Most leadership failures don’t start with people. They start with poor visibility into the business. In this episode, Heidi DeCoux explains why leaders who don’t understand their numbers end up working longer hours while making less money.

Heidi breaks down the leadership trap of chasing top-line revenue without understanding profitability. She explains why many founders scale chaos instead of results and how unclear financial data leads to bad decisions, burnout, and broken teams. Drawing from decades as a serial entrepreneur, she shows how leaders can use simple KPIs to identify what actually drives profit—and what quietly drains it.

The conversation also covers why automation is now a leadership advantage, how incentive structures impact productivity, and why white space is essential for good decision-making. Heidi makes a clear case: leaders who want freedom, impact, and sustainability must build systems that surface truth, not noise.

This episode is a practical look at leadership through the lens of financial discipline, clarity, and intentional design.

Want to learn more about Heidi DeCoux's work? Check out their website at https://heididecoux.com.

Connect with Heidi DeCoux on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/heididecoux/.

Key Points & Time Stamps

• [00:51 – 01:46] Heidi DeCoux’s background as a serial entrepreneur and business optimizer
• [05:08 – 06:13] Why small business leaders struggle to understand their numbers
• [06:25 – 07:08] How AI-driven insights change leadership decision-making
• [08:08 – 09:27] The KPI most leaders ignore—and why it impacts take-home profit
• [09:27 – 09:55] Why high-ticket services are often less profitable than mid-tier offers
• [10:17 – 10:39] The leadership mistake of confusing revenue with success
• [11:26 – 12:08] How leaders unintentionally work more while earning less
• [14:57 – 15:23] Overlooked expenses that quietly drain profit
• [15:34 – 16:20] Incentivizing results instead of hours worked
• [17:24 – 18:09] Why leaders need white space to make better decisions
• [20:35 – 21:06] Automating financial management as a leadership advantage
• [23:46 – 24:48] Why legacy software fails modern solopreneurs
• [25:14 – 26:08] How founder-led thinking drives real innovation

Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;17
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

00;00;51;20 - 00;01;27;18
Craig Andrews
Today I will welcome Heidi DeCoux. She is the founder and CEO of cashfllowey.ai. Heidi is a serial entrepreneur known as the Optimizer for helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs optimize their businesses and lives over the last 24 years. She's built for businesses. My goodness, that's a lot of work with 50% plus profit margins and successfully sold three of them, including a seven figure exit.

00;01;27;21 - 00;01;46;28
Craig Andrews
Pioneer of online marketing. Heidi's latest venture is Cash Flow AI, an elegant, AI driven bookkeeping client invoicing and cash flow management software designed for small businesses that eliminate the need for a human bookkeeper. Heidi, welcome.

00;01;47;00 - 00;01;49;14
Heidi DeCoux
Thanks for having me, Craig.

00;01;49;16 - 00;01;53;28
Craig Andrews
And I you know, it's funny, every time I run into somebody from,

00;01;54;01 - 00;01;55;26
Craig Andrews
you know, I'm usually it's,

00;01;55;29 - 00;02;00;08
Craig Andrews
CFOs, fractional CFOs that I talk to the,

00;02;00;11 - 00;02;05;24
Craig Andrews
the number one pain they remove for people is helping them understand their numbers.

00;02;05;26 - 00;02;07;08
Heidi DeCoux
You know.

00;02;07;10 - 00;02;33;28
Craig Andrews
And it's it's hard, you know, so many businesses, it's it's like QuickBooks has a stranglehold on small businesses. And it is not user friendly at all. Well, you know, we were chatting in the green room and it's it's interesting. We had kind of parallel Covid journeys.

00;02;34;01 - 00;02;42;13
Craig Andrews
You know, obviously, you know, those that know me know I was in the hospital, but you were like you said, you're in the process of selling a business,

00;02;42;16 - 00;02;44;15
Craig Andrews
going through a divorce,

00;02;44;18 - 00;02;46;20
Craig Andrews
fighting off Covid and then.

00;02;46;21 - 00;02;47;17
Heidi DeCoux
Moving to a new.

00;02;47;17 - 00;02;48;17
Heidi DeCoux
City maybe

00;02;48;17 - 00;02;51;11
Heidi DeCoux
5 or 10 years later. Yeah.

00;02;51;13 - 00;03;02;26
Craig Andrews
Wow. And. Yet you sold the business. You made all that work. I mean, I had a near miss,

00;03;02;29 - 00;03;10;10
Craig Andrews
very near miss with my business. Regarding the books regarding QuickBooks, specifically,

00;03;10;13 - 00;03;19;08
Craig Andrews
I've been using QuickBooks desktop. I've been staying with that. And, you know, they've been pushing hard to get people over to the online version.

00;03;19;11 - 00;03;24;00
Craig Andrews
And finally, I was like, in July of 2021, I,

00;03;24;08 - 00;03;29;10
Craig Andrews
told a buddy of my I'm like, hey, what would it take to get me the QuickBooks online?

00;03;29;10 - 00;03;44;00
Craig Andrews
And he told me and he set me up and he, you know, he had access to the account and what have you. And so they he moved me over to QuickBooks Online on July 15th, 2021.

00;03;44;02 - 00;04;06;11
Craig Andrews
I had no idea at the time that 16 days later, I'd wake up with a deadly disease that would put me in the hospital. Another ten days after that, and a coma. I look back on that and I'm just so thankful that I done that because, he made sure my my employees got paid, my vendors got paid.

00;04;06;11 - 00;04;18;10
Craig Andrews
He made sure my family got paid. He met with my wife regularly to help her know how much money we had. And, you know, I would help her make decisions and,

00;04;18;10 - 00;04;31;09
Craig Andrews
you know, thank goodness. Then have to file my taxes during that time or do any, any type of advanced reporting. We've been complete disaster.

00;04;31;12 - 00;04;40;06
Craig Andrews
But I think that's a problem for businesses is running the books, especially small businesses.

00;04;40;08 - 00;05;02;19
Heidi DeCoux
Exactly. Yeah. If you're a bigger, more complex business and you can then afford to hire an accountant and like you said, you maybe even addition to your accountant or bookkeeper, you have like say a fractional CFO working for you. You have what you need, right? You have those advantages. You don't actually have to deal with the clunkiness of QuickBooks because you have your people doing that for you.

00;05;02;19 - 00;05;08;11
Heidi DeCoux
You have your people really explaining what's going on in your business and helping you make those data driven decisions.

00;05;08;14 - 00;05;18;18
Heidi DeCoux
However, for a much smaller business that can't afford all of that, it's like a disaster. And even the other solutions out there like, say, a FreshBooks,

00;05;18;18 - 00;05;22;05
Heidi DeCoux
a zero, they're still too big and complex,

00;05;22;08 - 00;05;25;07
Heidi DeCoux
and have so many features that what I call like,

00;05;25;07 - 00;05;26;20
Heidi DeCoux
micro business,

00;05;26;23 - 00;05;29;15
Heidi DeCoux
solopreneur ship type business or even just,

00;05;29;15 - 00;05;32;03
Heidi DeCoux
a less complicated business needs.

00;05;32;05 - 00;05;37;18
Heidi DeCoux
And then in addition to that, even if, let's just say they're successfully using like a zero,

00;05;37;21 - 00;05;56;03
Heidi DeCoux
their have their financial reporting, they are tax ready, but rarely do they actually know their numbers and what they mean and how to make data driven decisions from them, often talking to even quite successful small businesses that I have been around a while.

00;05;56;08 - 00;06;13;07
Heidi DeCoux
You start talking about KPIs, key performance indicators, and they're kind of lost. Right. And so that was why I ended up launching cash flow in my software, which has a built in AI financial coach. So yeah, we're going to do a better job of your bookkeeping, accounting and tax prep.

00;06;13;10 - 00;06;19;23
Heidi DeCoux
For a small business like a solar preneur not a bigger business with more complications, but a smaller business.

00;06;19;25 - 00;06;24;27
Heidi DeCoux
The AI is really smart. Things are very automated. You don't need a human bookkeeper.

00;06;25;00 - 00;06;30;13
Heidi DeCoux
But in addition to that, you get this really savvy AI financial coach that

00;06;30;19 - 00;06;44;11
Heidi DeCoux
understands your business and gets to know it better and better and better, and shows you these are the KPIs you need to be looking at right now. Your biggest problem is, say, client retention or these services are these offerings are your most profitable.

00;06;44;11 - 00;06;49;04
Heidi DeCoux
These are your least profitable. This is what it you know, your cost per acquisition looks like,

00;06;49;07 - 00;07;08;05
Heidi DeCoux
other people in your industry are usually spending X percentage on marketing, and you're spending Y, or you have a lot of software subscriptions in comparison to other, you know, people in your industry running those businesses. So those kinds of insights we can now give through the power of AI.

00;07;08;07 - 00;07;20;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now, when you say numbers, what are the numbers? What. Yeah. Because, you know, for me, I have limited capacity to think about all this stuff.

00;07;20;22 - 00;07;21;11
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah.

00;07;21;13 - 00;07;23;16
Craig Andrews
What are the numbers I should be tracking?

00;07;23;19 - 00;07;40;22
Heidi DeCoux
Well, it's going to depend on your business, but our. So our target market with cash flow is a solar preneur. Meaning you are kind of a one person ish business. You might have an assistant and a designer and a web guy or whatever, some contractors. But the business is really you. You are a coach, a consultant,

00;07;40;25 - 00;07;48;07
Heidi DeCoux
financial advisor, a therapist, a you run an online program, you know, like, you really are your business.

00;07;48;10 - 00;08;08;05
Heidi DeCoux
And that case, the core KPIs that you need to know for sure is how. So this is the number one, one that we start with with people because it makes the biggest difference on their bottom line. Bottom line, meaning the amount of money that's actually going in your pocket after all your business expenses. You pay your taxes,

00;08;08;08 - 00;08;13;14
Heidi DeCoux
that you actually take home and put in your pocket because that's the number that really actually matters, right?

00;08;13;14 - 00;08;16;25
Heidi DeCoux
Top line revenue, sort of your all of it. So,

00;08;16;28 - 00;08;30;17
Heidi DeCoux
what we have them do is a we have them plug in a few. We, we pull in automated data as much as possible through their bank accounts, their PayPal, their stripe, all of that. And then we'll have them plug in any data that we're missing to help them,

00;08;30;20 - 00;08;36;13
Heidi DeCoux
to know what their KPIs and eyes are and understand them and often we're solopreneurs.

00;08;36;19 - 00;09;00;14
Heidi DeCoux
They automatically assume that the service that's bringing in the most amount of top line revenue, like it's usually their higher priced service. They assume that that's their most profitable because when they're looking at, say, their PNL, they're like, well, the income. So much of my income is coming from the service and I'm getting a lot per client. The service is, say, 3000 or $5000 a client or whatever.

00;09;00;14 - 00;09;02;24
Heidi DeCoux
And then they have these other smaller price services.

00;09;02;27 - 00;09;27;16
Heidi DeCoux
Often that's actually not the case. Often they will have a mid tier service that if they calculate how much money it costs and time it cost to acquire that client, how much time and money it costs to actually deliver the service to that client and what their average net profit was per hour that they put into delivering that client.

00;09;27;19 - 00;09;50;06
Heidi DeCoux
It's usually eye opening for people. What's actually the most profitable. They'll have a service that in fact, we were I was working with a user the other day. They, they swore that this, you know, high ticket thing was their most profitable. You know, what they were netting on that $83 an hour. They had a mid tier service that when we ran the numbers, they were netting $321 an hour.

00;09;50;08 - 00;09;55;01
Heidi DeCoux
Right. So like how about we sell more of these.

00;09;55;03 - 00;09;58;21
Heidi DeCoux
And less of this?

00;09;58;24 - 00;10;17;28
Craig Andrews
Well, and here's something else. I mean I think a lot of people think, well, hey, I mean I'm still making $83 an hour. That's great. But that's thinking about it from the perspective of if they were an employee making $83 an hour, that's great. Their business making $83 an hour, I that's not great.

00;10;17;28 - 00;10;34;14
Heidi DeCoux
Is it not great because you have all of these hours that you're making no money, right? Because you're doing like the admin on your business or this or that, and, you know, there's just so much that you take on as a business owner, including risk and high and low seasons and things. You have to play a plan for that.

00;10;34;14 - 00;10;39;08
Heidi DeCoux
That $83 an hour really is not a lot to justify all of that.

00;10;39;10 - 00;10;48;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, you know, I think it was last week, obviously the last week or the week before, I was talking to somebody and he,

00;10;48;14 - 00;10;59;11
Craig Andrews
you know, he and I hadn't chatted and, you know, almost six months. And we were just kind of catching up. I was like, well, how's it going? He said, you know, last year we had record revenue.

00;10;59;14 - 00;11;09;18
Craig Andrews
They said their profits dropped and we're having to make some adjustments. I interpreted adjustments as people got fired and,

00;11;09;21 - 00;11;24;12
Craig Andrews
how deflating that must feel. I, I kind of sensed it in his voice that, you know, he rang the bell, he chased the revenue. He hit it, hit his goal. But he hurt his business in the process.

00;11;24;15 - 00;11;25;28
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah.

00;11;26;01 - 00;11;27;21
Craig Andrews
Why does that?

00;11;27;23 - 00;11;46;28
Heidi DeCoux
And it's so common that that happens, right. And it's just because you don't actually know those core KPIs. Right. And so if you don't really understand your numbers, what's going on in your business and how to make data driven decisions on them, you're going to you're going to for sure work too many hours and make not enough money.

00;11;47;03 - 00;12;08;07
Heidi DeCoux
So like our core mission at Cashflow is to help you make more money and keep more money, like more take home profit. So yes, in that process, we're going to make sure your bookkeeping is done and you're tax ready and you have a nice I financial coach. You get to chat with 24 over seven. And all of our

00;12;08;07 - 00;12;10;07
Heidi DeCoux
customer service agents are actual bookkeepers.

00;12;10;07 - 00;12;14;26
Heidi DeCoux
So if you end up wanting some human support, we have human bookkeepers that you can talk to as well.

00;12;14;29 - 00;12;17;04
Heidi DeCoux
But that's all the

00;12;17;06 - 00;12;29;17
Heidi DeCoux
just what's required to get you the end result. The end result is more cash in your pocket, more take home money. And my personal mission is to have you actually work fewer hours for that.

00;12;29;19 - 00;12;40;22
Heidi DeCoux
I think that planet Earth is a better place if we actually have white space, if we have time to breathe, if we have time to, you know, follow,

00;12;40;22 - 00;12;57;23
Heidi DeCoux
passions and be with loved ones and take care of our health. And so we're now especially with the power of technology, living in a world that you can have a very abundant, lucrative business, that you enjoy doing some sort of good work in the world without overworking yourself.

00;12;57;27 - 00;13;00;08
Heidi DeCoux
But it starts with your numbers.

00;13;00;10 - 00;13;05;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it's interesting talking to somebody else. Last week, I was helping them with this,

00;13;05;10 - 00;13;07;18
Craig Andrews
and again this week,

00;13;07;20 - 00;13;10;25
Craig Andrews
yeah. This helped them with his, his presentation.

00;13;10;28 - 00;13;12;22
Craig Andrews
And he's like a,

00;13;12;26 - 00;13;14;04
Craig Andrews
he's a pinnacle guide.

00;13;14;04 - 00;13;17;08
Craig Andrews
Pinnacle guy is sort of like iOS, but,

00;13;17;11 - 00;13;22;19
Craig Andrews
you know, a little bit evolved, and he was showing me some numbers how,

00;13;22;22 - 00;13;27;16
Craig Andrews
you reach a point where you work more and you get less done.

00;13;27;19 - 00;13;43;17
Craig Andrews
And he was just kind of laying this out as if you think the solution to your problems or to work more, you have no idea you're missing. You're missing the boat. And I, you know, as as I was listening,

00;13;43;20 - 00;13;50;08
Craig Andrews
I was like, because I was coaching him on. Okay, how do we how do we take a presentation and turn it into a story?

00;13;50;11 - 00;14;00;22
Craig Andrews
And, and the story ends up being. Well, it's kind of like when you get an injury. When we get injuries, what do we do? We start compensating for that injury. And,

00;14;00;29 - 00;14;12;24
Craig Andrews
all of a sudden, you, compensating for that injury doesn't make things better. Actually makes the injury worse. And you never recover until you make a significant change.

00;14;12;24 - 00;14;18;26
Craig Andrews
And usually, you know, at least for me, in my journey, that was going to physical therapy for a long while. And,

00;14;18;26 - 00;14;42;02
Craig Andrews
but I think for businesses, a thing understand and they understand what's driving their business, do it better. So let me let's go this direction. So let's, let's kind of independent of software. Let's just talk in general about what are some good financial decisions.

00;14;42;05 - 00;14;57;14
Craig Andrews
What are some things I should be tracking in my business or the average let's say your average, you know, small to medium business. What are some things that folks should be tracking and what are the things that they often overlook?

00;14;57;16 - 00;15;23;12
Heidi DeCoux
An easy one that is often overlooked is your subscriptions. You have so many annual and monthly subscriptions, and when you get busy and business, you lose track of them and there'll be things that you stop using and you're continuing to pay for. So doing a quarterly audit of all of those subscriptions and things that you're paying for. So I would you know, that's just a quick, easy one to do.

00;15;23;14 - 00;15;34;09
Heidi DeCoux
Another one. Then is looking at what can we automate delete, delegate, get off my plate. You know, maybe delegate to AI now

00;15;34;12 - 00;16;01;09
Heidi DeCoux
and and then as part of that automate delegate delete process, is there some trimming that we can do on team. Can we be more efficient? One thing we do in my business that I've done in in most of my businesses, or at least the last couple, is people get incented by how they're results that they produced, not the hours worked.

00;16;01;11 - 00;16;20;19
Heidi DeCoux
So like you were talking about before, just working more doesn't get you a better outcome. And there's a lot of data that box that up. There's big companies that move to four day workweeks and then their actual productivity and output and results of the company like revenue in the company, you know, went up right, because people had time to.

00;16;20;21 - 00;16;38;04
Craig Andrews
Yeah. For us, you know, years ago I instituted policy where we do we do a full week shutdown for Thanksgiving, and we do a two week shutdown for Christmas and New Year's. You know what the two most productive weeks of the year are? The week before we shut down for Christmas and the week after we get back.

00;16;38;06 - 00;16;38;27
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah.

00;16;39;00 - 00;16;45;28
Craig Andrews
And, you know, the week before, it's just, you know, you have to get this done. And so you, you, you cut all the distractions out.

00;16;46;01 - 00;16;46;25
Heidi DeCoux
Right.

00;16;46;28 - 00;16;52;25
Craig Andrews
But the week you get back, you have in your minds a clean slate right?

00;16;52;28 - 00;17;07;11
Heidi DeCoux
Exactly. We did that this last Christmas. We rolled out our whole updated new version of the platforms. Everybody was just busting their butts heads down and got so much done. And then it was a celebration. It's like we did it. We hit the goal.

00;17;07;14 - 00;17;15;08
Heidi DeCoux
Everybody go out for the holiday, have fun, recharge. And then everybody came back just fresh and happy and, like, ready to dive in.

00;17;15;08 - 00;17;24;15
Heidi DeCoux
People had new, fresh, creative ideas. When they got back. They had insight because we need white space in our lives, right? You need time to actually think.

00;17;24;18 - 00;17;35;17
Heidi DeCoux
So it's yes, you need to know your numbers and what they means. You can make decisions, but then you have to have time to actually, like, think on them and feel into that because it's both science and intuitive.

00;17;35;17 - 00;17;51;13
Heidi DeCoux
Right? Because it could be that your most profitable service is actually one that you the least like delivering. Okay, well, I will say that it's a good business decision then to double down on that. I would say you actually need to take a step back and you need to say, all right, well, this is what the numbers are telling me.

00;17;51;15 - 00;18;09;18
Heidi DeCoux
This is what I like doing though, and what produces the most results in my business. Like what changes can I make where I feel like really aligned with what I did, the value I'm delivering and the money that I'm getting. It makes sense for the business and it makes sense for me, you know, emotionally and my energy and like all of that.

00;18;09;18 - 00;18;16;29
Heidi DeCoux
Right. So you have to have the bandwidth in that space to be able to really think.

00;18;17;02 - 00;18;21;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No. Absolutely. And that's,

00;18;22;02 - 00;18;26;27
Craig Andrews
Well, I, you know, I the thing I would liken it to something,

00;18;26;29 - 00;18;32;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. The I call it the shower moments, you know, when you have those epiphanies in the shower.

00;18;32;24 - 00;18;33;15
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah.

00;18;33;18 - 00;18;35;13
Craig Andrews
That's that white space that you're talking about.

00;18;35;13 - 00;18;35;26
Heidi DeCoux
So.

00;18;35;29 - 00;18;40;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I have one recently where we're spinning up another brand called,

00;18;40;29 - 00;19;01;15
Craig Andrews
Fiduciary Alchemy that's targeting wealth managers. And I'm in the shower. I wish I could say I did this intentionally, but I didn't. It was accidental magic. And I'm in the shower, and all of a sudden, it hits me. I'm like, oh, the initials of Fiduciary Alchemy is for like, financial advisor.

00;19;01;15 - 00;19;19;02
Craig Andrews
They all call themselves efforts. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's cool. And like I said, I wish I could say that I intentionally did that, that that was a strategic plan. But but it's that white space that you're talking about by getting that clutter out. And,

00;19;19;05 - 00;19;37;01
Craig Andrews
and all of a sudden you have those like, those moments. And I was like, oh, well, I've been debating what to do for my fave, a con, which is a little, you know, when you bring up a browser and there's like a little logo on the tab and the logo for Fiduciary Alchemy wouldn't work well in that.

00;19;37;01 - 00;19;41;13
Craig Andrews
And all of a sudden I realized, oh, it's going to be a stylized thing.

00;19;41;20 - 00;19;44;09
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah. And.

00;19;44;12 - 00;19;54;00
Craig Andrews
And yeah. And and that's like gold because my audience sees that my target audience is that. And you're like, oh, you're talking to me. I wouldn't have gotten there without the white space.

00;19;54;02 - 00;19;56;01
Heidi DeCoux
Totally. Exactly.

00;19;56;03 - 00;19;57;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;19;57;27 - 00;19;58;10
Craig Andrews
The,

00;19;58;10 - 00;20;01;24
Craig Andrews
the other thing I like that you said was about automation.

00;20;01;27 - 00;20;20;09
Craig Andrews
I think I was talking to some my small business owner, you know, would probably be fit right in your demo. Not solopreneur, but still small. And he was, you know, and he was saying, oh, yeah, I just finished my monthly reporting. Like, really? I was like, how long does it take?

00;20;20;09 - 00;20;21;29
Craig Andrews
It's like three days.

00;20;22;02 - 00;20;23;00
Heidi DeCoux
Oh my God.

00;20;23;02 - 00;20;26;13
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah, yeah. He's getting like.

00;20;26;16 - 00;20;27;07
Heidi DeCoux
Ten days.

00;20;27;07 - 00;20;32;13
Craig Andrews
Or less listening. He should have seen hide his face. It was like horror. It was absolute horror.

00;20;32;16 - 00;20;34;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;20;34;26 - 00;20;35;09
Heidi DeCoux
And yeah.

00;20;35;15 - 00;20;48;03
Heidi DeCoux
So we made cash flow so that solopreneurs on there can do all of their financial management in under an hour, a month. And that's people who hate numbers whose are brain blocked by bookkeeping.

00;20;48;05 - 00;20;49;05
Heidi DeCoux
Who.

00;20;49;07 - 00;21;06;01
Heidi DeCoux
You know, like, it's that simple. Now, obviously a bigger business with more complications is, you know, going to need more. So I'm comparing but three days for any I mean, unless you're literally a CFO is your job and you're doing some kind of deep dive reporting

00;21;06;01 - 00;21;07;22
Heidi DeCoux
that's going to help make hundreds of.

00;21;07;22 - 00;21;11;12
Heidi DeCoux
Thousands of dollars for this business.

00;21;11;14 - 00;21;27;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. No, I was Thomas like, dude, automate that. And he's like, well, some I can, some I can't. I'm like, put the stake in the ground. Everything will be automated. All reporting will be automated unless I can prove there's no other way.

00;21;27;18 - 00;21;28;04
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah.

00;21;28;07 - 00;21;30;18
Craig Andrews
And just put that stake in the ground. You'll find the path.

00;21;30;20 - 00;21;51;22
Heidi DeCoux
You'll find the path. Yeah. And it's becoming easier and easier and easier. And we're the at the tip of the iceberg right now. The general public doesn't realize, for the most part, how fast things are moving in the world of AI and how different our lives are going to look in five years. I mean, we're gonna be shipping robots to homes, most likely in five years.

00;21;51;24 - 00;22;13;22
Heidi DeCoux
And and even between now. And they're all of the different things in your business that you can automate with AI is going to be incredible. It's becoming you know, the vibe. Coding is just in its early, early, early days. Right? Claude Bot, you know, now there needs to be guardrails. There is security issues. There's a lot of things that need to get worked out, but they're going to get worked out.

00;22;13;22 - 00;22;16;19
Heidi DeCoux
They're going to start getting worked out quickly.

00;22;16;21 - 00;22;28;29
Craig Andrews
Well. And so let's let's wrap up with this because I, I'm kind of intrigued by what you're doing. When I look at companies like QuickBooks, you know, reminds me of SAP or are you familiar with that SAP.

00;22;29;01 - 00;22;29;25
Heidi DeCoux
Know,

00;22;29;27 - 00;22;33;05
Craig Andrews
SAP is like this big enterprise,

00;22;33;08 - 00;22;49;01
Craig Andrews
ERP, you know, planning. It's like your accounting and your materials planning on one. And I worked for a company where we deployed it. And the CEO, you know, he was a new CEO. He had been somewhere else. And that was one of his things he was doing was getting us one sap.

00;22;49;03 - 00;23;05;28
Craig Andrews
And he said, the good news is it only cost us $1 million to implement SAP. The bad news is it only cost us $1 million to implement SAP. You know, it's this big German software that's become a standard. And when you buy the software, you end up spending more on the,

00;23;05;28 - 00;23;10;07
Craig Andrews
consultants to get it implemented in your systems.

00;23;10;09 - 00;23;19;01
Craig Andrews
And I look at this, I look at that, I look at QuickBooks, and I'm like, you guys are like perfectly set up to be taken down. You know, and,

00;23;19;03 - 00;23;23;20
Craig Andrews
I I'll be honest. I mean, you know, I, we use HubSpot a lot,

00;23;23;23 - 00;23;36;29
Craig Andrews
and HubSpot, I think it's great software. I totally recommend it. But I'm seeing some early signs where I'm not convinced Hubspot's going to have be the leader in five years that they are today.

00;23;37;01 - 00;23;38;23
Craig Andrews
And so let's just talk about,

00;23;38;26 - 00;23;46;06
Craig Andrews
do you see a point where QuickBooks loses their vaulted spot as the default software?

00;23;46;08 - 00;24;09;05
Heidi DeCoux
Well, the the largest business segment in the US right now is a solar preneur, and they're the fastest growing. They're on track to be 42 million this year. And they're growing lightning fast. And for a solopreneur, QuickBooks is a absolute nightmare. Now, there are a lot of medium and large businesses, though, that are deep, deep, deep into QuickBooks.

00;24;09;05 - 00;24;32;03
Heidi DeCoux
And they use certified QuickBooks accountants and bookkeepers and like all of that. And so QuickBooks will retain, I think, that business because people are just deep into where they have their stuff worked out. They're just switching is such a big deal that there has to be a really, really good reason to switch. And I don't know that a new player is going to come on soon here, probably eventually.

00;24;32;05 - 00;24;48;03
Heidi DeCoux
But for for everyone else, they're already jumping ship on QuickBooks and not even trying QuickBooks. And so that market in QuickBooks did roll out a product that they tried to make for solopreneurs. It's kind of a disaster.

00;24;48;06 - 00;24;48;26
Heidi DeCoux
We have,

00;24;48;26 - 00;24;55;21
Heidi DeCoux
an a paid account of that, and we compare it to our software and it just doesn't even like begin to compare because it's old legacy thinking.

00;24;55;21 - 00;25;14;15
Heidi DeCoux
Right. And when you don't have it. So when you've got a startup and the founder is like grinding in the startup, and every day, you know, I'm laying in bed, I'm in the shower, I'm eating my breakfast, thinking about how we can make this experience better for our users, what we can do better for our users. You know what our users need.

00;25;14;15 - 00;25;39;08
Heidi DeCoux
I can't wait to get out and talk to users. You get these big legacy brands. It's just a machine that's running. No one's losing sleep over their users. They're just a grinding machine. I mean, that's why I like Google. I am a fan of Gemini. With that said, pre Gemini, I mean, Google really was stagnant and they still have a lot of things that could be just dramatically better because they're just an old the founders are you know, it's a long gone,

00;25;39;08 - 00;25;39;19
Heidi DeCoux
thing.

00;25;39;19 - 00;25;51;28
Heidi DeCoux
Right. It's now just a machine with a whole bunch of people with huge salaries that just clock in and do their thing and clock out and go to the Google gym and kick around a racquetball and, you know.

00;25;52;00 - 00;25;53;28
Heidi DeCoux
So, yeah.

00;25;54;02 - 00;25;55;10
Heidi DeCoux
The, the founders,

00;25;55;18 - 00;26;01;28
Heidi DeCoux
the scrappy founders on the ground, like they win the day in innovation and in user experience.

00;26;02;01 - 00;26;08;14
Craig Andrews
Well, and I believe the reason Gemini exists is because Sergey Brin came back. I don't know if you know that the.

00;26;08;15 - 00;26;24;27
Heidi DeCoux
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Actually a dead end. Yeah, that's actually a good point. I'd even put those two together till you said that just now. But that makes sense, right? Yeah. I mean, it was kind of like jobs when he came back to Apple, you know, I mean, it was falling off the cliff. And then jobs came back and, you know, revived it.

00;26;24;27 - 00;26;27;25
Heidi DeCoux
And and now they're stagnant again. Right. There's.

00;26;27;28 - 00;26;28;25
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah.

00;26;28;27 - 00;26;40;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And one of the this is different story, but one of the leading contenders to be the next CEO has never launched an innovative product ever. Yeah.

00;26;40;22 - 00;26;43;19
Heidi DeCoux
Okay. There you go. Like you go for Apple stock.

00;26;43;19 - 00;26;46;08
Heidi DeCoux
People sell your Apple stock.

00;26;46;10 - 00;26;47;27
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, hey,

00;26;47;27 - 00;26;51;26
Craig Andrews
this has been so good. How can people reach you?

00;26;51;29 - 00;27;15;15
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah. Come on over our our website. If you want to check out our cash flow. Cash flow? Tweet. I just spelled exactly cash flow I you can find me personally on LinkedIn and Instagram are kind of the only two socials I show up on here and there. Feel free to send me a DM if you think that there's, you know, partnership opportunity or you have a podcast you'd like to bring me on or something of that nature,

00;27;15;15 - 00;27;18;05
Heidi DeCoux
yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn or Instagram.

00;27;18;07 - 00;27;20;26
Craig Andrews
Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on. Leaders and Legacies.

00;27;20;28 - 00;27;28;28
Heidi DeCoux
Yeah, thanks for having me, Craig.

00;27;29;00 - 00;27;50;20
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Ally's for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;27;50;20 - 00;27;52;15
Craig Andrews
episode on social media.

00;27;52;17 - 00;28;15;29
Craig Andrews
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00;28;16;01 - 00;28;24;06
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up. Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me.

00;28;24;06 - 00;28;34;15
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Ally's for me.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.