Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 68 - Build a Business That Lets You LIVE
Synopsis:
In this inspiring episode of the Peaceful Profits Podcast, Chanelle Nielsen interviews coach and business strategist Yinka Ewuola, founder of Calla Success Systems. Yinka shares how she helps busy, ambitious women end the feast-or-famine cycle in their businesses by focusing on what truly matters: cash flow.
Through her signature framework—mindset, skillset, and habitual action—Yinka empowers women to build thriving businesses without burnout.
She also opens up about her own journey from investment banking to entrepreneurship, and how supporting her mother through cancer forged her no-nonsense approach to business growth.
If you’re a woman looking to scale your business sustainably, this episode is a must-listen.
Transcript:
Peaceful Profits Review: Build a Business That Lets You LIVE
[00:00:00] Chanelle: Hello, Peaceful Profits nation. Chanelle here with an exciting client spotlight episode for you today. Today we're talking to our client Yinka Ewuola. Yinka, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:10] Yinka: Hi Chanelle. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:00:15] Chanelle: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. And let me start off with an introduction.
[00:00:19] Chanelle: So Yinka is a coach consultant, speaker, and business strategist and founder of Calis success systems, where she is passionate about supporting women to thrive in business and in life with [00:00:30] almost two decades of experience in entrepreneurship and business and an extensive portfolio of experiences in charity and school governance, finance, wealth creation, and personal development.
[00:00:40] Chanelle: Thank you Yinka is a passionate advocate for equity in all its forms. Having first come into business, supporting school meals and children's nutrition and supporting and advising on policy and practice in this area. She now specializes in supporting women to create wealth in and through their businesses and has taken her messages on mindset mastery.
[00:00:59] Chanelle: [00:01:00] Personal empowerment, financial thriving, and entrepreneurial opportunity to stages and spaces across the world, as well as within her own growing dynamic community, she helps women to win in business and in life and focuses on supporting them in their mindset, skillset and habits to do so this is a powerful mission and I'm excited to dive in and learn more about it.
[00:01:22] Chanelle: So to start off, tell us a little bit more about the who do you help? What are these women coming to you looking to [00:01:30] do and then how do you help them?
[00:01:32] Yinka: Amazing. Thank you so much. It's such a powerful question. The first thing to say is that I do specialize in helping women. That is the stage I'm at in my business.
[00:01:41] Yinka: When I first started, I helped everybody do all the things and I have found that I get my best results supporting busy, ambitious, savvy women who want to make a big mark in this world. So they are women who they want to grow their [00:02:00] businesses. They are. passionate and excited about what they could create.
[00:02:06] Yinka: But at the same time because in my own personal experience, so much of the knowledge and information that is put out in the world about how to grow a business and how to improve your state of affairs in the business space. Is inadvertently or deliberately designed by men for men. Many of those women are experiencing frustration in their growth process.[00:02:30]
[00:02:30] Yinka: So they one of the key characteristics is that these women are often experiencing feast and famine. They have proven offers, they are really creating magic in their world, but their cash flow is not consistent and they are doing all the things. So they're super busy, they are motivated and committed but what they are not.
[00:02:53] Yinka: So while they're seeing an increase in effort and time. What they're not always [00:03:00] seeing is commensurate experiences around the outcomes and particularly cash in the bank. And so what I do is I support these women to take what I call a cashflow approach. where we focus on and really drill down into a focus on the cash in the business, because cash is the measure by which a business is either alive or not.
[00:03:24] Yinka: And through the emphasis of, my three part focus of mindset, [00:03:30] skill set, and habitual actions. What I'm able to do is support these women to create initially consistent cash flow, and then to have them increase their cash flow to create wealth in and through their business.
[00:03:42] Chanelle: I love it. Okay. So this is so good. And I love that you highlighted the difference that women are, what they're up against versus men in the workplace. And it's something that I think needs to be highlighted because it can be easy to say as a [00:04:00] business owner, I want to help women because I am a woman, or I want to help women because maybe, whatever arbitrary reason, but to point out the gap.
[00:04:09] Chanelle: In what is happening in these women's experience and to see that need and then to fill that gap is a really powerful thing as a business owner to understand what's going on. So I love that and I love your cash flow approach with that three part mindset, [00:04:30] skill set and habitual actions. I would love to hear a little more detail on what that looks like.
[00:04:38] Chanelle: And let's go specifically on what that looks like for your clients. So maybe you can talk us through a client success story, a case study of a client who you have seen before and after with this approach. Amazing.
[00:04:54] Yinka: Yes. So first of all, with respect to the gap it's really, as you rightfully pointed out, many women [00:05:00] say, I want to support women because I'm a woman, but actually it goes a lot further than that.
[00:05:05] Yinka: My experience as a woman running a business is characterized by a number of key factors. So for example, time poverty is something that all entrepreneurs experience. And yet as we are in a post COVID world we know how much of the, the invisible tax and invisible burden and life admin fell on the laps of the women in the households, [00:05:30] even when both, both parties, both parents were at home, those kinds of things.
[00:05:34] Yinka: One of the things that I, have done is take a real essentialist approach to the content. And again, this feeds into the case study that I want to share with you. So I made it really clear. I don't share everything I know on the topic. And so many courses do have that. I'm going to bombard you with 25, 000 videos because I am the expert and I want to tell you everything I know.
[00:05:59] Yinka: Actually, [00:06:00] what I have really focused on and supported women with is not everything I know, but exactly what they need to know in order to get the results that they want. And so when I think about a recent case study I took from one of my clients, she came in to the program. Each person that comes in for this version of the program gets a one to one strategy session with me.
[00:06:22] Yinka: I'm a business strategist. I love really getting under the hood of their businesses and helping them to adapt things. And I'm, I love [00:06:30] infusing, the mindset and the skills at, early on in order to help them to make a change. She came in, we had a really great session.
[00:06:38] Yinka: I gave her a few kind of challenges and suggestions and she was freaked out and I said, don't worry. You're going to be freaked out because right now you are You're about to take action that and you haven't yet up leveled your mindset, but trust me and take the action. It was incredible coming out of that strategy session.
[00:06:58] Yinka: She locked [00:07:00] in a brand new 10K client like straight away, like that strategy session was 10, she was like, Oh my gosh, I've doubled my, I've doubled my investment and it's the first week. Then, the incredible ladies have the opportunity to go through the content.
[00:07:12] Yinka: And again, the pillars, mindset, skillset habitual actions are the content that they go through, through the coaching conversations. And, we have weekly coaching calls together, group calls. And again, another really key part of my. particular offer because so many women, they go out and they collect [00:07:30] these courses and they make beautiful notes and, they learn, but they don't earn.
[00:07:34] Yinka: And that was another thing I really wanted to change. And so at the end of their experience with me having come through and had the opportunity to go through the content. They had the opportunity to then engage in what I call a cashflow sprint. All in all she, and again in the testimonial video talked about in total, her experience with me brought in an extra 30k into her business.
[00:07:57] Yinka: Mine was the first course she had ever [00:08:00] completed from start to finish. And yeah, she's a raving fan. She is calling other women into my space. And because my offer also makes every woman that comes into my program an affiliate it means that, again, so much of what I talk about money being abundant, being able to make money really easy.
[00:08:18] Yinka: These are not, these are no longer things that I'm, just saying, it's actually their experience. She, she gets paid just for being a great friend and telling her friend about something awesome that she's experienced herself.
[00:08:28] Chanelle: Oh, I [00:08:30] love it. That's a fantastic case study and so exciting.
[00:08:34] Chanelle: I think to see your clients have that kind of success to be in this place where they just want it and yet aren't, aren't making that action. And I love how you you're the approach that you've talked us through of really drilling down to what's going to get results. And when is there something, [00:09:00] obviously your whole, your approach of mindset skillset and actions, but is there something, what is missing?
[00:09:07] Chanelle: Like why aren't these women doing it anyway? They want it already. What is the missing component there? Any thoughts on that?
[00:09:16] Yinka: Oh, I have many thoughts. I have many thoughts. I have many thoughts. I have many thoughts. Full of opinions and the number one thing that's missing and again, this, I know that what I'm about to say may well feel very controversial that's cool, hit me up on [00:09:30] socials.
[00:09:30] Yinka: I'm happy to talk history, but the thing that I think is the thing that's missing the most is everywhere in the world that I went to before I created this course, because this is the course I wish I'd had when I came into business. And again, I, I'm happy to share that story in a few moments, but it was a really harrowing time.
[00:09:49] Yinka: And I did everything I, I went out, I tried to learn how to grow my business and I wasn't seeing cash continue to increase in the bank. And so the missing piece [00:10:00] is actually focusing on the cash in the bank, recognizing that not everything that builds your business actually builds your cashflow, recognizing and admitting, and this is the thing, this is why the mindset piece is so important because we live in a society where people in general and women specifically are, are very much discouraged from talking about being unapologetic about and owning their desires around money and wealth.
[00:10:28] Yinka: And so fundamentally, [00:10:30] this is how business development, personal development can be a billion dollar industry. And yet, 90 percent of businesses that start are gone in five years. The reason for that is because cash is the thing that is the difference between a business that's dead or alive.
[00:10:46] Yinka: And yet we are all told don't talk about cash, don't talk. And I'm based in the uk you can probably tell by my accent, and it's even worse here, that the money the money chagrin and the social condition conditioning to not speak [00:11:00] about money, not be too ostentatious. The level of apology around money create, it creates cognitive dissonance.
[00:11:07] Yinka: You can't want money and not want money. You can't want money and then not want to talk about money. And so what we find is rather than them being able to make unbridled progress, they're going round in circles. And that's characterised by that beast and famine effect in their business.
[00:11:23] Chanelle: Oh, that's so good.
[00:11:25] Chanelle: That is so good. I, it may be controversial. I don't know, but it's just, [00:11:30] it's so good. I love it because it's so true. And it's this push, this inward push and pull that we see of I want it, but I don't know if I really deserve it or really want it, or there's fear around it. There's so many things.
[00:11:45] Chanelle: And so I love that you're calling that out.
[00:11:48] Yinka: And what we see is in, for me, I talk a lot about finance, about money, both on the personal and business side. And the analogy I give is whether it's cash or in, in business, I call them [00:12:00] cashflow critical activities, but finance and wealth and money.
[00:12:04] Yinka: should be a, it should be part of your daily self care. It shouldn't be an emergency procedure. And, those who are experiencing feast and famine, the reason why they're experiencing it is because they only go back out to start selling when the money's going so low and they're like freaking out, oh my goodness, I'm about to get to zero.
[00:12:22] Yinka: And that's what I'm saying, it's that emergency procedure feeling. Whereas once you begin to make, [00:12:30] looking at your cash, calling in your cash nurturing your clients as a habit. Then not only do, as I said, do you initially get that beautiful, consistent cashflow, but you get increasing cashflow.
[00:12:42] Chanelle: Yeah. Okay, that's good. Thank you so much. Now, you hinted about your own journey to get there and your story. I would love to hear that. Let's dive into how you came to these realizations and what your early business was like.
[00:12:59] Yinka: [00:13:00] So I my story in business began When I joined, I left an investment banking career and I joined my mum's business at a time just after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
[00:13:14] Yinka: And when I came into that business, there is nothing more exacting and nothing that makes you focus like a business that's struggling and a business owner that's struggling. And I stepped into the business because to try [00:13:30] and fight for your money and for your life. It's spreading yourself too thin and, we were really worried.
[00:13:36] Yinka: She was very young. There was no cancer history in her family. There were specific indicators as to, what had happened in those spaces. It was incredibly virulent. It was going to be a fight for her life and I my siblings and I am the second of four children and we, we only get one mom.
[00:13:52] Yinka: I took the step out of, an investment banking career and then went into small business life. And [00:14:00] the thing I would say there is that it was an incredibly harrowing and emotional time. But. every one of those, every drop of those blood, sweat and tears that I shared in that period.
[00:14:13] Yinka: I'm so thankful for, because when you are in a business that's struggling and with a business owner, that's also struggling, you don't have time to muck around. You don't have time to faff and to worry about, the hex codes on your logos and all the things that people [00:14:30] spend a bucket load of time on in business.
[00:14:32] Yinka: You have to focus on the things that make the most difference. And it, my time coming into business really forged me in fire. But it is that fire that means that I am always looking through the lens of where is the impact, where is the impact, what is the purpose of this, thinking about the Pareto coefficient and the 80 20 rule, where is the 20 percent of my actions are going to get me 80 percent of my result.
[00:14:59] Yinka: I [00:15:00] don't, so I'm a very kind of no nonsense person, and I take that approach to business because of how I came into business. And it was at that time, the reason why the business was struggling was because of cash. And yet I kept going out to, and we spent so much money working out how to build a business.
[00:15:18] Yinka: And nobody actually wanted to talk about, look, the measure of business success is cash. And, we heard all sorts of really sexy, popular, [00:15:30] focus on the impact and the income will follow. That's not true. The people who are, doctors, lawyers, teachers, they are some of the most impactful people in our society.
[00:15:41] Yinka: They are not the wealthiest. And so that isn't how money works. But it makes us all feel better and it makes us all, it makes us all feel like we can do, the acceptable things. So from that perspective, that period in my journey. Where I had to focus on the cash, get the cash in, keep the business [00:16:00] going and to recognize that even, we came to a really harrowing point, and I was standing in an office with employees, with logos, with a website, with incredible products, with awards, but without cash in the bank, that business was still going to be dead.
[00:16:18] Yinka: And so it was like, no money, no cashflow, no business is something that anyone who spends any time in my spaces hears me talk a lot about. And so I'm like if it's no cashflow, no business, why is no [00:16:30] one talking about cashflow? Like vehemently, why are we not, why are we not having these come to Jesus moments about cashflow?
[00:16:37] Yinka: And so initially that gave me the rage. That, I felt it was like a really big scam. But I'm like, it's not a scam but it just takes a different type of courage. To really be able to look it in the eye and say, I'm here for cash. And that makes me, someone who wants to serve more, someone who wants to make more of an impact.
[00:16:56] Yinka: I, talking, for example, about like high ticket, low ticket, for [00:17:00] example. I go high ticket, and I go high ticket because those who pay money pay attention. I don't want you to just buy my offer, I want you to use it. And I know the difference between what happens when I give people things for free, and when I, when they pay a good, solid amount for it.
[00:17:14] Yinka: Yeah, it was a As you can tell by my animation, it was a difficult time, but I'm, as I said, I'm grateful every day for what it has given me and what I'm, what it has enabled me to put out in the world.
[00:17:26] Chanelle: Yeah, clearly it has affected you [00:17:30] in a lot of ways, meant a lot to, you at, In your business and the way that you run things and also the women that you're able to help.
[00:17:38] Chanelle: And so I want to tie those two together. How, what has helping the women that you help meant for you to see these women shift from where you were in, in those business days to not having the right kind of cashflow, not having the business set up to seeing them succeed. What is [00:18:00] that? business success like for you?
[00:18:03] Yinka: Honestly I talk about the fact that I came into business and there were so many tears and now I'm still in business and there were so many tears for a completely different reason because it was a period of so much pain, but to have been able to turn that pain into purpose and to turn each and every one of those challenges into something that has created.
[00:18:25] Yinka: Support and clarity and game [00:18:30] changing results and an opportunity that women aren't getting anywhere else. And like I said, over and over again, I am evangelical about the need for us to speak about cashflow, but I, I shouldn't, I'm, I shouldn't, and thankfully I'm not the only one, but there are not enough of us.
[00:18:48] Yinka: people speaking about cash. There are not enough women being unapologetic in this space. And I'm like, we need more and there should be more. And so for me, it is it's really [00:19:00] gratifying, but it's also very humbling because To think of, a period in my life that was, incredibly emotional.
[00:19:08] Yinka: I don't want to burst into tears, but just that was really tough and to know that it wasn't in vain and to know that it doesn't only help me is something I am very grateful for.
[00:19:20] Chanelle: Yeah. That's a beautiful thing to take that experience and use it to serve others. You mentioned the tears, you've mentioned the emotions [00:19:30] in your interview.
[00:19:32] Chanelle: As we prepared for this interview, one of the things that you said is that physics beats feels you obviously have the feels about a lot of these things, but let's talk about that idea. What does that mean? That physics beats, feels physics, beats, feels. It. is something I talk about quite a bit because in, because I work with women in business, there are many others who support women in business who very much focus on the idea of going with what feels good [00:20:00] and, dealing with, there's a lot of talk about masculine energy and feminine energy and I love it.
[00:20:06] Yinka: I, I think energetics is a really powerful and important part of the equation. I spend a lot of time talking about it when I'm talking about mindset and yet the thing I love more than, and there's in, in the personal and business development world, there's a lot of talk about motivation.
[00:20:21] Yinka: And the need to, be inspired and all of those kinds of things. That's great. I'm not shading that if you're inspired and motivated. [00:20:30] Fantastic. However, what I know for sure is that what is always more effective and impactful than motivation is momentum. And momentum is physics.
[00:20:40] Yinka: Momentum is you get started, whether you feel like it or not, you keep going, you take one, put one foot in front of the other, and you build up and get, the wind behind you, you get you, you build up. You call in your reps and one of the reasons why I love that idea so much is [00:21:00] because I am a mum with three children and and a husband and I, still help my mum in her business, I run my business, I'm a daughter, I'm a wife, I'm a sister, I have way too many things to do.
[00:21:11] Yinka: If I was going to wait to feel like running my business or even feel like helping these women, I love it when they are helped but the things that I have to do in order to do that I don't always feel like that. Whereas what I do know is if I can honor the process, [00:21:30] trust the process and put my reps in, then I know that momentum is going to be on my side.
[00:21:36] Yinka: And as such, I don't have to wait for the feelings or the motivation because I will have momentum working in my favor. And so yeah that's where physics beats the fields.
[00:21:48] Chanelle: Love it. So what is it that gets the momentum going?
[00:21:54] Yinka: The momentum, what gets momentum going, and again, this is part of the stuff that I teach when I'm talking about [00:22:00] habits, is that it is the It's first of all getting started and people say, oh, you know the start habit you need to start small I say in my spaces don't start small start tiny start unfailable people love the idea, for example, if they're on a new fitness flex and, January 2nd, the gyms are full.
[00:22:20] Yinka: January 30th, it's back to normal. But the thing there is because people they go to the gym seven days a week for the first week and then they, they tire themselves out. It is [00:22:30] better for you to do five minutes of exercise every day through January to mean that you're still doing it in July.
[00:22:37] Yinka: Then, oh my gosh, I feel like it in January because it's New Year's and I'm supposed to be on a resolution flex. And then you are, you've ditched it two weeks later. And so it is that tiny start connected to that giant why and that giant reason to take that tiny start. And then trusting that process that really gets that momentum on your side.
[00:22:57] Yinka: So physics, that's great. [00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Chanelle: Okay. Yes. Start tiny physics, beats, feels momentum is greater than motivation. So many gems in there. Now you've already shared a lot of great advice that I hope people are listening to and pulling from, but I'd love to ask what advice you would give to others who are looking to scale their own businesses and quite honestly, to have more cashflow in their business as well.
[00:23:25] Yinka: It's a really great question and what I would say is that in order [00:23:30] to, as with any other thing in life, if you want something, you need to focus on that thing. So if you want if you want more connection in your marriage, then focus on the things that bring connection. If you want to shed mass and lose weight on the scale, then you would focus on the things that give you that.
[00:23:50] Yinka: And it's exactly the same in business. We have been lulled into this paradigm of business growth and actually [00:24:00] Business growth is one of the best ways to characterize if you are a person who is minded to create really powerful, positive impact in the world. That's my only caveat. If you are minded to be that person, then actually the biggest evidence of your improving business is cash in the bank.
[00:24:18] Yinka: So taking that cash because no one is going to pay you cash. For a terrible product or for poor service and you yourself will not, you won't be able to live with the cognitive dissonance [00:24:30] of being a shady shyster towards other people. So it all comes together beautifully. So if you want to scale your business.
[00:24:38] Yinka: And this is not just my opinion, I was, honestly, the angel sang when I saw the business hierarchy of needs that Mike Michalowicz puts in his Fix This Next book. The foundation of a sustainable business is cash. It is it, and so you need to focus on sales for the creation of cash, and then you focus and then out of that [00:25:00] cash you then focus on profitability, and he put, he go, takes you up that pyramid really powerfully.
[00:25:06] Yinka: Ultimately, even when a business has become successful, if you look at Lehman Brothers, and them going out of business in 2008 Lehman Brothers had almost a billion dollars in real estate of worth of offices, and they were still out of business the next day because they ran out of cash.
[00:25:24] Yinka: And so that focus on cash, is really the difference that makes the [00:25:30] difference. If you want to scale your business, it needs to be underpinned with firm foundations. There is no point creating a fantastic business on shoddy foundations. It will still collapse. And that's not what you want. For those looking to grow and scale their businesses, taking a cash flow approach to create that foundation of cash, and they will provide a really powerful, solid foundation for them to then be able to, as I said, have that consistent cash flow and then [00:26:00] increasing cash flow in order to create that scalable, sustainable business.
[00:26:05] Chanelle: Oh, so good. Okay. I love that focus. I love that you've brought it home and made it very real to us today. So to wrap this episode up, how can listeners find out more about you and what you're up to?
[00:26:18] Yinka: Best ways to get hold of me. I'm on social media each day. So I'm over on LinkedIn with my name as it stands Yinka Elwala.
[00:26:26] Yinka: Facebook as well is another space. So [00:26:30] LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, always my name. Or people can get hold of me via email which is hello@coloursuccess.Com ahead of me actually getting my website ready, which is something that. I'm really excited to be able to do through the magic of the work that I'm doing here at Peaceful Profits.
[00:26:50] Chanelle: Perfect. Thank you for being here. We appreciate all the things that you've taught us today. It's exciting to see the work that you're doing in the world. Thank you everyone for [00:27:00] listening and we'll see you next time. Bye.