Bitches, it's time for the Grassroots Coaches Corner. Exclusive, insider access to dog business coaching sessions from Grassroots Dog Biz School students. You'll get an insider view of questions directly from our highest-level clients
Each week, we'll be covering dog training business questions, petsitter business advice, and helping dog walkers take their business to the next level. And the best part? It's no bullshit, no-frills, that you love and the action to take
In this episode, Kristen Lee and Maggie Christina talk about the toxic pricing that might be NOT giving dog trainers and dog walkers the profits they think they're bringing in.
Maggie also breaks down how to calculate your profit margin and how to start getting a fundamental understanding of your financial wellness while not leaving it in control of others.
Links:
Check out more episodes of Mind Your Own Dog Business
Connect with Kristen:
Online: https://thekristenlee.com
Instagram: @dogwalkercoach
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kristenleegrassroots
Learn more about Maggie and connect to discuss business coaching:
Online: https://maggiechristina.com
Instagram: @grassrootsdogbiz
Bitches, it's time for the Grassroots Coaches Corner. Exclusive, insider access to dog business coaching sessions from Grassroots Dog Biz School students. You'll get an insider view of questions directly from our highest-level clients
Each week, we'll be covering dog training business questions, petsitter business advice, and helping dog walkers take their business to the next level. And the best part? It's no bullshit, no-frills, that you love and the action to take
In this episode, Kristen Lee and Maggie Christina talk about the toxic pricing that might be NOT giving dog trainers and dog walkers the profits they think they're bringing in.
Maggie also breaks down how to calculate your profit margin and how to start getting a fundamental understanding of your financial wellness while not leaving it in control of others.
Links:
Check out more episodes of Mind Your Own Dog Business
Connect with Kristen:
Online: https://thekristenlee.com
Instagram: @dogwalkercoach
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kristenleegrassroots
Learn more about Maggie and connect to discuss business coaching:
Online: https://maggiechristina.com
Instagram: @grassrootsdogbiz
You're listening to the mind your own dog business podcast. I'm your host leading expert in dog business, strategic Kristin, late guys. Get ready for your journey, your journey to cutting edge marketing and sales, creating a standout kick ass dog business grant along with mastering your mindset that's going to smash all this glass ceilings that have been holding you back and catapult your dog was us to the next level with actionable steps you can take right away. We're going to empower you. We're going to grow you as you step into your authentic self, not only as a dog trainer, dog Walker or what ever slice the pet industry you find yourself in, but as that bad-ass entrepreneur, my mission is to disrupt the current norm. Cut through the noise, cut through the bullshit and power the incredible women of the dog business industry to step into the spotlight, reclaim, control, and transform not only their businesses but their lives. It's real, it's raw, it's uncensored, and it's what this dog business industry needs. Let's do this
Speaker 2:[inaudible][inaudible],
Speaker 3:so today's court a coach's corner. I'm really excited because I get to share the first story on this one. This one rolls in. It's this a scenario. I'm actually not going to share names because this was a private coaching session. However, one of our real life clients owns out booming on the outside dog boarding daycare facility. We're talking, they're running a hundred to 150 dogs through their facility facility on a daily basis. I'm on the outside. It looks massive and impressive and highly successful. But what we're talking about today is the toxic pricing on the inside of your business. You don't always pay attention to. And a lot of you guys don't know how to run easy formulas on this stuff. So today we're going to be talking about whether or not your pricing's actually shooting her in the foot. Uh, so in this particular situation I was running a pricing check, uh, to look at a possible increase going into 2020 for a client. And a lot of you guys know that, you know, looking at your prices and possible increases are always a healthy thing. And so I'm looking at his pricing. I'm checking the boarding and you know, I go through the increase, their check looks good, go through, uh, the daycare costs, everything looks good, their check. And I get down to the boarding and training. And I wanted to share with you guys what I did to break down his financials to figure out what we call a profit margin, which basically means the money that you have left over after providing a service. Okay, Maggie, those are some fancy learning words. There is some fancy words, there's some fancy words that make a huge difference. So we want to have big robust margins and not skinny, a mini, teeny tiny yellow polka dot bikini margins. I dunno, I just made that up anyway. We want healthy margins. Otherwise what will happen? And just like in this client's case, they're busy as a motherfucker, right? And they have enough volume that the volume of the company was actually covering up from a very toxic pricing structure that they have in their board and train. Um, so I'm going to break down how I figured out that their profit margin was only just over$2. Um, every single day that they have a warden trained dog. And I think the, I don't actually don't have the numbers down in front of me. I should, but that's okay. You guys can pull out your calculators. Um, and their overall margin per board and train contract was like something stunning, like$37. Right? So first of all, what, why did, why did somebody miss this? I'm going to tell you guys very easily when we're dealing with things that have little numbers like daycare, you know, a$40 per day daycare expense that feels and looks different as a business owner when you're looking at that number versus a board and trained contract, um, their board and train contract. So their boarding costs are$40. We're$40. We've actually raised them. But then when I went back to look at their training, or average cost was$1,700 for a two week board and train. Now here's where the problem came up, right? So the board and train contracts is a much higher number. It prevents people from looking deeply at that number. So all I did is I took that board and train costs and I first removed any expenses that they naturally incur. Things like those of you guys that buy collars and leashes or goodies or even gifts or things that you want to be able to give back to your clients. The expenses on that, on that board and training contract needs to be taken out. So I took that out and I took that remaining number, uh, which is very easy to do for you guys. And I multiplied that this is not, this is not a complex math molds or sorry, divided it by the number of days in the program, right? So that would be 14. So it was a$1,700 board and train contract. I removed$600 of expenses and then I divided that number by 14 days. That gave me my, uh, or they're, in this case, their average costs per day. Right? And so very easily I was able to then remove the cost of boarding, which was easy to find,$40 for boarding. What was left was that$2 and some change, profit margin. Simply breaking it down in that way for this client was huge. Cause at first it was like$1,700 to them in their area. Felt like a comparable or fair number to be charging for board and trains. But when we broke it down to what that profit margin actually looks like, all of a sudden he had the realization very easily, very quickly that Holy shit, they're not just, you know, the profit margin is not just that they're actually losing money because they have to pay higher expenses for payroll because you need a higher quality employee to train the dogs to make those contracts. Um, so whatever your actual costs are, you have to keep that in mind and be able to go back to a basic business and personal budget, which is a whole different topic that's been in coach's corner a lot recently is having a basic understanding and knowledge and knowledge and running your business expenses. Very, very critical. We find most people aren't doing that adequately. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I feel like this is something that there's not a lot of awareness around. I'm trying to say it delicately. Like I feel a lot of entrepreneurs are budgeting as a nine to five and there's a total difference between, okay you have your own personal budget, like your daily living expenses, your kids, your family, your home or whatever. And then you have your business budget. So when there's like this is like mesh and cohesive cohesion of everything all mixed together, that's where you get really fucked up. Like that fucked up a tripped up in the finances. What Maggie has created and what night is so good at like she's about to go through my fucking personal fucking budget, like my personal banking and shit is you have to start looking at the numbers. And also this is something that is taken me a long time to get awareness around it. I'm finally at a place is looking at them without emotions too. Does that make sense? And looking at them for the numbers, the binary, which what they are at the end of the day. So yeah, it's the words I feel that should never be in the conversation around your programs and pricing. Oh, I feel like that's too high. Well, what do the numbers say? Um, you know, you guys as entrepreneurs, and as Kristen was saying, there's a difference between being an entrepreneur, owning your own business and being a nine to five or a nine to five or means that you're on what's called a fixed income. No matter how sick you are that week, no matter what happens, you're earning the same amount week by week, month by month, year by year. That might adjust quarter to quarter. If you get a raise or something, but it's a fixed income, it doesn't change. Maybe you might get a bonus, but again, you're not in control over those things. As a business owner, you're literally in control over the assets you bring in as much as you personally are smart enough to do to in terms of bringing value and then organizing that business around your value. Yeah. And so when you don't run basic numbers like this on your programs and pricing, and most of you guys just don't know how, it's not that you purposely opted out, it's a, nobody's fucking sat down and tell you any of this shit. You know, you might be aware that you need to learn more, but like where do you go? Especially when it comes to this kind of, you know, this specific style of business. Um, so yeah, it's an imperative. First step in running those basic numbers is, well, how much do you need to know? How much does your business need to make anyway, right? How much you need to bring in to even get to the other, you know, steps in what you want to achieve. Do you want a facility? Do you want to buy property? Do you want to, you know, save up to get a new used car or whatever the case is. You've got to preplan those things. Nine times out of time, nine times out of 10 what Kristen and I find is when people don't pay attention, they'll go through spurts of making lots of money, even if their prices are higher, our healthy range. But if you're not paying attention to your finances behind the scene, because this is going to spend all that shit and end up broken two months anyway. Yup. Every fucking smart ass entrepreneur slash sales person and something. Also, I want to put a put on the side too. It's like if you're only in hyper-focusing on your finances or accounting, like they do have purpose. They do have purpose. I love all my camp CPAs and audit or auditors out there, bookkeepers, but they don't break it down the way that Maggie's kind of breaking down. So Maggie, like where would you learn how to do this type of stuff? So the difference is there's basic bookkeeping. It's like basic bitch bookkeeping, right? Where you're just, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There's, and there's nothing against bookkeepers. There's nothing against accountants, but you're just like higher class bookkeepers, whatever. Like there's a time and a place. However, that's different from wealth creation and financial strategy. Two totally different. A lot of business owners, unless they've been through this, first of all and Orban educated, we tend to confuse accountants. Like back in the day, I used to take more complicated questions back to an accountant or back to a tax person thinking that I knew that I was taking it to the right person. In fact, these are not the people you necessarily want to be taking. Financial strategy advice from strategy, law, everything else. Perfect. Exactly. Cause we're not talking about just helping you keep your money organized. We're talking about you coming up with a system that you then give to somebody else and say I want you to org to keep my system organized in this way. That's the difference between you guys going out and getting an accountant or bookkeeper and me going out and choosing an accountant and a bookkeeper. I'm going to choose a professional that's open to me, teaching them how they're going to view and manage my assets and then I do most of the work. I have them double check certain things and that's why I have them on board. Um, but I steer the financial wheel because you're the only person that's going to do that in your bus interest if you're not already doing it to a certain level, you be hiring somebody to outsource that stuff. Anyway. Basic bookkeeping, basic bitch bookkeeping's one thing like I said, but this is, you know, keeping a tab on your finances and managing your money and the next level that's beyond those two
Speaker 4:professions or job titles. Yeah, yeah. Cause I feel like, so when we first work with a lot of entrepreneurs, especially the dog business entrepreneurs, it's like, okay, let me run this by my account. And it's like, yes, it's always been to run numbers. Sometimes by account I just saw your face. But at the same time it's like, all right, we need to also start to, it's almost like this delegate, it's almost back to that delegation of fact of like, it's almost like scary to look at the numbers. It's like, here, take this. I don't want to deal with it. But the more you start to learn around numbers and the more you get comfortable where your profits are, where your money's gone, where's this has gone, where this has gone, where if you even have shares available in your company, the more you are going to be, I don't even want to use the word empowered, but you're going to feel you're not going to be, you just know you're going to operate at a different level. So like for example, you know something happened just for example, all of your clients drop dead one day in a plane crash or something like that. You have a plan for attrition, you have a business continuity plan. It was built into your financial management systems around your financial literacy. Right. And I feel like there's just so much secrecy around the financial literacy and like I'll, I'll fucking share my story. Like I've had issues around financials cause I was in student loan debt from coronally dollars and it wasn't until like I sat down with Maggie, you know, before we were in partners and just kind of look at this like for what it is and have the stripes around and have an idea of why the cash is coming in, where this has gone, where's that going versus allocated to. It wasn't until that I was like, Oh shit, it's actually not that ax. A lot of people always, it's like this thing of like where we always freak out and like, Oh my God, what am I going to do? And it's so funny and grassroots. We're just like, it's going to be all right. And when there's a lot of people down, either we're just like, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 3:And when it comes to money, if you're not managing your finances, your emotions are going to manage them for you and it's not going to look pretty. That's the bottom line. You could have very little cashflow coming in and not be in a, in a place of uh, isolation or fear or freaking out about finances because you have a plan, you know what you're doing and it does empower you because now you can focus on bringing more in instead of focusing. And this is why accountants and everything you gotta be really careful cause their job is to only look at the numbers that are in the bank. And as an entrepreneur, that's not where you live. You live at creating abundance later on down the road. So for example, when we got another invite to join a Richard Branson on Necker Island again this year, I immediately messaged Kristen and I was like, you know, cool. If we decide do this. Like here's what I'm thinking, here's, here's a quick strategy of how to include that piece into our budget that wasn't otherwise included. It's not a big deal. It's barely even needs to be a conversation because we choose to do it as a thing. Like we'll be able to do it because that's what you do.
Speaker 4:I remember I, I'm going to, it's so funny. I remember first, first couple of years when I really started to invest in my businesses and you know, business coaching and just like investing in mentorships and coaching and like other things like to build up to where I needed to be. And I remember the accountant, I had looked at the numbers, they're like, this is a lot of like they actually were legit scared but my numbers matched up to where I was in a good place of where there was, there was no, I wasn't questioning it. Like there was nothing going on where I was fearful for my survival financial survival. Right. And like these are big numbers. Like we're talking to twos of 40 50, 60$200,000. Not even thinking about my other deaths and shit like my student loan debt. And it's just so interesting about mindset around this type of stuff. And it's like, to me it's like all right cool. So I put this amount of money out cause we, I allocated here here a year. Are these big numbers? Yeah. What they freaked me out 10 years ago. Abso-fucking-lutely and it was funny cause I was showing my husband last night and he's like, and he's an entrepreneur too, but he doesn't have that, that almost knowledge around it of where the big numbers coming out. And we're just saying it doesn't need to be fucking scary. Like the Richard Branson thing, it's like that guy messaged me, she's like, Oh shit again. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, you want to do it? Let's do it. Let's figure it out. And that, you know, the operating systems like, let's see what we need to do with this. Right.[inaudible]
Speaker 3:yeah. And it took like 10 minutes to figure it out. 10 minutes. I think it was like five like, Oh, it's this number. I'm like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't want to go to, I didn't want to be too honest. Cause then it just sounds unbelievable. I'm like, sorry my life. Geez. But yeah, it's, you know, it's, when you get used to that, all of a sudden you have power steering on your business in a way that you've never experienced before. And it does, it empowers you to an extent where you are just free to build what you need to build and to go through all of the other bullshit that's gonna be required of you regardless to be building your business and to be pivoting your business. Some of you guys are at a point where I am again and I've been a couple times where, you know, I'm successful. Okay, great. Like, Woohoo, I'm bored of it. What's the next thing that I am passionate about that I do want to take a risk on and reinvest back into? Um, that makes sense on the side because I mean why not? Actually that's a conversation I have not yet started with you, Kristen. But that's one thing I want to re recommit to and spend more my time on. Speaking of finances as giving back in 2020 is to have the time to re reallocate to that. Um, so you know, it's, you have all of the control in the world over your business and your finances. You are the only factor in any of this. Um, so figure out what you need to stabilize your shit and, and double check your numbers on your pricing to see if you're even charging enough to survive. Um, you can't make this just about the dogs anymore if you want to do it longterm. So,
Speaker 4:yeah, and I know we already passed the deadline, you know, the healthcare deadline was there. And as entrepreneurs, whenever we're responsible for our own healthcare insurance, where are we looking at United States? What do we don't have universal health care? So all the conservatives are gonna come out now and call me a snowflake. But it's like, no, I, and I've seen this before where people like, you guys shouldn't be on Medicaid when you're 30 years old because you can't fucking proportionals insurance. I'm just saying,
Speaker 3:well, if uh, we had Mike's that we didn't want to break, we would be dropping expensive bikes if we don't want to break. Yeah, don't do that. It says budgeting business budget is part operating expenses. Yeah. Well, and that's a whole different cup of tea that I'd almost like to go back to.
Speaker 4:Thanks
Speaker 3:your finances. So many people prioritize stupid ass shit above reinvesting back in their business, which is crazy to me. Or or reinvesting back into yourself. Health insurance. For example. I know a lot of you guys would rather pay 500 feel bad. You feel emotionally better about spending 500 bucks on your fucking dogs rather than making sure that you're covered with health insurance. Stop leaving your financial decisions and your pricing strategy up to your goddamn feelings.
Speaker 4:That's a mic drop right there. Cause you never know. You might get hit by a bus one day. You might get into a plane accident, may fall off the horse break. Your head happened to me so you have to be fucking covered. And plus two if you're the sole provider, it's just fucking some, or even like a life insurance[inaudible] on this thing right now. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, right, so get your shit together. Go back real. Listen to this. Listen to Maggie's little calculation of how she did it. She's not going to say it again, but just go back and rewind it. Go from there and rewatch this and get some really good stuff and really start to fucking fix your fucking shit or on finances. And
Speaker 3:I do want to throw out, so you guys, we do have a standalone business finances course[inaudible] so if any of you guys need a jumpstart on this and need just a system to be put in front of you, much like I did because I wasn't a Tory so I wasn't like not a numbers person. I'm I so like crafting this was a very big deal for me. You guys need a leg up, just let us know and work with you.
Speaker 4:Yup. With that too. Yup. Cool. All right. All right everybody. Well thank you for
Speaker 3:this way. So coach's corner, favorite ever. I mean, Kristen knows I get really jazz to teach people business finances because it's been such a struggle for me over the years and I have such a fucking passion for it now.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. And people, you know, you don't, it's not going to be the time to share, but you have a background around, you know, the whole thing of finances with you. And how you grew up and everything like that. So yeah, she gets really cracked out. It's, it's funny, she looks like William Defoe, she's like acting and like red eyes bug at her head of like I did when I was um, when I was just operating as a stand alone business coach. I did a retreat with mag as my clients run business finances and my clients really shoot Kay. She had a stroke around this, but it was just excitement. So anyway,
Speaker 3:it's funny cause it's true because it's such, it's such a game changer for people. They don't even realize like how much emotional bullshit we waste. Just not having basic stuff put together that really is not going to take you much time to manage. Once you have that system in place, it is a fucking game changer for your pricing, your programs like everything.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Everything. All right Maggie. Well this is a good one. I hope everybody gets a ton of value out of it. And by the way, it'd be love you accountants be lucky bookkeepers but stay your pay grade.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well yeah. That's where everybody like accountants, bookkeepers know your role because I know most of you guys are willing to ask questions you shouldn't be answering that are more financial strategy and for you, business owners also know your role. It's your responsibility to nail this. Don't give it to somebody else because they're not gonna. They're not gonna know how to do it for you. Only you can do that for you.
Speaker 4:Yup. All right. All right, everybody is good one. I'll talk to you all later by the forgotten
Speaker 1:aye. Hey there. Thank you for listening to another bad-ass episode of mind, your own dog business. If you haven't already subscribed, what are you waiting for? Oh my God. Go and subscribe now so you don't miss out on any of our content pack dog business jam sessions plus special offers that I'm gonna only be sharing with my amazing Doug business entrepreneurial podcast listeners. Now, if you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a five star kick ass review. So more amazing dog business owners just like yourself can find us and start to transform and disrupt their businesses and their lives unapologetically. And if you feel so inclined, feel free to tag me on Instagram with a screenshot of this episode and holler at your girl. I'm at dog Walker coach. You can find me dog Walker, coach, and I'll pop up and I'll give you a special shout out. All right guys, til next time. Bye.