Why Did We Start This?

Penny Armbruster
  • 5.0 (11)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Daily

You started your business for freedom. So why does it feel like a trap? Most business owners start out wanting more time and more money, but end up working 80 hours a week for a boss they can't stand (themselves). They guess based on their bank balance, dread tax season, and have no idea what they can actually pay themselves this month. Why Did We Start This? is a daily reset for faith-driven business owners who are tired of the financial chaos. Hosted by Fractional CFO Penny Armbruster and operations expert Jonathan Armbruster, this livestream cuts through the hustle-culture noise to give you the plain-English financial systems you actually need. Every Monday through Saturday, we tackle the real issues your CPA isn't talking to you about. The problem isn't you. The problem is the absence of a financial system built for your business. Join us daily to stop guessing, start leading, and finally build a business that pays you. Ready to see where your numbers really stand? Book a free Financial Check-In at 1610consulting.com.

  1. 22h ago

    You Only Have a Lap When You Sit Down | Monday Mindset

    We came to you live from the Settled conference on Friday, and I have been sitting with one thing Jason said ever since. Luke says give and it will be given to you, poured into your lap. But you only have a lap when you are sitting down. Standing up there is nowhere for the overflow to go, so every time somebody needs something you are pulling it straight out of your own cup. That is where resentment comes from. I have felt it, resenting the client who asked the fifteenth question this week, and underneath it is fear of losing them or of what they think of me. Sitting down is not laziness. It is releasing control. Then my one thing for the week, which is Enrique, a dry cleaner I met at a networking event who is completely convinced his is the best. You can find bookkeeping elsewhere. Why would you? Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: You only have a lap when you are sitting down, so a posture of releasing control is what makes room for anything to overflow to the people around you.Sitting down is not laziness, it is the difference between receiving something and white knuckling it into existence.Resentment is a signal, not a character flaw, and it usually means you have been pouring out of your own cup instead of out of the overflow.Under most of that resentment is scarcity: fear of losing a client, losing an employee, or being judged, all of it dressed up as trying to prove your worth.Be like Enrique. If you are not convinced yours is the best, nobody in the room will be either.

  2. 2d ago

    The Business Credit Card We Actually Use | Software Saturday

    Get $500 with Bill Spend and Expense Spend your first $500 on the card and they pay it back to you. We are affiliates, and we use it ourselves. Today is Software Saturday and we are talking about Bill Spend and Expense, which we joined back when it was Divvy and still use every week. I will say it upfront: we are affiliates. I would also never recommend something I do not use myself. What I really want to get into is the business credit card side of it. Every business needs one, and no, running everything on your business debit card is not the same thing, because the fraud protection and the spending power just do not exist on debit. But this is not a card you carry a balance on. Credit cards are for expenses you pay off every month. They are not capital funding, so do not put equipment on one. Then the parts I love: photograph any receipt over seventy five dollars and it syncs straight to QuickBooks, a separate virtual card for every subscription, and a real budget for every employee. Jonathan pushed back when I called that control. He is right. It is empowerment. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: Every business needs a business credit card, because the fraud protection and spending power that come with credit simply do not exist on a debit card.A credit card is for expenses you pay off every month, not for funding equipment, so finance the equipment separately.Keep documentation for anything over seventy five dollars, because that is the line above which the IRS can ask you to support the expense.Give each employee their own card with a set budget instead of passing yours around, and put every subscription on its own virtual card so one compromised number does not take down all of them.If you have a partner or employees the rule is a receipt for every dime, and removing the temptation to steal is a way of loving the people who work for you.

  3. 3d ago

    Trust God With the Results, Not Just the Goal | Freedom Friday

    Happy Freedom Friday. Penny and Jonathan are recording this one from a coffee shop on the road to the Settled conference in Grapevine, which is exactly the kind of Freedom Friday they built the business for: being able to be at a conference on a Thursday night and a Friday. Nobody set the out of office. The conversation starts with something they picked up the night before, trust God with the results of your life, and Penny turns it into a live question for Jonathan. What if we stopped setting goals like sign twenty new clients this month and started setting them like go to this many events, shake this many hands, have this many conversations, and then released the results. Then Penny tells on herself. She raised a client's price by eighty dollars a month and the client left for someone cheaper, and it took her a while to get over it, and she still runs into that person at networking events. What she does with that is the point of the episode. Maybe they did not leave over the eighty dollars. Maybe they just did not like her, and that is allowed. Either way you do not get to let it imprint on you, and you do not get your image from a past client. From there they make the case for spending real money on yourself. Penny went to a fractional CFO conference alone last summer, talked herself into feeling disqualified on the way in, and walked out knowing she could have taught some of the sessions. The biggest thing conferences give you is not the content, it is finding out you are not the only one. And on iron sharpening iron, Jonathan points out the part everyone skips: the reason it sharpens is friction. Something has to rub you the wrong way. Set aside a budget for yourself and your leadership team, because your business cannot go any further than you can. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: Trust God with the results, not just in general. You still show up and do the work he called you to do. You release what happens after.Try setting goals around the inputs you actually control. Not sign twenty clients, but go to this many events and have this many conversations, and let the results be results.Somebody leaving because you raised your price is not a verdict on you. Penny lost a client over eighty dollars a month and had to decide not to let it become a label she carried into every room after that.You do not get your image from past clients. Shake it off. The people you are called to will end up in your life and the ones you are not will walk out, and sometimes that is a mercy.Investing in yourself is not indulgent, it is a line item. Conferences, books, education, for you and for your leadership team, because your business cannot go any further than you can.The real return on a conference is finding out you are not alone. Penny went to a CFO conference convinced she was underqualified and left knowing she could have taught it.Iron sharpens iron because of the friction. If something rubs you the wrong way, sit with it before you decide it was wrong.

  4. 4d ago

    15 Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Bookkeeper

    On Tuesday we told the story of an owner who overpaid the IRS by about forty five thousand dollars because nobody was checking the work. Today is the follow up we promised: the questions to ask before you hand your books to anyone. Penny has roughly fifteen of them, and every one comes from something she has walked into. Will I get reports every single month, and by what date. Can I see the reconciliation reports themselves and not just a summary. Can you explain what these mean in plain English, and how does the profit and loss relate to the balance sheet. That last one matters more than it sounds, because if the person on the call cannot answer it, Penny says that is not a red flag, that is the end of the call. From there it gets into the parts most owners never think to ask about: exactly what access someone needs to your bank accounts and why read only is the only right answer, whether they carry errors and omissions and data breach insurance, whether they store your passwords and how, and whether anyone is talking to your tax preparer during the year instead of just in April. Along the way, the client whose bookkeeper emailed to say she was retiring and did not know how to fix what was wrong. Books where nothing had been done at all. And the owner who was with a CPA for twenty years and said Penny's team understood his business better in six months. If you want the whole list, they are giving it away, so DM Penny and she will send it. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: The bare minimum from anyone doing your books is a report every single month, with an agreed date. If you have never received one, that is your answer.Ask to see the reconciliation reports, not just a summary. You do not have to know how to read them. Asking says you intend to inspect the work, and that alone changes the relationship.Ask how the profit and loss relates to the balance sheet. Plenty of people doing this work only know how to clear a bank feed. If they cannot answer, end the call there.Read only access to your accounts is the right answer, and a good firm brings it up before you do. Too much access is how embezzlement happens, and some banks do not even offer the right permission level.Ask about the boring things nobody asks about: errors and omissions insurance, data breach cover, how your passwords are stored, and who is talking to your tax preparer between now and April.

  5. 5d ago

    Your Gut Is a Liar | Wheel of Wisdom

    It is Wednesday, so the wheel is out and four business sayings go on trial. First one in, last one out gets thrown out fast: presence is not productivity, and Jonathan says plainly he does not want that culture for his team. Fake it till you make it gets rejected too, though not the way you would expect. Penny would rather faith it till she makes it, and she draws a clear line between doing something you have never done before and being dishonest about who you are. Then pricing, where they refuse to give a verdict on purpose, because every owner lowers their prices at the start and the real work is raising them until you start hearing no. Penny tells on herself about her first ten thousand dollar proposal, where the client never blinked and the only person who needed convincing was her. And then the one that matters most. Your gut is a liar, because your gut does not know the data. Penny had a client call convinced the Holy Spirit was leading her somewhere, and asked what the numbers said. Her answer is worth the whole episode: I will always tell you what the numbers look like, and I will never contradict the Holy Spirit. You are not stepping out in faith if you do not know what you are jumping off of. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: Presence is not productivity. Being first in and last out is not a badge of honor, for you or for the people who work for you, and it quietly builds a culture that rewards hours instead of results.There is a difference between confidence and faking it. Saying yes to something you have never done and then figuring it out is stepping into uncomfortable. Pretending to be something you are not is a different thing entirely.You will start your pricing lower than where you end up, and that is fine. Raise it with each new client until you start hearing no, and raise it every year regardless.The person you have to convince about your price is usually you, not the client. Penny's first ten thousand dollar proposal went through without a blink.Faith and numbers are not opposites. Knowing exactly what you are jumping off of is what makes it a step of faith instead of a guess.

  6. 6d ago

    "I Can't Afford a Bookkeeper" Cost Them $45,000

    "I can't afford a bookkeeper." Penny and Jonathan hear it constantly, so today they answer it with receipts instead of opinions. It starts with a client who was running Profit First correctly and then had a tax preparer count every transfer between accounts as income: roughly $90,000 of revenue reported as $280,000. On a conservative estimate, that is about $45,000 overpaid to the IRS, which raises the obvious question of whether you could have hired someone good for $45,000. From there it is one real story after another. $75,000 of overstated income found in the first thirty days. An $11,000 customer check sitting uncashed in a filing cabinet at a construction company. A $1,500 cleanup that turned up $60,000 of income that was never real. And a $600,000 startup loan a previous bookkeeper never recorded, which cost that owner a year of bonus depreciation. Penny also names the red flag most owners never think to check, and explains why so many of us will do our own books but would never dream of doing our own taxes. Then they close out with a new segment, Business Expense or Personal Expense, which is exactly as fun as it sounds. Not tax advice, and they say so on air. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: "I can't afford it" is usually the more expensive answer. In every story here, the cost of bad books was larger than the cost of good ones, and in the first case it was larger by about thirty times.Profit First works, but only if the transfers get booked as transfers. Money moving between your own accounts is not income, and both software and tax preparers get this wrong constantly.Reconciled does not mean correct. One set of books reconciled perfectly, to a book balance rather than a statement balance, while missing a $600,000 loan entirely.If your CPA or EA only asks you for a P&L and has no access to your books, treat that as a red flag. Somebody other than you needs to be looking at those numbers before they turn into a tax bill.The reason owners do their own books but not their own taxes is marketing, not difficulty. Accounting software spends heavily telling owners they can handle it themselves. No one runs that campaign for tax returns.

  7. Aug 24

    The Lie That Costs Business Owners the Most | Monday Mindset

    It is Monday, which means we start before the inbox. Penny opens in Matthew 4, where the first thing the enemy goes after is not Jesus' power but his identity: "if you are the Son of God." Then Colossians 3, and a distinction worth sitting with, that chosen, holy and dearly loved are gifts you receive rather than things you earn. From there it gets practical fast. Penny has been at the homeschool table with a kid in tears over math saying "I'm not good at this," and she hears the grown-up version constantly from business owners: "I am not a numbers person." She is calling it what it is this morning. If you own a business, you are a numbers person, because money is made or lost in those numbers. Maybe you have never been shown them in a way that made sense, in charts instead of spreadsheets, or with someone willing to actually teach you. That is a different problem, and it is fixable. Make it your one thing this week. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways "I am not a numbers person" is a crutch, not a fact. If you own a business, you are a numbers person, because money is made or lost in those numbers.Not understanding your numbers is usually a delivery problem, not a you problem. Charts instead of spreadsheets, plain English instead of accounting language, or simply someone willing to teach you.Chosen, holy and dearly loved are gifts you receive, not standards you earn. Everything Colossians 3 asks you to put on comes after that, not before it.Your identity gets attacked hardest when you are doing something you have never done before, which for an owner is most weeks. Being unfamiliar with something is not evidence you were not built for it.Pick one thing each week that moves the business forward, and make it specific enough to finish. This week, understanding one number you have been avoiding is a good candidate.

  8. Aug 22

    QuickBooks Was Never Built for You | Software Saturday

    It's Software Saturday, and Penny is finally saying the thing out loud: QuickBooks was never built for you. Those commercials with the overwhelmed owner who signs up and suddenly has it all handled? That is the pet peeve. QuickBooks is genuinely good software, but it is accounting software made for accountants, and if you have opened it and felt lost, that is the product, not you. Jonathan is the proof, he loves software and it still intimidates him. They get into why QuickBooks Desktop is finished in 2026, why Intuit's AI still misses things any person would catch instantly, and the two honest reasons they keep using QuickBooks anyway. Then the part worth acting on: three features you should never run inside QuickBooks, and a five minute piece of homework that could mean you have been paying more income tax than you actually owe. Book a Free Call with Penny Connect with us: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn 1610 Financial Solutions Takeaways: If you are still on QuickBooks Desktop, move to Online. Intuit stopped updating Desktop, which means no security patches, and those files do eventually corrupt.QuickBooks is accounting software built for accountants. Feeling lost in it is not a personal failing, and no amount of interface polish changes what sits underneath.Open your undeposited funds account this week. It quietly duplicates income, and if there is a balance sitting there, you may be paying tax on money you never actually received.Do not run payroll, client payments, or vendor bill pay inside QuickBooks. Better tools exist for each, they integrate natively, and they usually cost the same or less.QuickBooks Online lets you see your own books. Desktop often means only your accountant can, and you deserve to be able to check the work you are paying for.

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About

You started your business for freedom. So why does it feel like a trap? Most business owners start out wanting more time and more money, but end up working 80 hours a week for a boss they can't stand (themselves). They guess based on their bank balance, dread tax season, and have no idea what they can actually pay themselves this month. Why Did We Start This? is a daily reset for faith-driven business owners who are tired of the financial chaos. Hosted by Fractional CFO Penny Armbruster and operations expert Jonathan Armbruster, this livestream cuts through the hustle-culture noise to give you the plain-English financial systems you actually need. Every Monday through Saturday, we tackle the real issues your CPA isn't talking to you about. The problem isn't you. The problem is the absence of a financial system built for your business. Join us daily to stop guessing, start leading, and finally build a business that pays you. Ready to see where your numbers really stand? Book a free Financial Check-In at 1610consulting.com.

Information

  • Creator
    Penny Armbruster
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Penny Armbruster
  • Show Website
    Why Did We Start This?