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Making the Most of Your Profit Margin with Ciara Stockeland

Sarah Walton 66 lượt xem 3 months ago
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Have you ever made a boatload of money in your business and had nothing to show for it? You're hitting high six figures, but you're not taking a salary. If you have started to run a business and chased the ever-elusive " more sales, more sales, more sales!" chances are that what's happened with those increased sales is increased expenses.

That means you're not making money in your business, which can feel horrible. The emotional toll of feeling like a fraud, like you're hiding, and as if nobody knew, is a common business experience.

Today's guest, Ciara Stockeland, will break this down for us in a way no one else has. Ciara is a speaker, author, 4x Ironman, and Fractional CFO for inventory-based businesses.

Ciara is a third-generation entrepreneur. She started her first business at 13 and moved to retail to open a maternity baby store in 2006. She then built up a boutique business and franchised it.

With the second location, the expenses grew too. A second location meant more stuff, which meant the need for a forklift and forklift driver. On it went. At the time, Ciara was getting national recognition, which included speaking at the White House for small business advocacy.

"On the inside, I felt like a fraud. I was like, I feel trapped. I don't know what to do with all this debt. This is out of control," says Ciara.

To make matters worse, Ciara noticed on social media that one of the franchisees had rebranded the store. A group of franchisees was running two point-of-sale systems and not paying royalties. Ciara filed lawsuits for trademark infringement and breach of contract.

"We won on paper, but we lost everything," says Ciara. "And so in a year's worth of time, I went from being at the White House speaking on behalf of small business to being on my couch with no business, no team having to move because we lost our home, everything."

Ciara asked herself what she could have done differently, and she looked at the numbers.

"I wouldn't have pushed so hard to grow topline revenue, but instead, I would have focused on profitability and paying myself, I probably wouldn't have sold franchises to the wrong people," she says.

This time, she says she wasn't answering the phone 24/7, would pay herself from Day 1, and wouldn't buy into the lie that she couldn't be profitable for five years. She was going to build something and sell it quickly. It took 18 months. She did a wholesale subscription box for retailers.

When you understand your profit and loss statement and balance sheet, you have all the pieces of the puzzle.

Ciara breaks down the profit and loss into sections. The difference between your sales and cost of goods sold is your gross margin, and once you subtract all your expenses, what you have left is your profit.

The balance sheet shows your snapshot in time, all your assets, what you can turn into cash, your liabilities, and what you owe others.

"Looking at [the numbers] gives us reality. And when we have reality, we can make a plan," says Ciara. "If we don't look at it, we can't move forward."

Regarding profitability goals, most people either try to increase sales or cut expenses. But if you don't have the foundation for more sales, your whole business could collapse, and cutting expenses won't actually help your business grow.

Ciara likes to focus on margin instead. Whether your business is product or service-based, understanding how the cost of goods affects your revenue will tell you what levers you can pull to change your business—whether it's increasing prices, cutting expenses, or changing where you purchase inventory—everything.

"There's always options," says Ciara. "We can not sell as much. We can sell more. We can pay less for our sales. There's lots of ways to slice and dice those five categories. And I think understanding those buckets, sales, cost of sales, margin, expenses, profit. What can I do in each of those buckets to move the needle in the right direction?"

0:00 Intro
3:42 Launching a boutique franchise
7:12 Losing everything
12:47 Topline revenue vs profit
18:20 No reason for shame
20:20 Profitability goals
27:40 Ironman champion
31:45 Business learnings from Ironman
36:46 Free gift for listeners

#KnowYourBusinessNumbers #ProfitAndLoss #NetProfitGoals #FinancialSuccess #RevenueGrowth #FinancialManagement #SmallBusinessOwner #AskExpert #SalesCoach
#ProfitabilityGoals

===== Free Gift =====

Check out the free eBook "Inventory Genius": https://www.ciarastockeland.com/inventory-genius-ebook-ad

===== Connect with =====

Website: https://www.ciarastockeland.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ciarastockeland/

===== Connect with Sarah =====

It's time to make more money, expand your reach, and LOVE your life: https://sarahwalton.com/abundance-academy/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/thesarahwalton

Game on Girlfriend Podcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_Jen-dhtrcPvkgdjasgiyAk1NgPbZYRS

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