Master the 4 P’s of Business Finance with Ahuva Gruen

You're listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 165. 

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author and chronic under-earner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach. And then, on to multiple six figures as a full-time money and business coach. 

I help entrepreneurs create money-making businesses and build wealth using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let's dive into today's show.

Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. You know how much I love talking about money, don't you? If not, you're going to get your ears full today because I have a guest and we just geek out on money. You're going to hear from my friend Ahuva Gruen and I will introduce her in a moment.

Before we jump into the episode, I want to remind you that I am live several times a week in my new Telegram channel 24/6. This is the place for you to be if you want my wisdom in your ears 24 hours a day, six days a week with practical, actionable, business and money advice to help you build your business and build your wealth in 2025. Go to my website, https://debbiesassen.com/246 to join the Telegram channel now, because we are going all-in on our businesses and building our wealth this year.

Now, let me share with you my beautiful guest, Ahuva Gruen. She is a seasoned fractional CFO. For those of you who don't know what CFO stands for, it stands for Chief Financial Officer. Ahuva is dedicated to transforming businesses and unlocking their full financial potential. Ahuva has over 20 years of experience specializing in providing clarity and insights to entrepreneurs struggling with their finances. Is that you? You have so much to learn on today's episode.

Ahuva is a former CFO of a large organization with a proven track record of significantly increasing revenue, securing financing, and expanding services for her clients. As the founder of her own business now, Ahuva leverages her CPA and CFO backgrounds to guide companies toward growth and profitability. 

She focuses on strategic analysis and collaborates with her clients to make informed decisions, optimize their pricing, and eliminate financial obstacles. By joining clients in their C-suite as a visionary advisor, Ahuva empowers businesses to soar to new heights and achieve their long-term goals.

I wanna make sure that when you listen in to today's podcast, even if your business is less than the million-dollar revenue and above threshold that Ahuva speaks about in this interview, you take away valuable information.

So if you are driving or you're out on your morning walk, or you've got kids in the background, make sure that you listen in and maybe come back and review this episode another time so that you can take notes and find at least one takeaway that you will implement in your business and in your money this year. All right, my friends, without further ado, let's jump into the episode. 

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Debbie Sassen: Hello, Ahuva, welcome to the podcast.

Ahuva Gruen: Hi, Debbie, thank you so much for having me on the podcast today.

Debbie Sassen: I am so excited for this conversation. Just from the little bit that you and I were chatting before we hit record, I know that we are very like-minded in the way people should be thinking about money, especially women, and in terms of their business financials. And this is going to be such an important topic and important conversation for our listeners today. But before we jump in, tell us a little bit how you got started as a woman in business because I know you have a great story.

Ahuva Gruen: How I got started is when I was five years old, I did my first sales. I convinced my teacher to use my mother's sheitel business because not that my mother told me to, but I thought it would be best for my teacher. She would be the happiest getting a wig from my mother. 

By the time I was 10, I had a full fledged handy business in school by recess on the bus in camp in the neighborhood in the Brown colony. Then in high school, I had a different business. So it was natural for me when I finished school to become an accountant, CPA and to be in the business world. 

After 20 years of working as a CFO controller of a company and helping family and friends in business and seeing a trend which bothers me to no end is that business owners, women and men, they're good at what they do, what they sell or what service they provide but they're not good at running the financial and it affects the bottom line. So in COVID, when I left my company and decided what to do next, my sister said to me, "Ahuva is now or never, go for it." And that's what I did.

Debbie Sassen: Wow, that's amazing. First of all, you were very gutsy as a five-year-old going to your kindergarten teacher and telling her what you thought she should do. Has that been...

Ahuva Gruel: I actually bought the wig for my mother.

Debbie Sassen: I love it. I love it. But is that like, being really gutsy and taking risks, is that something that's very characteristic of you?

Ahuva Gruel: I take risks, but I'm logical. When I opened my candy business, I took risks, I invested money. There was a system behind it. I knew I bought the candy for seven cents, I sold it for a quarter. I'm not just taking risk without any logic.

Debbie Sassen: Right. Like, listen, quadrupling your money, your investment, that's pretty good. Did your parents give you the seed money for your candy business?

Ahuva Gruel: That I don't remember. But I knew whatever, if I wanted something, an extra, and my parents didn't want to get like a camera when I was a little kid, I babysat, I had a candy business, I earned it, I got it. And I took care of it and eventually I got a better one.

Debbie Sassen: I love it.

Ahuva Gruel: Also, that's how I raised my kids. You want something extra, I'll give half or something, but I'm teaching them about financials.

Debbie Sassen: We're so much alike like that. My oldest son, he's actually the fourth in the family, but he's my oldest boy. So he was the kid who they, you know, the kids get little plastic toys in kindergarten, first grade, whatever, you know, they do something good, they get a plastic toy. So he'd be the kid who would sell it to the next door neighbor or some other kid on the block. And he was always doing things to make money.

He had a candy business or like Nosh, you know, Doritos and potato chips and things like that. And I was his driver. I would like drive him all around when he was in school to go to the store. He would like be looking at the ads in the paper where he can get Doritos for cheap, where he can get sour sticks for cheap, and I'd be driving him around the neighborhood and he had his little kiosk in school. And yeah, then it turned into the Arbor Minim for Sukkot. So he has that business-like drive like his mommy.

Ahuva Gruen: Yeah, that's great. My kids also had little side businesses and whenever I would say anything, my friends would say, they take after you. You had businesses from when you were a little kid with his finding, selling things, carnival, whatever it is, selling candy, babysitting, whatever it is. But I think it's important for people, from young to have a sense of financial. I have a client.

I do mostly businesses, but I had a client that begged me also to help him with his personal. He was taking out almost a million dollars from his company and he could not make ends meet because not him, not his wife had no idea of financial. If you don't have any idea of financial, you could blow anything. 

My daughter wanted sneakers for $100, which I thought was not worth it because it wasn’t name brand. And she said, I wish you were a millionaire. You wouldn't care about how much it costs. Because I said, I'll pay part, you pay the rest. You want the name brand, you pay the rest. I said to her, even if I was a millionaire, billionaire, I would not just spend the money on things that don't have value.

Debbie Sassen: Do you know what I've actually heard? And it might have been from Dave Ramsey. It might have been from somebody else. But actually, when you have more money, yeah, I mean, we can definitely be a little bit like freer, looser. We have more choices, but we know what it takes to make the money, especially if you know you have your business, you're making your money. I have my business, I'm making my money. So we're almost more discerning. We're more intentional about our decisions.

And I'll just say yesterday, speaking of shoes, I went to meet my parents in Jerusalem and it's the end of the year as we're recording this and there's a lot of sales and it was a pouring rainy day and I was like, oh, let me just look at the sales in the shoe stores. And I was looking and I was thinking, but I really said like, Debbie, how often does it rain in Israel? And how often are you out of your house when it's raining? I have two pairs of boots. Like I really didn't need that urge to get something, but I really didn't need it.

And it just came back to, I would much prefer to use the money that I have to just have it for a rainy day, not a rainy day like a really rainy day like yesterday, but for example in the summer we did a family trip to Germany where my family is from and it just happened to be the time right when we were in Germany that Lufthansa canceled flights from Germany to Israel because of I think Iran was like sending missiles our way back in July that time.

So at a moment's notice, we flew from Germany to London to get an El Al flight home. So when you have cash reserves in your bank account, because you're not spending it on all sorts of luxury items. And I have nothing, I have no problem with luxury items. But I really call that rainy day fund your financial freedom fund because you have the freedom not to get stuck in Germany for a few more days until you can get on the next El Al flight and you can fly anywhere.

Yeah, it cost us a few thousand dollars to get the family there, but we got home and everybody got back to routine and we just limited the amount of complication in our life. And that's what money does. It gives you choices. 

You know, when you're managing it better, you really can see that you have so many options in front of you and you're like, oh yeah, that makes sense to me, that's sensible, that's a good decision, or I wanna put money away for my future self, for when I'm retired, when I don't wanna be working in my business anymore, right? Because there's that future that we just don't know what's gonna be.

Ahuva Gruel: Right, right. And it's also within business and in personal. Budgeting, people think, ah, I have to stay on a budget, it's restricting. No, budgeting is choices. What I want now to what I want most. Budgeting is where do I want to spend my money. To save for, like you saved for, and you used it when the flight was canceled, it's true in personal and in business. You have to have reserve if there's a quiet month.

Debbie Sassen: Yes.

Ahuva Gruel: Where your client doesn’t pay…

Debbie Sassen: Or wants a refund, they want to stop working with you. 

Ahuva Gruel: Or if something goes wrong, you have to have reserve. And you only can have reserve if you have a budget, a forecast of knowing what is going on, and having money set aside. Your quarterly income tax, if you don't put a money aside, sham help me, I have no money. How am I paying my quarterly taxes?

How am I paying my annual expenses? Budgeting goes with discipline. Discipline is a choice of what I want now to what I want most. In business, do I want every new technology? Will it really make more money for my business or it's just a nice toy? Men have their toy technology, women have different toys. If it's a fancy website, if it's new software, really what's the return on investment?

Debbie Sassen: So tell us about, like, you don't have to like name names, but some of your clients, when they come to you, right? You're a fractional CFO now.

Ahuva Gruel: Yeah.

Debbie Sassen: And first of all, what size companies do you normally work with in terms of their revenue stream? Is it like half a million dollars and above, a million, two? Like what are the size of your companies?

Ahuva Gruel: Usually it's a million and above in revenue to like 10, 20 million, depending on the industry. Because maybe they could, if they could make it when they're small, but once you hit a million, two million, and you're starting to grow, it's really important to have guidance. I have one professional service industry client, he made more money when it was just him and another professional who was a lawyer. Then now he has four attorneys working for him and he's taking out loans to pay his expenses.

Debbie Sassen: How does that happen? Let's just like - and somewhere along the way either he invested in growth too quickly, or he just wasn't aware of his money. What was happening? Just tell us a little bit about how that happens.

Ahuva Gruel: Okay, it's a combination. This person worked in a firm beforehand that was like overpowering and really difficult to work. So he went out, when he went out on his own and he had the experience, the attorney to go out, he went to the other street. In life, we need balance. Yes, so you could make it a good working environment for your other attorneys.

If you don't have good processes to weed out not good quality clients, you know there's an expression, 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients. You have to know which client to take, which client not to take. If they're going to go and to a charge back on the credit card for no reason, then I end up costing you more.

Debbie Sassen: Really? That happens with the companies that you work with?

Ahuva Gruel: With one company yes, because it’s not always such healthy clients. It depends on the industry. If you don’t have good processes about when to get deposits, when to bill, it’s another big area I have in other clients is profit margins. How they price things. How their cash flow, when they pay their expenses, their vendors, when they charge. I really, when I go into a company, I look at the four P’s, which I really feel that it affects the bottom line.

Debbie Sassen: Okay. So what are the 4 P's? Cause every, every company needs them.

Ahuva Gruen: People, your employees, are they doing good work? Are they efficient? Are they effective? If they do too much, you're paying them and you're not going to get reimbursed back. If they don't do enough and they have to go back and do it again, it's going to cost you and it's going to get into your profits.

If they don't have communication about what the job entails, if they don't feel safe to say there's another idea, if they're focusing on all over. I read a great book, Great at Work, it says do less and obsess. I love that concept. Look at really what's going to bring in the most money. What is the best return on investment and focus on that.

What does the clients want? So with the people, it's about employees. I had one client, they had field workers and things were taking too long. So I spoke to the CEO, the owner, and I said, it's taking too long. He said, it shouldn't be taking so long, that specific scope of work.

We put cameras, we told the employees, we put cameras, trackers in the vehicle. All of a sudden things took closer. You have software. Are they tracking their hours? Are you using your software or you're just paying money for nothing? A, you leak money for nothing and B, you're losing out because if you track hours, accounting is accountability everyone. Account, numbers, data and accountability.

Debbie Sassen: Amazing.

Ahuva Gruen: Another aspect. So that's people. Profit margin. I went into a business and he thought he had good profit margins, but he was using deposit to fund operation. And I said right away when I started speaking and analyzing, your profit margin is off.

We create a profit tool. We go through the projects, through the jobs all the time, different jobs, and see what went right or what went wrong. If something went wrong, we don't just cry over the past. What we could do to correct it. What are some kinds of ways we could make things better?

Debbie Sassen: So let me ask you a question, Ahuva, before you go on to the next P, because when you were a kid with your candy business, your profit margin was almost, you know, four times what you were paying, right? So how do you, with your clients, determine what the profit margin should be?

Ahuva Gruen: Great point. How I determine what the profit margin should be, I look at the income and also what's projected income, where we could go. When I look at the profit and loss, I first clean up the books or make sure the books are clean. And then I look at the profit margin and we make a budget so we know what's us a revenue and how much we could raise it. Before we could raise it, we first look at what the revenue is.

Then we also look at direct costs, direct material, direct labor. And then we look at indirect costs, overhead, rent, utilities, software, how much money the owner wants to take home. And all that type of stuff. And then you get the net profit margin. So when I do a pricing tool and we have to take in the direct cost and the profit margin has to cover the indirect cost.

I have an interesting story that happened last week to a client of mine that sells products. And we had me, the marketer, and the owner. And we had a conversation. Is it better to sell more at lower profit margin? Because it was an Amazon business. I'm just using it as an example, or is it better to have sell less and have better profit margin? What would you say Debbie? What's better?

Debbie Sassen: I think, listen, it's going to depend on the cost because you have shipping costs every time you sell a product at a lower price. Is the shipping included? Is it not included? Like I don't even think that you can make the judgment without knowing the numbers. I always like to say that the numbers tell a story. 

But I will say that when I think about exactly what you're talking about, I think about it in terms of mass, which means you sell a lot at a lower price, or class, which is more like a luxury item, which is a higher price, higher profit margin, and you sell fewer of them. Many times going for class rather than mass is going to work out better.

Ahuva Gruen: So what I told this client is, it's definitely a balance with quantity and quality, but you have to also keep in mind the indirect costs. We have a doubt how much it costs us to ship the product from if it's, you know, the direct cost. But there's also indirect costs, like shipping the items to Amazon or different businesses. It's the software, it's the overhead, it's the rent. It's not just quantity.

And when we dug in, I was correct because you have to keep in mind, yes, it's balanced. You have a huge profit margin but very little sales. It's not going to work. It's a balance. It's fine tuning. If you want to spend on advertising on a short period to boost sales of your product, fine. But in the long run, you need the profit margin. Otherwise, you won't make it. And if you make it, you could be on survival. If you're in low profit margin, I don't want to say a number because different industries is different. You're in survival mode.

Debbie Sassen: Right

Ahuva Gruen: You need deposit to fund operation, you’re in survival mode. If you don’t know what’s going on in your financials like my client told me, I opened his eyes, you’re in survival mode or they don’t even realize - that other client was losing money. He wanted to know how much he could spend on research and development, but you’re losing money. You first have to open your eyes and know what’s going on. Ladies and gentlemen, it is so important to know what’s going on any our business, to have clean books.

Debbie Sassen: So what do you even mean? Because you use this phrase clean books, and I'm not sure that our listeners know what that term means, clean books.

Ahuva Gruen: Great point. Clean books is to have accurate books, to know what services where you're making money, not to have two different QuickBooks or two different programs, industriy specific and QuickBooks. I see all the time, Debbie, companies have two separate books. They're not reconciled. If it's reconciled, it's not reconciled. Things, items are put in the wrong accounts.

Debbie Sassen: What, personal accounts? Are we, are we talking about people who are like swiping their business card to pay for their kids' tennis shoes and extracurricular activities?

Ahuva Gruen: I'm talking about both, Debbie. If people put their personal expenses in a mix in, I see that all the time, you won't have any idea of what things are costing.

Debbie Sassen: It's total spaghetti. It's like you don't know how much your family needs to run and you have no idea how much your business needs to run because there's just this like commingling of funds, right? There's just like a whole big pile of spaghetti.

Ahuva Gruen: And I had a client said, "I'm hardly taking money out of my business." And I'm like, "One minute." And I showed him where he tried to commingle funds. I tell that my client, "There's no commingling funds." Label something as office expense and it's really something else. You don't know what you're spending. In order to make a budget, you have to know where you're starting. If you don't reconcile, how do you know what's going on in your business?

Debbie Sassen: A hundred percent. Okay, so you told us about people and you told us about profit. What are the next two P's?

Ahuva Gruen: People, profits, products. Are your clients happy? Are your products good? Are they getting good feedback? Is there a demand for it? Before you want to start and expand on a new product, are you leaving money on service? Are you leaving money on the table?

Debbie Sassen: Nice, nice. I like that.

Ahuva Gruen: I spoke about people. I spoke about profits, people, profits, processes.

Debbie Sassen: Oh, and your processes.

Ahuva Gruen: Processes, how you get paid, processes with every part, how you give over jobs, how you price on the estimate, every part of your business has processes. So people, profit, products and processes are the four keys that really drive the numbers. 

So yes, you need to have clean books. You need to know what's going on in your books. But once you have that, then you have to know, work on with the full piece, how to get it better.

Debbie Sassen: Amazing. I love that. And I just want to talk about the processes. If somebody had like, here we are in a new year 2025 if somebody had to choose one process that they were gonna focus on like for the next quarter right the next three months. They're gonna be like this is the one that I'm gonna focus and get it squeaky clean running beautifully before I go into the next one, where do you think people should start?

Ahuva Gruen: Great question. Where do people should start with processes? It probably depends on where the pain point is, what's not going right. Different businesses have different places, but a very common one is profits. 

Debbie Sassen: Okay, so in an order, like we go back, it's like really, really looking at your numbers.

Ahuva Gruen: Right, but once you get into your profits, a lot of time you will see what other issues you are having.

Debbie Sassen: That's like I said before, like those numbers have so much information, their data, they're completely neutral, right? Numbers are just numbers, just like the number on the scale, just like if you're lifting weights, the number of the barbells that you're lifting or something like that.

Ahuva Gruen: The numbers tell a story.

Debbie Sassen: A whole story.

Ahuva Gruen: And you have to interpret what the story is. What is it your employees? Is it the weather? Depending on the industry, is it your products? You know, like what's going, is it your people and your products, your profits, or is it your process? They're all intertwined. But if you start with your profit or cash flow, then you will see really what's going on.

Debbie Sassen: 100%, I love that. So tell me when you started, when you like left the company that you were working for and you started your own business. Because one thing that I love talking about with my clients is money blocks, limiting money beliefs. How was it for you to work? You're working with a different clientele now, companies that are a little bit smaller than your former employer, and you had to price your services. So did you have limiting beliefs about how much you could charge for what you were doing?

Ahuva Gruen: Sure, I did. When I started, I started with pricing per hour and people told me, no one's going to hire you for that. Too much money. You should charge much less. And I said, no.

I had to close my ears from negative talk from people and really let go. Or, you're not going to succeed. Why don't you go get a different CFO job of a nursing home? And I said, no. I want to do this. This is my passion. My sister said to me, it's now or never.

Debbie Sassen: It's great for you to have such a supportive sister, right?

Ahuva Gruen: Right. And I knew once I started, what my father said to me when I was studying for my CPA and I wanted to quit. He said, you start, you finish. And then what I did is after I got my feet wet and I started my business, I invested in a business coach and that coach was also in my industry and she helped me on taking it to the next level on how to price a different on what to focus on. I really believe in who, not how. Do what you're best at and delegate to the rest.

Debbie Sassen: Amazing. For anybody who doesn't know, right, that's Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, right? Who Not How, it's an excellent book.

Ahuva Gruen: It's a great book and I tell my clients to read it too because focus, and it goes with the concepts of greater work book, do less and obsess. Do what's the most, what's your best at, do what will get the most return on investment and really do it well.

Debbie Sassen: I think that is such great advice for anybody because some people are really good with numbers, like doing the accounting like you do. And I do this work also, but I'm much more sales and marketing focused and working on money blocks and things like that. So you do what you do well, I do what I do well and it's in the money field. But then there are people who are, they're very good with technical. They're very good people who are like they know how to be very detail oriented, like lawyers.

They dot the I's, they cross the T's. People who are very creative and every person has their gift. G-d gave us all different gifts And I love what you said, right do what you are really good at focus on that and make that work. Don't spread yourself so thin.

Ahuva Gruen: Right. So my business coach I did not need any help in my business, what I'm actually doing, because that my previous job was like 50 levels more complicated. And I needed with the sales, with the marketing, that's not my strong point.

Debbie Sassen: So that's great, that's great that you have your team that does it.

Ahuva Gruen: And a money block is what I see a lot is about, you have to invest in your business with some thinking behind it, not blindly, but to invest. If you're not good at financial, invest in a fractional CFO. You're not paying a full-time salary. You're not paying my benefits. You're paying for what service I provide.

If I'm not good at marketing and I'm not good at sales, I hire someone to do it and I will focus on what I'm good at instead of twisting and turning and killing myself to do the marketing myself.

Debbie Sassen: I love that.

Ahuva Gruen: I did my own website. And then when I wanted to change something, my daughter walked in the room and she said, ma, use this and this person. And I redid my whole website. Yes, I spent money, but I did my homework. I thought about it. I didn't do it impulsively, but it was much less time for me and it was better than if I would try to do it again myself when it's not my forte.

Debbie Sassen: A hundred percent.

Ahuva Gruen: I don't believe in going spending on fancy phone system and thousands and thousands of website when you're just starting out. This was, I'm not just starting out. Baruch HaShem. So it was time for me to upgrade my website. I have to give that disclaimer because I don't want people to go and just spend and spend.

It has to be worth like a calculation. You can't just, oh, I want a new website, go. And I also priced it. I priced it. I did my homework. I did my research, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy. If you're not good at financial or you don't have time for it, go get financial help. It's not so expensive. It's just not.

Debbie Sassen: I have to ask you a question and just the listeners should know we didn't prepare this ahead of time because you're talking about investing, right? Whether it's in a website or whether it's marketing help, sales help, hiring an accountant or a fractional CFO. What are your thoughts about borrowing money to invest in your business for longer term growth?

Ahuva Gruen: I love the analogy that debt is like fire. It could heat up your house. It could be very great. We're recording this on Hanukkah. It's been always has fire or G-d forbid, it could burn down someone's house. People could die. 

If you have a plan in place, how are you going to pay? If you're taking it out to expand, do you know the return on investment? What's your interest rates? Credit card debt, I'm really against. Is there a plan in place? A return on investment, how long are you going to need it for? 

It's like if it's your inventory, you have to count in the cost of interest in it. If it's for expanding, there has to be like a budget plan in place in order to take out debt. But if you're taking out debt to pay your operation, that is a huge red flag. Something is really wrong.

Debbie Sassen: So I agree with you on that, that something's wrong if you're using it to pay your operational expenses. And when I worked on Wall Street, I also remember it because there's seasonality to businesses. So if you just go to consumer goods and now we're in the end of the year, so there's, whether it's Christmas sales, New Year's sales, since Black Friday. So a company can get, or a department store, any store like that, retail business can get a lot of cash during November, December, January, and then they can have some really dry months until the next jump in sales. 

So sometimes we worked with large companies, larger than a million or two, five million that your companies are working with. And there was something called a revolving credit facility where companies could borrow money just to get them over the end of the month or just could get them for a short term. I mean, there are definitely short term ways of borrowing money. 

So that's something also to, you know, I don't think that any of our listeners today are in that position, but if you can look at your cash flow and you know that in two months, three months, right, you have some recurring revenue, something coming in, and it's just a little glitch, maybe again, we've talked about refunds or whatever. 

Ahuva Gruen: I hear that to take it to ride it over, but it's a slippery slope. You have to be very careful. So just slip in and really pay it down and really to be careful. 

Debbie Sassen: Keep your eyes on the numbers. 

Ahuva Gruen: What I do also with my clients is they know the quiet season, is to build up a reserve like we started for the dry month.

Debbie Sassen: So let me ask you a question, because we talked about like dry months, and for many businesses, not all businesses, but 2024 was a quieter year for people. How did you help your clients? 

And I don't, you know, we don't know, none of us has a crystal ball. We don't know what 2025 is going to bring to us. How do you help your clients when the economy has been expanding, but then all of a sudden there's a drop in economic activity and their sales slowed down and they had reserves and maybe they're getting to the end of their, you know, reserve fund and they're starting to see the bottom of the reservoir. How do you help your clients?

Ahuva Gruen: Great point. How I help my clients when there's a slower year is quality of clients, of sales, of having profit margins, then you could do well, even if you have less sales. And then you could like tweak, tighten up your staff before going on hire new employees, really to use your employees, not to abuse them, G-d forbid, but to really make use all your clients' time. 

For example, with a construction client, he was booming before, but he wasn't making good profit margins. If you're not making good profit margin and your staff is just busy, busy. So yes, he did better in 2024, which in America, I don't know about in Israel, the construction industry slowed down. But because he had better profit margins, we tightened up the, it's a service-based industry, the staff members, not to leak out money, really to be more financially aware, you could do better.

Debbie Sassen: Amazing. Yeah, and I and I think also especially I think for women. I don't know about men this way but letting staff go sometimes is really difficult because we don't want to hurt people's feelings. It's just this like nurturing part of us as women that we don't want to be seen as the bad person, the nasty person or the evil or mean person. We really want to try to make people happy.

Ahuva Gruen: We try to make people happy, but there has to be a balance. We're not a bank, we're a business. And we have to make the bottom line work. And if the employees are not doing good work, a lot of times the one above helps that if you tighten up, really your ship and your processes, the one above will help you do it cleanly. 

For example, when we put video cameras in a client's vehicles, and we saw that an employee was stopping off and buying alcohol on the way home or not doing work or really like, yes, team approach, but really like accountability. I come in, I'm accountability. You know, I don't mind if the boss says, I have a new CFO and this is the processes. A lot of time those employees will leave on their own.

Debbie Sassen: Uh-huh, because they know they're about to be caught. Interesting.

Ahuva Gruen: No, if they know they're about to be caught, I'm thinking, for example, one, if she was trying to do what she wanted and she said that she will not follow company guidelines. I do believe I did not want to be the one telling her. I empowered the business owner to speak up that he could do it to really like to put boundaries. He was so afraid of hurting his staff members. He didn't like that difficult work environment that he was before, but he went to other extreme. If you go to other extreme, if the business closes down, no one's going to do well.

Debbie Sassen: Right. And I also think that, you know, I'm just going to go back to like not wanting to fire somebody either because they're not pulling their weight, like they're just not an effective employee, not efficient or effective, or because you're in a, you know, your business is contracting. There's a year that's just not going well. 

And when you're worried about other people and not wanting to hurt their feelings or not wanting to be the bad guy, it ends up backfiring on you because you end up hurting yourself. You're the one, because the CEO, the owner of the business, is the one who either takes home a salary or doesn't take home a salary. So if you don't have any profit in your business, your employees are gonna get paid and you're the one who's gonna be out there without having any income?

Ahuva Gruen: When you say yes to one person, you're saying no to someone else. When you're saying no to someone else, you're saying yes to someone else. I tell them, when I go on staff meetings, I tell the employees and my clients, cash, for example, they weren't tracking their hours when company employees. It's the lifeline of the business.

Debbie Sassen: Yes, yeah, yeah. It is 100%.

Ahuva Gruen: If they're not tracking their hours, it's the lifeline. If the business doesn't do well, they're not gonna do well. If the business does well, they're gonna do well too.

Debbie Sassen: Yes, I totally agree with you. So let's just change topics a little bit. This is something that we spoke about and you and I are very much like-minded on this. Let's talk about women and money, right? Both of us are business owners.

Both of us, you know, want to make money. We want to have businesses that pay for us today and pay for our retirement in the future and give us financial choices. Let's talk about it. Tell me all your thoughts.

Ahuva Gruen: That's a loaded topic. I believe every woman should know what's going on in their financials, in their business, in their home. You have to know what's going on. If G-d forbid something happens to your spouse, you outlive your spouse or divorce, whatever the situation is. It is so important to know if you're a business owner, you have to, yes, I would hire people when I'm not good at, but I wouldn't just close my eyes.

I would keep in contact with them, communicate and to know what's going on in the business, to know how much money you're spending in the app, to know what money is leaking out in your business, in your home.

Debbie Sassen: I’m going to tell you a story. This happened to a person that I know. I'm just going to leave it fuzzy for certain reasons. A woman that I know, well, got a divorce, which happens, right? Unfortunately, it happens or fortunately, whatever.

But as she and her ex were separating their assets, it became apparent that he had had her, unbeknownst to her, sign on a margin account. And he had been investing their money, their assets, and like she wasn't really paying attention and he ended up losing a lot of money. Didn't bankrupt them but she wasn't paying attention to what was going on in their joint account and their joint investment account and it really cost her financially. And I think this is so much underscores what you're saying about women…

Ahuva Gruen: You always should know, I'm not telling to micromanage your spouses, but you have to know what money coming in. You have to know what's on your credit. You have to know when you're signing a document, read it. Go through it to know what you're signing. I heard many stories of women who get divorced who have no idea what it costs to live, that have no idea what's on their name, no idea about...

Debbie Sassen: Just what's going on, but the financial lingo, the financial jargon is also so confusing if you haven't learned it, but really it's just, there's just like a few words, I don't know, 20, 50 words that you can learn. And again, you don't need to be an expert at it, but if you learn about investing, you learn about credit, as you said, like you, even a margin account, if somebody is having you sign like your partner and you know at one point in your relationship, you might trust the person implicitly but still like have some awareness and learn what these terms mean so that you can have your ears, you know, perked up when something's happening. So you can like go deeper and be like, wait a second, what is this margin account? What are you doing? You can look at the financial statements, notice if there are pluses or minuses.Yeah. It's like so…

Ahuva Gruen: I want to point out also if someone loses a spouse or a spouse gets unwell, a heart attack, G-d forbid, unfortunately it happens, to know where the money is, to know where the life insurance, to know how to look at the bank account.

Debbie Sassen: The passwords. Can we talk about passwords? Like, no, you're at the password where you can get them.

Ahuva Gruen: Yes, to know where the bank accounts really, and also going back to what you said about knowing what a spouse is signing you up. It's also in business. If you have a partner, I see this all the time, besides I see it in the person, if you have a partner and you're doing the sales or the marketing or the operation and your other partner is doing the financial or different part, I'm not telling you to do it, but you should know what's going on. 

Because I see too many times that the partner, I'm not saying a spouse even, that spouse is impersonal, but in spouse or partner in business, if they're not doing well, like hiding money or like not doing the financials well or whatever area they're doing, it could really put you both under. If they're taking out loans, and they're not paying it up, you could really get into hot water. If they're taking SBA loans, government loans incorrectly or not paying back loans or grants, it could get you in hot water.

Debbie Sassen: Okay, so listen, Ahuva, before we wrap up, because I don't wanna be Debbie Downer on this podcast episode. So we've talked about a lot of negative things, a lot of things to be aware of, and people can walk away being like, oh my gosh, this is such a heavy topic. I don't like it. Maybe people who have so much to give the world will even think about closing their businesses down. So I don't want that to happen. So let's end, give us a good story. Give us a good story.

Ahuva Gruen: Women can do anything. I've seen women who pick themselves up and build careers and don't let people say, no, you can't follow your dreams. We women could do anything. We just have to be educated and not to give up.

Debbie Sassen: Amazing. And you are such a shining example of that. We're just going to remind everybody, you left your job and you opened up your own business.

Ahuva Gruen: Over 20 years I left my company and I had so many people say, go get another CFO job. Why are you going on your own? Who's going to hire you a woman? Your prices are too high." And I said, no, this is what I'm going to do. This is my passion and I love making impact on my clients. And I never turned back and said I should have gotten another CFO job.

Debbie Sassen: Amazing. Ahuva, it has been such a pleasure having you on The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast and we're going to leave all of your details down below where people can reach out to you. If anybody listening to the podcast has a business that's a million dollars or more in revenue and needs a fractional CFO or knows somebody who needs a fractional CFO. And I really look forward to everybody learning so much. People, processes, profit margins, and what was the last one?

Ahuva Gruen: Products. 

Debbie Sassen: And products. All right. Or services, if you're a service-based business, products and services. All right. Thank you so much for being with me on the podcast.

Ahuva Gruen: Thank you for having me. It's been great. Women, you could do it. 

Debbie Sassen: Amen. 

—

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's interview with Ahuva Gruen. I learned so much from this interview, even as someone who's been in business and loves money and loves managing money the way I do, just understanding the intricacies and nuances that Ahuva brings to the conversations is so important.

As we talked about ,understanding your numbers because your numbers tell a story, tracking your income, tracking your expenses, when you focus on your numbers, when you focus on exactly what's happening under the hood of your car, aka your business, that is how you make changes. Wherever you are right now in your business. There is no guilt, no shame.

You are just where you are because of the information that you've had, but now you have more understanding, more financial literacy, and you have takeaways. Make sure that you don't just listen to this podcast, but you action on something in your business this week. 

And if you want more support, I will put Ahuva's links in the show notes, and I invite you to come into my world in my new Telegram channel 24/6, where you will have more practical, actionable business and money insights to grow your business and your wealth in 2025. And I look forward to seeing you next week on The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. Bye-bye for now.

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth. 

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.