Profit Is A Choice

Joining me today is Matt Drinkhahn of the Eternal Optimist Podcast and Pro Coach Advisors. Matt is full of information, enthusiasm, and excitement about understanding our numbers, especially surrounding financial literacy. Matt is going to share about his journey including some of his embarrassment at not knowing his numbers and then harnessing the power behind those numbers to scale and grow businesses. This is a fun enjoyable conversation, and I invite you to listen in and take notes.

• Financial Ownership

• Overcoming Shame

• Financial Literacy

• Optimism

• I think sometimes we're so used to learning by only getting it right and not a lot of learning comes from failure. The older I get, the more I'm embracing failure as a learning tool. 10:18 Michele

• The question is what am I going to do today that my future self will thank me for? 13:40 Matt

• Now you have a lot of women who are in companies that are making multiple millions of dollars, and they don't even have the background, because they've just never been taught that. 19:53 Michele

• I just want my story to be a testimony for others that it may feel like a dark place and maybe a stressor, you can get over that you can make it through one step at a time. 22:55 Matt

• My whole theory behind the podcast is profitability is about more than money. It's profitability of communication, the profitability of time, of energy, and of the whole thing. 31:41 Michele

• One of the biggest challenges that I see in recovering perfectionists and highly functioning workaholics is they don't know how to let go and they don't know how to delegate effectively. 43:07 Matt

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Email: [email protected]

• Websites: www.proadvisorcoach.com and www.eternaloptimistpodcast.com

• LinkedIn: Matt Drinkhahn

• Facebook: Eternal Optimist Podcast

• Instagram: @EternalOptimist Podcast and @CoachDrink

• Twitter: @PodcastOptimist and @MDrinkhahn

• Youtube: Eternal Optimist Podcast

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

• Michele's 3 Financial Courses

• Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profit

Joining me on the podcast today is Kelcee with Elite Ops. She has been with us before and we are going to dig into some questions all around the financial aspects, kind of the manage your money, and my program. Thank you for sending in your questions and please continue to do that as we continue working through this series.

Topics Mentioned:

• Pricing

• Cash Flow

• Billing

• Strategic Plan

• We can't measure everything all the time and need KPIs for measuring what is most important.

• KPIs can be determined by knowing the goals your firm has for each quarter and measuring to the goals consistently.

• Build SOPs to support your measuring goals.

• Charging to grow allows for growth and reinvestment in your firm.

• Having a strategic plan is crucial to grow your business.

• Create a plan then build your time and money based on that plan for profitability.

• If you don't know where every dollar goes, you don't know how that time is going to be spent then you need to halt and think about what you're doing.

• Know your process.

• Look at your business in cash and accrual.

• See the 360 view of your business.

• To protect what you are building, you need three to six months of a cushion to carry operating expenses.

• Change allows us to get something different.

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

• Click here to send questions for Michele

• Metrique 1-month free code: 1mofree

Every year around this time when my kids were young, I would be thinking about how we would handle our summer plans. Which camps were they going to and when? How could I have a more relaxed schedule at work while moving projects along but also being mom? Maybe you don't have kids, but do want a more relaxed summer schedule – no matter what, listen in to this episode originally recorded in 2019. The lessons in time management and project expectations still apply.

Topics Mentioned:

• Delegation

• Fractional Support

• Accidental Business Owner

• Systems

• Our industry is heavily saturated with women.

• We cannot do it all at the same time. Something has to give.

• You have to be upfront with your clients with what your summer plans are.

• We have to have realistic expectations.

• We do not want to make a decision in a vacuum.

• There are always trade-offs with whatever decision you make.

• Try to be as creative as you can.

• You do not have to do it the way I did it. Do what works for you.

• Anytime you stop marketing your business, it can take us 3 to 6 months to gain back your footing.

• Make a plan based on choices and decisions.

• Commit to the plan. Work the plan.

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

• PIAC EP. 05 - Shame - Listen Today

• Master Your Profit™ - Enroll Today

• The Designers' Inner Circle - Become a Member Today!

Joining us today is Shayna Rose of Shayna Rose Interiors and 4DBiz. Shayna turned a tragic event into a new business model that changes how interior designers run their business. Listen in as we discuss the hallmarks of overwhelm and how to get the help you need to run your business and reclaim your time.

• Delegation

• Fractional Support

• Accidental Business Owner

• Systems

• I always like to say my success has failed upwards. Everything has been created around a failure and it's the best thing you can go through when you hit that problem, whether it's working with a client, whether it's integrating an E-commerce, whether it's trying to build new avenues of business, or a team, you have to learn some way. Shayna Rose (11:37)

• Because the payoff is the only way to reclaim time. This delegation is super important because that's how we reclaim our time to do what we can do best. Michele (29:26)

• What's your retirement plan? Hopefully, it's the sale of that business. Hopefully, you have operations outlined, a system of procedures outlined, how you're obtaining clients, and how you're controlling those clients. Shayna Rose (36:01)

• We can be our worst enemy and we're the ones that get in our own way. I want to encourage you to recognize that and ask for help. It doesn't have to be that way. Michele (45:04)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: 4Dbiz

• Website: 4Dbiz.com

• LinkedIn: 4Dbiz

• YouTube: @4dbiz761

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

• Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz

• Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz

• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E Gerber

• Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success by John C. Maxwell

Today I have with me Kelcee Sparks, who is with Elite Ops Support. She has a team of people that support designers and other industries with operational support, VA support, and she also provides operations support for me personally. She's going to ask me some questions today so that we can share a little bit more information on some of the questions that you all have been sending in and have asked. Enjoy the podcast.

If people want to send in business questions please continue to send them in, we'll answer them. The majority of the podcasts that we are putting out are because people have asked questions and either we answer them in my solo podcast, or we go find somebody who can talk about it. If there are topics and ideas that people want to share, I'd love to hear them.

• Build a solid foundation

• Allow for growth

• Work on being centered not balanced

• Ask for help

• Know your own why, know your own values, and give yourself space to evolve and grow in your life and your business. Michele 15:10

• We can do it all, I just don't think we can do it all at once or without help. Michele 18:53

• I'm all about delegating, and not dumping, but how can I push the work to a different level in my company where it can be done well and support the brand. It doesn't always have to be the owner. Michele 25:57

• Know who you are, know what you want to do, know where your deal breakers are, know what you won't do, and then just build a business that you love, and then get help doing it. Michele 36:12

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz

• Who's In Your Room by Misner, Emery and Sapio

Joining me on the podcast today is Mark Willis. He's the owner of Lake Growth Financial Services, a financial firm in Chicago, Illinois. Mark is going to lead us on the journey of understanding our financials better. We're going to be looking at how to be the bank for our company, what it means to take back ownership, money, and lending instead of being a slave to the banks or to somebody else holding a note over our head or having so much debt that we don't know how to get out from under it.

Mark will share stories and give us methodologies and mindset changes so that we too can be in full control of our finances.

• Cost of Debt

• Building Wealth

• Money Mindset

• Generational Wealth

  Key Thoughts:

  • That became my mantra, I want to be better than debt free. And so, as a financial planner, now, I help people become better than debt free. I have since paid off my debts. But more than that, I bought them back by becoming my own banker, paying the student loan snakes off, and actually collecting that money from myself to get a profit off the debt that I once paid to somebody else. Mark Willis (6:03)

  • It's kind of the Profit First dilemma that we see all the money sitting in the bank account, and they just start taking it. What they've done in essence, is they rob the company coffers to live a lavish lifestyle, to go on trips to fix up their house, to do whatever, to pay a medical bill. I don't care what it is. But they took it from the business prior to when it should have been taken. And now the business is running lean, and they're struggling. And it was the entire lifeblood to build their life and they just destroyed the lifeblood. Michele (23:23)

  • When you have the bank, you control the whole card table. Imagine how this would work in almost every business. Mark Willis (42:07)

  • Today has been all about taking back control. And I want to encourage you to do that. Because if you own it, you can change it. And that's the beautiful thing about profit. We're building it. Michele (50:09)

  Contact Michele:

  • Email: [email protected]

  • Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

  • Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

  • Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

  • LinkedIn: Michele Williams

  Contact Mark:

  • Email: [email protected]

  • Website: https://lakegrowth.com/

  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notyouraveragefinancial/

  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lakegrowth

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklakegrowth/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/LakeGrowth

  References and Resources:

  • Work with Me

  • Metrique Solutions

  • Scarlet Thread Consulting

  • Debt for the First 5000 Years by David Graeber

  • Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

With us on the podcast today is Julie Murphy. Julie is the Owner of Designer Draperies of Boston, a full service to the trade workroom. She began as a home-based business in 2006. In 2014 she purchased Designer Draperies of Boston and merged the 2 businesses. She has tripled the size of her team as well as sales since transfer of ownership. She attributes her growth and continued success on 3 things: Quality, Effective Communication and Exemplary Customer Service.

Today we will focus on her journey to make a business acquisition – the highs and the lows.

• Purchase type

• Policies and Procedures

• Employee retention

• Support Teams

  Thank you for joining us today. If you have questions about purchasing a workroom, feel free to reach out to Julie. And if you want to get your business pulled together – not just to sell – but to enjoy the benefits of a well-run business for yourself, sign up for a discovery call at scarletthreadconsulting.com. Choose to be organized which leads to profitability – because profit doesn't happen by accident.

  Key Thoughts:

  • I wished I had reached out to somebody, at some point, and waved my white flag, and said, I need help in figuring out how to deal with business growth. Julie Murphy (45:59)

  • I still talk to clients and people all the time that are using pen and paper and I get it or they're using Excel to run all of their financials. I get it. I did it too, for a couple of years, until I realized that as you said, I could not get reports. I could not see where I was, I couldn't understand the impact or the cash flow or any of those things, what was happening truly happening at a glance, even if I was keeping up with those details to hand off to my accountant in a year. They were not helping me manage the day-to-day of what I was doing. I mean, that's the whole reason that we've even built Metrique is to take all of that data and to be able to put it in one place to look at it because there is knowledge and power in looking at those things. Michele Williams (48:38)

  • I would say really look into what the business has for documented procedures. The other thing that I'm running into too, is what's in place for your staff, human resource-wise. As a small business, we don't have to have certain things. Even if you have three employees, I think it's important to make sure that you are doing everything that you're supposed to be doing. Julie Murphy (54:00)

  • The more you document, the more you keep up with your financials, and the more you show that you're able to be paid and then the beautiful thing is if you can show that growth, that continual growth year over year over year, even at 10%. Michele Williams (57:54)

  Contact Michele:

  • Email: [email protected]

  • Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

  • Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

  • Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

  • LinkedIn: Michele Williams

  Contact Ericka:

  • Email: [email protected]

  • Website: http://www.designerdraperiesofboston.com

  • Instagram: @designerdraperiesofboston

  • Facebook: @designerdraperiesboston

  References and Resources:

  • Work with Me

  • Metrique Solutions

  • Scarlet Thread Consulting

How many of you go to an industry conference at least once a year? On our podcast today, I am just returning from the International Window Coverings Expo. And I'm going to share with you 10 things that really stood out to me while I was there.

• Industry Events

• Learning

• Travel

• Not everyone is looking for the same thing.

• Authentic connection requires you to block out the noise in the room to ask questions and listen.

• Real business decisions are made.

• Energy and excitement for the possibilities is create and restored.

• Not everyone thinks alike – you will find some like you and some very different.

• Laughter in the course of doing business is good medicine.

• Friendships that are made at these events can be very real.

• Vendors want to help us.

• There is as much education over dinner or drinks as there is in a classroom or on the vendor floor.

• These are important events to attend.

Scarlet Thread exists to support business owners in closing the literacy gap in their business. We accomplish this through this podcast, our blogs, educational resources, coaching and Metrique Solutions. If you want to talk about your business and your goals – sign up for a discovery call at scarletthreadconsulting.com. Choose to be profitable – because profit doesn't happen by accident.

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

Joining me on the podcast today is Ericka Saurit. She is the founder of Saurit Creative, which is a boutique brand marketing agency. This is really going to be such a fun discussion. We're going to talk about story, leaning into your story and inviting people in. Ericka has such an honest and curious approach. I love that. I really think you're going to learn a lot not only about your brand and marketing, but about being able to invite people in to share your story and to feel a part of it, and to use words and emotions to do that. Enjoy the podcast.

• Brand mindset

• Emotional connection

• Curiosity

• Business values

• Even the best ideas, even the very best interior design will not matter if you can't present it, if you can't sell it to your client, if you can't sell the right story. Ericka Saurit (12:46)

• I'm happy that we can make use of our varied experiences, to live out what's in our heart and the joy that it brings us in doing what we do. It is something that has been able to carry forward. Pulling all of the things together, the love of numbers, the way you tell stories with words, I can tell stories with numbers, I can look at them, I can see what they're showing you. I can tell you where it's going to go, I can tell you how it's going to play out, I can tell you the changes we need to make to change the story. It doesn't have to stay that static story; I can tell you how to immerse yourself into the financials. Michele (22:14)

• Creativity doesn't have to manifest itself as like an artist or musician or writer, like, I think some of I mean, you'll, you know, this, like some of the most brilliant minds, in finance and in math, and in physics, and in any kind of, like, any industry, creativity is essential to innovation. Ericka Saurit (25:53)

• Whether we're making a marketing decision, a hiring decision, a process decision or a financial decision, it must be in alignment with why you're here and what you're trying to do. Michele (39:29)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Email: [email protected]

• Website: Saurit Creative

• Instagram: @sauritcreative

• LinkedIn: Ericka Saurit

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

Joining me today is Brooke Chapman. She's the executive director of Three by 3 and Nine Boxes. Brooke has a proven track record in helping small businesses really create a strategy around their marketing. Today we're going to be talking about strategy versus tactics in your business with regard to marketing. Brooke uses a phrase that made me laugh, she calls it random acts of marketing. That's when we're just doing tactical work instead of strategy work. So listen today and see if there are some changes that you can make to your business to be more strategic.

• Strategy vs. tactics

• Market position

• Clarity in messaging

• Buying triggers

• When we think about marketing tactics, it's channels, it's your website is, you know, the suite of brochures that you're handing to clients. It's your social media pages, it's the campaigns that you run through Google. But if we think about what strategy is, it's really about understanding your market position and your differentiation from your customers. Brooke Chapman (5:31)

• It is so difficult for me or any of my team to guide clients to move forward to even find the right marketing strategist to work with if we don't know who they are. That foundation serves as the backbone for everything, not just to build your business strategy. Michele (7:06)

• Can you afford not to be in the market and be in business today without clarity? Because if you're not clear, your customers are not going to be clear. Brooke Chapman (8:22)

• I think that's what's so interesting about strategy versus tactics. With everything shifting and changing, if we don't have a view of the overall strategy, we can sometimes get twisted up with those tactics, then we're spending money where we shouldn't. Michele (32:54)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Email: [email protected]

• Website: Three by 3

• Instagram: @designer.elite.co

• LinkedIn: Brooke Chapman

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Get Your Score