6 Jobs Every Dollar Should Have

Most entrepreneurs think they have a revenue problem. In reality, many have a money management problem.

The truth is, the financial habits you developed in your personal life don't magically disappear when you start a business... they follow you. 

And if every paycheck seemed to disappear before you became an entrepreneur, there's a good chance your business revenue is disappearing the same way.

In this episode, Jeri Toliver shares a simple framework she calls The Six Jobs Every Dollar Should Have—a practical way to assign purpose to every dollar that comes into your business. 

You'll learn how financially literate business owners think differently about money, why lenders look beyond your revenue, and how intentional money management can make your business stronger, more profitable, and more fundable.

In This Episode:

-Why more revenue won't fix poor money habits
-How personal financial behaviors carry over into your business
-The difference between spending and investing
-How paying yourself the right way strengthens your business
-Why financial literacy is one of the most overlooked keys to becoming fundable

Whether you're just starting your business or preparing to apply for funding, this episode will help you build the money habits that create long-term success.

Resources Mentioned:

🎯 Take the Free Fundable Quiz: https://smartcreditcoach.com/quiz.html

🚀 Get Matched with a Smart Credit Certified Consultant: https://smartcreditcoach.com/help

🎙️ Explore more episodes: https://smartcreditcoach.com/podcast

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another entrepreneur who's working to build a business that's not only fundable—but financially sustainable.

Welcome to the Smart Credit Experience, the place where financial clarity,

strategy, and transformation begin.

I'm your host, Jeri Toliver, CEO of Smart Credit Solutions and the creator of the

Smart Credit Method. Every week, I break down the truth about credit,

funding, and building a financially abundant life and business.

So if you're ready to learn what lenders actually look for, how to build a fundable

business, and how to move forward with confidence and clarity, you're in the right

place.

Have you ever noticed how some business owners are making millions of dollars, but

somehow they're still stressed out and broke?

And then you see other business owners that are making not even a fraction of that,

but they're calm, they're not stressed out, they're paying themselves,

they have money in the bank. And so what's the difference?

Well, what I've learned is that it's not normally how much money they're

making. What's different is how they think about the money that they're making.

Because it's not about how much money you make, right?

It's about how much money you keep.

And I think that we have all been taught to believe

that money solves all of your money problems.

But I have learned that that's really not the case.

You may think, "Well, if I make this $10,000, things will be fine,"

or "If I get approved for this funding, everything will be fixed." Or, "If I get a

business loan or a credit card, I'm not going to have to stress out about money."

But here's what I want to ask you. If you got

$100,000 deposited into your business bank account today,

what would happen to it? For real. Not what you would hope would happen,

but what would actually happen. Would every dollar have a purpose,

or would it slowly disappear over the next six months because you didn't really

have a plan? And see, that's the conversation I want to have today.

Because one thing that I have learned after working with tens of thousands of

people with both credit and funding, is that the money habits that you have in

your personal life, they are not going to disappear when you become an

entrepreneur. They are legitimately going to follow you into your

business. So if you avoid looking at your personal bank account right

now, guess what? You're going to avoid looking at your business finances and your

numbers. If you spend emotionally in your personal life, you are going to

bring that emotional spending into your business.

If your paycheck that you get from your job somehow magically disappears, there is

a very good chance that your business revenue is going to disappear the exact

same way. So don't think that just changing the

name on your business bank account or any bank account is going to change your

habits. And that's why I believe that every entrepreneur should

give every dollar a job before you ever spend it.

Not after, before. So what I want to do today

is, I want to give you a blueprint, a strategy, a

roadmap, a plan that you can give for your money.

I'm going to give you six jobs that I think that every

dollar should have, whether in your personal life and in your business life.

But today, I'm going to focus a little bit more on the business.

Because most people that are probably going to listen to this are small business

owners, startups, entrepreneurs, and I want to give you the financial education

that you need to really grow your business sustainably long term.

So the first job that every single dollar should have is to keep your business

alive. This might not sound exciting, but it's true.

Nobody gets on Instagram or social media, period, talking about

paying their insurance premiums.

Nobody's talking about running payroll and having to figure out how to meet

payroll. They're not talking about renewing their QuickBooks software.

But these are the things that keep the business alive.

And so your business has to survive before it can actually scale up.

And I think that a lot of business owners skip over this,

because they're too busy chasing after growth. And I get it.

Growth is exciting. Stability can be a little

boring. But lenders don't finance or fund

exciting. They fund stability.

That is what they say yes to. So before a dollar buys anything and

while you're chasing that shiny object, ask yourself, "Does

this help my business stay healthy?

Does this

purchase, expense, help my business stay alive?"

Because sometimes the smartest thing that you can do is buy the things that aren't

popular, buy the things that people don't always talk

about or even notice. Because it's the things that are happening in the background

that keep businesses alive and healthy.

The second job your money needs to have is to help you make more money.

Now, I think that sometimes this is where people get

spending confused with investing.

Because not every expense is an investment, right?

Think about it. How many times have you found yourself buying a

course that you thought, "Okay, this is an investment in my business," but you

didn't finish it? Hmm. That's really not an investment.

Or what about buying a CRM or software just because you

saw somebody on YouTube recommend it.

Right? That's not really an investment.

But spending money on something that consistently

brings in customers, that is an investment.

Because you have to really ask yourself, "Will this dollar that I

spend bring me back more?" That's the question.

If I spend this dollar today, am I going to get more back?

Now, there's only a

few different investments that you can make that can guarantee this.

This is investments into marketing. Marketing can definitely do that.

If you put money into advertising, if you put money into sponsoring, if you put

money into getting your business out there so more people can be aware of it, you

can get a return on that.

Or what if you spend money into training,

into bettering your skillset?

That can definitely be an investment. Or what about hiring better people?

The right person can definitely help you bring in more money.

So the goal isn't really to spend less.

The goal is to spend your money more intentionally.

Because if you don't have a plan for your money, guess what?

Other companies, they have a plan for it.

So make a plan for your money, and that plan should revolve around your money

making more money. The third job that your money should have

is to prepare. To prepare for rainy days is the best way to

describe it. Because whether you realize it or not, emergencies are going to

happen. Things are going to go wrong.

Whether you want to think about it or you don't want to think about it, it still is

going to happen, period. So

Eventually, you are going to have to pay the cost of what

it costs to run a business. And these costs are when clients may pay you

late, or sometimes if some of your equipment dies,

or maybe one of your biggest contracts fall through,

or maybe your sales slow down, you're having a slow season.

Whatever the case is. Some people feel like, "Oh, maybe I'm having

bad luck." But that's not

technically bad luck, it's just the cycles of business.

I remember one time when I had some clients out in

Atlanta hire me to help them with repairing their credit.

This was when we were repairing credit. We don't do that anymore.

We only educate people on the process so they can do it themselves successfully.

But I remember when six people out of Atlanta, friends, hired us to

help them with repairing their credit. They all paid us the money to repair it.

We repaired their credit. We helped them raise their scores to qualify for what

they wanted to qualify for. So they went out there, they bought houses, they bought

cars, they got approved for credit cards and loans.

And then what did they do? They went to their banks, they told their banks that

the charges were fraudulent and that they did not approve of these

charges, and then every last one of those charges were

debited from our business bank account.

And I don't know if you all know this, but when customers file chargebacks, your

merchant will deduct those charges from your bank account,

plus they will charge you fees for every single chargeback.

So when I tell you over $5,000 was just magically disappeared out of my bank

account, and then on top of fees, it put my business bank account in the

negative. And that was a situation that I wasn't prepared for as a

startup business. Now, luckily, I had all my I's dotted and my T's crossed.

We have contracts, we have everything put into place so to protect us.

And so we sent in that documentation, we got our money back,

and it was able to put me in a better situation.

But the problem was that my merchant, the payment

processor that I was using, thought that we had a fraudulent business, thought that

we were scamming people. So they shut down my merchant account, and we couldn't

even accept payments because of this.

And so here I am, six months trying to find another payment processor

because of this crap, and it was just a situation that I just really wasn't

prepared for. But I had good credit at the time, I had some credit to

lean on, and it helped me survive that tough season.

But imagine if I didn't. Imagine if I didn't have contracts in place.

Imagine if I didn't have a way to protect my business and protect

myself. That would've been a really bad situation to be in.

And so you have to understand that even financially healthy

businesses have problems. And so

you shouldn't have to avoid them, you should expect them.

But the difference between thinking like a consumer and thinking

like a business owner is that consumers, they react to

emergencies, but business owners prepare for them.

So when something unexpected happens, you shouldn't have to wonder how you're going

to survive. How am I going to survive this month?

How am I going to survive this quarter?

That's what reserves are for. That's what your credit is

for, so that it can help you weather some of those storms and still come

out on top. All right? The fourth job that your monies

should have is to pay yourself. Now,

can we talk about this for a hot second?

Because this one is so

interesting, that I see a lot of people that treat their

business bank account like their personal checking account.

Every single dollar that comes in, they're buying something, they're taking cash

out, they're covering personal bills.

And that's not how business owners operate,

okay? That's not how they operate.

And then you have another set of business owners, should I mention.

These people don't pay themselves at all.

They never pay themselves. They're making everybody else rich, they're paying

everybody else,

but they're not paying themselves a dime.

And let me tell you something, whether you're not paying yourself anything or

you're paying yourself very minimal, or you're just

taking money out the bank account, just spending it wherever, neither one of those

behaviors is healthy.

Neither one of those. And so your business should pay you, but it

should pay you intentionally, not randomly, not

emotionally. You shouldn't feel guilty when you pull out money out of your bank

account.

You should do this with a plan. Because if your business cannot pay the

owner,

that's a problem, and that's something worth paying attention to.

You're working too hard not to pay yourself something.

And so you need to be paying yourself something so that you can reap the benefits,

reap the rewards of your hard work.

And that can even help you stay motivated to keep your business

going. Because there's nothing more unmotivating than working incredibly hard to

build your business and not be able to pay yourself something.

Pay yourself something. But again, do it intentionally.

I remember the first time that I paid myself.

It was like, "Ha!" It was like heaven.

Because

I was working so hard and I thought that, okay, I have to wait

until I make a certain amount of money until I pay myself, and then I

got with the right people and the right mentor, and they taught me how to pay

myself intentionally so that I could build wealth.

Which is job number five, by the way.

The fifth job that your money needs to have, your dollar, is to build wealth.

Because a lot of business owners, they trap themselves.

Entrepreneurs trap themselves in the self-employed role,

where you go from working for someone

else to just working for yourself.

Where if you don't work, you don't get paid, and you basically have a

glorified job. And granted, you can work whenever you want to work, but if you

don't work, you don't eat. And so your business is a vehicle

to help you with building wealth. And so if you're going to spend years

building a business, you need to also be building wealth.

And let me tell you something. I hear people tell me they want to build wealth all

the time. Every single time we get on meetings or consultations

and I ask people what their biggest goal is when building a business, the number

one thing that they say is they want to build wealth.

But how can you build wealth when everything stays inside the business?

Then one bad year comes along, and then suddenly everything that you built is at

risk. That is not building wealth.

Your business should be producing assets that improve your life.

Maybe that's investing, maybe that's buying real estate, maybe that's opening a

retirement account. Did you know that your business can have

a company-sponsored 401 ? My business does.

Smart Credit Solutions has a company-sponsored 401 .

I am an employee of my company.

I contribute 7%, I'm sorry, 10% of my paycheck

into my company-sponsored 401 , and then my company matches

it.

Did you know that you can do that?

You can, and that's a part of building wealth as a business owner.

So, whether you're trying to invest, build real estate, whatever

you're trying to do, this is something that you have to do, but I understand that

it's also something that you have to learn. This is something that I had to learn.

I had to learn that just because your business is generating revenue doesn't mean

that it's building wealth. Just because your business has strong cash flow doesn't

mean that it's building wealth. Just because your business is even bringing in a

profit doesn't mean that it's building wealth.

Until your business

can intentionally turn something into another thing that

continues to grow, right, it's not building wealth.

Your business should be creating assets that pay you

passively. That is building wealth, and your business can be a vehicle to

that. But your business isn't going to be able to do that

if you're spending emotionally, if you don't have a plan

for every single dollar, and if you're not intentional about where

your money is going. And this actually brings me to job number

six, which is to reduce debt.

Now, some people are going, "Jerri, what are you talking about?

You're the one telling me to get into debt." I understand that.

I'm in the funding business, right? I'm not anti-debt, not at all.

I teach people how to get access to capital.

See, the goal isn't to avoid debt. The goal is to make sure

that your debt is working for you instead of stressing you out and

controlling you. Debt should help you create new opportunities for yourself, not

create anxiety. And most people get incredibly anxious when the topic around

debt or capital or funding arises because they don't have a

plan.

Every dollar should have a plan because when you have a plan, it's going to reduce

unnecessary anxiety, it's going to reduce the fear of not being able

to pay it back. It's going to reduce the fear of having unnecessary

obligations. So the more money that you have

tied up in yesterday's decisions and/or yesterday's

mistakes, the less freedom you have to build today and tomorrow.

The reality of it is we only have today.

And so if you really, truly want to succeed, you

can't be racking up a whole lot of bad debt.

If you want to have freedom, you've got to use capital to your

advantage to build more money because that's what you're after, right?

You're after freedom. And so when I look at financially successful

business owners,

I don't see people that have never borrowed money.

I see people who knew exactly why they borrowed it,

exactly what it's supposed to accomplish, and exactly what they're going to do to

pay it back.

That's the difference. That's the difference between the mindset.

And so here's what I want you to do today, okay?

I want you to pull your bank statements from last month, your business

bank statements from last month. And I don't want you to pull it with any type of

feeling of guilt or judgment. I just want you to look at it. Just look at it.

And then I want you to ask yourself, can I explain what every

dollar is supposed to do?

Did every single dollar have a job, or was I making financial

decisions just as I went? Did I just spend as I go?

Because if you're really trying to become fundable, if you're really trying to get

capital, this is what really matters.

Banks are evaluating whether your business is going to not only make

money, but how to manage it. That's what they really care about.

And honestly, I feel like that's something that we all should want to get better at

anyway because the overall goal, although it is to get access to

funding, the real goal is more so about becoming a business

owner who knows exactly what to do once the money hits your bank

account. That's what it's really all about.

It's about becoming a financially literate business owner.

And so those are going to be the six jobs. I'm going to recap that real quick.

So the first job was to make sure that

the money is keeping your business alive.

The second job is to make sure that your money's making you more money.

The third is to help you prepare for the

emergencies. The fourth is to pay yourself a reasonable

salary. The fifth is to build wealth, and the sixth is to reduce

your debt load. And so I just want to say thank you all for spending some time with

me today. And if you felt like you got some valuable

gems today, share with another business owner that you feel really needs to hear

it. And if you're ready to build a business that's truly fundable, I want you to

join us for our First Steps to Fundable workshop.

It's going to be this upcoming Wednesday at 7:00 PM Central, 8:00 PM Eastern, and

we're going to give you the blueprint for funding your business the right way.

If you don't know where to go, you don't know where to get funded, you don't know

what to say, and if you don't know how to get lenders to really compete with each

other to confidently lend you money, then you should be there.

We've had plenty of people that have graduated out of that workshop and have had

wonderful success with funding their business, and we'd love to see you there, too.

And if you want to talk to somebody one-on-one, you want to get a little one-on-one

guidance, head over to smartcreditcoach.com and click on Get Help so that you

can get matched with one of our certified Smart Credit Coaches.

These professionals are highly equipped to help guide you through the steps of

getting funding the right way. And if you want to join us for First Steps to

Fundable, you can join us at

smartcreditcoach.com/fstf.

That's

smartcreditcoach.com/fstf.

Because the way we see it, getting the money is half the journey.

We want to make sure that you know what to do once you get it.

But other than that, thank you for joining me today.

Again, my name is Jeri over here at Smart Credit Coach, and I'll see you all next

time.

Get personalized guidance, expert credit strategy, and a fundable roadmap built for your business.

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