By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group
Originally explored on Wake Up Women Leaders — Episode 16
There is a specific kind of moment every leader experiences at least once in their career. The numbers stop adding up. The revenue you projected did not come in on schedule. The vendor invoice was not what you agreed to. The launch underperformed. A larger than expected bill arrived. The EIDL loan ran out and the monthly expenses still have not.
However it happened, the gap is real — and now you have to decide what to do with it.
In Episode 16 of Wake Up Women Leaders, Victoria Whitfield and I had the money conversation that even the best leaders must face. Women leaders managing business finances through a crisis need a clear sequence of actions, not a pep talk. This is that conversation.
First: Take the Shame Out of the Room
A budget blowup carries shame in a way that most other business problems do not. And shame is a terrible financial advisor.
“Take the shame out of this. When you need to start making decisions and moving forward, it’s really critical that you look at the facts of the situation and not infuse into it the, oh my gosh, how did I get here? I’m smart. I thought I was prepared. None of those kinds of statements are really helpful in solving the problem.”
Victoria quoted Theodore Roosevelt during the episode — Brené Brown’s version of the man in the arena. “The credit goes to the person who is actually in the ring, face marred by dust and blood, striving valiantly, coming short again and again. Not to the critic in the stands.”
You got into a financial difficulty because you were willing to take a swing. You received money and you spent money. That is not a character flaw. It is what building something requires. The leaders who never blow a budget are usually the leaders who never try anything big enough to blow one.
That said — feeling the weight of it and functioning clearly in the middle of it are two different things. You can acknowledge what you are feeling and still choose to look at the facts. The facts are what will get you out.
“You can’t make good financial decisions from a shame spiral. But you also can’t make decisions without information — because that’s kind of where you got to this point in the first place.”
Women leaders managing business finances through a crisis need both: the emotional honesty to acknowledge what happened, and the discipline to separate that from the practical decisions that have to be made.
What the Blowup Is Usually Telling You
Most budget blowups are not random. They are the result of something specific — under-planning, assumptions that were not tested, or a habit of not looking at the numbers until the situation forces the issue.
“It’s likely not bad luck. You’re not necessarily bad at money. But there’s probably some amount of under-planning, under-preparing, or not looking at the information that already existed in your business.”
The EIDL loans from COVID are the clearest example I have seen of this pattern at scale. People received significant runway — more money than they had planned around — and without a system to track what was going in and coming out, the runway quietly shortened month by month. By the time the gap was obvious, it was significant. The money did not disappear through bad luck. It disappeared through a lack of daily attention.
That is not a judgment. It is a pattern that repeats across businesses of all sizes, industries, and leadership styles. The leaders who avoid it are not smarter or more financially gifted. They are simply looking at their numbers regularly enough to catch problems early.
Step One: Stop the Bleeding
Victoria opened this section of the conversation with a bear metaphor — you chose to go big, you got mauled, now you need to remove yourself from the mauling. The practical translation of that is specific and immediate.
Put a moratorium on all spending for 48 hours.
“If you just keep unconsciously or reactively letting the money go out, you’re never going to resolve the situation.”
This feels uncomfortable — especially if you have final notices coming in, or fees that are accruing. But spending reactively in a financial crisis is how the problem gets larger before it gets smaller. A late fee does not make you a bad person. A late fee you incurred while also opening a new line of credit to cover something that was not the actual problem — that is a pattern that needs to be interrupted.
Stop the outflow first. Then identify where it is coming from. That sequence matters.
The other part of stopping the bleeding is recognizing that the body in crisis mode is not equipped to make good decisions. Victoria made the physiological case for this directly: when you are in a highly activated, anxious state, blood moves from the brain to the extremities. You are wired for physical response — run, fight, freeze — not for strategic financial analysis. Reactive decisions made from that state tend to be band-aids: a new credit card, a quick loan, a call to a family member that strains the relationship before anything actually changes.
Her prescription: a strategic spa day. Not a luxury — a necessity. Get yourself into a regulated state, physically and mentally, before you try to make financial decisions. That might be a day at an actual spa. It might be a morning at the library with your statements. It might be a long walk before you sit down with a notebook. What matters is that you create a container of calm before you start the analysis.
Women leaders managing business finances in crisis mode need to regulate first. Then think.
Step Two: The After Action Review
Once the immediate bleeding is stopped and you are in a regulated state, the second strategic spa day begins. This one is analytical.
Pull your statements. Look at what came in, what went out, and when. Look for patterns — not for someone to blame, but for information. Victoria described doing exactly this with her own credit card statements, highlighting recurring subscriptions she had forgotten about, expenses she was no longer using but still paying for. “Oh, this is so easy. I could just cancel this, this, this. I can downgrade this, I can negotiate this.”
The clarity that comes from actually looking at the numbers is almost always less frightening than the anxiety of avoiding them.
The after action review has three columns: what worked, what did not work, and knowing what I know now, what would I do differently. That third column is the most important one. It is where the system gets built.
“Failure to reflect is going to cause you to fail. People make plans wonderfully. But the problem is we don’t take time to reflect and to learn from the actions that we’ve taken.”
This is also the moment where the conversation with vendors happens. Call them. Be honest. People are human. A vendor who receives a phone call saying, hey, I see the invoice, I cannot pay it all at once, can we talk about a payment plan — is almost always more willing to work something out than a vendor who receives silence.
Women leaders managing business finances through difficulty often assume creditors and vendors will not negotiate. They frequently will.
What Not to Do
Taking on new debt before you understand the root cause is a trap many leaders fall into. “Debt in these moments is your enemy. It’s like asking the bear to come back and maul you again.” A new line of credit, a zero-percent card, a loan from friends or family — none of these solve the underlying pattern. They extend the runway while the pattern continues. And if you do not understand what caused the blowup, you are not in a position to guarantee it will not happen again.
The same caution applies to large cuts made without understanding what they will cost. Cutting the wrong expense in a crisis can remove the revenue-generating capacity you need to recover. Identify what is fixed and what is variable before you start cutting.
Do not go silent. Financial problems that are avoided get larger, not smaller.
Building the System That Prevents the Next One
Women leaders managing business finances will probably will not build the system that prevents future blowups until you have had at least one. The lesson is embedded in the experience. What matters is that you extract it.
The system has three components.
- Daily observation. Not weekly. Not monthly. Daily. What came in, what went out, what the gap is. This does not have to be a long process — ten minutes with a tool like YNAB (You Need A Budget) or QuickBooks is sufficient. The discipline of looking every day is what catches problems early, when they are still small enough to address without crisis.
- A buffer. This is the advice from Gina Knox of Small Business, Big Money, and it surprised me when I first heard it. When you are carrying debt and trying to recover financially, the instinct is to throw every available dollar at paying it down. Knox’s guidance is different: build the buffer first. Two to three months of operating expenses sitting in reserve, while paying minimums on everything else. The reason is simple — without a buffer, one bad month puts you straight back on the credit card. The debt goes up. The cycle repeats. The buffer breaks the cycle.
“Once you stop the bleeding and get back to a neutral zone, the next thing is to widen the gap between what’s going out and what’s coming in.”
- A ritual. Victoria’s Fancy Financial Fridays is not a gimmick. The leaders who look at their numbers consistently are the ones who make looking at their numbers feel like something other than a punishment. Dress for it, make a ritual of it, build a positive association with it. “Get into the habit of repeated rituals that turn you on so that you can recalibrate in your journey with your finances.” When you change how you relate to the numbers, you change how often you look at them. And frequency is everything.
Things to Do This Week
- Look at your numbers today — not at the end of the month. Pull up your accounts and write down three numbers: what is coming in, what is going out, and what the gap is. That is the baseline.
- If you are in a blowup right now: stop the outflow for 48 hours. Then take a strategic spa day and do the after action review. Three columns — what worked, what did not, what you would do differently.
- If you are not in a blowup right now: build the buffer before you need it. Pay the minimums and put all revenue into a savings account until you have at least 1 month of expenses and taxes at the ready. Then, you can shift back to debt reduction or paying unexpected bills.
What’s Coming Next
In Episode 17, Victoria and I are talking about why your origin story is the most important story you will ever tell in your business — and how sharing it changes the relationship between you and every room you walk into. Join us Wednesday at 3:30pm ET.
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Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group · sapparigroup.com · © 2026
