77: Amy Rose Herrick: Profit Building Specialist + Online Course Creator

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Today my special guest is Amy Rose Herrick. Amy is a profit building specialist. Business owners implement her secret profit system to increase productivity 10,000 to 100,000 or more by eliminating their hidden profit eating black holes. Clients have turned to Amy since 1991. Accelerating profits, increasing bottom lines, demystifying root causes of business losses, and making more money without requiring adding costly inventory, changing locations or adding more staff. Amy, thank you so much for joining me. Excited to jump in here with you today and learn more about your entrepreneur journey.

Oh, I've been looking forward to it. I've listened to some of the other podcasts and and it's a real honor to be in the lineup that you have.

Well, why don't you start and start from the beginning and tell folks about your entrepreneur journey and how you got to where you are today.

Well, if I back it way up, I think entrepreneurs are something that happen throughout a lifetime, that some people have that talent or they've got that destiny. My older brother taught me how to pick up night crawlers and I sold them to the bait shop in grade school. So I became an entrepreneur very early, even if it wasn't a very girly job. And over the years I went into office management. I did a lot in the corporate world. I ended up working for an investment firm. And then I branched out to my own consulting practice, which I've been doing for three decades at this point. And my journey has been one of learning. I've always had a thirst for learning and how the pieces work together. Financially, that has served me very well as I have bought, bought businesses, sold businesses. You know, we even closed a second generation family business. And it has given me a very unique set of skills when it comes to dealing with money or companies and even titling of personal assets. And that's how I ended up doing the Secret Profits is really trying to build in and help focus the business owners to get the most out of their company in ways that they're really not being taught.

So I have to ask, and I'm not that familiar with this, so you'll have to excuse me. What is a nightcrawler? Is it like a bait that you use for fishing?

Yes. If you go fishing, Night crawlers are these really big fat worms that fish love. And you know, this will go back and say, in my childhood, I'm telling you, I would put them together and 65 cents a dozen was really big money and I was the richest kid in the neighborhood.

So where did you find them? You just went out and dug in.

The yard and found them in the yard. My brother showed me how you wet the soil and you have to wait till after dark and with the flashlight and you literally have to pick them up by hand and put them in your container and then that's how you package them afterward. And that also meant that I got to stay up really late.

So 65 cents a dozen. How much were you making in like one night?

Depend on how many I picked up. You know, if I picked up 10 or 12 dozen. Wow. Which didn't take all that long. But again, after I picked them up, you know, then I would have to package them because it took too long to pick them up and package them, you know, at the same time. So I had my little system and with working with that and the band wanted all that I could bring in, because once the word got out that he had the really good bait, he had a market for it and he had this little neighborhood kid who could bring them to him. So I was cheaper than his other supplier. We were all happy.

So I love that. I love how you started your entrepreneurship journey when you were just a child. You said you moved into the corporate, corporate world and worked with an investment firm. Tell us a little bit about that. And how long did you do that?

Well, I had originally worked with and some other corporate arenas where I was doing cost accounting, inventory control, hr, you know, payroll, some other things. And an opportunity came up for me to work in an investment firm, but to take over as office manager. It was a smaller, a much smaller than the corporate world that I'd been in. So I went to work there. And after getting the office lined out, which was really very easy for me, I kept watching the guys on the sales desk. It is a very male dominated industry. And I said, you know, I could do that and I could do it better than they do. And it was all on commission, and I believe in commission. And so I had a baby and I asked to come back and, you know, I helped train a gal and I went right to the trading desk after having a little one with absolutely no income base and built up a practice, did that for a couple of years and then said, you know, I think I would rather work with individuals, corporations and colleges and almond farms and all these things are very nice, but I'd rather use some of this expertise. And I was able to go to a different financial firm where I worked for two years. And again, very male dominated. I joked about I was the wife most of them had at home. And with that I said, you know, they kept saying, well, you don't fit our paradigm. And they were right. I didn't fit their paradigm. I went out on my own in 1993 with a home office and I've had a home office ever since.

So you've been working out of your house, working for yourself since 93. Um, so you started this consulting firm. What, who, what, what did your life look like then? What kind of clients did you have? Who was your target market and how were you helping them?

Well, I made, again, I did not fit the paradigm. I was adamant that I was not going to build my practice strictly on, you know, my friends and family. There were a couple of them that I asked to come in because I knew I could help them, and they did. And then it was strictly on referrals. I did a lot of writing of articles. I did presentations to groups. I went to dentist eyeglass meetings that they had and basically talked to them and said, here's some things I can do and there are some things I think you're missing. And I built a client base literally from nothing by doing it outside of the paradigm because I felt there was a different way. I did the same thing in the investment firm I was at. I watched what these guys were doing. I'm going like, you guys are chasing the wrong money pools. I went and got books, which that's what you did at the time. And I reached out and I looked at all the financials and I worked with a lot of private foundations because that's where the money was. And I think it was even focusing then on who were the people I felt I could help the most and what were their economic dynamics and really targeted there personally. I found very little success in the Chamber of Commerce and that type of thing that really didn't work for me. It just didn't. So I had to think of other ways that were more creative that got me into the clientele that I wanted to work with.

You mentioned that you were writing articles at the time. Had you started a website? Blogging wasn't that big back then.

Oh no, this is.

Tell us a little bit about what that looked like at that point.

I'll joke about this was in the dinosaur days of newspapers and no, I hooked up with a Christian newspaper. I reached out to the editor and he had a lot of things. And I said, you know, you really don't have much on finances. Would you be willing to test this? And I said, give me what your word count was. Bluffed my way into some of it at first until I learned a little of the ropes. But then I had him tell me, what is your word count that you want? Let me send you over to Goals and then you can insert them where you have space. That worked out wonderfully. I did that for years until he retired and my world was changing and I didn't have time. I reached out to the local newspaper and said, I have an idea of a series that I'd like to do on financial planning. And here's kind of what I'm thinking, would you be interested in doing that? We ended up doing four one page blowouts. That was a huge amount of local press for me. And do you know what it would have cost me for a full one page, let alone four months in a row? I couldn't have paid that. Wouldn't have happened. And then I offered to speak in front of groups, you know, teachers, retired teachers, group. There were some things, you know, whoever it was, and I let that be known to clients or whatever. Sure, I'll be happy to come in to your group and I would pitch things. Now we have different media sources, we've got Haro and lots of other things to get your name out. But I pitched when we were having economic issues, I pitched to the newspaper. How about we do just a couple of little snippets on like money minutes or how. How to maximize your money. Here's some ideas that I have. I've got about 30 or 40. What do you think? They ended up running that every week for months. So you have to think outside the box of how do you reach some of the people, Cost effectively. And at the same time, the huge advantage people have now is that Internet lasts forever.

Yeah. And back then when you were doing that once it was in the paper and people kind of threw the paper away, they didn't see it anymore. Right, right.

But when you're looking at a full page ad and they're talking about somebody who's kind of similar to your circumstances and what the problems were and the solutions and how this worked out, the phone rang, I saw so and so. And I'd really like to come talk to you about this and that. That, you know, and the person that I interviewed and worked with at no charge because I wanted the publicity, I did that. That gave me a chance for them to also say, oh yeah, they did not have to identify who they were, we would just do, you know, that was up to them if they wanted to use their name or not. But of course they sent referrals. You know, they didn't think that they were wealthy enough for a financial advisor or whatever the case may be. And then in working with my small business owners and buying my own business and doing different things, it's always like, hey, you know, if you did this, this could make a big difference to your bottom line. And I'm very astute with numbers and taxes. Over the years with some of our businesses, we had engaged consultants and professionals that helped us increase our bottom line. And I feel strongly that whenever you expand your knowledge base, you can always apply that into another endeavor. So don't be afraid to learn something new.

So in 1993, you started your own consulting firm and you did that for many, many years. And you were in Kansas. Correct. When you were working, when you had your consulting firm.

I still have it. It has morphed over the years where I have added and taken away pieces. I did portfolio planning for about 300 clients for 25 years. I sold that off in 2016. I still do my consulting with individuals and small businesses that are by the hour. And then I built the profit secrets because I can only do so much with people one on one. And by doing the videos and teaching them the formulas and the workbooks, I could really expand my reach with individuals. So many things that I was doing in 1991, I'm still doing. I'm only doing it so much better because I've got over 30 years of experience now, and the world changes, tax laws, opportunities. So, you know, just continue to grow on that.

When did you launch your online course and what kind of led you down the path to do that?

My online course was slower to get up than I really wanted. And some of you identify with this in 2000. And I have to think of calendar 2019. It took me almost two years to find the firm that I really wanted to work with because I had the vision. And my vision included a ton of videos. I think I have 37 of them up right now. And with those, I had a specific way that I had built this, that I wanted to have the components to be able to stand on their own. So if you only needed help in one area, but also that they could be bundled and it could, you know, be a succession of successes in a company on increasing bottom lines in different areas. Took me almost two years to find the firm. Then in 2019, I flew to Philadelphia. I spent over two days in the studio. For those of you who are in the know, we filmed over 55,000 words plus two unscripted segments, which is, like, unheard of. But I did it, got it done, and then it was supposed to be out of editing within six weeks. Can you say Covid?

Oh, no. Are you kidding me?

No, I'm not kidding you. Can you say Covid? And that ended up taking over eight months to get it done. And then I engaged another firm to help me get it up and get it built. I have hired and fired Kartra people. Now I have the most wonderful Kartra person I could ever. He's so fabulous. And then it was in the process of going up clear back in October, but it has taken a while, and some of it has been backtracking because we, you know, I had some individuals, and it really wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't what I needed. So the courses that I had been doing, I had Been teaching individually or I doing on smaller basis. I worked with Enterprise SBA. I teach local classes for AARP. But having the component that is available 24. 7 on the Internet, man, that was a little bit more of a struggle to get up than I anticipated. I'm not unhappy with it at all, but I had a specific vision and I wasn't willing to settle for less.

So you have 37 courses up for your portfolio that people and we'll make sure that that link for that is in the show notes so people can go and check them out. 37 courses and it sounds like that they can go in and just pick whichever one is a best fit for them. I am curious though, how do people find you or find your courses? So what are your traffic strategies for that?

Well, obviously I enjoy doing podcasting because this can get me towards a targeted audience. Some of it is also from referrals from the clients that I have worked with and also were helping me with some of my beta testing and those are the ones that I feel will work the best for me. At some point I will probably do my own podcast, but as I'm still maintaining a boutique tax practice and this has been the worst year ever for that, I don't feel like I want to add that extra to my plate because I respect how much expertise and time that you host Destiny put into having a fabulous show and screening guests and things. And that will be a piece that I will do later. I do enjoy and it has worked for me to do some of the major events. The top talent. There's also Rainmaker. There's several different ones Pride that have been large virtual events to help tie in for individuals that you can refer to each other. Those have been very helpful. Again, Covid has changed a lot of things on our dynamics. It really took away all of my live gigs, but I believe they will come back at some point.

So how do you have your courses packaged? They can go pick which one is best for them or can they buy the bundle or how do you have that set up?

Well, the easy thing that they can do is to go to the website. It'll be in the links and let's say there's a particular topic and they're all different topics and there will be more added. Those are just getting those three core courses up. Let's say that you really don't know how to correctly price your employees. And an example of that was a real client that they offered a new service and he could not understand why this is selling so well. Then when they're losing money, he'd mispriced the employee's cost. And what was really happening is he was losing $48 every time he sold the service. He didn't price it correctly. That could be of a help. You know, that is one. There's another one about advertising must give you roi. I believe that everybody needs to know, when you're spending your advertising money, is this going to give you a return on your investment or is this going to cost you profits? You know, if you spent $5,000 on advertising and you made $3,000 of sales, well, in your mind you're going to say, Well, I lost 2,000. And I disagree. You only made the profit that was on those 3,000 in sales. And let's say it's $500. It's just a number. So I spent $5,000 to make $500. I just lost $4,500. I can't afford to repeat that type of an economic loss over the year because that's almost 60 grand. If you do this once a month and there is a course there. And then on all of my courses I will say are short because we're busy people. We need the meat and need to go on. Some of them are as little as eight or 10 minutes. Some of them are as long as 40 or 45. And they will have workbooks that have formulas that are evergreen so that you can repeat them. And it's also not currency based. The concepts are the same. And it doesn't matter what currency you're using, you still can get the same result. And that's why there are so many different courses, because there are many, many areas in business that I don't see business owners retaining enough of their profit. Whether you're a course creator or you're a bricks and mortar, you have ways that you are giving away your profit dollars needlessly, but nobody has showed you how to retain more of them. It's not always how much money you sell or how much you make gross. Gross is wonderful. I want to see your net because you could be grossing $5 million. And if your net is minus $100,000, you are not successful and this cannot continue.

So I love how you have set them up so that folks can get quick wins. Because what I found, and I sounds like you have too, is people don't have a lot of time to spend hours and hours and hours in these online courses. Do you have any type of support system set up? So if they had a question about the content how do you handle questions from your students?

Well, this will make it very easy. When they go to the courses page, there is my phone number that is at the top of the page. So if someone is having an issue or has a question that is available, they can also reach out to me through Facebook. And then there is and it'll be down in the bottom of the show. Notes I have a free book, an ebook that is available that they can download and there is a link there that if they wanted to book a 30 minute free discovery call and ask a question or if they said, you know, I really need help, I do consulting on larger packages. It just depends on what the individual needs. But one of my passions is watching some of the businesses that they are struggling and they've got potential, but they're limited on what they can do with their resources. And I wanted to make sure that there were courses that were very affordable. So even if right now I can only focus on one and I pull that and I'm able to bring my profits up 10 to $100,000, then I'm in a better position to do something else and to keep building on that success. Because this is not just one time. Once you've learned how to do it, you can replicate this.

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Okay, so let me ask you this, Amy. What do you see as next steps for your business in 2021? You could be either for your online course or for your consulting firm.

2021. I will, I believe, find more time later in the year to go ahead and film the rest of the courses that I had that I have not had a chance to circle back to. And I decided to just focus on getting the core built up and the bundled courses and everything to get that running very smoothly. And I had to get past this terrible tax season. I don't know that I will really have time, but I will be building a separate platform probably within the year. That will be money with Amy and that will be strictly individual topics like titling of your assets. This is not Dave Ramsey. This is not Susie Orman. These are the things that deal with more of your estate credit issues and other things. I see that on the horizon. I am tentatively scheduled to go to a podcast building school because I told you folks I believe in learning for in November. And we'll see if I decide that I'm ready to launch at that point. Point. So I'm going to continue to build and work out on those type of things and toying with the idea of whether I want to do some individual sessions that will be on Facebook Live or I will do them through Zoom. I already have the topics, I already have the information. It's deciding where I want to put some of that in the calendar and how I will be able to spend my time to bring in the audience that I want. And there'll be short programs. There'll be one to two hours. Again, we're busy. And if I can't teach it to you in a very short period of time and then also work you through a couple of exercises so that you can run with it, then I don't think I've done my job.

So what is the podcast building school that you're interested in? Is it a conference that you're going to or is it something else?

Yes, that is actually done. I'll do a name drop that is through Steve Olsher. And Steve Olsher has a podcast Domination. And then they also have a podcast school, in essence, where along with that you go. It is a dedicated couple of days. You will be film. I'm sorry, you will be recording your first eight podcasts and it's also getting your everything set up. Think of it as turnkey. Turnkey. We're going to get everything up and going and get you off with a very good foundation so that you can run with this going forward. And I think when it's an area that you are not well versed in, that's when you want to bring your professionals in to help you so that you don't stumble. And you might as well invest your resources in doing it correctly and doing it the easy way rather than stumble through this and go, oh, I wish I would have known or I should have done that. And it Includes equipment and everything. And that, for me, made most sense if I was going to do it with excellence.

So that sounds exciting, and I can't wait to hear more about that. You'll have to circle back with me and let me know how that goes for you. Closing question. Amy, you've been doing this for a while, since 1991, way before I've been even doing this. What advice do you have for other online creators or entrepreneurs out there?

I will bring this really up to the present because it's something that I have seen a lot of individuals stumble on when they're doing an online business. And that, of course, is what online courses are. When you are looking at your branding, look at your name. You've picked a name that you want. Of course you're going to pick up your domain name. That's one of the easy ones. Then I want you to immediately look at the trademark. If the trademark is not available and you can't make a deviation that you're happy with, abandon it right now. Stop. Go no further. Until you have the domain and the trademark that you can secure, then you're going to need to do your logo. When you do your logo, it's great to see all those beautiful colors. However, I want you to take that logo and I want you to be able to do it on with white on a transparent background so that you could put it on any other color and just have it very simple, white on a color. And I want you to reverse it, and I want you to do it on black on a color. And what will happen is some logos that are very, very workable in color don't really come off so well when you are doing them as a solid white or solid black on a transparent background. If you can make those three pieces work as you're building out all your components and your graphics and whatever you may do going forward, I think that gives you the most flexibility with your logo. You've secured it by the trademark, and it's going to make your world easier if you put those three pieces together as part of your building process. The other little thing I will tell you is the value of the word the. On mine, I have the secret profits. When you're doing your logo, you want to make sure you include that word the or you're going to start over. So I have. I have these secret profits, and I have secret profits. Well, I like secret profits better. But whatever you're looking at, if you're doing a little bit of a deviation on your name because it wasn't available to trademark, remember that your logo has to exactly match whatever you're picking up on your trademark. So very important that those three things are integrated before you start a lot of build out or you'll have to go backwards and redo all your graphics or shut down. You don't want to do that.

And I think those are some great tips. I love what you said about doing the white with the transparent background and the black with the transparent background. That's one of the things I did for my logo. And it's, you know, you can basically put it on anything. So I love the tips that you gave us there. Amy, where can people find you?

They can find me at just about anywhere. If you do a Google search, you'll come up with my websites. But if you go to the secret profits.com courses, that's where you're going to see the courses I have. And of course my phone number's up at the top. So if you want really low tech that's available, if you wanted to reach out by email, it is at success these. Com, so I'm very easy to find.

Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. I loved hearing about your story and all of the things that you've done all the, all over the years and how you have morphed your consulting business and started offering online courses and how that has benefited you.

Yes. And one thing I forgot, I also have a Facebook page. So, you know, if you prefer Facebook, you know, reach out there to these secret profits. And it has been a pleasure and one of the dynamics that I think your listeners are realizing. We are in an entirely different world than we were 10 years ago. You have a knowledge that somebody needs and the ability for us to go 247 and to find these courses and to be able to learn on your schedule and is priceless. So don't underestimate the value of the knowledge you're bringing to the table. Somebody needs it and somebody wants it and you've got it. Please share it with the world.

And thank you, Amy, for that last tidbit of juicy tidbits that you gave us. I really appreciate it.

All right, well, thank you again and you have a blessed and wonderful day. And to same to all of your listeners.

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.