Why Women in Business Aren’t Making Enough Money

Women in business aren’t making enough money because they’re undercharging, overdelivering, and operating inside business models that were never designed for them. They face an advice gap, a confidence gap, and systemic bias that makes it harder to grow beyond “just getting by” into true financial independence.

In Australia there are around 900,000 women-owned small businesses, yet only about 1% generate more than $1 million in annual revenue. Most are stuck under six figures, often not paying themselves a consistent wage. This isn’t because they’re not capable; it’s because the ecosystem around them wasn’t built with them in mind.

Research shows the broader advisory system is missing the mark. One analysis of accounting firms found only 15% of small businesses see their accountant as a strategic advisor, meaning an 85% “advisory gap” where owners are largely left to figure things out alone (ESS BIZTOOLS). For many women founders, that gap is even wider.

On top of that, social conditioning encourages many women to be agreeable, take up less space, and prioritise others. That often turns into chronic undercharging, discounting, and saying yes to unpaid extra work “for the relationship”. Busy calendars hide thin margins and inconsistent take-home pay.

Unlearning money stories and rebuilding real money confidence

Most women don’t start a business dreaming about spreadsheets. They start because they’re good at what they do and want more freedom, impact, or both. The problem is they bring a lifetime of money stories into the business—many of which quietly work against their income.

From a young age, men are often encouraged to invest and take calculated risks, while women are encouraged to save and be careful. That shows up later as hesitation to raise prices, fear of losing clients, or a belief that “making good money” somehow clashes with being a good person.

You can’t build a strong business on top of those stories. The unlearning work looks practical, not fluffy. It sounds like: “I’m allowed to be paid well for the value I create,” or “My prices don’t need everyone’s approval to be valid.” It’s recognising that staying below the GST threshold “because it’s easier” might actually be keeping the business artificially small.

In one recent Australian survey on business finance, nearly 40% of women said they don’t feel confident accessing finance, and over half hadn’t applied because they didn’t understand what was available (CFOtech Australia). That lack of confidence isn’t a character flaw; it’s a signal that the information and support have not been built with them in mind.

Fixing your business model: pricing, billing and getting paid

Once the money stories are on the table, the next step is structural: changing how the business makes and collects money. This is where small, concrete shifts can unlock big jumps in take-home pay without working more hours.

One of the biggest levers is dropping hourly billing and moving to value-based or fixed-fee pricing. Hourly rates quietly cap income because the only way to earn more is to work more. For a solo or “solo-ish” founder, that’s a direct path to burnout. A clear scope, a fixed price, and a strong outcome promise usually serve both the client and the business better.

Then there’s billing and collection. Too many service businesses do the work first and hope to be paid later. Instead, take payment details up front and authorise pre-approval for ongoing fees. Tools like Pinch and similar platforms let you automatically charge retainers or milestones on agreed dates so you’re not chasing invoices or having awkward “just following up” emails.

When a bookkeeping or consulting practice switches from post-work invoicing to up-front approval and automated collection, debtor days often drop to near zero. That doesn’t just improve cash flow; it reduces the mental load of worrying whether next month’s rent or payroll will clear.

Finding real advisory support when the system overlooks you

Even with better pricing and payment systems, most women founders still need strategic financial advice that makes sense for their stage—often well before they hit $1 million in revenue. The trouble is, many advisory firms are structured to prioritise larger clients and overlook smaller, women-led businesses.

Some accountants openly prefer clients turning over more than seven figures because “they can pay the fees”. The result is that the 88% of women-owned businesses earning under $100,000 a year are left with compliance-only support: tax returns, basic structures, and not much guidance on how to grow sustainably.

Closing that gap means finding advisors who explicitly design for this market—CFO-style support in group or fractional formats, with clear pricing and no condescension. That might look like a 12‑month scale program that includes a cash flow forecast, operating model, and regular decision-support calls, rather than a once-a-year tax meeting.

It also means building your own “black book” of values-aligned professionals: tax specialists who explain structures in plain language, legal advisors who don’t minimise your questions, and finance partners who respect that your goal might be $350,000 revenue and $320,000 take-home, not building an empire.

Ultimately, financial independence—what some call “F‑you money”—isn’t about yachts or sports cars. It’s the ability to choose: to leave a job or client that doesn’t respect you, to walk away from a situation that’s unsafe, to make decisions without being trapped by your bank balance. Every person deserves that, and women in business shouldn’t have to fight a broken system alone.

Full Podcast Transcript:

Transcript lightly edited for clarity, readability and blog formatting. Timestamps, filler words and auto-caption artefacts have been removed where possible while preserving the meaning and flow of the original conversation.

Joe: That is literally why I exist: to make sure that everyone, all of those women, have access to the knowledge and the support so that they can grow, so that they can earn the money that they want to earn, and ultimately, so that they can achieve financial independence.

And I call that “F you money,” and I call it that on purpose. That’s not about, you know, a face full of Botox and a yacht and the latest BMW. F you money is about the ability to choose. To leave a situation that doesn’t serve you. To leave a job that you don’t like anymore. To do what you want and not feel like you are kind of enslaved to your financial position.

So this is Shay Thyer.

Shay, you have a very storied background in the Australian accounting industry. So just talk about your background, where it all started, what you’ve done, and then we can focus on the more important stuff, which is what you’re doing now, which is some amazing stuff.

But it’s always a good idea to do a bit of scene setting first.

Shay: Totally.

After realizing that, as a teenager, I identified as a lawyer, I wanted to be a lawyer so bad. So I went and tried to do a law degree and figured out that I actually wasn’t very good at it, but I was pretty good at all of my commercial and business-focused things.

So once I finished uni, I thought it would be a good idea to go and get a grad role in an accounting firm. And I say that with a bit of sass now because it was absolutely not the experience that I anticipated it would be, because all I wanted to do was help people.

And I rolled into an accounting firm, which at that time would have been early 2000s, and my job for a really long time was standing at the photocopier, putting compilations of tax returns together.

And I was like, “When does the helping start?”

Anyway, that was kind of the start of a spiral of needing to be in roles where I actually felt like I was helping people.

Joe: Making an impact.

Shay: Exactly. Making an impact and having the ability to steer a little bit. Provide advice. Have an impact on the world.

So I figured out that an internal finance role was more suited to me because I was able to have influence and do those things. After I left that firm, I was in a number of commercial roles and then turned that commercial role back into practice in a fractional capacity.

So this is kind of the evolution of the fractional CFO, right? I did that for a number of years.

Then I started at BDO, and this was a big milestone in my career where I really quickly embraced all the tech that was rolling out into the world. I’d kind of broken up with the way things had always been done — big D-ring binders of accounting notary — and looked at how we digitize things.

I did a big exercise there to basically transform their finance function.

Joe: Is that when you were in your 20s?

Shay: I was, dang, I’m trying to do the maths. 2015-ish. I would have been approaching my 30s, I think. Let’s just say late 20s, something around there.

But what was really interesting is I didn’t think that the things I was doing were particularly innovative. I just thought, “Of course, this makes perfect sense. Let’s automate. Let’s reduce the size of our team. Let’s give our team members better things to do that are more interesting than plugging numbers into a form.”

But the industry, and particularly some big firms, were like, “Oh, this is very new. We’re not doing this yet.”

So there came about probably one of the biggest roles I’ve had in my career, which was working in the national team at BDO and having a lot to do with bringing the bulk of their clients onto the cloud.

I can’t even believe I’m saying this now, but that wasn’t a thing when I started there. It gave me a lot of perspective on what gets said in the industry and what actually is happening inside firms that I found very fascinating.

It was probably at that time that I met Sharon McClafferty. If you don’t know her, she’s amazing. She has a podcast. You should totally follow it.

She bailed me up at an event, like the ABE. Never met her, just on the corner of a table, and said, “Oh, I’ve seen some stuff you talk about online. I really like what you’re doing,” and she said, “Don’t stop telling the world what you’re seeing.”

She was a big influence for me to start pointing out the gaps between what we hear and what gets done, and how that’s actually impacting the profession.

Anyway, long story short, it felt like a really long time I was at BDO. Lots of potential inside that firm. Big brand, global brand, looking to make an impact. The internal workings are not always as pretty as the picture, but I certainly learned a lot there.

Leaving that firm, I really, really, really wanted to keep working with other firms. But at that stage, I didn’t quite have the confidence to go and start my own practice or start my own business, even a consultancy helping other firms.

So I went into tech. I was like, “Cool, well, I can help other accountants through tech. Let’s work for some software businesses, see if I can help in a sales capacity or a customer success capacity.”

Joe: That brings us to the Intuit years.

Shay: That’s kind of the story there. I was only there for about 18 months.

Joe: Oh, okay.

Shay: But what was fascinating was that I’d been completely indoctrinated in the blue T-shirt since 2014 and all the things. So jumping across to the competitor was fascinating.

Mostly because I think it’s really healthy for that space to have some competition, and I would have really liked some competition to be presented. Whether that actually happened or not, everyone’s probably got their opinion.

Joe: Depends what country you’re in.

Shay: Yeah. For the Australian market, I was part of the Australian business, which arguably is a rounding error on the Intuit global balance sheet.

It was just a reminder that in those enormous corporate entities, it can be very difficult to have your role translate into actual impact on people’s lives, people’s firms, and all of that kind of thing. Very, very big machine.

Joe: So when you were at Intuit, were you guys operating off the playbooks that were given to you by corporate over in the States? Or were you actually able to operate with some flexibility and do your own thing?

Shay: Sometimes, and sometimes not.

There was a very heavy influence of the US strategy on the Australian market, in my opinion, with a disconnect around the understanding of the Australian market.

What I believe, and what many of us feel like we know, is this is a very advisor-controlled market. The control of decision-making for small business, in particular, even mid-market accounting, finance, and business software decisions, is very heavily influenced by the advisor.

That relationship is very different in the US, and so the strategies of the tech companies need to be very different.

I think potentially we missed a trick when I was there in that flavor. I still believe the advisor is the gateway, and I’m not sure that was understood or believed as a legit strategy.

Never mind the fact that it had been proven by the incumbent.

Joe: I was going to say that.

Shay: Well, let’s do it different for different’s sake, right?

Joe: Since you departed Intuit, you’ve started your own business. Big transition.

You mentioned before that when you were at BDO, you didn’t quite feel like you were ready to take that step — or I think you implied that, if you didn’t outright say it. But 18 months at Intuit was enough to flick the switch.

Shay: Very different things going on personally at those stages.

Around a similar time that I was at BDO, I was also in the middle of a divorce. I had really young kids. I was working part-time.

Joe: So you had a lot more risk.

Shay: I had significant risk and responsibility, so my appetite for taking on things that I hadn’t done before was much smaller.

I’ve run everyone else’s businesses for 20 years. I’d never run my own business. And they don’t run on air. They need money too.

So I’d had a number of years rebuilding my financial position, so to speak, without letting the cat out of the bag. Anyone who’s been through a divorce can probably read between the lines.

It was still a risky move. It’s always a risky move. But I was in a much better financial position to do the new thing and embrace the courage, I suppose.

Joe: If you could go back in time and talk to younger Shay, would you have done it earlier?

Shay: Totally. One hundred percent.

I think there’s a huge market for particularly smaller firms that just want to get better at their operating model.

There are a lot of really simple unlocks that someone like myself can help firms with that can help them get out of their own way. And I say that with love, because we really do bring a bunch of things forward into running our firms because we’ve assumed that’s the way things have always been done and it has to stay that way. I don’t believe it does.

For example, if you want to talk about managing debtors — plug, plug, plug — even just hourly rate billing. Like, hello, no wonder you have debtors.

That’s just one simple example, but I think there’s a huge market for that, and there aren’t a lot of folks out there helping the smaller firms. It seems to be a concentration of consultants that will help the larger firms. But where’s the rest of them?

Joe: Well, let’s segue and talk about your current business.

How long have you been doing it? Who’s the target market? And what sets you apart from other people trying to do what you do?

Shay: I’m coming up to three years.

Joe: Congratulations.

Shay: Thank you.

Joe: That’s huge.

Shay: It’s a scary three-year milestone. They say that about every year, but yeah. Every year is scary, but I say this to my clients: every single year is its own version of hard, its own version of scary, and its own version of exciting as well.

Joe: That’s crazy. Sorry to interrupt you.

So you started this in 2022 or 2021? You started it just after COVID.

Shay: Pretty much, yeah.

Joe: And before AI went nuts.

Shay: Before it went nuts, yes. It was still useful.

Joe: Such a good time to start a business.

Shay: I agree. But I also wonder, as a solo-ish practitioner — I call myself a solo-ish practitioner — I have made a conscious strategic decision at this stage not to build a team out because I just don’t have the emotional energy, if I’m really honest.

I’ve got clients that need my full attention. My ideal client profile is an emotionally charged woman. And I’ve got teenage girls, so I could not promise that I could grow a team in the leadership style that I would like to subscribe to, that I love doing, as well as grow my girls and manage all of that.

So that’s my decision at this stage.

I can’t remember why I even told you that, Joe. What did you ask me?

Joe: We were talking about AI, I think.

Shay: AI, that’s right.

Joe: I assume what you were about to talk about is how AI’s managed to allow you to do more with less.

Shay: Absolutely. I actually don’t know how I would have got enough out the door, especially in the early days, without it.

Not because AI gives advice for any of my clients, but creating some of the structures and frameworks and sense-making of stuff. I’ve got all these big ideas and 20 years of experience. Distilling that down into programs and masterclasses and messaging and all these things that we don’t learn as accounting practitioners — how to do sales and marketing, how to write website copy.

Oh my God. I don’t know how I would have done it without my pal.

Joe: ChatGPT? Or have you moved on?

Shay: Well, I don’t—

Joe: You’ve been Claude-pilled, haven’t you?

Shay: I am not a fan of warmongers, so yeah. I have moved.

Joe: Yeah, I feel you.

I actually messaged the management of Pinch last week and copy-pasted an article — you know the one I’m talking about — and I said, “Permission to switch from ChatGPT to Claude?”

And then I discovered ChatGPT’s group chats feature. Have you ever seen this?

Shay: No.

Joe: So I think you and I probably use AI relatively similarly, where it’s like this thinking partner. You’re fleshing out all of your strategies and your ideas, and you get to a point where it’s coherent and you’re like, “Yes.”

The hardest next part is transferring that information to somebody else. But what AI does really well is it makes things coherent for other people.

With ChatGPT’s group chat feature, you can invite other people straight into the conversation you just had, and then they can be like, “All right, tell me what the hell Joe was just talking about,” and ChatGPT does the business.

Shay: That’s perfect. That would be so good.

Joe: It is very, very good.

Still not changing back?

Shay: No.

Joe: I wouldn’t either.

It was so strange because I was going to switch and then it was like, “Oh, but this is exactly the feature that I was looking for.”

All right. So three years — congratulations first and foremost. That is a tremendous achievement.

But for somebody who spent as long as you did working in BDO, you would expect to be talented at business. So let’s go back a little bit to what we were talking about before when I asked you if you would tell younger Shay to start sooner.

Did you miss signals? Were there moments in time where you went back and went, “I was ready then, but I just didn’t feel it”? There was too much risk on the table. At what point during your career had you developed enough knowledge and skill to actually take that leap?

Are we talking years?

Shay: I don’t think the gap was confidence in my capability. I think it was genuinely a maturity thing.

I was experiencing all these things in my career as a professional at the same time as listening and watching advice being given to other women in business inside the organizations that I worked in.

There was always something off. I had some pretty not nice experiences that were very gendered. I also saw differences in advice given to clients that was gendered.

It didn’t trigger for me at the time too much, but as I matured and went through different things in my life, I started to recognize what I was seeing and experiencing, and then understanding that it’s a problem I could solve or a problem I could help.

So the BDO exit moment was definitely a risk appetite thing. But after that, it was more about having this itch I needed to scratch, but not knowing how to bring that together with my capability, which I was very confident in.

I didn’t know how the two things came together. That didn’t click until I left Intuit.

I was the Australian chair of the Women’s Network. I had a whole day job — I won’t call it a day job, it was like a 24/7 job — as well as that. But if I’m really honest, that side hustle was my favorite thing to do because it felt like I was able to be really impactful.

But it also reminded me that so many of these initiatives that purport to support causes are just lip service, purple cupcakes, and lipstick on a pig, if I’m really honest.

There was just a window where I thought, “Duh. Just put your passion together with your expertise, dummy, and get on and do it.”

I don’t think I’m an expert. I’m still learning so much about running a small business, and it’s very humbling actually, because I’ve advised so many clients. I’ve always had great empathy. My dad’s owned a small business since I was born, so I had a level of empathy, but I’d never experienced it myself.

It was very humbling starting and tripping over the things that I knew were coming, and I knew how to get out of, but still doing it anyway and going, “Now I really know. Now I really know how my clients feel. Now I can genuinely say, I fucked that up too, and it’s okay.”

I think that was the biggest thing.

The thing I’m learning now is there is a huge role to play in helping other women who want to start businesses because corporate doesn’t work for them anymore, which is a big motivator for the fastest growing cohort of entrepreneurs at the moment: 45- to 55-year-old women who have had a gutful of corporate.

They’re saying, “I’m awesome. I’ve got expertise. I can start a business, and then I don’t have to answer to that jerk anymore, put up with the mansplaining and the mantrupting and all the crap. I can start my own business.”

It’s about having them understand that the advice industry is not set up to service them.

You asked me what my point of difference is. I literally exist to service that market on purpose because, generally speaking, other advisors don’t, and they overlook them.

If you think about all the small businesses we have in Australia, which arguably runs our economy, I don’t know the latest stats, but it’s well over four million. Nine hundred thousand of them are women-owned. Of that 900,000, only 1% have annual turnover of more than a million dollars.

So you ask any advisor at an accounting conference who they’d prefer to work with, and they’ll say, “Businesses preferably turning over a million bucks so they can pay my fees.”

I get that from a commercial perspective, but it also means that the 88% of women who run businesses turning over less than $100,000 a year have no support and no help to get past that mark. I am not comfortable with that.

I don’t think it’s deliberate, but it is systemic exclusion and systemic discrimination.

That is literally why I exist: to make sure that everyone, all of those women, have access to the knowledge and the support so that they can grow, earn the money they want to earn, and ultimately achieve financial independence.

I call that F you money, and I call it that on purpose.

Joe: I call it being rap rich, but anyway, go on.

Shay: Rap rich? I haven’t heard that. I like that.

I’m okay saying the F word, but I hear myself saying it a lot lately. But it’s not about a face full of Botox and a yacht and the latest BMW.

F you money is about the ability to choose. The ability to leave a situation that doesn’t serve you, to leave a job you don’t like anymore, to do what you want and not feel like you are enslaved to your financial position.

It’s not intended to exclude anyone else or make trouble for anyone else. It is literally just that. You have the choice if and when you need it, which I think every person deserves.

Joe: Absolutely.

You talked about some really interesting figures there. Four million odd small businesses, 900,000 of them female-owned, 1% of those over a million dollars per annum.

You mentioned lack of access to quality advisory as part of the problem because advisors prefer to work with larger businesses. But what other reasons are there for those 900,000 businesses, the 99% of them, to not be able to get over that threshold?

Obviously that’s what you’re teaching them, right? You’re giving them the tactics and the advice they’re not receiving. Lack of access to advice is one layer of it. What’s some of the actual advice to get to a million bucks?

Shay: The first thing is it doesn’t have to be a million.

You can achieve financial independence without turning over a million dollars. We could have you turning over, I don’t know, $350,000, and you could be taking home $320,000. That would be amazing.

If your overheads are low, that is very possible for a solo or solo-ish consultant, if we get the office structure right, if we get the operating structure right, if we do those kinds of things. Or not even right, but just good. It can just be good.

Better than shit. Better than manual. Better than billing by the hour.

A lot of the advice starts with unlocking the possible.

Some people say, “Oh, I give permission.” I don’t need to give permission to my clients. They’re not babies. They’re adults. But it’s allowing them to give themselves permission to actually charge properly, or potentially to charge differently than the way they were brought up.

If they’re in the accounting space, for example, it would be completely normal for them to leave a firm, start a firm, and bill by the hour because that’s how we were raised. Not realizing that the only way to make more money is to do more hours.

I don’t want to do more hours. That sucks. I want to do fewer hours, but I want to make more money.

So there’s a whole set of value-based charging.

A whole bunch of unlearning happens in those first layers of working with business, and a whole bunch of debunking.

It’s very common for clients to come to me and say, “Well, Steve-O down the pub said blah, blah, blah,” or, “My accountant said I should just stay under $75,000 turnover, then I don’t have to register for GST because it’s a bit of a hassle.”

A lot of this reductive advice or dismissive language — I actually think it’s negligent. I know that’s really strong language, but why would you say that to her? I bet if she’s sitting next to her husband who runs a business, you’re not telling him to stay small, right?

I genuinely don’t think people do this on purpose. I don’t think everyone is out to get women or anything like that. I just think they don’t realize the implications of some of the unconscious bias they bring into their advice, or even that the way they’re providing advice is misunderstood or not explained well.

I love our profession. I have lots of respect for my colleagues. They will not be upset if I say their best thing is not communication, right?

Knowing that, it’s normal for clients to say, “I don’t really understand this complicated structure.” But I see so many women coming to me and saying, “We’ve got a structure in our family for a thing, and I don’t really know why I have to do it like that. Actually, I don’t see any of the cash coming out of the trust.”

That debunking and understanding piece happens at the front of my relationships with clients really frequently.

Joe: I was actually having a conversation with somebody earlier today, and it’s a very similar philosophy I have to managing my team.

When I get new people in my team, the first thing I try to do is get them to take their masks off. Get them to unlearn their negative beliefs about themselves.

If they’re wearing a mask derived from insecurity or vulnerability or information they received in the past that’s not necessarily accurate, instead of focusing on being the best version of their real self — the best content creator they can possibly be or whatever — their focus is on trying to be who they think I think they should be.

I think the tactics involved in getting somebody to unlearn information in the context of a new small business owner and a new employee are really quite similar.

It’s all about the bullshit you end up lugging on top of yourself. The personality you build on top of yourself based on what other people say. What other people say is the right thing to do. Co-opting information and bringing in information from sources you think are better than you at this subject.

“They’re an expert at this. They know this. My mum knows this. My dad knows this.” And you build that up over your entire life.

So I get where you’re coming from.

Let’s talk about the billing thing, because Pinch is a money business, right?

When I first met you, I don’t exactly know how you’d heard about Pinch, but it was in Adelaide. I think we were there for the ABEN thing maybe.

Shay: No, it was a Xero thing.

Joe: Anyway, we were there for something. We were having dinner with Liam McNamara and a whole bunch of people, and you came over and started talking to me about Pinch and how much you loved Pinch.

Shay: I fangirled.

Joe: And I’m like, “That’s great,” because you were talking about things I had actually really recently realized Pinch solved around pricing and making sure you get paid on time.

Do you want to talk about that?

Shay: I think that might have been the AccountKit XPM event.

Joe: That’s right, because I was the MC.

Shay: Yeah, and I totally fangirled you. I was like, “I need to talk to you.”

I guess the question is, why do I love Pinch?

You had a very specific reason that’s so unique. Most people like Pinch because it gets you paid on time. At the high level, it’s probably the same reason I like it, but it’s what that actually causes psychologically for a small business owner.

The reason I got so excited and came and fangirled is because one of the biggest unlocks I have — because I mostly work with service-based businesses — is yes, pricing, but also how you bill.

We have a full framework called the No Surprises Cashflow System, and part of that is making sure you are not starting work unless you have taken some money from your client.

Now, that feels very jarring if you’ve never done that before. It’s also kind of tricky if you don’t have the backend systems to support it in a way that doesn’t let you hesitate. I say that deliberately, because if the system is going to do it, you’re just going to press a button and it’s gone, right?

So it fits really nicely with our system.

We help clients move from hourly rate or daily rate billing to either value-based or something where you at least take an estimate of your quote up front before you start the work. Then, of course, you lock in pre-approval, send your invoice, and get paid.

You don’t have to have weird conversations with your clients. You don’t have to spend any of your time chasing.

We’re quite used to the not-chasing concept, certainly when I’m working with my clients because I wouldn’t let them. But enabling them to take payment up front, I think, is one of the most pivotal things.

And giving them a bit of a lever as well to say, “Dear client, for our retainer, I think it’s a really great idea if you go on pre-approval. And do you know what? I’ll pick up the fees. Don’t worry about it.”

That’s just a much nicer conversation to have with clients.

The tech together with the change in billing strategy and pricing strategy really works because it gives my clients a lot of confidence to make the shift, and that it will be supported, rather than this, “Oh no, my clients are going to hate it.”

They’re not. They’re going to love it. I can tell you they’re going to love it.

Joe: Because they don’t have to think about anything.

Shay: They don’t have to think. They don’t get chased.

Joe: People hate getting chased, not because they think you’re an asshole for chasing them, but because it reminds them they’ve actually caused you a problem. That’s the actual psychology around it.

I’ve had this conversation two times in the past two weeks.

Once with Corey from Asana. Corey from Asana received a bill from one of his service suppliers. Xero invoice, no pre-approval. He literally is like, “I’m not paying this unless you can take my credit card because I am sick of logging in and paying this bill every month. What are you doing? It’s 2026.”

So he sends that email and CCs me in. They’re signing up to Pinch. Use that.

Then this morning, it was a bookkeeping practice that uses Pinch, talking about how much their clients love it. Ladies Behind the Tradies is the name of the practice.

Shay: So good.

Joe: Bookkeepers from the Bush — that’s another name I’ve given them.

All their clients are tradies. These blokes, the last thing they want to be doing is paying their bookkeeper invoice once a month. So just stick them on pre-approval. Thank God for that. Then they can just go and be tradies.

So you’re 100% correct.

When I started at Pinch four years ago, for the longest time, the natural pushback, the thing I dealt with the most when trying to convince practice owners or business owners to embrace pre-approval, was the belief that their clients would hate it.

They don’t. They love it.

Where do you think that comes from?

Shay: I think it’s because they’re more frightened about having the conversation with their client about the change, so they project.

The client’s not going to like it, but what they’re actually saying is, “I’m uncomfortable having that conversation.”

And I get it because nobody likes talking about money. That’s why lots of firms have shocking debtors. They’re happy to put their fee on the thing, but then they go and hope that it gets paid. It’s ridiculous.

It’s definitely a hot topic with my client base because, talking about unlearning things, the money stories we bring with us as women growing up are very different to our brothers or our boy cousins. Men are conditioned to invest. Women are conditioned to save.

Because of that, when we start to build our own value, it gets weird. There’s this whole intersection between self-worth, “I haven’t done enough,” “They’re going to say no,” “I’m frightened,” “But I know I need to get paid,” blah, blah, blah.

What I do is help them embrace a billing strategy and an engagement strategy that brings the money stuff together inside the sale, and then you don’t have to talk about it again.

The client is really excited. They’re ready to pay you. That’s when you’re going to take their money, and then you don’t have to talk about it again.

It doesn’t have to be weird. You don’t have that barrier of the conversation they’re not courageous enough to have.

Joe: That’s 100% my perspective on it too.

There’s nothing worse than the feeling when you’re sitting there waiting for somebody to pay an invoice that’s critical, especially in the early days when you’re a small business owner, because every client’s invoice is critical. You might only have three, two, one, right?

You’re sitting there waiting for that day to pay. You’ve got them on a seven- or 14-day payment term, and then 14 days ticks by. It’s 9:00 PM and you go to bed, and now it’s late. Now the conversation shifts and you have to ask for something you shouldn’t have to ask for.

Then people start to question why.

Was my service not good enough? Did I not do a good job? Did I price incorrectly? In comes the insecurity, in comes the vulnerability, and you end up spending a whole bunch of time thinking about things like that rather than focusing on your actual business and improving the real business.

When 99% of the time, the reason is that you sent them an invoice and didn’t give them an option to pay it in a very easy way. You literally expected them to log into their banking and transfer it.

So yeah, I hear you. It’s good to hear the validation.

To be honest, when you came up and talked to me about that, it was very validating and affirming. I didn’t found Pinch, but I founded a lot of the messaging. I made the decision to double down on the pre-approval functionality because of things like this.

Let’s talk about ADE. You’re here not to talk to me, unfortunately. You’re actually here because you’re doing a talk tomorrow. On what subject?

Shay: The talent shortage.

Joe: The talent shortage? That’s different. Talk about it.

Shay: I’ve been in the game over 20 years now. Don’t look closely at the lines around my eyeballs.

What I’ve come to know is that the talent shortage is not actually a talent problem. It’s a business model problem.

A lot of firms are still operating inside a structure that was built for an era that doesn’t even exist anymore. Fundamentally now, it’s working against us as a profession.

So when Michelle and I talk tomorrow, we’re going to unpack that in the context of having a talent pool in Australia that, give or take 1% or 2%, is 50% men and 50% women.

The cohort that’s leaving the profession, leaving firms, starting their own firms, and starting businesses that aren’t in the profession the fastest is women.

That is a structural, business structure problem. It is not a pipeline problem.

Over the course of what we’ll talk about, we will help everyone understand that there are a bunch of myths that get kicked around about whether the pay gap is even real, whether she doesn’t even want a promotion, and all of this kind of other stuff.

Joe: What? Not that. The other thing you said — she doesn’t want a promotion. What?

Shay: Last year, bless them, in all their wisdom, McKinsey and Lean In, which is a women-led organization, released a study that they had done. Essentially, they found there was an ambition gap.

Joe: Oh.

Shay: What they’re talking about is that, generally speaking, or within their study, women were much less likely to want a promotion than men.

What they didn’t broadcast well, but was in their report and absolutely found in their study, was that when women had access to the same support, the same stretch opportunities, and the same sponsorship, there was no ambition gap. Women wanted promotions with exactly the same desire as men.

So there isn’t actually an ambition problem. There is a structure and design problem.

It was infuriating reading that last year. But we overlay that concept on this myth we hear very commonly from firm owners, from other directors, especially in large firms, that, “Oh no, she’s not that committed. She’s going to go off and have a baby. We’ve invested so much in her,” and that kind of attitude.

What that is doing is driving 50% of the workforce out of your firm.

What we do offer is four very practical ways you can retain that 50%. You can literally unlock another 50% of your talent pool by doing four very specific things.

Joe: By the time this goes to air, you’ll have already done the talk, so you’re not going to be spoiling it by telling me. In fact, you’ll just be broadcasting the incredible information to even more people who didn’t get to come to ABE.

So yes, I am going to ask you.

Shay: Oh my God, and I’m only prepped for two of them because Michelle does the other two.

Joe: That’s all right. Let’s just go with two.

Shay: The easiest one, in my opinion, is to audit some of the structural exit points in the business.

What I mean by that is: grab your shareholders’ agreement, grab your performance review policy and procedures, and interrogate them honestly.

Really be honest in having a look at them and seeing whether they reward the most visible and most present humans, or actually the humans in the firm who add the most value.

I can just about guarantee you it’s the former, because that is standard practice that I have observed in my 20 years. Again, not about blame. It’s about being really clinical about having a look at what we’ve got there, and then choosing to make the change.

Joe: I think I made a LinkedIn post about that about two months ago.

Before you go onto the second point, this week I have spoken to at least three women who have said to me verbatim, “I don’t care about my commissions. I care about making an impact.” Or something very close to that, in sales roles.

I understand that. In the specific context I’m talking about, there’s opportunity that exists for them to do things they can see that other people can’t see. To close deals or put together strategic partnerships and alliances that don’t just fit the narrow window of what ends up qualifying for their commission.

There’s this frustration. We have to solve it at the systemic level. We have to put this better solution together, and it’s going to change everything and everything’s going to be fantastic, but I don’t get value from that for myself.

So eventually, because it’s easier to just give up on the commission and go after the thing they know needs to be done, ultimately what ends up happening is they don’t hit their targets, and the person who gives zero about doing the thing that’s right smashes their targets, and they get promoted.

I can attest that I’ve had a conversation three times this week that has been to that effect.

Shay: Corporate.

The criteria by which promotion or performance success is measured would be incredibly narrow. It wouldn’t be holistic.

Joe: It’s numbers.

Shay: And it’s just not good enough, because you and I both know that just numbers don’t run a business. It certainly doesn’t innovate. It certainly doesn’t build relationships.

Joe: Numbers are an output, not an input.

My LinkedIn post was talking about how, in an organization, you have to develop a structure to tie the revenue numbers — the actual outcome of your business — not just to direct closed deals won. You have to tie it to the people in the organization who keep the organization’s heartbeat running too.

I think AI is something that could actually do a good job here. If we can use AI to aggregate all the different things occurring inside a business and analyze and create different models and different ways to say, “We had 35% growth in the last quarter,” it’s very easy for us to attribute that to these deals, these account managers, these people who closed it.

But what facilitated all of them being able to do that? Who was responsible for bringing those people into the organization? Or keeping those people in the organization when they have bad days? How do you account for all of that?

Shay: In small business land, if we’re doing something as clinical as building a metrics dashboard for a small business, under no circumstances do I let them only have outputs on there.

It’s not just top-line sales. It’s not just net profit.

What are your reps? Like at the gym, what are the inputs, and how are you committed to them?

There’s always an impact metric in there because, especially with my clients, there’s a bit of friction between making money and impact, which I think is unnecessary, but it’s conditioning.

“I can’t possibly be a world-saver if I’m making good money,” which is bullshit. But it’s conditioning that we have to unlearn.

Allowing them to see their impact goal at the same time as their money-making goal seems to be working. Making sure they’re measuring both of those makes a lot of sense.

Joe: That’s great. What was the second one?

Shay: The second one, which I think is really critical, and what you were saying about AI made me think of anything that makes it easier.

There’s this big objection to doing anything differently: “Oh, it’s too hard. I don’t have numbers for that. That’d be so hard to collect data on.” Anything that can shift some of that is going to make a huge difference.

But the second one is about genuinely embracing flexibility in leadership and, if you are a leader in a firm, actually walking the talk.

There are zero business reasons why a leader in a firm needs to be full-time, needs to be full-time in the office, or needs to be present in the office.

Leadership is not about physical presence. It’s about influence. It’s about trust-building. It’s about nurturing. It’s about credibility. It’s about authority. All of those things. It is not just about physical presence.

There is huge friction in the industry about this. Yes, it’s wrapped up in return to work and all of that stuff. But until leaders in the business are willing to embrace that for themselves, it will never feel safe for anyone else to ask or do it.

If no one else is doing it, you will have women exit stage left to run their own firms so they can run it their way, or have the flexibility they need, or whatever the thing looks like. That is massively decreasing the talent pool for so many firms.

I know that feels hard, but as soon as you can start to redesign leadership, even in that very small way, you unlock a huge pool of super experienced, qualified, willing humans who want to work for you. They just don’t want to be locked into that archaic model of leadership.

Joe: I would summarize it as there are two types of leader: there’s a coach and there’s a manager.

A coach focuses on growing their people. A manager focuses on managing the systems of the business. There’s probably a place for managers, but I think there are a lot more managers than coaches in leadership positions.

Let’s talk about your business one last time. What’s it called? How can people find out more about it? What are you up to right now?

Shay: Palos is the name of my business. It’s a CFO advisory practice for women founders who want to make money.

I do work with women one-on-one, but otherwise, to make sure we can have offers and service offerings that reach the 88% of women making less than $100,000 in their business, we do a lot of group coaching.

We have The Profit Lab, which works for solo and solo-ish founders who want to maximize their take-home pay. That’s their primary objective.

They’ve started their business. They’re doing really well. They’re probably tripping over a number of things we’ve talked about today: billing by the hour, managing cash flow, their accountants telling them some stuff that’s really not helpful and is very reductive.

We help them with that fundamental business wisdom and also give them ongoing support, so they have someone who can give them the answers when they need them at the right investment.

We also work in The Scale Lab. The Scale Lab is super exciting and kind of new. We start that on the 29th of April, and that is for the beautiful, messy middle of business.

When we’re growing up out of being solo or solo-ish, we still kind of identify as an owner/operator, but we want to start identifying as the CEO.

This is where we work across 12 months with businesses, starting with a strategic financial planning day. We build together all the fundamentals they need: their cash flow forecast, their operating model, their revenue strategies, all of the things, in a way that works for her as the leader.

Then we partner every other month to make sure she’s got the decision support she needs as she’s making those big decisions.

How do I know who to hire? How do I structure my team properly? What should I be investing? Should I offshore? Should I onshore? What does a finance function look like? Do I need to raise capital?

All the things she needs as she’s going through that growing-up stage, that scaling stage of her business, and has access to a CFO.

Generally, across the marketplace, you need to be turning over at least a million bucks to get access to a CFO, and it’s going to cost you at least five grand a month minimum. That is not sustainable for businesses of that size, and they deserve the support.

So we do that in a group capacity to make sure it makes sense.

Joe: When’s your podcast coming out?

Shay: My podcast? I don’t know.

Joe: You’ve got the messy middle and the powered-up. What about the people who just need the information at the very start, when they can’t even afford the Scale Lab?

Shay: Every month we do a free masterclass.

Joe: There you go. I knew you would have something. You’re a ChatGPT expert, and ChatGPT would have told you you needed that.

Shay: No, my business coach actually.

But also, I just think it’s necessary because there’s misinformation and a lack of information.

Last month, I had one of my clients, who is a tax agent and amazing, talk all about structure. When is it right to shift from sole trader to something else? Because so many women get stuck in a sole trader box because someone is trying to keep them small, and it’s really difficult not to get into a pickle as you grow.

The month before that, we talked about whether your offshore person that you’re paying through Wise might actually be a deemed employee, and what that means for super, penalties, and all of the things. That real nitty-gritty stuff.

I always partner with other women who are running their own businesses and have an area of expertise that’s complementary to mine, and that my clients ask about. “I need support here,” or “I need support there.”

So we do that every single month in our masterclass series, and it’s free.

Joe: It’s been a really good conversation.

I want you to talk directly to male business owners and male managers, just for a minute, who have female employees. If there are one, two, three things you just want to grab every one of them and shake them and tell them, the floor is yours.

Shay: That normally gets me in trouble.

Joe: Duh. You’ve been saying that the whole time. We’re all good.

Shay: I want them to imagine a world where they go home and don’t have someone else doing everything for them. Imagine that they are the ones doing the everything.

What do I mean by that?

Typically — and this is generalizing; we have single dads and hashtag not everyone, whatever — but generally speaking, women carry a significantly higher domestic and mental load than the guy sitting next to them.

In the context of a man managing a team that has men and women in it, he needs to understand that when she’s leaving the business, she’s second-shifting. Whether that’s with kids, elderly parents, or just managing her man child at home, she is doing more than he is when he leaves the building.

The reason that’s important, particularly in the accounting industry, is that we’ve been brought up on this idea that if you leave at 5:00, you’re a slacker and you will not be promoted because visibility matters.

I literally had my very first manager say to me in one of my performance reviews, “Perception is everything, Shay.”

Shay used to start at 5:00 AM and finish at 5:00 because I couldn’t work past then. I was studying for my CA. I was doing other things. But because the business didn’t see that, they saw me leaving at 5:00, not starting at 5:00, and I was labeled as not committed.

So I would say to him, “I need you to understand that her 24 hours is very different to yours and very different to his.” That makes a huge difference.

Joe: Fantastic.

One final question. Take a second to think about the answer.

If you’re a person working inside corporate and you’re listening to this, and you’ve been dreaming about starting your own business, how do you know when the best time to make the move is?

Shay: I’m loath to answer “it depends,” but it really does.

A few things to think about: I wouldn’t start a business with no money in the bank.

Even though we might be super confident in our capability and could probably land a couple of clients next week if we just made a few calls, building a business takes investment of time and cash.

If it’s your time, you still need to feed people, so that costs money. Or whether it’s investment in infrastructure, systems, getting your structure right, getting the advice — you need a bucket of money.

I don’t mean a big bucket, but you can’t start a business with no money. Otherwise, you start making very weird decisions.

This idea of money is not original. It comes from, I can’t even remember who came up with it, the fund — basically a personal slush fund so you can get yourself out of a pickle if you need to.

I would suggest you have a fund at least to start your business.

No large business CFO would let a business operate without working capital reserves. It’s exactly the same concept.

Joe: So first piece of advice, sorry to interrupt you, Shay, would be start saving. Have some cash aside, or consider access to cash.

Shay: I’ve absolutely seen businesses start on no money because they had to. That is possible. It’s difficult. Recipe for burnout. Not saying you can’t do it. But if you’re asking me for advice, that’s what I’d be thinking about.

If you’re able to straddle your corporate role and a side hustle and scale one back as you’re ramping the other up, that’s magic. If you have the ability to do that, I would explore that.

If you can wind back to part-time and then scale the other one up and do all those things, I would absolutely look at that.

I’m going to plug what we do because it’s important. I don’t do it just to feed me and my girls. I do it because I genuinely think there’s a huge gap, and it’s really important for the world that women know this: get the right advice to start with.

If you can start right, you will start better.

Most of the clients that come to me are unlearning and fixing a lot of stuff that, if I had met her a year ago, we could have done a couple of simple things and she would not have experienced the problems she is now in, if that makes sense.

Seek out support. Make sure you’re doing that with someone you feel aligned with in terms of values. If you don’t love the vibe you’re getting from your accountant, don’t talk to them. Talk to someone else. You’re not ever wedded to anyone.

Find the people. Find your people and ask them for advice.

One of the things we are really deliberate about is what our black book looks like, and I mean that deliberately. Who are the other values-aligned humans who have complementary service offerings and complementary areas of expertise that I will actively refer my clients to if they need support?

Super important.

Joe: Well, I hope you enjoyed it.

Shay: I enjoyed it.

Joe: I did. I thought it was an awesome conversation. I feel like we could just talk for hours.

Shay: Totally.

Joe: Thanks so much for coming on.

Shay: Thanks for having me.

Joe: Appreciate it.