Uncovering Hidden Profit: Empowering Entrepreneurs to Fuel Their Purpose

Jamie Trull is a seasoned CPA and corporate accounting veteran turned entrepreneur. Founder of "Power in Numbers," Jamie specializes in teaching small business owners how to uncover hidden profits and strategically manage their finances. With her new book "Hidden Profit," she offers insights on finding profitability to fuel life and business goals. Jamie is known for her engaging teaching style which resonates primarily with women entrepreneurs, helping them overcome financial uncertainties to build sustainable, purpose-driven businesses.

Episode Summary:

In this engaging episode of Talking Shizzle, host Taylor Wilson sits down with Jamie Trull, a dynamic female entrepreneur and the brain behind "Power in Numbers." Jamie is celebrated for her unique approach to helping small business owners discover hidden profits within their operations. With her upcoming book, "Hidden Profit," Jamie aims to debunk the myths around financial management for entrepreneurs, especially women who typically doubt their fiscal strategies. The conversation sheds light on embracing financial strategy to drive both personal and professional objectives.

Jamie Trull shares her journey from being a corporate accountant to pursuing entrepreneurship out of necessity and personal choice when faced with a career crossroads. Her empathetic style and insight have amplified her impact, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when she pivoted to offer crucial financial advice through her online platforms. Jamie introduces concepts like 'Profit Levers' and 'Profit Planning,' encouraging listeners to realign their financial habits to foster lucrative business ecosystems. Her candid discussion emphasizes the alignment of profit with purpose, challenging the conventional narrative around financial success and its correlation with societal impact.

Key Takeaways:

• Jamie emphasizes the significant potential of women entrepreneurs in using profit to fuel purpose-driven initiatives, highlighting the economic ripple effect when women thrive financially.
• The episode covers strategic approaches like adjusting pricing and cost management, presenting these as pivotal levers to unlock hidden profits.
• Jamie’s 'Profit Planning' method offers a structured way to allocate profits towards personal and business goals, underpinning a balanced financial strategy.
• The importance of frequent review and adjustment of pricing is stressed, aligning this with market demand and operational scalability.
• Jamie challenges the misconception that profit is at odds with purpose, instead advocating for profit as a means to enable broader social impact and personal fulfillment.

Resources:

• Jamie Trull’s website: jamietrull.com
• YouTube Channel: Jamie Trull
• Book: Hidden Profit - pre-order available on her website, releasing October 21st.
• Relay Financial: Business banking service mentioned for managing multiple accounts efficiently.

Tune into this episode to discover how Jamie Trull’s insights can transform your approach to financial management in your business, uncover hidden profits, and drive both purpose and profitability. Stay connected for more impactful episodes on Talking Sh

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Transcript

0:00:00 Taylor Wilson: This is the Talking Shizzle show where we meet entrepreneurs who are shaking things up. Let’s go. Hey there, friends. Taylor here. I’m so excited about this new fresh episode of Talking Shizzle. Today I get to sit down with Jamie Trull, who is just an amazing woman, a female entrepreneur, and she has a new book coming out called Hidden Profit. She is the founder of Power in Numbers and she helps small business owners find hidden profit that’s just hiding under the rug, which we all have. And she’s just a master at helping people implement really simple best practices for their finances so that they can run a profitable and purpose driven business.

0:00:51 Taylor Wilson: I hope you really enjoy this episode. I’m really excited about this season. We are just getting started. We are just kicking off, we really to focus on helping you figure out how to grow your business. And so I’m excited about the season where we’re going to be bringing on a lot of cool entrepreneurs and marketers and people who grow their businesses and people like Jamie who can help you figure out how to do it with getting your numbers right.

0:01:20 B: All right.

0:01:21 Taylor Wilson: Hello, Jamie. How are you doing today?

0:01:23 Jamie Trull: I’m doing great, Taylor. Thanks for having me.

0:01:25 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I’m excited about this conversation and I want to just jump right into it with you. So you’re the founder of Power Numbers. You have a book that is about to launch. It’s right around the corner, Hidden Profit. You do a lot of work with helping small businesses and entrepreneurs really get a wrangle on their finances and figure out how to find hidden profit, but also how to take profit and have it fuel your purpose.

0:01:54 Taylor Wilson: So there’s a lot there. I’m gonna get in it. There’s a lot there. I’m really excited about talking to you about this. But first, let’s get going with. Just tell me why you even started your business in the first place.

0:02:07 Jamie Trull: Yeah, I mean, there’s a long story, but I will shorten it that basically I worked in corporate for a long time and so I was in corporate accounting. I’m a CPA by background and. And really was happy in my corporate role. But then I was actually pregnant with kid number two and my. I was actually working myself out of a job. So my job was going away. It was moving to London. So it was either I figure something out or I moved to London. But I also was, you know, six months pregnant at the time. So probably not the best time to be moving my entire family overseas. So.

0:02:43 Jamie Trull: So we opted instead to. We were in Atlanta at the time to move closer to home. And I really thought I would end up back in the corporate world, but I’d always kind of had this entrepreneurial bug and it was really mostly about freedom. I think that’s the reason a lot of people, and especially moms choose this life is because it gets harder. You know, I had a toddler and a baby and so just, you know, with the reality of that was I wanted a life that was, you know, what I thought would be easier to manage. Which is funny now thinking about it. It is in some ways, in other ways, not as much.

0:03:17 Jamie Trull: But I think it started with, okay, what can I do that can help people from home? Right. How can I actually build something that makes money for our family from, you know, the confines of my office? And so I started working one to one first with business owners to help them with their finances, mainly as a virtual cfo. So I’m really big on the strategy side of numbers. I can talk taxes, I can talk bookkeeping, but I love financial strategy. How to be more profitable in your business.

0:03:47 D: Right.

0:03:47 Jamie Trull: And so that’s what I helped business owners with. And then kind of along the way figured out how much I love teaching. I was doing originally just to have a pipeline of clients for my business. And then I really maxed out on the number of clients I could serve. And, you know, I just realized, you know what, I could serve a lot more people if I just lean into the teaching element. And so I really went towards becoming a financial educator and doing things like Facebook Live trainings, and then it became YouTube trainings. And now that’s. My entire business is just educating small business, primarily women, not entirely, but primarily about their business, finances, how to be more profitable. And like you said, to also use that profit to fund the life that you want and the causes that you want.

0:04:34 D: Right.

0:04:35 Jamie Trull: So that’s really what drives me in the business that I have today to.

0:04:40 Taylor Wilson: You don’t do any one on one consulting work anymore. You are all like a content creator slash educator.

0:04:47 Jamie Trull: Yep. So now I have, I have group programs and things like that that I sell. So that’s really where our revenue comes from those programs. It also comes from various different, you know, we have affiliate relationships with brands that I recommend for things like accounting software, stuff like that. So that’s really where we’ve picked, pivoted towards is just trying to provide as much value as we can.

0:05:08 Jamie Trull: And it’s been really great. It grew really fast. I started the business in, in 2019 in this way. I pivoted from my one to one to being, you know, more of an educator. And it was right before the COVID 19 pandemic happened.

0:05:23 D: Right.

0:05:24 Jamie Trull: And so I actually was in a good position because I had pretty much off boarded most of my one to one clients by the time the pandemic hit. And so that allowed me to actually pivot my content entirely to helping business owners navigate through Covid. So nobody wants to learn how to be more profitable in their business when their business is shut down. And so that’s what grew my YouTube channel so fast, is that I was live almost every day talking about things like PPP loans, tax credits, you know, grants that were available to help businesses through that difficult time.

0:06:01 Jamie Trull: And so that made all the difference. And that also really invigorated me. I look back at that time, I’m very, I feel very lucky to have been in a place where I could help, like my skills of going and, you know, reading these congressional bills that were coming out and interpreting it. You know, I was the director of technical accounting, so I understood how to read something that was really difficult and then translate in it in a way that makes sense to people. So I’m really thankful to have had that opportunity. And that’s really, you know, what built my business to begin with. And so now, you know, I. I just help business owners be prepared for whatever might come to, you know, again, be more profitable in their business. Be prepared for things like taxes and be prepared for, you know, we never know. Hopefully it’s not another pandemic, but often there’s something. It’s, you know, the economy or whatever, there’s a million things that can happen.

0:06:58 Jamie Trull: And I just want to help business owners be more prepared for that financially.

0:07:02 B: Yeah.

0:07:03 Taylor Wilson: Wow, what a cool time to like, make that pivot and like, be able to find the relevance for yourself and your business. And making that pivot right around that time. I think that’s really kind of fascinating and interesting and, and cool that it’s worked so well for you.

0:07:20 Jamie Trull: Yeah.

0:07:21 Taylor Wilson: You know, because we didn’t.

0:07:24 Jamie Trull: I was just gonna say we didn’t charge anything. Like, I, at the time, I didn’t charge a single thing for any of what I was doing because it felt like more of a calling, you know, And I think that that’s the dream.

0:07:36 D: Right.

0:07:36 Jamie Trull: Sometimes I’m chasing that feeling still where it was so evident what I was supposed to be showing up and doing. But the knock on effect of giving.

0:07:44 D: Right.

0:07:45 Jamie Trull: When we give of ourselves, truly without expectation in return, it comes back in spades. And that is what I’ve seen In the support for my business. You know, since then, I think like the trust that was generated really has helped. I mean, that’s where, where this book came from.

0:08:02 D: Right.

0:08:03 Jamie Trull: Like this book deal came from the support that was generated during that time. This, it wouldn’t have happened without it. And so I can kind of now see a little bit more of like, oh, that was the story that was being created in the moment. We have no idea. But looking back, it’s really evident, like how one thing leads to another. Leads to another.

0:08:21 D: Right?

0:08:22 B: Yeah, yeah, I love that.

0:08:24 Taylor Wilson: I love that story. That’s such a good story. All right, let’s. Let’s get into the book. Okay, I’m going to read. This is from the opening intro. I’m going to kind of go over here to my notes here real quick. If I can get my, my screens moved around. Oh, gosh, you know how it goes when you’ve got multiple screens on. Okay, so the very opening in the introduction of your book, it states, I own a small business.

0:08:47 Taylor Wilson: I own a small service based business. And I’m embarrassed to even admit this, but I’m so incredibly bad with managing money. I wish I had someone to hold my hand on a monthly basis and tell me my budget, tell me what, what I can pay myself and help me out of this mess. I know I’m not dumb, but I just don’t get it. Just, oh, that opening line spoke to me so much as a small business owner who has started a big bootstrapped business.

0:09:17 Taylor Wilson: And I know that it must resonate. And those are probably the types of people and lines that you hear all the time.

0:09:25 Jamie Trull: Yeah, yeah.

0:09:27 Taylor Wilson: Why is that who you wrote this book for? Tell me more about why you wrote this book.

0:09:31 Jamie Trull: Absolutely. So I think that what I’ve realized in, in doing this teaching, right. I started out teaching, thinking. I’m gonna teach people strategies, right? That’s what I’m gonna do. And as long as they have the strategies that they’re good to go. And what I realized is there’s so much more to talking about finances, talking about money than that. Because there’s so much that we hold inside ourselves. Again, especially women.

0:09:57 Jamie Trull: I don’t think it’s uniquely to women, but I do think that women, there’s so much, that there’s so much baggage there with our own life experience or the things that we’ve been told or the things we’ve told ourselves, right. About our own abilities. And, and it really comes to a head when we start a business and that business starts, you know, Picking up and doing well. But then we wonder, like, what are we missing? Am I doing this right? You know, and we start second guessing everything when it comes to the money aspect. And we make it a lot harder than it needs to be.

0:10:27 Jamie Trull: And that’s why most of my teaching is just reminding people it’s actually, it’s. It’s math, but it’s just basic math. Like, this is like math my, my third grader could do. And we make it so much harder than that and we berate ourselves about it and we. It brings up so many emotions and feelings. And so part of what I teach is not just here are the strategies, but how do we navigate through these emotions and feelings and these things that kind of keep us where we are and that, you know, whatever that is. Shame, past decisions, things like that, that stop us from moving forward. So I really wanted people to see themselves in the book. This is not a book for people who are really good at numbers and are like, oh, I love numbers.

0:11:07 D: Right.

0:11:08 Jamie Trull: This is a book for people like, yes, sure, you know, you can get something out of that too, if you’re a numbers lover.

0:11:14 D: Right.

0:11:14 Jamie Trull: But this is a book for people who normally maybe wouldn’t pick up a business finance book they wouldn’t be thinking about, you know, oh, I want to read about accounting and finance. It’s written in a way that’s a lot more relatable and from the heart.

0:11:28 D: Right?

0:11:29 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I love that I. It resonates with me so much because I’m not a numbers person. I’m terrible at math. However, I’m very invested in not going broke. And so, like, when it comes to. I’ve actually found that finances, while I’m very bad at math and not a numbers person, when it comes to thinking about the strategy of finances for my business, it’s actually something that I’ve come to learn that I actually really like doing.

0:11:59 Taylor Wilson: And I’m pretty good at the strategy piece. But it’s just a lot of times what something that you said is, we do. We question, what am I missing? Because it’s not my background. I’m a creative, I’m good with words. I can tell you when something looks pretty, but. And so a lot of times people are starting a business that has nothing to do with finance and numbers. And I think that, like, what am I missing? Question is something that probably keeps a lot of, especially women up at night. Because I think there are, like, sometimes it is intimidating and I want to get into this. It can feel intimidating when you think about maybe Getting a loan. Or maybe you’re thinking about, I want to make. Maybe I need to find an investor. But, like, I don’t even know how to have those conversations. And I just feel like the bros are going to, like, look down at me and talk down to me whether they’re not. Whether they are or not.

0:12:52 Taylor Wilson: We, as women entrepreneurs, I think, often have that story in our head. And so it just makes you, you know, either refrain from doing that or bumble around how.

0:13:07 Jamie Trull: Yep.

0:13:08 Taylor Wilson: Tell me, am I onto something here?

0:13:11 Jamie Trull: You are.

0:13:11 Taylor Wilson: How do we deal with this?

0:13:12 Jamie Trull: Yeah. I think what happens, right, Is we minimize, right? And that’s. That’s a natural reaction. It’s kind of a protectionist reaction sometimes of, you know, okay, I’m gonna minimize myself and my business. I see this a lot with women, you know, who They’ll. They will tell themselves, oh, I don’t need the money. Like, I don’t really. I’m not doing this for money anyway. Like, it’s like, it’s a badge of honor to not make money.

0:13:36 Jamie Trull: And I think that there is something behind that where it’s. It’s really. It’s a worth thing. It’s a. Well, if I go after it and I don’t succeed or, you know, but. And we try to kind of paint money, profit as a negative thing. And I think some of that is our own wiring to know. Like, hey, we know money corrupts. We are very well aware of that. We don’t want to fall into it. We. We look at, you know, some of these bros like, you’re talking about, and we’re like, I don’t want to be that.

0:14:04 Taylor Wilson: Not hating on bros, but, you know, yeah.

0:14:08 Jamie Trull: Hanging out on my yacht and my. Driving my Lamborghini, we’re like, ew, gross. Like, that’s not the life that we want. But I think the mindset shift there. And this is what I. This is where it really connects to the purpose. We think, right? We think that profit is antithetical to purpose, right? We think like, oh, if we’re really trying to do something meaningful and make a difference, that means we can’t, like, be profitable off of that. That feels gross, right?

0:14:35 Jamie Trull: And you’re like, but wait a second. Profit is what fuels the purpose. It is fuel for your purpose. If you are not running a sustainable, profitable company, you cannot make change by, let’s say, hiring people and contributing to that family’s, you know, economic stability, right? You cannot help more customers and clients because you won’t have capacity to be able to do that.

0:15:01 D: Right.

0:15:01 Jamie Trull: You. You can’t, you know, make a difference. You can’t donate the money that you want to donate to the causes that you care about because you’re too busy, you know, being a martyr within your business. And it’s like, we can make such a bigger difference. The people that strong arm profit and money and finances the most and say, like, I don’t need that. I don’t want that. Those are the people that need to have it, because guess what? You’re gonna do something better with it than those who are out there just trying to gobble up as much as they possibly can.

0:15:35 D: Right.

0:15:36 Jamie Trull: For their own self. And so I really. And I see this so much with women. There are so many statistics. And I talk about this in the book of how women give back so much more to their families, their communities, you know, all around them. They are economically, like, when women make money economically, everybody rises. Everybody rises. And that is so important. And yet we’re like, no, no, no, I don’t need it. No, no, no, I don’t want it.

0:16:04 Jamie Trull: You know, all of that. And it’s like, what are. What are we doing here?

0:16:08 B: Yeah.

0:16:09 Jamie Trull: And so that’s one of the things I want to inspire, is like, no, no, we can make money and do good things, and in fact, that can be fuel for the good things that you want to do, right?

0:16:22 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, totally. I mean, one of. One of my passions behind starting my company was to create an environment people liked working in. And so I, like, I have to keep making that work so that these people who work for me can continue to have an environment that they like. And. And that’s a big part of it, you know, and.

0:16:44 Jamie Trull: And pay them well and offer good benefits and all the things that you want to do to care for people, Right?

0:16:50 B: Yeah.

0:16:50 Jamie Trull: Like, we think caring for people is reducing our rates so much that we can barely scrape by. But really, what if we charge what our product or service is actually worth and then utilize that again to care for people in other ways? Like, yeah, we don’t have to. It doesn’t have to be a sacrifice in order to do that. There is, like, a win, win, win solution. And, you know, I know you talk a lot on this channel about, like, nonprofits and things, and I think people think that the only way to, like, truly have a business with purpose is, like, it needs to be a nonprofit. And we are.

0:17:23 Jamie Trull: We’re currently in my company in. In the works. And so we’ll have to talk about this offline. Taylor. Cause I need some. Yeah, I need Some help. But we’re working on creating a nonprofit arm of the business.

0:17:34 Taylor Wilson: Okay.

0:17:35 Jamie Trull: But the business will fuel it, Right? It will be the fuel for the good we want to do. And that will be a sufficiently profitable business because that’s how we’re going to make that change.

0:17:47 D: Right.

0:17:47 Jamie Trull: And we’re not hopefully going to have to even rely on donors and things like that. We are going to fuel the business with what we are doing commercially in a for profit business. And so that’s just something that I feel I, you know, I’ll get on my soapbox all day about because I am, you know, people assume like, oh, she talks about money and profit and, you know. Yeah, that is, you know, we are sacrificing purpose for that. And I just, I completely disagree. I think it’s all about. At the end of the day, it starts with purpose.

0:18:17 D: Right?

0:18:18 B: Yeah.

0:18:18 Taylor Wilson: Oh, I love it.

0:18:19 B: Yeah.

0:18:19 Taylor Wilson: We definitely have to talk more about that. I think that’s interesting and I think that’s so cool. When I met another company recently where the company fuels this nonprofit work that they do and they have a whole nonprofit arm. And I think that’s such an interesting model to be able to do good work and not rely purely on. On donors and contributions like that. So I think that’s.

0:18:41 B: Yeah.

0:18:41 Taylor Wilson: Well, we’ll talk more. I want to learn more about that. So. Okay, let’s talk about.

0:18:46 Jamie Trull: We.

0:18:48 Taylor Wilson: I want to know. The book is called Hidden Profit.

0:18:52 B: Mm.

0:18:54 Taylor Wilson: I’m sure you have a lot. It’s a long book. There’s a lot of tips you have for people to find Hidden profit. If you had to narrow it down to like the top three to five things that are just basically like hiding under everybody’s rug and they don’t realize it, where they could find and discover more profit, what would those things be?

0:19:15 B: Where.

0:19:15 Taylor Wilson: What are those? What’s hiding under the rug?

0:19:18 Jamie Trull: That’s a great question. So I teach what’s called the profit levers. So they’re basically things, you know, What I want to show people is that they’re in more control than you think. I think sometimes we think it’s we’re at the mercy of the market or our customers or demand or whatever.

0:19:34 D: Right.

0:19:34 Jamie Trull: And there’s some element of that. That’s true. But there’s a lot we can control too. And that’s where these levers come in. We can go and pull a lever if things aren’t, you know, if we’re not as profitable as we want to be. Okay. What leverage do we need to go and pull. And the one that we typically do, right, the one that we default, like, okay, we’re not as profitable as we want. We need to go make more sales.

0:19:55 Jamie Trull: That’s like the, the top one that we go towards. We’re like, we just need to hustle harder to make more sales. But if you’re not sufficiently profitable off of each and every one of those sales, all you’re really doing is working yourself into the ground.

0:20:10 D: Right.

0:20:10 Jamie Trull: You’re not actually, you know, we’re missing an opportunity. So what I tell people is, let’s leave that one to last. Like that profit lever is a good lever. Fine. When you’re just starting out, it is about getting sales. But once you have an established business now, it’s about making sure that you’re, you know, making as much profit off of those sales as you can. And then we turn on the volume lever again. So what we start with, right, because. Because again, like profit is. It’s just a calculation. Essentially, it’s money in minus money out. It’s revenue minus expenses. There’s some crazy, what I call accounting funny business in there.

0:20:44 Jamie Trull: We strip all of that down. Don’t worry about depreciation, all the crazy stuff your accountant does at the end of the year.

0:20:50 B: Yeah.

0:20:51 Jamie Trull: As accountants love to make things more complicated than they need to be. It’s just money in minus money out. That’s why I say, like, literally, it’s an equation my third grader could do. So we have to look at, okay, what are ways to increase money in volumes? One of them. But what about pricing?

0:21:07 D: Right.

0:21:07 Jamie Trull: And that’s usually where I tell people to start. We need to make sure that your profit margins are adequate. I think this is hardest for service based businesses who are solopreneurs because it’s hard to value what you specifically are doing. Sometimes we undervalue that. Again, especially as women, we undervalue the work that we’re doing. We’ve done unpaid labor for centuries. We are used to undervaluing ourselves.

0:21:34 D: Right.

0:21:34 Jamie Trull: And so we may not be charging what we need to be charging, but I don’t subscribe. I think a lot of people are like, you know, charge your worth. Okay. Your worth is immeasurable. Like charge the worth of your product or service. That’s what we need to figure out. How do we know what that is? Well, we need to figure out what are the costs involved. So that’s easier in a product based business because we know we have are more aware of what the costs are. And then we add a markup when we’re talking about our time.

0:21:59 Jamie Trull: It’s what would we pay somebody else if we had to hire them? So if we had to hire them to do the work, the things that even if we wouldn’t actually hire them, what would we hire someone? What would we have to pay them? If you’re getting paid less than that in your business, then that’s a problem. You’re never going to be able to scale it, right? You’re never going to be able to hire anybody to help you because it’s going to cost more to hire them than what you were making.

0:22:23 Jamie Trull: That’s a pricing problem usually, right? So we need to price in the fact that we should not just be making money for the work we’re doing in our business, but also the work we’re doing as the. The, you know, investor in our business, as the person who’s, you know, doing the marketing, the accounting, like all the other things, right? We need to compensate ourselves for that, too. And the risk that we’re taking by doing all of this, right?

0:22:46 Jamie Trull: So we need to be pricing all of that.

0:22:47 Taylor Wilson: It’s on our credit card at the end of the day, you know.

0:22:51 Jamie Trull: Exactly, exactly. We need to be pricing all of that in when we’re coming up with our prices. So that’s the first thing is figuring out, okay, what is the true cost? How do I figure this out? You know, let’s say you’re doing work for a client and you know that client is paying you $1,000 right now. But if you hired someone, you’d have to pay them, you know, $1,000 to do the work. That’s a problem. Take, you know, what you’d have to pay them and maybe double it. That’s like an easy way to kind of do the math and say, okay, well, if I had to pay somebody a thousand dollars for this work, then I need to charge 2,000, and then you’re ready to scale. So pricing is the number one thing I usually tell people to start with and make sure you have profit margins that make sense and are scalable. Number one.

0:23:36 Jamie Trull: The second part, right, is then if we go to costs, that’s another piece, right? It’s increasing the money coming in and decreasing the money going out. How do we decrease the money going out? It’s not just cutting costs indiscriminately because that actually can backfire. I’ve done that. I once caught. I once, literally, to save $12 a month, I cut my scheduling software, which is the stupidest thing, because then I spent like five hours A month going back and forth, trying to schedule meetings, and then I’m like, oh, I’m valuing my time at like, $2 an hour, right?

0:24:07 B: Yeah.

0:24:07 D: Could I.

0:24:08 Jamie Trull: If I use that time for something else, could I make more money? Yes. So I went and signed back up for it. So don’t just cut things. It’s about realizing, like, what costs are not providing you a return on your investment.

0:24:19 D: Right.

0:24:20 Jamie Trull: And that’s a difference in how we think about money in our personal lives. Because our personal life is more, you know, about consuming. Our business is about investing. And when we invest money wisely in our business, in hiring, learning new skills, marketing, things like that.

0:24:36 D: Right.

0:24:37 Jamie Trull: Technology to help us work faster. Those are things that provide a return if we’re using them wisely. So that’s the first place is, where are we spending money? That it’s actually not providing a return. Let’s cut those, or let’s figure out how to get a return on them.

0:24:52 D: Right.

0:24:53 Jamie Trull: So those are kind of the two biggest ones, I’d say price and cost. There’s a lot. We can go deeper into a lot of them. But I think on its face, once we’ve done that, where, okay, now we’re priced correctly, and our costs, you know, we’ve cut costs that we don’t need, so our margins are better. Now you go and you sell more.

0:25:12 Taylor Wilson: Right.

0:25:13 Jamie Trull: And now all of a sudden, you’re making, I don’t know, maybe twice as much off of each and every sale that you’re making, which means you need to make half as many sales to get to your goal. So it’s just kind of using that math.

0:25:23 D: Right?

0:25:23 Jamie Trull: That’s the strategy piece. Yeah. It’s simple, but it’s kind of fun. And there’s so many different ways to do it. There’s not one way.

0:25:30 D: Right.

0:25:31 Jamie Trull: It’s not just, like one answer. It’s. It’s playing around with it. And that’s the thing that I think makes it fun. When people stop trying to get it right and they start realizing, like, oh, hang on, there’s a million different options of things I could do. Let me, like, play around with this and see what works. All of a sudden, numbers become more fun because we’re not worried about getting it wrong.

0:25:51 D: Right.

0:25:52 Jamie Trull: We’re not talking about taxes and getting down to the penny. That’s your accountant’s job. Your job is as essentially the CFO of your own business, is to see the big picture and to make decisions that are going to help you meet your goals.

0:26:04 B: Yeah.

0:26:04 Taylor Wilson: I think there’s a couple things that you said. One, I’m glad that you are kind of saying sales comes like trying to turn on volume and sales comes later. And I honestly think that makes so much sense because honestly, like just doing more sales is actually one of the hardest things. There’s other things that you mentioned are way easier. So looking at your pricing, you can do that yesterday and then going through and doing cost cutting measures, that’s also easy to do. Like take a whole Friday and literally go through everything thing that’s appearing on your credit card and say, why am I using this?

0:26:42 Taylor Wilson: Do I need this? Yes. No. You know, and then sales. Because sales is the hardest part of that equation. It is the hardest thing to get new people through the door versus doing those other things first. I also think that pricing. Tell me what you think. I think pricing is sort of like, I think it can always be an open discussion. You know, I think the market evolves. I think buying buyer behavior evolves. And so for me, like I regularly look, I probably look at our pricing like a few times a year and like really pause and think about it and, and we’ll shift and we’ll say like, let’s try, let’s just change it and try it.

0:27:26 Jamie Trull: Exactly.

0:27:27 Taylor Wilson: You know, because you can always change it. Again, it’s not like set in stone, but maybe people feel. Do you feel like people feel like it’s set in stone?

0:27:34 Jamie Trull: A thousand percent. We overanalyze it. We think we can’t change it going forward when we know we need to change it. We are afraid to.

0:27:43 D: Right.

0:27:43 Jamie Trull: We’re afraid of how people are going to react. Things like that. We get so in our heads about it, most of the time they don’t react at all.

0:27:50 D: Right.

0:27:51 Taylor Wilson: I know.

0:27:52 B: Yeah.

0:27:52 Jamie Trull: We make it such a big deal.

0:27:54 Taylor Wilson: And every once in a while you get someone who’s like, hey, I noticed your pricing change. But like rarely.

0:28:00 Jamie Trull: Yeah. And. And we have lived through the last several years a significant increase in cost.

0:28:07 D: Right.

0:28:07 B: Yeah.

0:28:08 Jamie Trull: So yeah, whether again, like that’s more evident in like a product based business where you’re like, oh shoot, now it’s cost me double to, to actually get the things that I’m selling. Some people still waited to increase their prices because they keep thinking that deflation is going to happen. Let me tell you, historically, deflation pretty much never happens.

0:28:24 D: Right.

0:28:24 Jamie Trull: It never goes back. Inflation may slow, but it’s never going to go backwards. You know, there may be some certain categories depending, but most of the time it is only going one way. So if we’re waiting for things to, quote, unquote, normalize. You’re waiting a long time and in the process you’re cutting into your profits. So having, I think what you’re doing about assessing that regularly, Taylor, most businesses don’t do that.

0:28:47 Jamie Trull: And so that’s a great practice to get into to just say, how are we doing? And even if you are right, a service based business and you don’t have employees, again, the cost of the employees that you would have to hire is going up too, right?

0:29:02 B: Yeah.

0:29:02 Taylor Wilson: The busier you get, the more people you’re paying.

0:29:05 Jamie Trull: Exactly. So. So that’s where it’s again, if you want to keep your business scalable, you have to increase your rates as well. Even when it’s just you and the things that you’re buying in your life are getting more expensive. So you need to be making more just to kind of stay at the same level you were at. So those are some of the traps we can fall into with this. But if we’re paying attention to it and there are ways you can, you know, do pricing increases, you can do them stair step, you can do them for new people.

0:29:32 D: Right.

0:29:32 Jamie Trull: I love to try out new pricing on new people. I leave, you know, everybody else, let’s not touch it right now. Yeah, let’s do new pricing on new people. Let’s see if it’s still viable. Are we still making, you know, our sales goals, our profit goals? If yes. Okay. Now how do we do this in a way that feels good for maybe our existing customers or clients? Right.

0:29:53 B: Yeah.

0:29:53 Jamie Trull: You can do it however you want to, but I think it is important to do. And even if there is backlash to begin with, remember it calms down.

0:30:03 D: Right.

0:30:04 Jamie Trull: And then eventually you’re going to be doing better off for it and you’re going to have more money to reinvest and grow your business. So I think it’s really important. And this isn’t about like price gouging, it’s about charging the, you know, what you need to charge in order to have a profitable business.

0:30:19 B: Right.

0:30:20 Taylor Wilson: And if you go up and people stop buying, you can go back down. I mean, that’s something that I’ve experienced is like at one point we raised our prices and then less people started buying and then we were like, okay, maybe that’s the market telling us like it’s too much and lowered them a little and we started selling again.

0:30:41 Jamie Trull: Right. It’s time to find that, that, you know, that happy medium. Because sometimes. Sure, right. Most of the time, if you reduce Your prices, you’ll get less sales. Just if nothing else changes, you increase your. Increase your prices, you’ll get less sales.

0:30:55 D: Right.

0:30:57 Jamie Trull: However, you still may be making more money overall. And right then you’re working less hard for more money, which is kind of the point. So I always caution people to say it’s not just about, like, yes, your sales might decline, but what’s your profit doing? And that’s really the key to it. Now, if it falls more, then. Then that’s where we need to reassess. Okay, hang on. Like, where’s the happy medium where we can meet the market, where it’s at.

0:31:24 D: Right.

0:31:25 B: Where.

0:31:25 Jamie Trull: Where what we’re charging meets demand. And it works.

0:31:28 B: Yeah.

0:31:29 Taylor Wilson: And that’s more. It is kind of complicated. And you do have to sort of like, make a few adjustments here and there and stuff is because, you know, we’ve done it a few times. All right, I’ve big, deep, maybe somewhat existential question for a business owner. How do we determine what we pay ourselves? So let’s just take the scenario. You are, you started a business as a solopreneur, you grow, you start having employees, you start wondering, what do I pay myself?

0:32:01 Taylor Wilson: Do you have, like, a formula or a way of determining that? I mean, it probably seems sort of. Maybe it’s kind of a stupid question. I don’t know, like, look at your expenses and what you want and all of that. But, like, maybe there’s a methodology. And I think probably some business owners I know I have been guilty of this myself, is like, they don’t pay themselves or they pay themselves way too little.

0:32:26 B: Yeah.

0:32:27 Jamie Trull: Yep. The first thing is to make it a practice to pay yourself regularly.

0:32:32 D: Right.

0:32:33 Jamie Trull: And it’s going to depend, you know, I’m not going to get into the differences based on, like, what type of entity you are and how you pay yourself, whether it’s payroll draws. Regardless of all that, I do think that one of the things I teach in the book is a method called profit planning. And it’s really about, okay, now that we’ve optimized our profit and found that hidden profit maximize our profit, what do we do with it?

0:32:55 Jamie Trull: Where do we put this? Do we reinvest it back into our business? Do we save for the future? Do we pay it to ourselves? What do we do with this profit? Obviously, we need to save for taxes. Do we save it for emergencies? What do we do? And it’s really all of those things and the percentage that you’re going to put to each of them. So my profit plan, it’s basically a acronym. So it’s, you know, the pay yourself is. The P R is rainy day. So saving for a rainy day, that’s your emergency fund.

0:33:26 Jamie Trull: The O is opportunity Reinvesting intentionally back into your business. The first F, it’s my profit plan has two Fs. It’s a whole thing. The first F is future. So that’s, you know, paying down debt, saving for retirement, things like that that you’re trying to do for your future. The second F and why profit planning has two Fs is fun. So we need to put aside money for fun. I think that helps motivate us. We make more money when we know a percentage of what we make is going towards that. That European vacation we’re trying to save for or whatever.

0:33:58 Jamie Trull: The I is for impact, that’s causes that you care about.

0:34:01 D: Right.

0:34:01 Jamie Trull: And the T is for taxes because we need to do that. So not necessarily in that order, but those are all the things that we need to decide where, you know, what’s most important to us right now. So if you’re in a place where you’re like, I just need to maximize my paycheck right now, a lot of that after the taxes piece. Right. Probably is just going to go right into your paycheck.

0:34:21 B: Yeah.

0:34:22 Jamie Trull: You’re in a place where you’re like, you know what? I’m trying to save up for Taiwan or retire in the next five years. Well, you might be putting a ton of that into your future bucket.

0:34:30 D: Right.

0:34:30 Jamie Trull: If you’re like, I want to grow my business, that is the biggest priority right now. Even if it means sacrificing a little bit of the money that I’m making today. Put it back into your opportunity fund and intentionally grow your business. So it’s not a one size fits all answer. It’s sitting and it changes. My profit plan has changed over the years.

0:34:49 D: Right.

0:34:50 Jamie Trull: Right now I’m in a place where I’m saving for a down payment on a new house that we want to build. We really want our dream house. So I have changed it around where, you know, I am taking more out of the business right now than I was a couple of years ago. I was putting a ton into my opportunity fund to grow it so we can change it. And I think that there’s an agency in that. There’s not one right way.

0:35:12 Jamie Trull: So many, you know, financial gurus and people are like, this is the way to do it. And these are the percentages. Just we’re all different people with different businesses, different dreams, different goals. So you do have to look at, what do I want, what are my goals right now in this moment, and how can I then use my profit to meet those? And then we kind of divide it up based on a percentage. So every month I do my profit plan allocations and I move money around.

0:35:37 Jamie Trull: You know, I use relay business banking, which has the ability to multiple accounts, so I can just put them in there and aggregate the money, which I think is great. Or you can just use spreadsheet, whatever you want to do. But it’s helped me to then be able to, like, make very clear progress towards my goals. And then things like giving. It’s not an afterthought. It’s like, no, we have. We set aside 10% of our profits for causes we care about so that it’s already sitting there, you know, ready to be given. I’m not having to take from myself. It doesn’t feel like I’m taking anything from me.

0:36:10 B: Yeah.

0:36:11 Jamie Trull: To do that.

0:36:11 D: Right.

0:36:12 B: Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

0:36:14 Taylor Wilson: I. I have a similar thing where it’s like several bank accounts where you can move and, like, things around and stuff. And one thing I’ll say I have learned is, like, always make sure that there’s money in the tax bucket before the other stuff.

0:36:30 B: Yep.

0:36:31 Jamie Trull: And that’s. And that’s typically, you know, we have the tax piece, that percentage your accountant can tell you, or you can use last year’s or whatever. That one you probably want to not play around with too much. But after that, you know, let’s say that’s 20%. Well, then you have the other 80% of your profit. Where does that go? So we can kind of figure out, like, what are the musts first. But don’t put paying yourself last. Don’t make it the what’s left over, because there won’t be anything.

0:36:55 D: Right.

0:36:56 Jamie Trull: If we. If we’re making it the leftovers, guess what? There’s not going to be any. We have to be intentional to put that in there. And a lot of people use profit first. I don’t know if that’s what you use, Taylor. Profit first is like a common methodology for doing this. The only thing I don’t like, I like the methodology, and it’s kind of putting things in different bank accounts. However, mine is different in that we have things like, you know, saving intentionally for reinvestment.

0:37:21 Jamie Trull: That’s really important. I think that’s key to growing a business. Otherwise, you might again, accidentally shoot yourself in the foot. If you’re so focused on just maximizing profit today. And not thinking about the future.

0:37:34 B: Yeah.

0:37:35 Jamie Trull: I also think things like the fun fund and the impact fund become really motivating. So I really feel like my business makes more money, more than what I even put in that fun fund, an impact fund, because of the extra motivation I have to make more money to fund those things.

0:37:51 D: Yeah, right.

0:37:52 Jamie Trull: I like that we’re in control of our. Of our. How much we make. So if money doesn’t motivate you, what does it? And make that a goal.

0:38:00 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, right. No, I think that that’s really important. And also, it’s like. It’s twofold. It’s a motivator. But it’s also. Then when you’re doing that regularly because you’re making enough money to be able to have your fun, you’re just more refreshed at running your business. So, like, it’s a.

0:38:17 Jamie Trull: Exactly.

0:38:17 Taylor Wilson: It’s a circle of life. Yep. You know?

0:38:21 Jamie Trull: Exactly. Exactly.

0:38:22 B: Yeah.

0:38:23 Taylor Wilson: I like that you called that.

0:38:23 Jamie Trull: And you get more creative. Like, you do. I’m. If I’m super close. If I’m like, oh, I want to book this vacation, but don’t have enough of my fun fund yet.

0:38:31 D: Right.

0:38:31 Jamie Trull: Yeah, I will get. I have. The very first fun fund we did was actually during COVID so we couldn’t go anywhere. But I was trying to get my husband on board with, like, I’m gonna be working a lot. It was, you know, like, there’s just a lot going on. I’m doing a big launch, and, you know, and of course, he’s like, oh, man. That just means I got more to deal with with the kids and all this. And so that’s actually where the fun. Fun was really born that second f came in. Because I was like, okay, well, what if.

0:38:56 Jamie Trull: What if, like, 5% of the profits from this launch we put towards a hot tub for our back patio, which he has always wanted. Like, he has. And I’m like, I’m the frugal one. I’m like, that’s ridiculous. We don’t need a hot tub.

0:39:09 Taylor Wilson: It’s not. I will tell you. I have one. It is amazing. And I saved up for mine, and I’m so glad I did.

0:39:16 Jamie Trull: Right. And that was the first thing. And all of a sudden, my husband was like, can I go to the grocery store? What do you need? What can I help you? Yeah, coffee. And I’m like, yeah, sure. Like, it just became fun.

0:39:26 B: Yeah.

0:39:27 Jamie Trull: And I feel like that when I would have probably been, you know, when the energy started to wane.

0:39:32 D: Right.

0:39:33 Jamie Trull: Like, if anybody who does launches it’s like you’re high energy, and then it’s like, oh, man, towards the end, you’re really going downhill. That was the thing that propelled me to keep going. I was like, okay, we’re so close. Like, let’s keep, you know, making this happen. And I think. I think I. That’s why I highly recommend it. If you control your income, put some fun things in there, like, y’, all we have, we can enjoy life today. I am very much a saver. I get it.

0:39:59 B: Yeah.

0:39:59 Jamie Trull: But we gotta enjoy our life today. Like, otherwise, what’s the point?

0:40:04 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, totally. Totally.

0:40:06 B: All right.

0:40:07 Taylor Wilson: Jamie, is there anything that you feel like we didn’t cover that you, like, you really want people to know about you or your book or just how to feel better? Going back to that quote at the beginning, I know I’m not dumb. I just don’t get it. Like, any. Anything that we left out today.

0:40:23 Jamie Trull: I think the thing that I like to tell people is it doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful.

0:40:29 D: Right.

0:40:29 Jamie Trull: And I think we get stuck in perfection with things like finances, where we’re, like, trying to make sure we’re doing it right. And like I’ve said, there’s so many different ways to do it. I’m not talking about, again, like, your taxes is a whole different story, but how you make decisions in your business, how you look at it, there’s so many different ways to do it, right? And. And use this as permission to go figure out what’s going to help you.

0:40:51 D: Right?

0:40:52 Jamie Trull: The key when people ask me, what should I be looking at in my business? I say, well, what’s going to help you make decisions?

0:40:56 D: Right?

0:40:56 Jamie Trull: What? Numbers. Like, you don’t need to look at numbers if they’re not helpful to you. What do you wish you knew and had access to all the time to make decisions? Those are the things to look at and make a system that allows you to have access to that information. And so I think we get so caught up in perfection that we just kind of bury our heads in the sand, have some fun with it.

0:41:17 D: Right.

0:41:17 Jamie Trull: Does not have to be perfect to be useful. Like, just. It’s fine to make estimates. It’s fine to make educated guesses. Like, all of that is on the table. That’s actually how you’re supposed to do it. That’s how big business does it. I’ve been there. Right. Like, yeah, we make assumptions all the time. Don’t be afraid to do that. So that would kind of. I want people to feel that agency over it. And not feel like there’s one way to do something, make it work for you.

0:41:43 Jamie Trull: And if it doesn’t work, it’s not you, it’s the system. Change the system, try something else.

0:41:48 B: Yeah, I love that.

0:41:49 Taylor Wilson: I love that. Okay, tell us. Your book comes out October 21st.

0:41:53 Jamie Trull: October 21st. So but you can pre order it before that as well. So we actually have some bonuses available too. Whether you’re pre ordering it. We’ll have some bonuses actually after the book is out as well. But just go to jamieturl.com hiddenprofit and you can find that.

0:42:11 Taylor Wilson: I love it. Is that the best way for people to find you? Jamie troll.com Any other places you want.

0:42:16 Jamie Trull: To share, Jamie troll.com Or if you want to go, subscribe to my YouTube channel. It’s just Jamie Trull Troll with a you. And that’s where I am doing, you know, free financial information all the time, every Single Week on YouTube. So that’s a great place to make sure you’re following too.

0:42:32 Taylor Wilson: I love it. Go follow this woman on YouTube. She’s got a great channel, a lot to share and I really have enjoyed getting to know you. I appreciate so much the conversation and also the topic. I think it’s just really is one of those things. People get very uncomfortable talking about money and as business owners, we get very uncomfortable thinking about money and it’s something that we have to talk about and we have to think about.

0:42:58 Taylor Wilson: The more you avoid it, the worse it gets. So I really like, I like, I love talking to you and I appreciate it. And I cannot wait to finish your book. I got it a little bit started but I haven’t finished it and I really look forward to it. So thank you so much.

0:43:14 Jamie Trull: All right. Thank you, Taylor. Thanks for having me.

0:43:16 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. All right, friends, if you are thinking about starting a business or you are looking for a little bit of extra help with figuring out how to get your business and your brand and your marketing out there, hit us up at creativeshizzle.com and until next time, go get your good shizzle done.