or scroll down to get the highlights

Last week on the podcast I shared a strategy that will slash your “To Do List”, and show you how to be more effective by focusing on what your Business really needs now.

Today, you can be a fly on the wall as I walk an Inner Circle member through the process of figuring out what her business needs now, and setting her priorities for the balance of the year.

Kelli Meyer is a “newish” Inner Circle Member who was feeling overwhelmed by all the things on her “To Do List”. She knew that she had more work on her list than she can manage, but she had no idea what she should work on first.

She was overwhelmed and stuck, so she asked for help in our private Member’s group.

It’s common for people like us to have trouble identifying the tasks that should be a priority vs the tasks that can wait.

When I saw Kelli’s post, I knew I could help. So I invited her to jump on a call with me and we could figure out her priorities.

Together, we walked through the  process of:

• Getting clarity on the outcome Kelli wants this year
• Refining her outcome to make specific and measurable
• Slashing the number of tasks on her “To Do List”
• Identifying what her Business needs right now
• Specific tasks Kelli should outsource
• Deciding on the tasks that are her priority work

We also talked about the one common mistake that will keep you overwhelmed all the time.

See how you can use this process by watching my session with Kelly, or scroll down to listen to our session.

Listen for:

• The common mistake that will keep you feeling overwhelmed.
• The “aha”moment when Kelly identifies what her business needs now.
• Susan shares an extra little gem: The secret to conversion.

Use this simple process every time you feel “decision overwhelm”, and reach your goals faster.

Once you’ve decided on your priorities, it’s common for it to be difficult to find the time to get this work done. It was a challenge that I had struggled with for years, until I finally got some help.

Now I have a process that has changed everything for me. I knew that if I was able to transform the way I manage my work, you can too, so I asked my coach to jump on a call with me and share the process that I’ve learned. You can listen here.

Links mentioned in this episode:
https://thesocialsalesgirls.com/a-hot-tip-that-will-make-you-money-episode-154/

Grab the Guide, Emails that Sell here:
https://learn.thesocialsalesgirls.com/emails-that-sell-guide/

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

or scroll down to get the highlights

What if I could show you how you can slash your giant list of things to do? 

I’m going to give you my process, so you could slash that list today. When you do, I promise, you’ll be more effective, you’ll make measurable progress, and you’ll feel better about how you spend your time.

How do I slash my “To Do List” without creating more stress?

The goal is to reduce the tasks on your list and feel confident that everything won’t fall apart.

You start by realizing that you’ll have a bigger impact on your results if you focus on doing a great job on a few areas of your business, rather than spending your work time rushing through your list and checking off a bunch of tasks.

When you’re in “check off” mode, you’re often not clear on why you’re doing the work, and you’re not asking yourself this one important question:

What does my business need right now?

When we’re in a state of overwhelm, most of us can’t see the answer. We see every task on our list as “important. That creates a sense of urgency, and it’s why we always feel like we’re behind.

A big “To Do List” is the Kiss of Death for people like us.

When you’ve got a big list of important things to do, you’re likely to be in high gear, dipping in and out of projects all the time. You feel like you’re working hard, and you’re doing the things you’re supposed to focus on, but you probably don’t feel confident that you’re on the right track. It feels messy and hard, and you wonder if you’re wasting your time.

Or, you might be the opposite. You might have a huge list of things you know you should do, but you still feel stuck. You know that you don’t have the time and resources to do all the things on your list. You want to work smart, but you can’t get clarity on where to start, and what will have the most impact on your results. You’re experiencing decision overwhelm, and you feel like you’re wasting your time.

Wasting time is more expensive than wasting money.

Don’t risk doing a little of a lot of things, but not completing anything. 

Imagine that you have a piece of lumber setup with 10 nails that you need to finish hammering into the lumber. You’re allowed to hit the nails 10 times.

If you hit each nail 1 time, you’ll start 10 nails, but you won’t finish nailing any of them into the lumber. And in fact, you might not even be able to see that you’ve done anything.

But if you choose to focus on just 2 nails, and hit them 5 times each, you’ll finish hammering in 2 nails. You’ll be able to see the impact of your 10 hits. You’ll be clear and confident about the progress you’ve made, and what’s left to do.

Give yourself permission to remove tasks from your plate, so you can focus, and see the impact of your efforts.

3 steps to deciding what your business needs right now

1. You have to start at the end to find where you should begin.

When we’re prioritizing, it’s too hard to sort through and make assessments about all the things we “could” do. So we don’t make a decision. We default to “doing all the things” or we spin in circles, analyzing our options from all angles, and ending up exhausted.

When I’m working with a client, I always ask them about outcomes, usually in the form of a question like this:

If you woke up X months from now, and ONE thing had changed in your business, what would that ONE thing be?

Try it. Ask yourself  – start with 3 months.

In your perfect world, what would have changed in your business in 3 months?

When you focus on outcomes, it gives you clarity on the destination. Once you know where you’re headed, you can make a plan to get there.

Here are some examples of an outcome:

• My sales have grown
• I’m emailing my list and getting more sales
• I’ve got more time to do marketing because some tasks are off my plate

2. Make your outcome specific and measurable.

If you’re headed to a vacation rental in a city 500 miles away, would you ask for directions to the city, or would you use the address to get directions that take you all the way to your rental?

You’ll make better decisions when you take the time to get specific about your outcome.
You’ll come closer to achieving your outcome when you find a way to measure your progress.

Here are some examples of how to make outcomes specific and measurable:

Add specifics to your outcome
From: My sales have grown
To: My sales have grown by 10% each month. I’m tracking my sales in a spreadsheet every week.

From: I’m emailing my list and getting more sales
To: My Welcome, Abandoned Cart, and Browse Abandonment flows are complete, and I have sent a campaign every week. I have a spreadsheet to track my campaign sales and I have identified my 4 best campaigns.

From: I’ve got more time to do marketing because some tasks are off my plate
To: I have freed up 2 hours a day. I have a customer service app and I have trained my new Customer Service VA to manage all  customer service inquiries. I have created canned responses and training videos so that my VA has the information she needs to do the job, and we’ll be covered if we have to train someone else on this job.

3. Work in your zone of genius 

Give yourself permission to stop doing all the things. Even though you think you can’t afford to get the help you need, I’m going to encourage you to change how you think about this.

I see too many store owners bogged down and frustrated by tasks that aren’t in their zone of genius.

If you’re hesitant to hire for tasks, I would encourage you to start with “one time” tasks.

These are often set ups or installations that require a particular set of skills. A few good examples are things like upgrading the theme on your store, or custom coding, or migrating to a new email provider, or setting up the framework for email automations.

Before you hire someone to do a task, you must understand the outcome you want, and have a clear picture of what a good result looks like.

Remind yourself that you don’t have unlimited time or unlimited energy. Like money, time and energy are resources. When you spend them doing work that is not in your zone of genius, or that you’re not even good at, you’re spending your high value resources on work that you’re not qualified to do.

It’s like hiring the CEO of a fortune 500 company to rewire your house.

This Blog Post and Podcast will show you how to budget for this:
https://thesocialsalesgirls.com/how-to-have-more-cash-in-your-business-episode-164/

Remember this when you’re facing overwhelm:

Give yourself permission to slash your to-do list. You’ll be more effective, you’ll make measurable progress, and you’ll feel better about how you spend your time.

• When you’re deciding on your priorities, ask yourself “What does my business need right now”.
• Focus on specific, measurable outcomes, and use them to decide what your business needs.
• Work in your zone of genius as much as you can. Wasting time is more expensive than wasting money.

Next week on the podcast, I’m going to show you an example of this process, so you can see how you might apply it to your to-do list. I’ll be working with an Inner Circle Member, so you can see how we identify her outcome, and then prioritize her work.

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

or scroll down to get the highlights

Pricing to Maximize Profit

Today I’m sharing a pricing strategy that most store owners don’t use.

Once you understand how it works, and start implementing it in your store, you’ll have the potential to be much more profitable.

Most importantly, you’ll have a better understanding of how to pay yourself, hire help, and make your business profitable for the long term.

Before we dive in to what how you can price your products for.

The pricing error that could put you out of business

Most people have their own system for setting their retail prices. Many store owners use a target gross margin percentage, and apply that markup to every item in their store. Others simply set their retail prices at a multiple of the cost of the product.

Even though these strategies seem solid, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be profitable.
It’s completely possible that you could find yourself losing money every month, because the actual profit in dollars and cents is not enough to cover your expenses.

Try a different way to calculate the selling price of your products

Instead of using a formula, try setting your prices based on Margin Contribution dollars. You decide on a minimum amount of Margin Contribution revenue your products must generate.
When each product must contribute a minimum profit in dollars, you can avoid costly pricing mistakes and meet your minimum Margin Contribution by bundling products together or even eliminating products that don’t generate enough profit.

How to make sure you get paid and have funds available to hire help

In this episode I share the sneaky little strategy that will give you the funds you need to pay yourself and be confident that you can afford to hire help.

It’s a little exercise that anyone can do. I think you’ll love it!

Even if you hate the numbers, you can do this

As store owners, we tend to focus on our products and on growing our sales. Most of us don’t spend much time analyzing our finances, and many of us are simply not comfortable when it comes to conversations about money in our businesses. I understand that, because for many years I felt that same way. One day I was finally fed up with paying late filing fees and getting financial surprises, and I decided to get on track and understand this part of the business.

It’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I’ve learned that everything is fixable, and that you actually can be more profitable when you have the information you need to make good decisions.

In the episode, I mention this video and podcast episode:

Video: https://thesocialsalesgirls.com/the-secret-to-getting-paid/

Podcast Episode 43: https://thesocialsalesgirls.com/forget-everything-you-think-you-know-about-pricing-and-be-profitable-episode-43/

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

or scroll down to get the highlights

Recently I recorded a podcast episode about cash flow, and how Ecommerce store owners often don’t understand why they are chronically short of cash in their businesses.

After the episode was released several store owners reached out to me to share their struggles with cash flow. Some were looking for advice, but many just wanted to express their thanks for normalizing a topic that is embarrassing and often creates feelings of failure.

Karen Steuer is a long time client, and owner of Tangled Roots Herbal, a multi six figure business that includes a brick and mortar location and an ecommerce shop.

Karen has been struggling with cash flow for some time, and needs some advice. She’s at the point where she’s exhausted by the stress, and wants to solve her cash flow problem this year, even if it means that she needs to make some hard decisions.

I asked Karen if she’d be willing to jump on call with me so I could have a look at her current situation and give her some recommendations about how she can create a plan to move forward with more cash in her business.

Karen has generously allowed me to share our conversation. We agree that any store owner can follow the process we used to check the financial health of their business.

If you prefer to listen, scroll to the bottom.

Here’s what we did:

I asked Karen to send me her year to date income statement and balance sheet.

When you have a cash flow issue, it’s highly emotional, and most of us think that we can work our way out by working harder and selling more.

The truth is, that way of thinking keeps us where we are. The best way forward is to take a step back and look at the facts. Even though it’s uncomfortable, we need to start with the data.

Is the Business profitable?

I used the year to date  [4 months] data from Tangled Roots Herbal Income Statement to gather the data below:

YTD income:  $72,570
YTD cost of goods:  $37,216
YTD gross margin:   48.8%

Calculate gross margin by 100% minus (Cost of goods / income) 

Tangled Roots Herbal has an average gross margin of 48.8%.

In simple terms, on every $10 of sales, Tangled Roots makes a profit of $4.80.

Tangled Roots margin of 48.8% generates:
YTD Gross Profit on sales: $35,414.

Tangled Roots expenses are:
YTD Expenses: $49,407.

Tangled Roots has a YTD Loss of $13,993.

4 months into the year, Tangled Roots Herbal is losing about $3,500/month

When we looked at the expenses, there was one expense that stood out as too high.

The Company’s wage expenses are $22,930, which represents 32% of the total sales, and a whopping 46.4% of their total expenses.

This amount includes labor in the physical location and the cost of various contractors. 

It does not include any owner’s wages.

Typical wage costs for product based business should be 15% to 18% sales.

At 18% of sales, the upper limit wage spend for Tangled Roots Herbal is about $3,240 a month.

Year to date, the average monthly wage spend is $5,732, almost $2,500 over the recommended upper limit wage budget each month.

Recommendation #1:
Get a plan to bring monthly wage spend to 18% of total sales in Q3 and Q4.

Cutting expenses is not a long term solution to cash flow shortages.

Even though I think it’s imperative that Karen cut her wage expenses to 18% of her monthly sales, for Tangled Roots, like most product based businesses, simply cutting expenses will not make the company profitable for the long term.

In an established business like Tangled Roots Herbal, the expenses incurred to operate the business, including owner’s pay, need to be covered by the gross profit.

In product based businesses, the gross profit is dictated by the margin we set on our products.

When Karen gets wages to 18% of sales, she’ll free up about $2500 a month.

Year to date, the business is losing about $3500/month.

She must get her wages down and more.

The pricing mistake that will kill your business.

Tangled Roots has a margin problem, and that’s the root cause of the cash flow issue.

Even though many people think a gross margin of 48.8% is normal, it doesn’t tell the real story.

It might surprise you to learn that gross margin percent is much less important than your gross profit  (margin dollars).

The simple fact is that Tangled Roots Herbal is not generating enough margin dollars to cover their expenses.

When I reviewed Karen’s website, I could see why her gross profit is low.

The bulk of the products in the store and on the website sell for less than $10, and that’s where the problem starts.

Even though the margin % seems “enough”, Tangled Roots is not generating enough margin contribution dollars to cover their expenses.

Here’s an example of how low the profit actually is:
Tumbled stones: $5.45 = $2.65 profit
Incense: $12.95 = $6.32 profit
Chakra Candles: $19.99 = $9.75 profit

Recommendation #2:
Set a minimum margin contribution dollar amount for every product sold.
Raise prices to reach the margin contribution dollar minimum where possible.
Bundle products to reach the margin contribution dollar minimum.

Can Tangled Roots Herbal return to profitability?

Karen can absolutely make her business profitable again. She’ll need to make some hard decisions, but she has lots of options. Now that she knows the facts, she can make good decisions that will pay her well in the future.

As online Retailers, we need to remember that we control the messaging of our business. We get to decide who our ideal customer is, and we have the power to put together products and messaging at a price that will appeal to our customers and make a profit for our businesses.

Tangled Roots Herbal is a specialist business that caters to people who have an interest or a passion for the products. Karen can let go of her “rules” about pricing, margin, and creating a selection of products and services that fill the needs of a broad audience with a variety of interests. Over the next few months, she can decide on who her products are “for”, modify her offers and pricing to serve that niche, and create messaging and stories that appeal to her perfect people.

By the end of the year, she can reduce her expenses, narrow her inventory and increase her margin so that she can finish the year on a high note.

Next Steps:

I left Karen with three things she can do now to get back on track.

1. Run an Event that will generate some quick cash this month. I recommend that Karen start liquidating some of her low margin, fringe products. The goal is to sell out and recover some cash.
2. Take a few days to think about what you want the business to look like by the end of the year. Who are you serving? What are you selling, and what is your scalable product? Create a one line elevator sentence for your vision. Create and promote a 100% digital product that you can sell online. Your biggest opportunity for long term profit is online. Your online sales are up 22% year to date, while your brick and mortar sales are down 15%. I recommend you work towards closing your store and selling online only.
3. Your gross margin needs to be 70% for you to break even. Start this work now.

Karen has promised to get started and report on her progress. I’m excited to see what she can accomplish in the next few months.

If you’re struggling with cash flow, and your books are not up to date, that is your first step. Get it done now. Your data will be the key to solving your problem.

Find the episode about cash flow here: https://thesocialsalesgirls.com/how-to-have-more-cash-in-your-business-episode-164/

Learn how to stop wasting money: https://thesocialsalesgirls.com/youre-probably-wasting-money-on-this-episode-134/

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.

New FREE Course

GROW YOUR SALES

(without breaking the bank)

Conversion School is a step by step process to grow your sales,
without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies, or discounting your products.

Works for Ecommerce stores at all stages.

Start getting consistent sales, and see significant sales growth every month.