Episode 71: Online Sales and Profit Margins with Carole Rains

I love that. That's fun.

The word of the day is Prophet, as in the Prophet first podcast.

I ruined it, dude. I ruined it. Episode 71. Yes. Hello. How are you? Good to see you.

That was almost weird.

It was kind of weird.

It was weird.

It was like two different languages. Like, I'm spe English and you're speaking Ewok or something.

Welcome, everyone, to the show, the Profit first podcast. My name is Chris Curran.

I'm Mike McCallum.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

I am stepping on.

You know, how I screwed it up. I left a space between Chris and Curran like we talked about on the other episode.

All right, who were you? The founder.

The founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first, joined in studio by my colleague Christina Bulduk.

Hi.

And you are listening to the Profit first podcast, where you learn all perspectives of profitability and often do a deep dive. That's what we're doing nowadays with entrepreneurs that are going through the journey of bringing profitability to their business.

Right. Owning a business or being an entrepreneur is so great, but not if you're not making a profit.

You are basically committing financial suicide.

Right There it is telling you.

Yeah, it's like. I don't know, it's like running a marathon without ever taking any water. At a certain point, you're dehydrate and die.

Whoops.

That's it.

I don't know that makes that hard.

I like that. You can find our show on itunes and Stitcher and Tunein Radio, and of course, our website, profitfirstpodcast.com, where you can find all our previous episodes, all the glorious mayhem of the Profit first podcast, which you can binge listen to. That's not unhealthy, by the way. On the weekends, you can listen into two or three episodes at a time and get your fill of profit.

So we've been up to.

Bro, you know, I want to ask you a trivia question, which I think you already caught on to me when I told you in the show prep. But. So then I'll ask Christina and the listeners. I'll ask Christina. Christina, question. Back in the 90s, when I was working in the recording studios in New York City, which. Which of these artists did I actually work with? Oh, MC Hammer, Foreigner, Ice Cube, Jeff Buckley, Sarah McLaughlin, Biggie Smalls, and Puff Daddy.

Oh, man, I thought you were gonna give me, like, four.

I know, I know. Like, remember the list of 7,000 names?

I remember the first two. I really want to Say Ice Cube.

And I want to say Foreigner, because they're badass.

The answer is all of them, actually.

Oh, well, you know, that's pretty amazing.

Pretty cool.

What a cornucopia of sound.

I know. And I worked with a bunch of hardcore bands, too. But anyway, that's why I love recording. I love being in the studio. Mike Michalowicz, what do you love?

I love my mom. And I was. I visited her and my father this morning. You know, they're getting up there in the years, and one flake of snow is coming down, and my mother goes, oh, there we go. It's all over. I can't go driving today. It's too dangerous. The roads are slippery. So I'm thinking maybe I have my mom come on for an episode one day.

You absolutely should.

Would that be just bizarre?

That's so I get bonita on, too. So they can speak German.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, cool.

I should ask my mom what she taught me about profitability. I would just be a crazy journey down, maybe episode 100, memory lane. Oh, yeah, there we go. 100. Yeah. See if we can book her, right?

See if we can book.

Like, she's gonna say no.

I know. Well, I know. She's. If it's snowing out, she's definitely available now. She's wonderful. Her and my father, just wonderful parents. They. They truly mean the world to me, have done so much for me in addition to giving me life. So I thank them.

That's awesome.

Talking about giving life, our sponsors make this show have a life.

Fly swat him. He said sponsor.

Thank you. Here it is.

I have to do the hand.

Oh, Jesus.

That was too hard. Okay.

She really hit you.

Wow.

Yeah.

No, my knuckles are red already. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Listen. I'll never say that word again. It worked. I want to thank our corporate partners. They are Fundera, Fundbox, Nextiva, and T Sheets, and whoever this flyswatter company is that works. We should ask.

Somebody literally says spirit splat.

This is splat on the fly swatter. Hey, let's get a picture up on Facebook of this here, if you can get this. Okay. You want to see a quick picture of me?

Yep. Got it.

Oh, you're taking it. Okay.

Yeah. So now I want to welcome to our show, Carol Rains. Now, let me just give you a little background before we bring her on. If you've noticed, we've done more and more shows working with entrepreneurs, navigating profitability, and they're all different stages. Some folks have implemented profit first Some have never even heard of it before and are just curious about it. There's one space we constantly get questions from and it's the e commerce space, in particular, Amazon sellers. And actually, you know this, Christina. We have a profit first professional who services exclusively Amazon sellers.

We do.

Who is it?

Cindy.

Cindy Thomason? Yes. I'm sorry, I totally put you on the spot. Cindy Thomason. She exclusively focused on Amazon sellers. They have a unique need and among other things, a high inventory turn. You need a lot of money to buy stuff, to sell stuff. So you're constantly doing that. Inevitably, there's profit challenges. Well, if you don't get one on one time with Cindy, maybe you can come on the show. But I would definitely suggest get a call in with Cindy Thomason. She'll guide you through it. She has a whole setup process to get you profitable as an Amazon seller today. But let's bring on one of her clients, Carol Raines, and see what challenges she still faces ahead of her. Maybe we can help her out a little bit further. Carol, welcome to the show.

Hey there. How are you?

Welcome.

Good. How you doing?

Good. And I'd like to say for the record that, Chris, I guessed the right answer to your question, which was all of the above, but you didn't ask me.

Oh, nice.

We probably had you off sound off of mute. You probably could have just blurted it out.

Oh, you know.

Oh, well, I wasn't ready to jump quite in.

How did you know it was all of them? You just not quite.

I'm not as obnoxious as you guys yet.

Talking about obnoxious, you have a business that sells emu bliss. It's called emubliss.com and here's my obnoxious question. All your products, the dry skin, eczema, paint, all this stuff comes with emu oil. What the heck is emu oil?

That's exactly what I put in one of the pins that I made for Pinterest. And it had some little cartoon people and that's what they were saying, what the heck is emu oil? And the other one says, I don't know. Because what I found was that most people don't know what emu oil is, nor did I even two years or so ago and happened that I was reading a home decor blog for my other business, Rustic Artistry, and the blogger decided to take a break from talking about living rooms and rugs and tell everybody about this product, emu oil, that she had used for, I don't know, her eczema or her hair loss or something like that. And she thought it was so fabulous that she, she wanted everyone to know about it. And so I did a little research and learned that emu oil has been used for tens of thousands of years. The Aborigines of the Australian Outback discovered it and found out that it was helping with their sunburn and their cuts and their rashes and things like that. And it has continued to be used for all these years. And it's fantastic for any kind of skin condition or swelling because it's a natural anti inflammatory and it's one of the only oils or skin preparations that can travel all the way through the skin and that's why it works so well.

What's the source of it? I thought emu was like an animal. I guess it's, it is.

The emu bird is a flightless bird, looks a lot like an ostrich. And they are actually farm raised primarily for their meat. It's a lean red meat. And so when the birds are harvested, the meat is processed, the feathers, the skin is tanned for leather and they have a pouch of fat on their back. And that fat is taken and it's put through a whole refining process in FDA facilities. It gets cleaned, it gets purified, it becomes this lovely smooth clean oil. And then you can either use that just as is, or it can be mixed with other ingredients and it carries them with it through the layers of the skin to do their work.

Now your business, are you the manufacturer of these different products that use emu oil?

I'm a private labeler, I have a sole. I'm the only private labeler that this particular farm works with. And I was looking to, to get into emew oil and I wanted to work with a company that was only using natural ingredients in their products. And so I found a small family farm that just raises the emus humanely, feeds them nice organic feed. It's just a top notch operation from start to finish and that really affects the quality of the emu oil. It's certified, it's, it's really the best you can get. And if you're going to put something that goes through the layers of your skin, you want to be sure it's good quality, right?

You don't want to put turpentine or something on your skin. So. Okay, so I love it. It sounds like you have a great product. It's interesting. I suspect maybe you sell this directly, but it sounds like Amazon, at least what we're discussing. Off air, it sounds like Amazon is your biggest platform. For moving this product?

Yes. So most of my sales come from Amazon. And then I also have a website I use shopify for emubliss.com so I sell direct as well.

What's the percentage breakout? Just so we can get a sense, how much does Amazon move for you, this product versus Amazon?

Amazon is about four times as much sales revenue as the website.

Okay, so that's the old 80 20.

Yeah. My goal is to really. I really want to increase the sales from the website because you never know with Amazon when things could turn bad. So it's absolutely critical to really consider that almost as gravy and put the marketing focus and energy and money into growing the website.

If 8% of your sales comes through there, I presume the profitability is not the same ratio. Aren't you more profitable when you sell it directly versus Amazon?

Definitely, because Amazon takes 15%. So the shipping costs are basically the same because even for sales through my website, I use Amazon services as my warehouse and shipping facility. So I would have to pay that anyhow. But yeah, Amazon takes a 15% commission on everything that is sold through them.

And that's 15% not of your profits, but 15% of your top line. Right. What you sell for price.

The sell price? Yes. Whatever the sell price Is, they take 15% of that right off the bat.

Now, just because I'm curious, does Amazon have the ability to influence the sale price? Do you say I sell it for $20 a unit and that's the price, or do they have the ability to put some pressure on you and move the price around?

No, they do not. Not for a private labeler that is bringing the product in themselves. So that's completely up to the seller, whatever it's going to be priced at.

You know, there's one insight I wanted to share, Christina, with you and Chris is we sell. I sell books. Right. We sell them through Amazon. Amazon has the ability to adjust the sale price. So I determine the list price. That's the price of the book. Say $29.99. They can sell for $16 if they wish. The only thing that's unique about book sales is if the they decide to discount it, they. I still only pay them a percentage of the. I'm sorry, they pay me. It's a reverse. They pay me a percentage of the retail price no matter what. Yeah. So it's interesting. So I get the same fee from them every time they sell a single book, but they'll adjust the price and they actually adjust the price. And this is going to be a question to you, Carol, they adjust the price on a hourly basis, if not faster. And they're watching the behavior of the consumer. And my book starts moving the. They'll actually move the price up to capture that momentum, and it's fully within their right. Yeah. Do you see, Carol, that kind of Amazon yielding that kind of leverage? Do they do things to. Do you see your product spiking in, valuing, going into a valley? Do you see any of that stuff? And maybe it's being influenced by Amazon?

No, not on a. Not on a private label product because I'm the one that's setting that retail price and sell price. Now, there's businesses who sell where there's multiple sellers of the same product. And a lot of them work with repricing software so that if somebody. One seller drops the price, then they can automatically drop their price to still win the buy box. But that's when they talk about a race to the bottom. That's why it's, you know, it's very tricky if you're selling. If you're just another seller on a product listing. For Emu Bliss, I'm the only one that can sell it.

Okay, so that's a great tip for us right there, that exclusivity.

Yes, definitely.

So I know you engaged Cindy Thomason, her company's bookskeep for. As your consultant, if you will, and bookkeeper around making your business more profitable. I know she does the profit first method. Tell us, what did she walk you through? Where do you stand right now and how's your business shifted to become more profitable to this point?

Sure. I started on Amazon a little over a year ago, November of 2014. And then I launched the website in February of 2015. And I was pretty much just using Mint, you know, the basic Mint program, to import my expenses and my, you know, my checking accounts and credit card accounts. And then in September. Well, I guess it was about September. Yeah. That I heard about Profit first through a member of the E Commerce Fuel private forum and read the book. And I was like, I got to do this. This just totally makes sense. It resonated with me. And so I contacted one of the. Through your website, I guess, you know, one of the advisors. And he hooked me up with Cindy. And so we had a really great phone conversation about, you know, what my needs were and that I wanted to get my books more organized and, you know, have. Have everything documented properly so that down the road, when it comes time to sell the business, it's all, you know, the books are clean. And so I started working with her in September, October, she and her team did a whole. They basically went back to January 1st and reconciled all my books from January 1st through the end of September so that we were clean then going forward. And now we do a reconciliation every month. I need to go in once a month and split up all the Amazon and PayPal and Shopify deposits into their different categories, and then they do a reconciliation and do a profit and loss statement for me.

Well, yeah, let me ask you all about that. So reconciliations, the kind of layperson's term, is a way of affirming or confirming that all the financials are accurate and consistent with the bank says, so you clean up your books, they're accurate. Now, did that give you what was your impression of your business once you knew what the actual numbers were and where money was flowing?

I was just spending way too much money. There was just no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You know, here's the thing. Before I started separating it out into the different categories, the operating expenses and whatnot, I basically just looked at my bottom line. If there was still money in the checking account, you know, between the ins and outs, I'm like, okay, you know, that's. That's good. But that's as much analysis pretty much as I was doing. So now we have accounts for income, for operating expenses, for inventory, and for profit. And it's a lot more illuminating, you know, what, how much money I have, what's coming in, what I have available to spend. I'm really now with the profit and loss and what has set up in QuickBooks because I hadn't been using QuickBooks. I'm doing much better analysis of looking at what vendors I've been spending with, what I can cut. I canceled a bunch of software subscriptions and things like that so that I have a much better grasp now on what I'm spending my money on.

Before Cindy came in, did you feel you were more profitable and then what she actually discovered and what the reality is?

Yes, Yes. I have to admit that.

Yeah, that's normal. That's normal. And now that you're on the other side of it and you know, your real profitability, how's your confidence at least? Maybe you're not where you thought you were, but what's your confidence about your numbers and the outlook for your business?

Well, I feel that. I know that these are the true numbers, so, you know, there's no more fooling myself now. You know, it's right there in black and white. And you know, year one is a tough year. There's a lot of expenses that are startup one time expenses. So it's not like I was expecting some huge profit in year one, but at least I've got a basis for going forward in year two. And it's really gratifying to see this little profit bucket, small though it may be, you know, at least there's money going in there. And, and it's been helpful to create this separate account for inventory because cash flow for inventory was a huge challenge for me last year.

So let, let's go into that. Tell me what the challenge is, maybe we can address it right now.

Well, some things are just beyond my control. There's a lot of issues with Amazon and Amazon is a true frenemy. That's all I could say. You get tons of sales, but boy, when they screw up, they really screw up. And what happens sometimes is I would ship inventory in and they would lose it. So right away it'd be gone. So now then you go out of stock. And if you go out of stock on Amazon, you basically go to the back of the line as far as you know, where you appear in search. It's like falling all the way down the mountain. So I had instances, for example, where I shipped it in, they lost it, they found it, they lost it, they found it. But in the meantime I had to order more because I was out and yet they found it. So now I have bought twice as much as I need. I have twice as much as I need. So that really threw me off, you know, cash flow wise because it was a whole, whole order that I shouldn't have placed. And you know, I had another instance where they put the wrong labels on a product and we're sending the wrong thing out. And finally just got that resolved and they dropped another $1800 in my account the other day, which was sweet, but you know, for a while I was really behind there because I didn't have that money. So there's things that come up that you just can't predict with Amazon as far as cash flow. And that's why it's going to be very important to have this cushion in inventory, in an inventory bucket so that if I do suddenly have to make an unanticipated inventory purchase, there's some money in there to do it.

Gotcha. So tell me about the, the actual numbers. How much stock do you need to buy at a time? What are we talking about? The quantity and also the cost.

I Usually, I have six different products I usually buy probably between 100 and 200 units at a time. And that can run me, oh, several thousand dollars. Let's just say, you know, two, two to $4,000 at a shot at a pop.

Okay, so in the worst case scenario, Amazon, our friend of me here, messes up, you're out another 4,000. So you could be out 8,000 bucks before you recoup that money, right?

Yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of money. Yeah. And when it's sitting in inventory in Amazon, but you know, you're, you've already had to pay for it. Even if I'm at a 30 day net payment, you know, it's still, I don't necessarily sell it all out in that 30 days. So I bought it before I've been paid for it by customers.

Okay, and then what percentage is the cost of your product, of your total sale? Meaning if you sell a product for $10, does it cost you $8 to provide that product? I just want to get the understanding what the cost is of the product for you versus the retail price.

I would probably try to mark my products up two and a half to three times because then after that I still have to back out. Amazon's 15% and then all the shipping costs, which altogether comes out to about almost 30%.

Gotcha. Okay, I already got a few tips for you. The first one, I got one more question. It's gonna sound really weird, but I'm telling you it makes sense. How much does your product weigh? Like what's the weight of your product?

Oh, they're very, very light. So two of them are the size of a lip balm and the other ones are in like a 1 ounce bottle or like a 2 or a 4 ounce jar. So there nothing's more, more than a few ounces in weight.

Okay, so here's the first little trick I want to share with you. When it comes to stocking, stocking inventory, places like Amazon, Walmart, they're notorious for losing product. There's a little trick you can do and simply breaking into multiple packages. You see, if I say you send 100 units, if you send one package, that package that's lost, you're out 100 units. If you send it in three packages, you're only out and they lose a package. You're at 33 units, but 66 get stocked. Now I get it, there's more shipping costs associated with it. But it's a insurance mechanism and since you have a light product, it actually may save you. So a little more time is spent for packing. A little more time is or a little more money spent in shipping, but the loss of inventory is way less likely.

Well, that's a good idea too. And my supplier offers me free shipping on orders over $200, so.

Oh, and you're doing drop shipping?

No, no, when I'm shipping from them into Amazon, into the warehouse. So yeah.

Okay, that's what I mean. By dropshipping, you're directly shipping. Yeah.

Yes. So I could do that and still take advantage of not having to pay shipping to my supplier.

There you go.

So that's a great tip. Thank you.

Yeah, I'll hit the button for me because I'm so proud of myself. All right, we got our first mega tip. And here's the funny thing about this is a lot of the solutions to our business, we look for the complex, really technical solution when there's something very simple in front of us. So there's the first one, but the other one. Now getting into the numbers that kind of triggered my mind is the markup you said you did two and a half to three times. From my experience, luxury products should have actually, actually a four times markup. I wonder if you're underpricing yourself now. Of course you have to test this out, meaning you can mark up four times and no one buys your product. Well, that's the wrong price point. With a product like yours, I believe it's perceived as a luxury product from your consumers. Do you feel that's a fair assessment? Is it considered a luxury product?

I'd say that my products that have more than one ingredient could probably go along those lines. It's harder with emu oil because a lot of people mistakenly see emu oil as a commodity product because it's a single ingredient thing and there's a lot of other, you know, sellers out there. But in fact, there is a difference in quality and, you know, whether it's been certified by the AEA and has gone through all this testing. So there's some very inexpensive emu oils out there and people who are price shopping are just going to go go for the cheaper one, even though it's not quite as good of an oil. So it's a harder sell to get away with going up on on a product like that because there's an education that is difficult to accomplish on Amazon.

Okay, so here's my next tip is if I tell you I'm a bookkeeper, I suspect in your mind you already know what a bookkeeper is and they're basically pretty comparable. Yeah, there's some good ones out there, there's some marginal ones. Cindy Thomas being an extraordinary one. But for her to convince you of that, you have to have an experience with her. Just by saying she's a bookkeeper, she's in a trap. So I'm going to give you a little secret. What Cindy does to reveal her true value. And she doesn't call herself a bookkeeper. She calls herself a profit advisor or profit first professional. There's a strategy behind this, is that she's using a distinct term that you can't associate with a commodity, therefore you can't commoditize her price. I wonder if you're not selling emu oil. That's just a component. I wonder if you're selling a different name that you can come up with. Now, sometimes you can't come up with a different name. So what companies do we have? The Keurig K Cup system here, you know, they have pumpkin spice. Everyone sells pumpkin spice. But then whoever that was came out with a limited edition pumpkin spice or the Christmas series. And just by giving a unique name, there's an instant perception of more significant and more value, and we pay a premium for it. So if you want to break out of the commodity competition price wise, Carol, I suggest, strongly suggest, you find a unique name that does not reference a commodity type product.

You know, that's a good point. And there's actually one company out there that sells their emu oil for an exorbitant price. I mean, I think it's 60 or $70. And they don't actually call it emu oil. I mean, it says that on the, on the ingredients.

I wonder if they've been on the.

Show, but it doesn't have a big label that says emu oil on it. And I look at it, I'm like, how can they possibly do this? You know, but yet they are selling it and it's actually. Yeah, it's exactly what you're suggesting. So.

So do you want me to push a button for you?

I'll definitely be doing some brainstorming after this.

All right, here we go. Here's the second one for you. There we go. I got one more for you.

Sweet.

Okay. There's another way of increasing your margin. And so the challenge many businesses have, and I can see right away, is your margin isn't big enough. It's going to hurt your profitability. Another way of increasing margin besides coming up with a unique name, still do it, is packaging. Can you imagine this? Say you sell iPhones. Well, I can Sell iPhones and we can sell iPhone and iPhones and iPhones and iPhone. How could I ever dictate a higher price than someone else? Because they're all the same. Well, if I sell a DVD training you with the 10 hottest tips on how to use an iPhone, I instantly break out of the commodity. And now I'm offering a value. I wonder if your emu oil, if you could include with it as a set the 20 applications of EMU oil that no one's ever told you. And you make a DVD or a simple audio recording, you put it on a cd. But now the perceived value is they're buying a product in part, they're buying the information and knowledge. And there's tremendous value in that. Okay, I'll push it again for you. Don't worry about it. There we go. Three in a row. All right, Carol, one more tip. When it comes to that situation, should you ever run to Amazon again, I hope the multiple packages save you. I encourage you and Cindy Thomas and can walk you through this. Set up a vault account. This is similar to the profit account. You start squirreling away money. It's an emergency fund. Every business that I've owned, I've set up a vault account. Over time, slowly scrolling away money. The day a disaster hits, a tragedy hits. That money is used to fund and fix that situation. Or if you need a loan, Banks and other loaning sources, fundera being the best of all. Like to see a business that has a cash reserve, they'll treat you more favorably. So if you're setting one is 1% aside to profit or 5%, consider adding one more percent. But setting it into your vault. Never to be touched, always to be. Sit there. Only an emergency fund. And the only way you're allowed access to it is if you talk with Cindy first. She gives you a thumbs up. And then you come on the show and sing a song so you have to embarrass yourself. And if you pass all those tests, then you're allowed to get access to those money.

I could totally do that.

Okay, good.

I got a song picked out already. Okay, well, we're gonna camp. I've got tons of songs.

Oh, okay. Well, now you got the solution. Unfortunately, we gotta run so people can buy your product. Where's the best place they should go?

Carol at the website. It's emu. That's emu.

Emubliss.com and definitely go there. Check out the product and Cindy Thomason if anyone wants to. If you have an Amazon business yourself, you're an Amazon seller or you're just an E Commerce. Cindy Thomason is our gal. It's books with an S bookskeep dot com. And Christine, we'll put in the show notes too.

Yes, I will.

Hey, Carol, if you would just hang on tight with us, we want to ask you something off the air too, okay?

Okay, thanks. It's great talking to you guys today.

It's a pleasure talking to you.

Thanks, Carol. Great job.

Chris and Christina, I want to ask you what we learned here. First, I want to thank our corporate partners that make this show possible. Do you know if you Fundera could help in a situation like this too? When you need to buy more product within 24 hours, Carol. Or someone in that situation could go on Fundera's website and receive the funding all within a 24 hour cycle and get that.

That's fast.

Yeah. Sometimes when you're in a lot in a hard situation, that's a tough spot. You, you have a sustainable business here, you can't say, well, I'm gonna wait until Amazon figures this out. You gotta move. That's a good source for it.

That's awesome.

Fundbox. If you invoice companies, and guess what? You can invoice Amazon. I mean, Amazon releases funds to you, but you need the funds faster. You notify Fundbox, they release the funds to you immediately. And then when the money comes in from Amazon, you reimburse Fundbox. Perhaps a good solution here for this case. Yeah, you gotta make phone calls, right? Customer gets your emu bliss.

What's a phone?

And they're like, do I put this in my eye? Like, oh, well, they call you. You need a phone. Nextiva VoiceOver IP. Perfect for the brand new startup business. To a larger business, we use it here we have 12 or so phones. And to businesses that have 50 or 100 extensions, it's voiceover IP. Very affordable, very flexible.

Multiple locations too.

In multiple locations. Simultaneous ring. Yeah, ultimate flexibility. And then T sheets. Listen, how much time are you spending in the warehouse here moving email around? I don't know. But T sheets can tell you it has a little GPS track that goes right into your phone. It tells you where your staff is at what time and where they're spending their time. Amazing.

Whoa.

All right, Christina, you're up first. What'd you learn today?

Oh, I have quite a few things jot down actually, but and I'm not just saying this because I love prep first, but I'm noticing the more entrepreneurs that we talk to and the more people who are actually grasping this concept. They are realizing how quickly their finances become clear to them. It's not this jumbled mess where they don't know how much they're spending, how much they're making. Everything is literally laid out for. You can say, oh, this is the real revenue that I got this month. This is how much profit I'm getting. This is how much we're spending. And you just, you know, within a matter of seconds looking at your financial statement. And that's just a huge deal.

I love seeing it too consistently across all types of businesses. Right, Chris, what'd you take away, brother?

Yeah, along the same lines, Christina, Carol, the wording she used was she, she's not fooling herself anymore.

Right.

Think about that. That means if you're not implementing profit first, you may be fooling yourself.

Most people unwittingly.

Yeah.

But also we desire it. We don't want to know the truth. It's like, it's like saying, I have a massive pain in my chest, but I don't want to go to the doctor to find out because I know.

It'S gon something bad. I just don't want.

And it probably is.

Right.

But the nice thing is if you go to a doctor, she'll fix it for you and you won't have to die.

Yeah, Right.

Same idea.

Well, I also liked real quick, you, your. Some of your advice was to change the name of a product or change the presentation to add more value, to not compete with everyone else who's offering the same product. So build more value in get a little creative. That's why Carol said she's going to brainstorm. I think that's a wonderful idea. I even thought of what I do, you know, selling podcasting, production, like maybe I could roll that into something different and bigger or whatever. But anyway, great tip.

Yeah. And you know what's great is that she sees it playing out in another competitor of hers and they're doing successfully $60, where I think her equivalent was about $20. And it's just a name change. And I want you to know you are not taking advantage of the customer either. Bottles of wine do this and everyone knows that bottle of wine yet are slightly different flavors. But a hundred dollar bottle of wine doesn't necessarily have to be better than a $9 bottle of wine. But the more a customer pays, the more psychologically they put significance in it. So in not blind taste test, but when visual taste test, when you see it's $100 bottle of wine, it actually tastes better.

Right.

So the emu Oil. If you invest more in it, you'll be more invested in it successfully working for you. You'll be better with it.

Boom, boom.

Here's my tip. Here's my tip. The race to the bottom. Isn't that shocking that that Amazon is a powerful platform? I would argue you're forced to use the platform.

Yeah.

But if you put yourself in a commodity position now, every penny that's cheaper than the alternative, the customer goes to the cheapest. And you get this quick race to the bottom of everyone trying to be cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, you have to become exclusive. I love that she's the only provider of this farm stuff and that gives her the opportunity to never go again into that race to the bottom.

Yeah, killer.

Killer. Yeah. Great stuff. We got to get out of here.

This has been awesome. Thank you to Carol. And by the way, you can find our show in itunes and Stitcher and Tune in radio and any. Any of your preferred podcasters. You can find our show and including the website profit first podcast.com, which you can hear all our previous episodes, literally every one of them. Go back. Listen to episode one when we used to do the. The. The secret word trick, remember? Which didn't work because I didn't know.

I know. We never knew. People like the secret word. You just told me it.

That's awesome.

So listen, Chris, Christine is already backing up. I grabbed the fly swatter because here's the deal. I want you, listener. Get. Get your face really, really close to the speaker. Speaker. Is it close? Here comes. Do you feel that? Why haven't you been to profit first professionals.com yet? Carol did it. She picked up the phone. One quick call. She connected with one of our team members here. When I say one of our team members, it had to be Ron.

Yes.

So she spoke with Ron. He's the only other guy in the office. He ob Ron. He unders. What he does is he gets an assessment of what's the challenge you're facing, your business and what vertical are you in. He then matches you up with one of our over 100 members, all in different specialties, all different verticals, and gives you the perfect match. Cindy went in to Carol's business and within hours had guided her to a level of profitability she's never experienced. Why? Because Cindy has done this for countless Amazon sellers. I don't care what business you're in. I don't care what vertical you're in. I care about your profitability. And we have a person here that can help you go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on the Find button. We will guide you to the solution.

Well said. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, Carol. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Christina. Thank you, Obi Ron. And of course, our next episode.

Mike, it's episode 72. My boy Matt Schoup is coming on. I hope that you got to get like, a 20 point seatbelt system on. This guy is such energy now, you know, we've been coaching people on how to be more profitable. Matt has been wildly successful in the painting industry. Not. He's not a professional painter like da Vinci or something. He paints houses and commercial space, and he's making millions doing it. He's been kind enough to say he's gonna come on the show and tell us step by step how you can do it too.

All right, we'll see you guys next week.

Thanks, guys.

We'll see you later.

Oh.

Oh, no. Oh, the bridge. Hang tight now. Here it is.

You're. We're gonna have to suffer through it. I think it's like descending into hell.

God. Miserable. But can you get going further down?

But.

Huh. Coming back up. It's coming back up.

That's how you end the show here.

Wow. On an uncomfortable bridge. Say y' all.