153: Stop Worrying About Sales and Start Thinking About Profitability with Ciara Stockeland

Does it feel like you're making good sales, but nothing is left in your bank account at the end of each month? Trust me, we've all been there. Join me and my special guest today as we get to the simple truth about inventory, margins, and profitability. Grab your earbuds and your notebooks and come join us.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today I have a very special guest, one that was brought to me by our mutual friend Susan Bradley, who you guys know and love so much. But it's in a different thing. Like, we, we always talk about subscription boxes around here, but with subscription boxes come inventory challenges. Whether you're selling one-off products, one-off boxes, or you have that subscription box We always have challenges with inventory. I have Sierra Stokeland here with me today, inventory guru. We're going to talk about all the things that really trip us up when we think about, you know, we think about our inventory challenges, how much we have sitting on the shelf, how long should it be sitting on the shelf? What should I be ordering? How wide? How deep? All those things are decisions that we have to make and they affect our cash flow. And so we're going to talk with Sierra. Sierra, why don't you introduce yourself to my audience? Give them a little background of who you are and what you do, and then let's dig into some topics.

Okay, well, we get to talk about numbers today, so, but I'm gonna make it simple and fun. It's gonna be okay. So I'm a third-generation entrepreneur from North Dakota. I started my first retail store in 2006, which I built, franchised. Then when I sold the brand to one of my franchisees, I actually started a subscription box. I don't know if you know that.

No.

Yes, it was the first-to-market wholesale subscription box for retailers.

Okay.

So I would put vendor and maker and wholesaler samples in a box and ship it to the doorstep of retailers because the landscape for going to market was really changing and it's really expensive to go to market, to leave your store. And so I just saw this need of matchmaking. So I built that and grew it and sold it within 18 months. And through that business started meeting so many inventory-based business owners that were all asking the same questions. Where's all my money going? What do I do with all this debt? How much inventory should I really own? And that's what Lynn launched and built the Inventory Genius classes and courses.

I love it. I love that you started a subscription. This is going to be such a fun interview. I love this. Okay, so you and I talked a little bit before we started the podcast and we talked about, we know a lot of people that claim they're 7-figure business owners, 6-figure business owners. They made $1 million. They do these things. But at the end of the day, and, and I see this because I see a lot of back end of businesses, is that you can be making a million dollars or $2 million a year, but you can have very little in your bank account, right? Let's talk about that.

Yeah, so I think most often, if not 100% of the time, when someone comes to me, they have one or two questions. Either Where's all my money going? All this money's coming in. Where's all the money? Or I have so much debt. How did I get here? What do I do with it? Can my business be saved? So I want to normalize that first of all, because everyone that's listening today has had issues with cash flow. Sometimes they've conquered it. A lot of times they haven't. And we feel very, we can feel very fraudulent, right? So from the outside looking in, I look amazing. I'm building this business. Everyone thinks I'm wildly successful, but behind the scenes, I can't sleep at night. I have so much debt. That is very common. So if that's where you're finding yourself today, there is absolutely hope for you. We can fix it.

To be fully transparent, I don't know if I've ever said this on a podcast before, but I was there. Yeah, I was there at one point in my business where I was making probably $700,000 or $800,000 in a year, and I was broke. I was waiting for payments to run on my subscription box before I could buy product for the next box. I was sitting there the last couple of days of the month hoping nothing else was gonna auto-draft from my account because it was going to bounce. And you almost feel like a failure. Like, how could I have this great successful business and not have anything to show for it. And it's this really lonely feeling. And I remember saying this for the first time and probably to the only person, to Susan Bradley. And she, she really made me realize that, hey, that is normal. And I didn't know that because I didn't know other entrepreneurs like me. I didn't have a base of friends that were doing this that I could talk to about. And so it made me feel like I was doing something wrong. It made me feel dumb. It made me feel like I wasn't a good enough entrepreneur because I didn't know how I was making all this money and spending all this money at the same time.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that because I think we've all had— I mean, I, same thing. I had a multimillion dollar business, 13 franchise locations, a team of 12+ women that worked for me, and I wasn't paying myself and was so stressed out. I feel— I felt so trapped. Like, I hate this business, but I can't get out because I owe so many people money. What do I do? Now, the good thing is there is hope and you can fix that. So it's just about identifying the root issue. What's causing the cash flow crunch? What numbers do we need to lean into? What do we need to understand? And how does our inventory play into that cash flow situation?

I love this conversation. So if you're listening right now and you're like, oh my God, that's me, like you having the itchy sweats right now. I know in my situation I was growing too fast and that was my problem. And so I identified that. But let's talk about a couple of different scenarios. Scenarios, like give us a list of things we need to really look at for our business if we're in this situation.

Yeah, so I like to say there's always 3 levers we can pull. When I start working with a client, the first thing I look at is their margin. So while inventory most often got us into debt, inventory is our secret weapon. And if you know how to use inventory, you are on your way. So it's the margin piece. What is our margin? It doesn't mean that we have to increase margin by 10 or 20%. Sometimes increasing margin by 2 or 3 points can make a massive difference on the bottom line. So let's look at your margin. This means what you're marking your product up for. A lot of times people will say, but I don't, I can't see your, I know you're going to want me to mark everything up right away. And I'm like, no, not necessarily. Sometimes yes, but there's other ways to find margin too. What is the shipping expense? Can we be smarter with our shipping? That goes into the cost of goods. If we're a maker, can we buy differently our raw materials differently? Can we buy better? Is there overstock liquidation closeout opportunities where we can be getting discounts? Can we negotiate with vendors? There's a lot of ways to find margin, and I can find margin really fast, and margin's real money. So that's the first lever.

Is there a sweet spot in percentages that you like to be in for the margin? Yeah.

So if you're brick and mortar at all, you have to have at least a 60% margin. You just do. Like in this day and age, you cannot— a business is so expensive to run. Now, if you're e-commerce, we have a little bit more wiggle room. So if you're running your subscription box just on the e-commerce side and you don't have a storefront, we can be a little bit better, you know, equipped to handle a lower margin. So, but I would say, I mean, you need to be above 50%. Like we shouldn't be running a business under a 50% margin. So then our second lever to pull is our operating expenses. So, um, you know, this is where just taking a look, people will say, well, I think I'm doing good. I mean, I don't spend a lot of money, and— but then when I have them truly audit, and by this I mean the first month I work with them, I literally make them write down every penny that leaves. It's such a tedious exercise, but it's like, Sarah, it's like if you're going to lose weight or if you're having nutrition problems and you have to document your food, there's a reason. Because you're like, oh shoot, I didn't realize I actually have this little snack and then that little snack and that, you know. So I, I did this with the client had her write everything down and she's like, oh wow, $5 at Arby's, $3 on tape at Office Max, running to Office Max 4 times a week instead of 1 time a week. Like we found hundreds of dollars pretty quickly.

Yes.

So that's our second lever. We look at our margin first, then we look at what we're spending to run the business, and then we look at top line revenue. So I, I focus on that last because like Susan says this a lot, like if we just keep chasing sales and we don't fix what's underneath the sales, the expenses just follow that. The debt just follows that. So you have to figure out what what's going on underneath first.

And there's something that you said that, you know, you really focus on building a business with profit goals instead of revenue goals. And I love that because we can have more sales. Like, I have met people that have $10 million, $20 million in sales, and I am more profitable than them with my few millions that I've made. And I, and I think, how is that possible? And it is these things. They have low margins, they have high expenses. Like they're just going after that top line goal and they're not looking at the profitability of their business.

Yeah, absolutely. So in setting those profit goals, the way that we do that through my framework is the same no matter the size. If you're doing $10,000 a month or a million dollar a month, I follow the same framework. So we look at your margin, then we look at your expenses, then we fill in your sales goals, then we look at the bottom. What is that going to produce in profit? If we're not happy with that profit, We go back and start pulling those levers until the profit we're projecting gives us the paycheck we want and can cover our debt. Because that's the thing, like your profit margin, your net profit margin has to be able to service the debt. That's where a lot of people are like, my P&L says I made $10,000 last month, but I don't have the money. If I look at the debt, the debt is overwhelmingly higher than the profit they're bringing in. So that's really important.

Yeah, and I truly believe that our subscription box owners, or any product-based business, they can be profitable in month 1 with a subscription box. We just have to be very cautious about those operating expenses. No, you can't go buy the fully customized box when you first start out. All your profit is gone. No, you can't go buy— and here's one thing that I was guilty of when I was having that cash flow issue. I was so guilty of adding one more thing to the box. And one more thing to the box. Like, I just wanted so badly for this to be the best experience ever that I was like, oh, that's only $2, I'll add that to the box. Well, times 1,000 was $2,000 out of my profit, and that might have been the $2,000 I needed to pay rent on my brick and mortar. Like, it was, and I wasn't tracking that. I was tracking what I had planned, you know, the, the one thing and the two things that matched it and the thing, and then I kept adding this thing and this thing, and this thing's 50 cents, and this thing's $1.49, and this thing's $3, it'll be fine. It's only $5. Well, $5 times 1,000 is a whole lot of money. That was my paycheck I was giving up. That was my rent check I was giving up. And I was doing this month after month after month for over a year. And then on top of that, I was snowballing my growth. 300 new subscribers, 400 new subscribers. And that meant I had to buy more product than I was selling. And I didn't have the money and that is where it got really stressful.

Yeah. And that's what happens because we keep chasing the sales cuz we think, okay, if I could just have 100 more subscribers or 10 more subscribers, then I would have enough money and I could cover my bills. But the problem is that the margin follows that, right? If we haven't fixed that and the expenses and the inventory cost. So yeah, we have 10 or 100 or 1,000 new subscribers. But the cost went right along with them. And so that just snowballs in the wrong direction very, very quickly.

So if we look at our margins and we know that we need to increase our margins and we really start there, and then we look at our operating expenses and we're like, yeah, I, I am not in budget on this box. I need to cut back, which I did too. I had 5 items in my box when I started. Now I have 3 to 4, and I'm really strict with my budget. I'm like, nope, we can't afford anything else. Nope, we're not putting anything else in there. You have to be really honest with yourself in that. And it also, it's all those operating expenses that you just talked about, like things that you don't even think about are coming out. I was paying for software I wasn't using. I was paying for apps I wasn't using, or that I wasn't using them to what I would, you know, the benefit of the cost of them, right? And I really had to streamline that as well. So when we start to look at that, we can make changes. What other inventory things do we need to be looking at? Maybe I sell one-off products as well as my subscription box, and that could be tripping me up because I can make a bad buy. You know, I went through this period of I should buy deeper because then I can run ads, or do I buy wider so I have more to offer the few customers that I have? Talk to me a little bit about inventory and how to handle that as, you know, an entrepreneur.

Yeah, so with your inventory, you really need to look at it by category. So you have your subscription box inventory. If you have a brick and mortar, like you said, you have your one-off inventory. Um, what is the margin on each individual category? What is your turn? So a lot of times I'll go into a brick and mortar and e-commerce and we look at the categories and I'll say, okay, yes, you make X amount more money because this is a $100 item versus a $50 item, but your $50 items are turning 3 times as fast as your $100 items. And so you're turning that money into money quicker. That's really important too. The, the beauty of a subscription box, if you're doing it well, like I know you help people, but with this is that they buy for the box. So they're not, they shouldn't be buying like all this excess inventory. So essentially like you're turning perfect, right? You're buying it, you're selling it, you're buying it, you're selling it. But if you have a brick and mortar or an e-commerce, if you sell alongside, look at the turn of what that inventory's doing because if you tie it— and how do you calculate that? So you look at the average wholesale value on hand for a given period of time and divide it by the cost of goods sold. I should mention the cost of goods sold is the cost of the goods that sold. It's not the inventory you purchased.

It's not the cost of the stuff sitting on your shelf. It's only what you sold.

Sold.

Yep.

I was just working with a client on this because I looked at her profit and loss. This is a massive company, multiple locations in California. Like, these are legit retailers. And I looked at her P&L we just started working together and I was like, your margin looks wonky. And when I look at your balance sheet, you have 5 locations. You don't hardly have any inventory in your balance sheet. What's going on? And this is what I find typically, their accountants are expensing out all of their inventory when it's purchased. They're not letting it stop on the balance sheet first as an asset and expensing it out once it's sold. That's a huge issue because you'll never know your margin. So, um, yeah, so that's really important to see. And you can't look at turn if you don't have your inventory entered correctly.

Yeah, super important. Okay, talk to me about more about inventory. What else do we need to be looking at as far as owning and handling and dealing with our inventory?

Yeah, turn and burn. So I'm all about like, inventory is cash on hangers, cash in boxes. It is literally dollar bills. I know you say something very similar. Like, it is dollar bills hanging all over in shelves, in drawers until it is sold. It doesn't age well, and you need to learn to be an extreme editor of your business. No more emotional attachment, which is Which is why it's really important to work with someone like you, someone like me, like a coach, a consultant, a profit strategist, because we have no emotional attachment to your inventory. And so if we can show you how to look at your inventory based off of data, black and white information, instead of, but this is so cute and I love it and I want to keep it, or I spent so much money on it, great. It's not making you any money and you could liquidate that out. Take that small amount of money and turn it into more money and grow your business, pay off your debt. That's really important. You have to look at your inventory as cash.

At what point do you look at inventory and say it's subscription box inventory? I've got a little bit of excess subscription box inventory from about the last 6 months or so. It's so seasonal. So because, you know, I might have beach towels and fun backpack coolers and, and then I might have sweatshirts and sweaters and stuff, and, and, and you don't want to mark it down right away because it was just in someone's subscription boxes. Can you talk through, like, what would be a great plan of action to liquidate some excess subscription box product?

Yes. Um, I want you to think really outside the box, zero attachment to that inventory, and put yourself on a rhythm. So your subscription box owners, all of you listening, right, you have rhythms for everything else. Have a rhythm for liquidating. Okay, so maybe that's twice a year. You collect all the inventory twice a year. You do a warehouse sale where you invite the public to come in. They shop your product. It's not in conflict with your subscription box. Now what's super cool is as they come in and shop, you say, if you love it, guess what? Sign up for my subscription box, right? And we, we nurture future relationships. Maybe that's twice a year. Maybe that's once a year. Maybe that's once a quarter. You can work with overstock jobber. They're called jobbers. So people that buy liquidation, I used to buy and sell and broker liquidation, so companies would come to me and say, Sierra, I have 1,000 of this. It was misprinted or we can't— they're discontinued. Can you find a buyer? And I would help them find a buyer like TJ Maxx or small mom and pops. You can sell your inventory to someone that does that. You're going to get pennies on the dollar, but who cares? It's not doing you any good. So put it in boxes, get it on a pallet, get that cash and be smarter with that cash. You can do that on a rhythm. So I have a client right now who sells cigar accessories. I mean, people sell everything, right? We've talked about this. And I said, let's twice a year, let's just create a couple pallets and let's just liquidate it out. Let's get out of the warehouse because he's paying warehouse spot, pallet spot. He's paying for people to touch it a million times. Like every time we touch our inventory, it costs us more, margin goes down. And so finding a rhythm for him where he doesn't have to put it on his website and have it compete with his full price product, let's just liquidate it out and let it serve its purpose. So finding a rhythm. And then not being attached to what you paid. You cannot be attached to what you paid. That's part of the game.

I was gonna ask you, because I'm thinking right now, like, how hard it is knowing I've paid, say, $10 for an item, um, and then watching it leave my building for $2. Like, how hard is that? And what do we have to really tell ourselves, you know, when we, when we want to liquidate it in that capacity? Because I would never liquidate it that in a public capacity because those are my subscription box they don't want to see me giving something away for $2, right? So that's a great way for me to liquidate it without my subscribers having to see it. But what mentally do I have to tell myself when I'm doing something like that, knowing I'm taking an $8 hit on all of those pieces that are about to walk out my door?

I think when you start to get really diligent about knowing your numbers, it becomes a lot easier to letting it— to let it go. So when I know that, yes, I paid 10, I'm only going to get 2. But hey, I know how to make money off of money now, and I'm going to take that 2 and I'm going to make 6. So I'm still in the, you know, I still didn't make back, but then I'm going to take that 6 and I'm going to make 18. And in 3 months or 6 months, I'm going to write the shit because I know how to make money from my money now. Or I can just sit on that 10 and make nothing on it. So those are my options, right? So, right, when we get really focused on the numbers and the metrics in our business and learn that business is a game and we need to learn how to play that game without emotion, it becomes much easier to say, you know what, I'm going to take $1,000 for the pallet and I'm going to turn that $1,000 into something smarter. I'm going to be smarter with it. I'm not going to make that mistake again, but this is the cost of doing business and I'm okay with that. Also, if you've improved your margins on the other side, right? So in the meantime, I've been working on my margins so I can afford to take a bit of a loss on that and get the cash out of it because I know I've increased my margins to 60%. I've decreased my expenses. I've been paying off debt. Yep, it's $1,000 when I paid $3,000 for it, but I am healthier over here and I can turn that $1,000 into more money. It just becomes like that mindset naturally comes.

I love how you said rhythm because I think when we make a plan and we start to implement that plan on a regular basis, you take the emotions out of it because selling something like that, making that decision, making the decision to take an $8 loss on that product feels heavy for me. But if I say, you know what, it's hit this point, we're going to liquidate it. Here's what they're going to give us for it. Let's get it out the door. And it's a, it's that rhythm. It's that template, it's like, at this point, we're going to mark it down to this price. At this point, we're going to mark it down to this point. At this point, we're going to liquidate it. And there's— the emotion is taken out of it. And you just have a structure, a system, a process that you can implement over and over in your business.

Yeah, a couple things I was thinking when you were saying that. I worked with a lot of retailers that do dropshipping. So they have to buy the samples. And I cannot tell you how many samples— this is product they've paid for— is just sitting in warehouses. I'm like, what's going on with all these samples? They need to get into a rhythm. Once a month we put our samples in a box or we eliminate it out. Yes. Like samples cost us money too, right? But if we have a rhythm where it's like, okay, we use the sample, it's served its purpose, it goes into the sample bin, which once a month we clean out or twice every year we clean the samples out. We get what we can out of it. We reinvest that money. It just becomes, you know, a money-making machine. The other thing I was going to say is, We look at that item like you have that beach towel for— you paid $10 for it. You made your money back already on the entire load though. So maybe you bought 3,000 of those beach towels, you sold 20— 2,900 of them, you sold most of them, right? You made the right margin on them. So yes, on that 100 quantity you paid $10, but you've made that money. So you're really squandering an opportunity to make even more money by letting it sit there. So we think about like each individual item as like, here's what I spent for for it, but if our margins are run correctly, we've already made that money back and essentially, if this helps you, right, like they're kind of like free, right? Like they're not free, but they're sitting there, they're waiting to be turned into more money and it's okay. Like we have permission. Yeah.

I love that because we forget that. I'm seeing, I'm taking an $8 loss. No, I've already made the money on these.

You made your money.

Yeah. And now it's just like, let's get this off the shelf and out of our hair so I can sell something new fresh and fun and make more money and be more profitable because I have a new item at a higher price that people want versus this old item that is just hanging around and I keep marking it down and nobody is buying it. And so it's just stagnant and stale in my inventory, but it's also holding up all this cash that I have invested in it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, I love that. Can you give us a structure? Like, I know this might be too detailed. If I have product, like, what is my simple structure for getting rid of? Is there a timeframe like at 30 days, at 60 days, at 90 days? Do you have like a timeline of where inventory should be marked down and liquidated?

You won't like the answer. It's no. I actually don't have— everybody asks me that. Give me a markdown schedule.

Just tell— wait, I know my people just like to be told what to do.

Like, Sierra, just tell us what to do. Tell us what to do. So So here's what I would say. Here's, here's me telling you what to do. It's not about like 14 days, 21 days, 36 days. It's about, are you building a 12-month profit plan and budget? So a 12-month plan of here's what I need to sell, here's what I want my bottom line to look like, here's how I'm gonna live lean and mean. Then are you following up every month with that and saying, am I living lean and mean within my operating expenses? Am I living my budget? Do I have the margins I need? Are we, am I hitting my sales goals? The markdown schedule will follow. Like, as you're more in tune with your numbers, you're going to naturally say, I don't want 5 boxes sitting there because I want to take that money and invest it in marketing. I want to take that money and buy more inventory. And you'll get very tight as you watch your turn. You're going to want that turn to be better and better, which turn is everything. It's not, you know, so you're looking at your average cost over a period of time and your average inventory on hand. If you are stingy and like you will not allow your inventory to go out and be liquidated out, your turn's gonna look horrible. So if you wanna tighten that turn, the only way to do it is to sell that product faster. So those, those rhythms will naturally come as you focus on your numbers. Those peripheral like rhythms in the business will naturally come. I mean, that being said, like you wanna be turning inventory like 6 to 8 times a year. So, um, and now for subscription box, it, again, it looks really different because you naturally turn really well if you're managing, you know, if you're not way overbuying for your boxes. But any brick and mortar component, you want 6 to 8 times a year, meaning that every 60 to 90 days, your full inventory value is turning out of your business.

What advice, Sierra, do you have for anybody listening that's maybe felt like their cash flow is really strained and they're listening and they're saying, oh, it's in my inventory. And what advice would you give them for their next steps right now?

Okay, they need to get my book, Inventory Genius. Inventory Genius. It's $10. Everybody can afford it. Yes.

Okay.

Because in the book I explain how the financials work in a very anecdotal, super simple— I am not scientific, you guys. I'm as artsy as you all are. Like, the reason I'm passionate about numbers now is because I know what it did to my business. And my life and my health when I didn't know the numbers. And I know the difference that I'm making in women's lives, entrepreneurs' lives when they do. That's why I'm passionate, not because I love accounting. So the book is really like, really simply breaks down what is a profit and loss. You have to understand that, like where does profit come from and how does it work? What is a balance sheet? You're a business owner. You have to understand that you cannot make an excuse that other people need to know that for you. You need to understand it. And then it talks about how inventory plays into what's happening with your cash. So I think reading that book will be super helpful. It's like a 2-hour read, super simple. Then the next thing I think would be to just, you know, start small, writing down all of your expenses, looking at what your true margin is and just adding that up. It's a simple math problem. Sales minus cost of goods gives me my margin minus what it costs. What does that leave me with? Am I happy with that? Am I not happy with that? And then you go to town working on which of those numbers am I going to tackle first? I love that.

It's simple, but it's necessary. And I can sit here and tell you how many of my business owners listening right now have never seen a profit and loss statement for their business. They don't have one. And that's really the first step. Like, we have to understand what's happening behind the scenes with your money for you to be able to change that. And if you're listening right now and you are strapped for cash, you don't know why all the money coming in is going back out. And you're not getting a monthly P&L, or you're not creating a monthly P&L, that's where we have to start. We have to know our numbers to be able to make decisions about our prices, about our inventory, about our cash flow. And if you don't know that, you're just shooting blind at a dartboard. And so we have to dig into what is this business doing and how do I understand that. I want you to go get Sierra's book, because you're going to be able to really understand what those numbers mean and start to make some progress. Knowledge is power as entrepreneurs. The more we know about the making of our business, the better decisions we can make and the more long-term stable businesses that we're creating. A lot of times we get into entrepreneurship, you know, for me, I just wanted to make cute things and sell cute things and, you know, I didn't really think about paying taxes and paying employees and being a business owner. I just wanted to make cute things and it turned into this incredible business, but I have to do my diligence. I can't just stick my head in the sand and act like, oh, I'm just over here making cute things. I have to really be the business owner if I want to have a long-term sustainable business that pays me well. And looking at our profit margins is going to be a huge game changer for a lot of people.

And it won't fix itself. Like I can't emphasize, like this problem you have will not iron out on its own. It won't. You have to take action to fix it. Like if you're in a lot of debt, you're constantly like, oh my goodness, I can't wait till my next Shopify loan. You know, cash flow is so tight, I can never pay myself. And we start to resent our business when we pay every— I'll tell you, I mean, I had 12+ women full-time, part-time. I made payroll for them every weekend and I'm like, I work the hardest. This is my business. I'm not making a penny. I hate my business. And then you resent your people, which is not fair, right? It will not fix itself. You have to understand what's going on. But the exciting part is it can fix, you know, it can be fixed by understanding what's going on. Yeah.

And I think that was the turning point for me when I really understood that this was normal, number one, which we talked about that in the beginning, but also I had the power to change it and I was making kind of dumb impulsive decisions. Every month that were affecting my profit margin. And I couldn't see it because I was so busy doing all the things in my business. I didn't realize that I was killing my own profitability. I was killing my own cash flow. I was like, wow, we have, you know, 1,000 subscribers. We're doing great. Like, yeah, we have all this money coming in.

Great.

No, we don't. 'Cause it's going right back out as fast as it's coming in. And I didn't know my numbers. I didn't know my budget. My budgets. I wasn't paying attention to all those little expenses in the business and I wasn't adjusting for that. And that was my bad as a business owner. And that's where I had to step up. Okay, if I want to have a business, because basically I was breaking even. I was doing it for free. We don't want to work this hard for free. No, ma'am.

Yeah.

And so we've just got to be, it's an awareness. And I think that's why having someone like you on my podcast bring awareness to those things that we don't like to think about, we don't want to think about. But if we don't, we're not going to be profitable and we won't have a business in a few years.

Yeah, and we don't want that for you. We do not want that for you. We want you to be wildly successful. We want you to love what you do. We don't care if you're making a million dollars. We care that you're taking a paycheck, that you're paying off your debt, that you're loving your business, that you can make choices from a place of certainty. Instead of panic, like, oh my goodness, I just have to add this other product. I have to take 40 more subscribers. I have to do all these things cuz I'm stuck. We do not want that for you. And you do not have to live business life like that. Um, when I sold my franchise brick and mortar and I started the subscription box business, I made a decision. I'm not doing business the way that I did it before. I will not work nights and weekends. I'm not going to be a slave to my customers and my employees. I will not. To pay anyone else if I am not getting paid. I just made those decisions and I did it that way and I sold it and I was like, I love it because I'm getting paid what I'm worth.

And you empowered yourself. That empowered you to be the business owner that you wanted and not something else, not the business dictating the business owner that you were going to be.

Yes. I love that.

Sierra, if they're listening and they're like, I need Sierra's book, I need to find her, I need to follow her, I need be listening to her podcast. Where can they find you?

All things Inventory Genius. So the podcast is awesome. It just gives you every week a bite-sized actionable step when it comes to inventory and financials. The book does the same. And then my website, Sierra Stockland, you can find all my free resources. I have lots of like free trainings and articles and blogs and Facebook group, and I want to help you. I know I can help you if you're willing to do the work. So yeah, check me out, Sierra Stockland or Inventory Genius on socials and the podcast and book.

Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through some of the hard topics that we deal with in our business. I know that my audience is going to run over there and check you out. So thank you so much.

Thanks for letting me speak about numbers. I really enjoyed it.

Yes. And we'll be back next week for another great episode. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.