Profit Is A Choice

Welcome to 2022! This year we are going to focus on metrics in our companies. Identifying what metrics are, what we need, and how to go about monitoring them. Last year it was all about strategy – and this year all about how to make the strategy work. Listen in for tips and tricks that will help you determine if you are still on task or not.

• Metrics

• Focus

• Analysis

• Standards

• One of the most important sections in a strategic plan is where you create metrics to aim for as you grow in your business. And while creating these measurements needs to be done, what is most important is actually measuring to a measuring stick. Michele (2:03)

   

• We need to determine what we are going to measure, when we are going to measure it, how we are going to do that, and when are we going to review what we have measured. Michele (4:11)

   

• It is so very important to create time budgets for projects and then measure to them with time tracking, both in the amount of time the tasks took as well as measuring to a completion date. Keeping up with your hourly tracking can provide a wealth of knowledge as you analyze what is working and not working in your firm. Michele (5:16)

   

• Each person on your team should have something that they are measuring within their job description, and they should know how that action or activity will generate profits for the company. Everyone impacts profits. Michele (7:21)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

I am so excited to welcome Ceil DiGuglielmo of the Sew Much More podcast back to share the podcast with me continuing a 4-year tradition of reviewing our year and preparing for the next. Ceil is the owner of the custom drapery workroom, Sew Much More, a podcast by the same name, the owner of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library, and the publisher of the Drapery & Design Digital Digest. Enjoy listening to us dig into the challenges and shifts that happened in 2021 and find out what books are on our holiday reading list.

• Resiliency

• Change

• Favorite book of the year

• Year review

• I do love that about so many of the people in our industry, we just keep going. We got handed a curveball. Now let's pivot and let's figure something else out. Ceil DiGuglielmo (3:55) 

   

• I think having the perseverance, the resilience, the tenacity, to hold on and to work through it. It is about making sure that that we are owning everything and that we're being intentional so that you don't get blindsided. Michele (5:04) 

   

• I think that when we move back to more US based manufacturing, and we are really looking at the quality of what these craftspeople are creating, and the price that we're paying for it, I think it could shift us back to quality pieces that have longevity in the home versus such a throwaway mentality. Michele (13:31) 

   

• I think there are so many wonderful things that came out of the pandemic that taught us how to be resilient and how to pivot. Ceil DiGuglielmo (19:25) 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: The Sew Much More Podcast

• Website: The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library

• Facebook: The Sew Much More Podcast

• Facebook: The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library

• Instagram: @ceildi

• Instagram: @csf_resource_library

• Email: [email protected] 

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney

• Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt

• The Vision Driven Leader by Michael Hyatt

• Everyone Deserves a Great Manager by Scott Miller

• Get Different by Mike Michalowicz

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Getting Things Done by David Allen

Can we just talk for a few minutes about what it means to end the year well? Does it mean to have every job go our way? Does it mean to make more money than ever? Does it mean to barely get through it but still be standing? On today’s podcast we are going to chat about ending the year well – defining that – and using the little time we have left to do it.

• Define well for your company

• Plan in advance

• Be intentional

• Finishing well means to complete the critical items in the best way my team and I know how. Never sloppy. Never half done. Fully done, and fully done in a way that makes us all proud. Michele (2:06)

   

• It is always a great time to dial in your marketing strategy – meaning: Messaging, Branding, Channel – are you saying what your ideal client needs to hear and are you saying it in a way they understand and that resonates with them – and are you saying it where they are reading it? Michele (6:00) 

   

• Stay steady. Sometimes the hardest part is that - staying steady. Michele (7:02) 

   

• Know what is most important to you – and preserve it. Michele (8:49)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

With us today is Damari Gold, owner of The Gold Standard Accounting  & Tax firm. Damari is passionate about helping small business owners understand their money. So you can easily see why I am excited to have her on the podcast.  

We will be talking about the yes and no items for tax deductions, the importance of CFO days in your firm, and why we need a tax plan. Enjoy the conversation!

• Define your industry

• Create a tax plan

• Have CFO days

• Consistency is key

• I don't know if you've experienced this, you go into tax offices, they're all gloomy and gray and just not fun. So, I set out to be different and set myself apart from that. Damari Gold (04:26) 

   

• One of the things that I always tell my clients when they come to me, and I guess one of the very first things I do when we start working together, just look at their financials. Simply because as long as the numbers are being input correctly, they don't lie. Michele (6:24) 

   

• If you don't like the story that the numbers are telling, we need to change the decisions, the inputs, and the choices, so that we can create a new story, and then we can tell them what to do, where to go, and how to get there. Michele (7:09) 

   

• It is always better to do the preparation during the year as opposed to doing it at the end of the year, or trying to piece it together at a time when you're getting audited. Damari Gold (11:54) 

   

• Being able to handle the taxes of both the business and the family, the earlier we do it, the better off we're going to be. Michele (31:05) 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: DamariGold.com

• Facebook: DamariGold

• Instagram: @damarigold

• Email: [email protected]

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

• Pricing Without Emotion®

• Understanding Your Financials™

• Master Your Profit®

Today’s podcast is a request by more than one client of mine. You see, owning a business is not all roses and profits – it means owning the hard and sometimes yukky parts, too. Let’s dig in to learn some coping mechanisms and strategies for dealing with the parts of business that suck.

• 5 E-Strategy

• Communication

• Intention

• Leadership

• The biggest area of difficulty as businesses grow is not just the financial burden and monitoring – but the people management. Michele (3:10) 

   

• Educate on the job and tasks needed. Equip your employee with all they need to get the job done well. Set clear expectations so they know what to do, when, how, and in what format you want the deliverables. Empower them to get the job done, and encourage them along the way. Michele (4:10) 

   

• Another area around the people part of the company to consider- and most of you have heard this statement, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” This is truth. Michele (6:34) 

   

• When we think about other difficulties outside of the teams we are building and working with, the other problems that arise seem to be focused on marketing and sales, finances, and operations. This is exactly why we work through being intentional about everything and creating repeatable processes to reduce stress in my coaching practice. Michele (9:08)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• Pricing Without Emotion®

• Understanding Your Financials™

• Master Your Profit®

• One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

• Management Would Be Easy…If it Weren’t for the People by Patricia Addesso

• HR Assistance: Bambee

Joining me on the podcast today are Debra Scarpa and Ashley Blaesing of Home Designer Marketing. We are going to talk systems and processes which you all know by now is a favorite topic of mine. We will look at the benefits of having systems, which areas of the company we need to create them in, and go over an idea of the types of systems that will make our work more efficient. Enjoy the podcast.

• Systems

• Processes

• Profitability

• There's one thing about being design-oriented. There's another thing about being into beauty, but I think that systems and processes are left-brain logical, but there is beautiful creativity in that process. Michele (8:34) 

• I am such a strong visionary, that as you know, if you're a really strong visionary, you need to have a super-strong integrator in order to be able to, like push back and stand up. Debra Scarpa (12:17) 

• Anytime we can't find a point of agreement, that's when things start to fall apart. But if we can at least agree on what the end result needs to be or look like or feel like, then we're all at least moving in the same direction. Michele (18:52) 

• How much time can we save you by setting up a template for you where maybe you just change one sentence? Ashley Blaesing (23:35) 

• I think having a system to analyze data because it's not enough to create all these systems that we have talked about today if we're not analyzing what's coming out of it. Michele (59:48) 

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: HomeDesignerMarketing.com

• Facebook: Home Designer Marketing

• Instagram: @homedesignermarketing

• Pinterest: Home Designer Marketing

• YouTube: Home Designer Marketing

• LinkedIn: Home Designer Marketing

• Email: [email protected]

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• Begin with the End in Mind EP 110 with Michele Williams

• Traction by Gino Wickman

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

John Warrillow is the founder of The Value Builder System™, a simple software for building the value of a company used by thousands of businesses worldwide. He is the author of Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry, and The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies & Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top. John also hosts the popular podcast, Built to Sell Radio. Today, we are talking about how to create a business to sell, the difference between a job and a business, and who needs to be on your team.

• Niche

• Recurring Revenue

• Product Offering

• Time

• If you're doing the selling and you're still supervising the work, your company is worthless. John Warrillow (4:33)

   

• It is not very easy, in my estimation to sit down on the day that you decide you want to sell and sell if you haven't prepared in advance to be able to do that. Michele Williams (20:03)

   

• Giving away your time for less than your worth is a symptom of this larger problem, which is wanting to be appreciated, wanting to be loved and needed and, being acknowledged for what you do, makes people squeamish about charging for what they do. John Warrillow (33:05)

   

• It's hard because it's almost like watching somebody come in and totally retool everything that you've done that you thought worked so well that got you to where you are and then you have to sit and support it and rah, rah, ree, and cheer right behind it. Michele Williams (40:24)

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: BuiltToSell.com

• Facebook: Built To Sell

• Twitter: @JohnWarrillow

• LinkedIn: John Warrillow

• Email: [email protected]

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• Built to Sell, Automatic Customer, and Art of Selling your Business by John Warrillow

• Built to Sell Radio - Podcast

• BuilttoSell.com/profit - Downloadable on the 9 Subscription Model

On the podcast today I’m going to share my origin story. Some of you have reached out to me and asked me to share more and that you want to hear more. And so I thought it would be a great thing to just put my story out there beginning to end. That's what I'm going to do today. I hope that there's something that you can take away from it and that it inspires you.

• Your Why

• Strengths

• Experiences

• Uniqueness

• I started this business because I had been in the business for a while and had really started to see the effects of a lack of profitability, a high tolerance for low pay, not understanding the numbers and what they meant in the business. Michele (1:08)

   

• I started going home to home, making everybody's window treatments and helping them with paint colors and the small accessories and pulling the rooms together. That's how my business started up in upstairs and the sitting room of our bedroom. Michele (9:51)

   

• I have always focused on helping people understand money and numbers in their business because I'm definitely a more left-brain logical person, right-brained creative; so, when I think about a problem I think first logically, what do we do, and then try to get creative in my problem-solving. Michele (22:04)

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

Joining me on the podcast today are Jenny and Ben Slingerland of Black Ink Interiors. Jenny and Ben are clients of mine who have had tremendous growth over the last year. Today they are going to share their story of how they began working together in the company, how their business has morphed over the years, and how they each have their area of specialty that makes it all work.

• Husband and wife team

• Business growth

• Scaling

• Visionary and Integrator

• The idea of being in total control of your, your life, lifestyle, schedule. That's probably the biggest motivating factor. We control our destiny, and we can control our lives and how we schedule things and that's a big motivating factor. Ben Slingerland (14:28)

   

•  I think before you were to make a jump into a situation of working with your spouse, it would literally be asking yourself if other than the six hours you're sleeping at night, can you stand to be with that person every day and to get feedback when needed? Jenny Slingerland (21:28)

   

• Everybody knows there's got to be somebody driving hard in front, and somebody standing there manipulating behind the scenes and making everything work. That is the beauty of what two of you have created together. Michele Williams (23:22)

   

• Some of the things that I teach around financials and hiring are lessons that if learned, it's not just an investment or the ROI within that first year, it's the ROI of every single year after that, where you now know that you have the knowledge, you have the skill set, you have the tools to do something. It is now a return on investment year over year over year over year, because you've learned that idea or that skill. Michele Williams (27:05)

   

• You gave us tools to help us look at things differently to see the key performance indicators, to break things down in a way, to analyze the financials in a different way, so that we could take insights from them, and then also to look beyond just a year right. Ben Slingerland (30:16)

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: www.blackinkinteriors.com

• Instagram: @black.ink.interiors

• Facebook: BlackInkInteriorsAZ

• Pinterest: Black Ink Interior

• Twitter: Black Ink Interiors

• LinkedIn: Black Ink Interiors

• Houzz: Black Ink Interiors

• Email: [email protected]

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

• Traction by Gino Wickman

Joining me today on the podcast is Kelcee Sparks. Kelcee is the Director of Operations and Success for my company, and we've been together for almost a year. We're going to talk about what it's like to hire an operations person, why you need one, and actually how to hand off the work that sometimes can be very difficult to let go of. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

• Operations

• Build Trust

• Zone of Genius

• Process

• I think what's always cool about these ops positions is that it's different for everyone, because you're truly coming in to complement the genius of the CEO that you're working for. Kelcee Sparks (5:52)

   

• On the back end, there are a lot of people on my team, making things work from automation workflows, to really making sure that we support our clients. Michele (6:58)

   

• I know I'm saving you time; I know I'm helping you create a more efficient business. I know I'm helping you provide your clients, better customer service and better information. And that's what really sets my soul on fire. Kelcee Sparks (10:22)

   

• One of the things that I also was looking for in the person I hired was somebody who could not just take direction, but who could equally give input and be part of a forward strategy. I didn't just want a “Yes man”. Michele (20:59)

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• AIM Masterclass - Watch now

• Traction by Gino Wickman

• E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

• Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz