Episode 222: Becoming an Expert Advisor in an Industry Lin Brown

Aren't you fed up with calling a business only to reach a voicemail, phone tree, automated system? Or worse, someone who sounds busy, bored, or actually annoyed you are calling. I can't believe how many businesses we interact with spend money marketing to drive phone calls and then completely fail at handling those calls. A full time assistant costs a lot of money, but at a fraction of the cost. AbyConnect provides businesses with a world class, professional and courteous team of receptionists specifically trained to take their calls. Based in the 247 city of Las Vegas, AbConnect has been wowing business callers for over 13 years. No wonder they are the highest rated live receptionist service. For our listeners, Abby Connect is offering a no obligation free trial. And after your trial is over, our listeners will also receive $95 off their first bill, but only when you sign up at our special link. Abbyconnect.com profit first. That's abbyconnect.com profit first. Sign up today to experience the difference. Let's get things kicked off. It's the Profit first podcast. Here we go. Kelsey, I can hear you kind of singing in the background. In my head at least. All right, my friends, you are listening to the Profit first podcast. This is a show where we explore all elements of profitability. I am your host, Mike Michalowicz and I'm joined out of studio with Kelsey Ayers. Hey, Kelsey.

Hey, everybody.

Oh, that came through nice and clear. And in studio, our guest today, we've swapped it out. Lynn Brown is here. Hi, Lynn.

Hello, everyone.

And one thing I didn't tell you is make sure you're. Oh, he's like two fingers away from the microphone. You actually did a good job. I should give that heads up in advance. And you listeners, here's the heads up. I should give you in advance. You're in for an amazing episode. We're going to explore profitability in the home staging business. And I don't care if you're not a home stager, there is insights to be learned here. I had Lynn and I went out to lunch. This is maybe a month or two ago. And you were sharing some strategies on how to make a home staging business profitable. I'm like, holy, you need to bring the stuff here. And so Lynn made the trek down from somewhere outside the country to get here. New York State, an hour and a.

Half from the outside country, New York State. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm doing the cuts wrong. I'm just kind of coming off like the wheels are falling off the bus a little bit Kelsey, before I continue, why don't you tell folks where they can find us?

Yes, everybody, you can find us on itunes, Stitcher, tunein, radio, hopefully Google Play and profitfirstpodcast.com or, or any podcatcher.

So I was trying to ask you before we kind of kicked off the show, what the hell's going on with your house? Like you have a big book club coming to your house. Is that why you took a day off? Is that why you decided not to come in? I know it's your usual day home.

Yes, that's why I needed to be home, because I a need to make my food for later. So it's a lot easier when I'm home and I can just monitor it. And now I'm super glad that I did because I had a little bit of an emergency in that I couldn't get my bathroom door to close. So I put in. I installed new floors, right. And the like jam that I put in for the bathroom is higher than it was before. And I didn't realize it until this morning and I went to put on the door and now it wouldn't close. So thank God I was here.

So that meant you might have had guests there with a bathroom that you can't close the door and you have to leave, you'd have to leave the door off. So when people had to go piddle, the door would be off the hinges.

It's like, it's like a commune here.

Hold it.

Oh yeah. In college, like Lynn was pointing out, you have two people go, one person's holding the door. But of course, right? But for me in college, cuz when guys had to do that, it was always a joke. The one friend who would hold the door, the second you started using the loo, he'd kick the door wide open and run away.

Girls are a little bit.

Yeah, girls have way more cruel. What was the best. What was the best prank ever done, Lynn, to you or that you've seen done to someone else during the college years?

Oh, the saran wrap on the toilet.

Oh, what's that? What's that really?

That happened?

That really happened. All six of our toilets in our dorm room had saran wrap put on them. So when you went to pee on Friday night, when you got home, didn't actually go in the toilet.

Really? That's a great. What college was that?

University of Iowa.

University of Iowa. Never will be the same. Kel's best. The best prank you ever saw in the college age years.

Somebody pooped outside of my dorm, mate's. Door.

That. First of all, it's disgusting.

Isn't that disgusting? I will never forget it. Who does that?

So I have the win. Yeah. Who does that? I have the best prank ever. I don't even know if it's a pranks really. A stunt. My dorm room neighbor. We lived on the sixth floor of a co ed dorm. The top floor half of it was all male and everyone else was female. Jamie got repelling rope, tied it to his bed, rappelled out the window around midnight and starts knocking on people's windows like the fifth store up.

Oh, it's so creepy.

Spider man.

Yeah. And he's wearing these. These old fat. He put on a helmet from like a pilot with the leather helmets, the old fashioned goggles and people start giving him food and stuff out the window. It was hysterical. That was the best not prank, but stunt I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah.

That's bold.

Yeah. I did a totally inappropriate. Maybe one day I'll see if I can pull it up. I did something for the school newspaper cartoon. Totally inappropriate. And still. They still play. They still posted. It was awesome. Okay, that being said, what you did. No, no, I'm gonna save it for the future. That's a cliffhanger. No one wants to listen to show more than once. I'm trying to keep people locked in here.

Open loop.

Yeah, an open loop. I'm open looping. I'm an open looper. And clearly Kelsey had a neighbor who's a pooper.

I see what you did there. That was great.

Yeah. That is a rhyme. It's a rhyme. Hey, do we have any community shout outs or anything?

We sure do. This one comes from Yvonne Kroon from the Netherlands.

Yvonne?

Yeah. So she said since she started using Profit first over a year ago, she finally feels secure. There's hardly any stress anymore. For example, she went holiday and everything is saved and paid in advance. Thank to. Thanks to Profit First, Yvonne.

Nicely done. I was just out in Armis Fort in. In Dutchy Land just about a month ago. That's what they call. They call themselves Dutchies. That is not like my own term. Lynn.

Do they call it Dutchy Land?

They call it Dutchy Land. I think. You call it Dutchy? That actually, I don't know.

You think or they do?

I think, I think. I don't know. I don't know. Kellis. I don't know. Okay, so before we kick things off, I do want to thank our corporate partners who make this show a reality. You know who they are by now. It's receipt bank who we're actually going to be doing some articles with and some Facebook live posts with. By the time this goes live, this podcast, the receipt bank, Facebook lives will already happened. But we're kind of stepping up ways to partner with them and kind of explore more what they're doing. Nextiva voiceover phone system. Do you have it?

Love it.

Oh, you have one.

Love it.

How long? Tell me about this. How have you had an Xtiva phone system?

Since right after I joined. So that would be 2015.

Good.

You know what I do? I have all my coaching calls on it, so they're all recorded.

Oh, is that so great.

Both for me and for my customers. So when I have my coaching calls with my mentors, it's all recorded. I don't have to take notes and then they don't have to take notes my clients because I just set send them a link.

Oh my God, it's so great. And it's all included. And how many phones do you have? One? Two.

I only have one and then I use my iPhone app so it's like.

So what do you pay per month?

Under 60.

Under 60amonth. And it's a full blown system. Recording capabilities. Yeah, we love it too. I love now I think we have 20 phones or something like that. So it's a little more than 60. But the first phone is more expensive. The second phone, each line is I think like 15 bucks or 20 bucks once you get the core system. And then last but certainly not least is right Networks. They're still sponsoring us, right?

I know. Okay.

Oh, so whatever. Right. Networks is awesome. Why is this on my show notes?

I don't know.

Because I maintain them myself, that's why. Because I don't ask you to maintain my show notes. I'm going to ask you to start doing that. All right, well, we love right now works. I know they were doing a short run with us, but we love them anyway. Okay. And then so here's the deal. Thanks to our core partners, we'll give you more details on them later, even though we gave you some now. And we will be sharing our insights of what we learned today from Lynn, who is in studio. Oh, and one last thing. Do we have a we do a listener mail later on today. Okay. Okay, so we'll do some listener mail too today. All right, let's get into the crux of our show today. It's about profitability, but specifically for home stagers. Her name is Linda Brown. I call her Lynn and she's a Prophetologist. A prophetologist.

A profitologist.

A profitologist. Which sounds a little bit like a.

Yes, it does. That's much more time.

That's what your friend needed. That left that little pooper for surprise.

They needed that.

They needed a profitologist. Linda Brown is a profitologist that supports entrepreneurs on their journey of financial freedom and a prosperous life. She became interested in business at an early age and by sixth grade was helping her mother, who's an accountant, work on client financial books. In 2001, Lynn became disenchanted with corporate America and decided to retire and stay home with her newborn daughter and then start her magnificent business. Now, one thing you may not know about Lynn is as a young adult, she would water and snow ski on the same day twice a year. Twice a year. How is that even possible, Lynn?

A lot of driving, wetsuit, actually, dry suits, Wetsuits wouldn't handle it. So you were skiing on snow.

Yeah.

First thing in the morning, snow and rocks and mud. And then you ram down to the lake and you'd put your dry suit on and you get behind the boat and you would break some ice.

Boom, There we go. Well, everyone just you that did it.

Or did a lot of people do it?

We had 10 of us that did it every year for about 10 years.

Awesome, Lynn. That's official now. Welcome to the show.

Welcome.

Yeah, we're excited. That's cool. That is cool. Okay, so I wonder if against Book of World Records thing, like, how many people do you need to go snow skiing and water skiing on the same day to become a Guinness Book world record?

I don't know, but I would assume California does it all the time. Probably not. So up in north, you know, an hour and a half from Canada, probably not often.

You could do in Hawaii, actually, because Hawaii, I went up to Haleakala. The mountain. Mount Haleakala, the very top. At a certain time of year, they get snow on the top. You know, skiing, I don't know, maybe it's 10 yards or 20 yards.

Counts.

Counts. Right. You're on skis and you go all the way down, and then you're in the ocean. And the temperatures down that far could be, you know, the air temperatures maybe 90 degrees. So I guess you could do there, too. Yes, but someone needs to coordinate. Yeah, that's how you get in against.

Brooklyn World Records, the coordination.

All right, so let's get into the coordination of making profitable business, why don't we?

Let's do that. It's fun.

So first of all, we got to talk about what does that mean I need a prophetological examination? So what is prophetology?

Prophetology? Well, an ologist is the study of. Okay, so I study profit. I study profit. I'm a prophetologist.

Okay, but you're a prophetologist specifically for the home staging community.

Yes.

How did. Why that community?

That community for me is because most, not all, but most home stagers actually start as a second business, a career, a sidearm. And when they begin to grow, they don't think necessarily about their need to make money. It just happens because they're enjoying it. And then they get to the point where like, oh, no, I'm working all the time and I have no money to show for it. I actually started similar way, way, way back when. Not with home staging, but with my own career and my husband's boat business. We never thought that we were actually going to do it full time. So I became aware, especially of mothers who start this when their kids are young, that they needed some help.

Cool. And maybe I move that mic a little bit closer to the old two finger rule. But tell me about this. We met up at that one event, I think it was Gail Dobby's event, actually. And I noticed when I scanned the audience, that business is 99% women. There was a few men in there, very few. Why is it. Is it just a natural talent for women or why is predominately women? Do you feel?

Two reasons. One, I think that a lot more females have some type of creative gene in them and they're trying to nest. So they're always trying to make their home more beautiful and that spreads out. So that's one reason. And the second reason is when you start having these toddlers get togethers and you bring another mother into your home and they say, oh, my God, this house is beautiful. Can you help me do the same thing with my home? It just evolves.

What's been the impact? Like, I go on Pinterest all the time. Oh, I have an idea, by the way.

Yeah.

Do you know how everyone has a man cave?

Cool, right?

They're cool. I'm thinking of having a fam cave for my family.

Well, isn't that the living room to decorate that new home?

Yeah, it's called the living room. Kelsey, you're even remotely. You're an a hole.

Well, no, actually, the living room is supposed to be the public room where the public comes in. You really want a fan room. That's the family family room.

Yeah. Oh, that's what they said. Yeah. Thank you. So tell me about how home Staging is different because you've worked with many industries. How's it different than other businesses? Or maybe how's it the same?

Well, it's the same. It's a business, but it's very different that there are so many different aspects and you can pick and choose and put together. So it's a jigsaw puzzle that no two individuals will actually put together the same.

Meaning?

Meaning, yeah. We have furniture rentals. So some people don't own their own. Businesses don't own their own furniture. They rent it to rent it.

Right.

Other businesses rent or own their furniture and then rent it out.

Okay.

Some people do design work virtually. Some do it in person.

Yep.

And then it all depends on how you're going to do your designing, whether it's going to be lived in homes or vacant homes or even Airbnbs.

Really? Home stagers do Airbnbs?

Yes, they do.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Callous. Did you hear that? Because you're going to Airbnb, you want.

To make it look beautiful in the pictures. You want to be able to make it beautiful so you can sell your home.

Now, I'm not a professional home stager, but I can give Kelsey a tip with her Airbnb. Why don't you have a door on your bathroom?

Just. I don't know. I think it could be a nice trend. It makes it a little bit more of an anomaly, right?

It does make it an anomaly. Yeah. You can put cellophane over the toilet.

You can poop right on the front door.

Pooping door, yeah. I'll be the first and last visitor. So. So people are staging their Airbnbs.

Yes.

Now, this just for photography or is this actually for use, too? The Airbnb ones?

If you're decorating to sell a home, it's just pretty much for photography. And walkthroughs.

And walkthroughs, yep.

But Airbnb's people expect luxury when they go.

Does this translate to other businesses? Because you're talking first impressions here, right?

Yes.

You know, what about a doctor's office or all these other professions? You're nodding your head. Tell me about that.

Usually not a home stager, usually an interior designer, but there are interior designers that specialize. I work with one that does dentist office. All she does is goes in and decorates a dentist around the country. So, yes, anything that you have to have a first impression. A lawyer's office, a doctor's office, even some schools are doing it so that when you walk into a building, you begin to feel comfortable okay, so now.

Why don't you lay out your first edict as a prophetologist to me when it comes to profit driving profit, If I stage my. Clearly there's a reason to stage homes. Does that drive product, bottom line profit?

And how if it does, yes, it does. Because if you're staging a home to sell, it sells in less than half the time and usually closer to above asking price.

Really? And this is. This is like a national average or something?

Yes.

Okay, so. So you're saying two identical homes, one staged, one just left to its own accord, that the one that staged will sell in half the time and the at with the. The receiving price will be higher, near asking price. What's the typical. I don't know if you know this, but what's the typical discount people get off the asking price, meaning if it's not staged?

Depends on where you are.

Yeah.

Some homes actually sell at a premium.

Yeah, I guess it depends.

Some are at a discount. It depends on your location.

Okay. Okay. So now let's talk about the home stagers themselves. If I'm a home stager and I want to amp up the profitability for my business, you gave me some killer tips over that Mexican meal we're having. Lay some of those tips on me.

Okay, so one of the tips for home stager is you really need to watch your time. Because we all think about rental furniture, but very rarely does a home stager professional actually look at the hours that they take to design and implement, as well as the time that it takes their staff. Because it's not just designing. You have to take the furniture out of storage, you have to move it, you have to load it in, make it look beautiful, and then go home.

Yeah.

And when you're done, you have to reverse that.

Yeah.

So what I'm finding is that many home stagers forget to account for all of the time. And the staff and the trucks and the wear and tear and the gas and the tolls.

What are they typically accounting for? Just the setup, so to speak, and not really the other stuff.

Design time for them.

Okay.

And some. Usually the time that they're in the home setting up, but not the transporting to and from.

That's, you know, that's a classic thing. And what now this is. Maybe you don't know this, but what percentage do you feel is spent on design time and the setup? And what percentage of time is spent in the transportation reassembly of stuff?

Dismantling depends on how you're doing it. Some of the designs are pretty easy. And, okay, easy. You know, they take down a bucket, they put it in, and they go, yeah, but you can spend up to two hours, especially near a city, just driving across town.

Right.

So you really have to account for that time in there.

Right. Because two hours of driving versus two hours of designing or two hours of staging at another place.

Right.

Wow. Okay, so. So say you go, I know you work with many home stagers. I hope any home stagers listening to the show call you to get some more of your advice. What do you do with them once they have this realization that they're not accounting for time, therefore not billing for it? How do you get them to profitability?

I reverse engineer businesses. So we start with our bottom line, and then we start looking at what makes up the bottom line and takes the money out of the funnel. So most people, when they're coaches, they start with the top line, how much income is coming in?

Right.

I start on the bottom line and say, I'm really not worried about where the income's coming in. I want to know where the income's going to. Going out.

Right. So you.

So we look at the bottom and work our way up.

Okay. So you say, what's your intention for profitability? What kind of numbers are we looking to drive for you personally? You look at the. You said the expenses first and say, here's the cost we're going to incur. This is what we need to charge in order to make that bottom line a reality.

Or cut the expenses.

Or cut the expenses. Okay. Oh, true profitologist.

It's quicker to cut expenses than it is to bring in income.

Okay, let's talk about that. Most people that I talk to say, okay, Mike, I get it. I need to cut expenses. I didn't really appreciate the quicker parts. I want to learn about that. But also, some people think the only way to profitability is cutting expenses. But I'm hearing from you, well, hold on. You gotta talk about income, so let's talk about profit expenses first. Why is it the quickest and easiest thing to do?

Because it's what you have control of and it's what you're doing now.

Yeah.

So if it's coming, if you're spending it now, the question is, do I need to spend it now?

Yeah.

So that's what you can control right now. You can turn a switch off today where you cannot normally bring in a new customer today just because you decide you want more income.

Got it. So you can. You can cut expenses and you can defer expenses.

You can defer yes.

Okay. And if I defer expenses, I afford myself a cash flow upside. Right. Because I'm not spending the money now. But also, I guess I wrote this about this in the book. Tell me if you agree that. That some expenses we defer and then we realize, actually, I don't even really need that thing for a home stager. What are some of the expenses that are unnecessary or could be deferred?

Once again, it all depends on the business and where you're located. I had one that was doing about five or six thousand dollars a month on Google.

What? Ads.

Google Ads. And really what she needed was more word of mouth and Facebook and Pinterest. So she really needed to reallocate where her money was going. Another one, believe it or not, is staff. Do you really need to keep the staff on as much as they're on?

Yeah. So are they doing, like, are they hiring people full time when really they need them kind of per project.

Per diem?

Yes, per diem. That's the word. Yeah. But will people work for per diem.

Work or is a lot of them will?

Yeah.

Think about this once again. We're females kids. The kids go to school. What does a mom do while the kids are at school? So we're working in getting a lot of other mothers to go out and help with the design and the staging.

Okay. And Kelsey, we've experienced that too, with Amy. Right. Oh, Kelsey, we lose you. You know, this is what sucks about.

Sorry, Sorry.

Did you start working on your house?

What?

We're doing a freaking podcast and you just drop off and you start doing work on your house?

No, there was construction right outside my window, so I muted myself, and then.

I forgot that I muted myself. You live in the woods. Did you hear Lynn? She thought there was like.

I've never heard construction outside of my house before. And all of a sudden, what's being constructed?

Like, I don't know.

I'm scared to, like, stand up and walk away, you know?

Yeah. Cause I'm gonna ask you a question.

No.

Here'S my question. And you probably missed the whole thing I asked about. Lynn was explaining the flexibility of per diem, and actually it's desired by some employees or maybe many. And she was talking about moms specifically. And I said, we're kind of experiencing that with Amy and maybe some new potential people are looking to bring on board.

Right, right. And that's. I think the beauty of per diem, or even just being a consultant of sorts, is you have that flexibility.

It's really hard for Us to hear you over all that feign construction going on. Such a story. All right, I'm kind of being jerky.

I'm gonna take pictures a little.

I'm gonna say something. But, you know, you and Kelsey have this.

I had a blood test today. Like, I've had. Kelsey, I've had, like, four. I know, four exams. So I got. Here's the deal, Lynn. I got life insurance. And then I was talking to a financial expert time and guys like, you know, you really should have more life insurance. And I'm like, you know what? You're right. So I went for another policy with the same. And they said, oh, you knew another exam? Because this is 10 days later. It was literally 10 days later. Then I got another insurance policy. I just. I want to do a whole life policy. I've always heard negative things about them, but now I'm thinking there's some protection mechanism. So I'm going to do whole life. I said, I just got this exam, I don't know, 14 weeks prior now, and I've had two. I'm like, can you take one of these? And they said, no. And then, Kelsey, I got another exam today. Who the hell was that? Just a random person off the street or something.

That was for me. I just wanted to see how good your health was, to see where my job stood, you know?

You know, the more money that you're asking for health insurance, the more tests they have to do.

It's unbelievable.

Yes, it is.

Really?

Yeah.

I didn't realize that.

I know we're diverging, but. So as he's doing the exam, they start asking questions. Do you have emphysema? Do you smoke? Do you Blah, blah. Every question they ask, I'm like. Particularly in actions like smoking, I'm like, ooh, those are things I shouldn't do. They ask a lot about drinking. I say, do you drink? How often do you drink? What kind of drinks do you have? So I stopped drinking for about six to eight months, and now I'm like, yeah, when I want to, I'm drinking about two beers a day. Two beers a day? I'm sorry, Two beers a week. And she still kind of went, okay. All right. Made a special note of that. So I'm thinking maybe I should just rule out drinking again altogether.

No, we're going to do margaritas next week.

Oh, that's right, we are. Maybe two weeks from now. I will. All right, uh, I'm wasting valuable time here, so I want to talk more about home staging, cut expenses. But you say you can increase income. There's profit in income once you cut the unnecessary expenses and defer them. How do you additionally increase profit through income?

I actually have people looking at what they're charging.

Yeah.

So they're not actually getting more clients, but they're charging their value.

Okay.

Too often it's like, hey, my neighbor's charging this, so I can't charge anything more than that. I'm like, why are you your neighbor?

Right.

What makes you special and unique? Work on that. So we work on pricing. I had one woman charge four times as much after going back and forth on consulting. She's like, I'm never going to get this job.

Yeah.

Lo and behold, the quickest signature on that contract ever.

She was four times what she was.

Four times what she was charging.

Is that taking advantage of the client, though? I mean, she would have done it for one fourth of that price.

She would have lost money for one fourth of that price. Is it taking advantage of the client? No. Value. Value. Win. Win. Client wants to sell the property. She's very good at what she does. And she had beautiful furniture brought in to do that. So, no, she wasn't taking advantage. It was a win win.

I love it. The customer's getting what they. They expect and want. She's the best at it. She was just undervaluing herself.

She was. Yes, severely.

And what I'm hearing is she was putting herself into a loss situation. No profit, which means she's not sustainable. Therefore, one day she'd have to pull her services off the market because she can't afford to survive.

Yeah, exactly.

Think of the future customers.

This one client started working with me in October.

Yeah.

By the end of April, she had made her last year's gross income.

Yeah.

Doubled her profit for the year.

Oh, my God. Did she send you a gift?

Actually, when I went and visited her new warehouse, I did get a gift.

Really? Did she call you her proctologist?

You know what she called me? Her business therapist.

Oh, I like that better. Because, you know, if you say that too quickly, like, I say every word too quickly. When you say introduce yourself. And someone's like, oh, this is my profitologist. Like, people like, oh, you don't really have to share that.

Yes, I am a business therapist and a prophetologist.

I love it. Okay, so, you know, I had a conversation. I want to get your feedback on this. I had a conversation with someone recently that our clients want us to be profitable, but they'll never say those words. Meaning, could you imagine Lynn going to a client and Saying, listen, I'm going to charge very little, I'm going broke. I don't know how much longer I'll be in business. I desperately want to work with you. So I'll give you the cheapest price. Could you imagine saying those words? Because that's what the reality is. Versus going to a client saying, I am charging what I'm worth. I'm going to bring extraordinary value to your company. It is going to drive profitability for my business, which means I'm sustainable, I'll be around forever. I mean the client wants option two and.

Right, well, the client wants option two to a limit.

Okay, lay that on me.

All right. Client wants to know that you're profitable. He wants you to, he or she wants you to look nice, have a good car, make money. But they don't want to feel like they're overpaying you. So if you're going off to Europe every week or every other week and you're doing this and you've got the three million dollar homes around the country, right. Then they're like, well, am I just supporting a lifestyle?

Right.

So there's a happy medium.

Right. So they want to see sustainability and comfort to a certain degree, but they want to be taken advantage of.

Exactly.

Is there a way to convey that as a home stager, to show your value that you do extraordinary things? How do you show the customer, I'm delivering the value that you expect and also I am sustainable. I'll be around.

You take your industry average of your home sales, how long they take and where they are against asking price. And then the homes you stage, what is the days on the market before an offer is made and what's the percentage of the asking price?

Oh, prove it with the numbers.

You prove with the numbers.

You're very. I love it. I love that.

And the numbers are out there. Mls it's there.

Yeah. Okay, that's cool. So let me ask you about the home stagers that have been around for a while. I know you've worked with some very established ones.

Yes, they have.

Are they more difficult to convince and to drive toward profitability?

I'm not want to say. They're more difficult to convince depending upon the business. Unfortunately, tax advisors are meant to minimize your taxes. So if you have a CPA who's a tax advisor, your business might not be set up for transition.

Gotcha.

So what's going on with this, these type of clients? The ones that are more established is let's make your business sellable. So I have a client out in California, who has about $4 million worth of staging furniture. Her balance sheet is zero. So when she goes to sell a business, what bank is going to give her any. Her purchasers money for a loan when.

She owns nothing, even though she has $4 million of assets?

So it's been working with. Not only working with the individual stagers themselves, but. But with their CPAs and tax advisors getting their books so that they can go forward whether they bring on a partner, need a loan, or want to sell the business in the future.

See, that's the power. That's the power of. You're not, quote unquote, just a profit consultant. That's an extraordinary skill set you have. But you also are a certified bookkeeper. You've worked with clients over the years in driving their numbers accurately. So you can work with their team. I mean, you're a profit advisor now, fully, but you can work with a team of experts around them to ensure that they're getting the details right, I guess, with the numbers to support sustained profitability and even position them for sales for sale their business. Okay, that's pretty amazing. Anything else? Any other kind of surprises or ideas that you do that you help home stagers with to drive profits?

Yes, I'm a little unusual in that I don't just worry about their numbers. I worry about their business in whole.

Okay.

That is the business therapist. I showed one client how to use her employees to make her more money.

Yeah. A prostitution ring. Like, what's the secret?

No, the secret truly is that's good money. Have them do what they're good at and have you do what you're good at.

For God's sake, Lynn, where have you been? This is the solution, right? Put the right people in the right seats.

Exactly. And figure out who needs to be the next hire.

Yeah.

Because you both going to. If you're starting out as an individual, you're going to have jobs you don't like. You hire somebody usually like us, which isn't the right thing. You really need someone to fill up the jobs you don't like that will excel and be better than you. And then the two of you are splitting jobs. Well, who's the third person you bring on?

Yeah.

So there's an order to who you have to bring on in a business.

And I think that's a big. Is it a big profit driver to have the right people doing the right things?

Yes.

Okay.

For morale and for dollars.

Right. So great for retention. It also seems like a lot of these owners home staging or Otherwise are very much in this mindset. Like, I can do everything I need to do everything.

Yes.

Is that compromising profit?

It is, yeah. Because most importantly, you probably don't have to do it anyway, which is the other thing.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

I bring in systems and processes that they didn't have. This, actually a local woman from Livingston right here in New Jersey has me working with her IT designer, and we're developing a new program to assist in simplifying and streamlining all of paperwork that goes on in a home staging business.

Oh, my God, that's amazing.

So that you don't have to, you know, nobody wants to push paper around.

No, but. No. Right. And the funny thing is, as a business owner, regardless of what business it is, if you make, say, $50,000 a year, you know, that's roughly $5,000 a month. It's a little bit less, but it's about $5,000 a month. And you break it down to the hours, you're talking about $25 an hour or so. And if you're, you know, $25 an hour, would you pay someone to push papers around $25 an hour? If not, you are paying someone yourself to do that. It's time you make a shift. Right.

Well, and actually, usually it comes down to about two, three, four dollars an hour, so you can push papers around. So would you go do that for somebody else?

Oh, my God. Yeah. Right? I mean, if I can get someone to do it for three or four or something else to do for three, of course I would do it.

So.

Yes, Lynn, this has been so insightful. We got to rock and roll. Before I let you go, for any of our home stagers listening in or people that know home stagers tell their home stagers that they got to call you or contact you, how do they get hold of you?

They get hold of me by either my website, which is spirebusiness.com s p I r e business.com or lbrown inspired business.com for my email.

Good. So we'll have both those links on our website. Do you own profitologist.com or is that.

Owned or do you know it's being trademarked?

Be trademarked. I can't even get it. Oh, my God. That's amazing. All right, that was amazing. Lynn, thanks for joining us. And just stay right here because.

Thank you, Lynn.

Thank you very much. All right, see you later, Kel.

Bye. Bye.

Okay, that's my little punch. All right, Kelsey, what'd you think about that?

I loved that. I just Feel like she exemplifies the best parts of being a business consultant and really honing in on a niche so that you can serve them wholly, you know?

And what'd you think about doing this remotely like from your house?

It's odd. It's very odd.

Yeah, I don't like it.

It's harder for me to be present in the moment when I'm not looking at you. You know what I mean? It's just weird.

Yeah, no, I prefer you here staring at me. Yeah, it's way preferred. No, half. She's sitting here, she's fixing her hair. So last episode, Lynn, I'm sitting here and I'm asking her questions. She's checking out split ends in her hair. She's texting someone and she calls that present.

She's a millennial. She can do multiple. The same thing.

Anybody ever.

Freaking millennials.

Freaking millennials.

Okay, so here's what we're gonna do, Kels. We are going to recap what we learned, okay? We are going to share a little listener mail. I'll answer the question that came in and we'll thank our corporate partners, but we'll do it in that kind of a reverse order. Okay? So I'm going to talk about the corporate partners first because I know you didn't expect that. Bazinga. Okay, so here's our corporate partners. I only got two of them now. Beginning of the show, we had three, we lost one in the middle. It's nextiva and Receipt Bank.

We started talking about poop.

Oh my God.

Oh my God, it's so funny. I wrote a book called the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur so people think I like poop humor. That's the one sentence. That's the type of humor I don't like. I like off color humor. I just don't like fecal humor.

No bathroom humor.

No scat necessary.

So I got my brother a little golf bathroom thing for Christmas last year.

Okay, so that's funny. Now I'm back. Now I like fecal humor. Nextiva voiceover IP phone system. You heard Lynn. She uses them. We use them. The question is, why aren't you using them? Check them out. They are a world class corporate phone system for a business as small as 1 and as big as 1000. So go to nextiva.com. the other sponsor of ours is Receipt Bank. Have you ever used Receipt Bank?

I have.

What's your impression of Receipt Bank, Lynn? Easy, easy, easy. One word exactly. Scans receipts, they sync up to QuickBooks, Xero, all these different platforms. No longer does the bookkeeper has to go through the shoebox of receipts and kind of reconcile, match things up. It's automated.

It is automated.

And I'll tell you, if you're a bookkeeper, this is a weight off your shoulders. If you hire a bookkeeper to do that, that's a weight of money that you're not spending because it's idle time. You know, not idle time. It's necessary time, but it's. It's so inefficient.

So you take a piece of paper, and it's at the bookkeeper's desk the same moment.

Boom. Boom. You heard from Lynn Brown first. All right, so, Kels, what did you learn? Oh, I pushed a button.

So what'd you learn today? What did you learn today when Lynn said that it would not about the numbers, but really about the whole business? Because I feel like as a consultant, that's what she does, really. She addresses the whole business. She's super aware of what the numbers mean and what insight they give to the whole picture, but they don't paint the whole picture themselves, and I think that's really critical and a differentiator from just your standard accountant or bookkeeper.

Agreed. I took a few things I learned about charge your value. I like how you say that so definitively, too. It's like, just charge your value. Otherwise. Yeah, otherwise, I think it's called prostitution if you don't. Secondly, I like that she said cutting expenses is the fastest thing to do. You can cut them overnight, Right?

You can cut them.

So if you want to be profitable overnight, you do through cutting expenses. If you want to be profitable permanently, you do it through value income.

Exactly.

And then the last thing was. I actually reverse engineer as a profitologist how you reverse engineered profitability, that you start at the bottom line, then figure out the expenses that you need to support that bottom line, and then lastly determine the income. And now you know your starting point for that income. Yes, I like that.

Thank you.

All right. And we want to know from you, our dear listener friends, what did you learn today? You can post that in our comments or on our.

What did you learn today, JoJo?

One guest. Lynn, who do you think Kelsey's favorite singers, if she was a singer.

Oh, I don't know.

Stevie Nicks.

Oh, cool.

She wants to be Stevie Nicks. And she sounds a little bit like. Well, not like Stevie Nicks, but she sounds like.

We'll go introduce.

I think it sounds just like her.

It does sound like her. I want you singing on the edge of 17 next time. You're here. All right. Did you hear the gong?

I heard it.

That's a new pfp, just joined us.

Very cool.

Yeah, these mics are good. You can't pick it up, but Lynn could hear. Okay, Kels, listen. Let's do it.

All right, this one comes from Brian Jardine. So Brian is trying to pumpkin plan his business, and he has a small grocery store and delivery. Grocery store routes or routes, however you say it. And he wants to give a survey to his customers to really figure out how to serve them better and figure out which customers to serve. So he says when writing the questions he's asking on a survey, what should he ask? What should he ask to get the insight that he's looking for?

Okay, so, Brian, I don't know if you're going to like this, but I think surveys are of kind. Kind of not so effective. I mean, I don't know how you are, Brian. Lynn, I don't know if you're this way. Say you get the ones, 10 questions, 50 question surveys. The ones where you have to keep them going. Next, next, next. The first like three, four answers, I answer truthfully. By the fifth one, I'm like, oh, my God, this is longer than expected. And I start just clicking whatever and I'm trying to get it done. Have you ever done that, Lynn?

I have.

You have. Guess what, You're a human being. Have you done that, Kels? So surveys suck. Surveys suck. The longer they are, we just try to blow through them. The accuracy is actually so bad that it can. It can persuade us to do something that's totally wrong for our business. So there's been this kind of pursuit of these simple surveys. I don't know if you've seen restrooms now. Like, you click on the smiley face. Like, you push like smiley or frowny or neutral face.

I guess that's a New Jersey thing.

You've never seen that up in the woods?

We don't have that.

Oh, Kelsey, have you seen those in airports and stuff?

No.

Well, whatever.

I don't know what you're talking about.

When you go through an airport nowadays, it's like, how is the service of our toilet? And like, you just push one of the smiley face. Kels would push a frowny face. Like there was a door on the toilet. I don't like that.

Or a poop on the floor.

Poop on the floor. I prefer poops on the floor. Oh, my God. So there's this idea of super short surveys. The thing is, you don't get enough information. So Ask too much, you get the wrong information. Ask too little, you don't get enough. I believe you have to, Brian. Talk in person with your best customers and take them out to lunch. Meet with them face to face and ask them. I don't care what business you're in. Everyone has top customers. Maybe it's five or 10 meetings or whatever, but meet them face to face and just have a conversation. Let the conversation flow. That's how you do it. Yeah, yeah. So whatever. And then you can read the pumpkin plan for more strategies there. Yeah. Okay. That's my answer. Kelsey, we got to rock and roll. Do we have anything else to talk about?

No, but please leave us comment on prophetfirstpodcast.com.

Yeah.

Or leave ratings and comments anywhere else.

Yeah, and one more thing. Get into this music. Listen. That pretty good, right? There's one more thing. There's one more thing. Yeah. Lynn wants a video. She wants one of those like SIA videos where you're dancing around. Here's the thing. There's a website you need to check out. It's called called profitfirstprofessionals.com. that's where we have our profit first Professionals. Lynn Brown is one. Go there, click on find one and we'll hook you up with a profit first professional in your industry. Now, if you need a home stage or profit first professional, it's Lynn Brown Spire business. But if you need someone in another industry, just go to profit first professionals. We'll make the introduction. Oh, and one more thing. You know, Lynn was alluding to things about putting people in the right seats on the bus, you know, the right employees to doing the right thing. There's a book dedicated to that now. It's called Clockwork.

Yes, it is.

It's in stores right now. So go to Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, wherever your favorite bookstore is. Pick up your copy of Clockwork by Mike Michellow.

It's spectacular.

Yeah. Thank you. And let's drive your business forward. All right? You got business to do, go make yourself profitable. We're out of here. See ya.

Bye.

Sam.