How to Power Your Profits with Susie Carder

Kathi: Hi gang, I'm back. This is Kathi with Organized and Energized, the podcast. Of course, you know that because you're here. But what you don't know is who I'm going to talk to. I'm talking to the profit coach, Susie Carder. We're going to have an amazing conversation about you're not alone, how you can make money, how you can be successful and live your passion, and make a lot of money in the process. So, welcome to the show, Susie.

Susie: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to connect with you and support your community and your tribe. Love working with powerful women.

Kathi: So, I know you have a big backstory. For people who don't know you, Susie, tell us about your background story and how you got to be the profit maker central girl that you are.

Susie: Well, I am a rogue entrepreneur. My formal training and my vocation was I was a hairdresser. And I was a hairdresser who found herself as a single mom raising two little girls, and I had to figure out the money thing. I didn't know much about business when I started, and I immediately had my own business, which I didn't realize. Because in that industry you're a booth renter or you're strictly commission, so there's no salary, there's no guarantee, there's no, oh, here's your paycheck. If you did not sell something, you did not eat. And so, being a single mom of two little kids, I had to figure out how to eat and eat quick. And I loved what I did, loved my vocation, but only 15% of what we do in business is your vocation. So, as a hairdresser, that was how I colored, cut or permed it. 85% is sales, marketing, operations, communication. And so, I learned early on that I need to be in front of my ideal client. I always said I wanted my clients chemically dependent on me. So, clients who were investing in hair color, clients who loved chemical work, because those were the higher ticket prices. And I would go to the bookstore at night to figure out how to market, to figure out my ideal client. This is way before the internet. I'm a little bit seasoned, y'all, if you're listening. I've been in business for 30 years. Woohoo!

Only 15% of what we do in business is your vocation.

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Susie: I caught the attention of Paul Mitchell, and Paul Mitchell said, "Susie, what are you doing?" Because I finally figured out the business formula for that business and was doing about $250,000 a year as a hairdresser. To give you context, I didn't own the salon, I was a booth renter, and the average hairdresser at that time made about $30,000 a year. And so I said, "Oh, well, I have this marketing campaign and I have this referral program and I upsell every client and I want my clients chemically dependent on me." And just making fun of what I was doing, they're like, "Oh my gosh, can you teach our clients?" I'm like, "Sure." I didn't have a class. I was not a speaker. I just wanted to help my community. My community needed the business side of education, not necessarily the technical side of education. And that's how I started speaking. And then people said, "Oh, Susie, love what you do. Do you have a book?" I'm like, "No, I don't have a book, man. I just want to share the good news." They're like, "Oh, if you had a book, we would buy it." And I'm like, "I'm going to write a book and be famous."

Kathi: Yeah, right.

Susie: You've got some books back there. And so I wrote my first book. I had to hire a coach. I had to figure out how to write the book. I had to figure out how to publish the book. I had to figure all that out, not knowing the business model. And so I wrote my first book, and the first publisher I approached rejected me. And the great thing about entrepreneurship, if you're an entrepreneur, you definitely know this story. It's like, "Oh, don't tell me no." I created my own publishing company. And then from there, students said, "Oh my gosh, love the book, hate to read. Do you have it on audio?" I'm like, no. I'm just a hairdresser. So then I went to the studio, had to figure out how to record it, had to figure out how to do it. And so then I created audio, and really that's how the speaking side started. People would just go, "Hey Susie, oh my god, I love that spreadsheet, can I buy it?" I'm like, "How much would you pay for that?" That, Kathi, was my pricing strategy in the early days. How much would you pay for that?

Kathi: Uh-huh.

Susie: And then I realized I love speaking. I'm like, wow, how can I be in front of 50 women at one time to bring into the salon? So then that leveraged my speaking. Now I want you to know, I hated speaking. I did not like it. I would get sick to my stomach. I would go throw up. But the end result, which was I made a difference and I got clients, was so well worth it.

Kathi: Yeah.

Susie: And so in the early days, that's how I started speaking, that's how I started making money. And then I was building this online platform back in 1999. Now think about 1999. There was no Google, there was no WordPress, there was no Infusionsoft, no ClickFunnels. You had to build everything from scratch. And back in the day it was like, you just need eyeballs. You just need people to see your site and then you'll be rich. You get on there, you'll be rich. You build the site, you'll be rich.

Kathi: Yeah.

Susie: I had to learn how to raise money, because it was half a million dollars, Kathi. Half a million dollars to build this website. That is bananas when I think back at it.

Kathi: Crazy, right? It was expensive back then.

Susie: It was so expensive back then. So expensive. Like I had to walk miles in the snow, right? That's what it feels like. So I went to this millionaires forum, because your business had to do a million dollars, and they were teaching you how to raise money. And then I realized, they're teaching us how to raise money, which was great, but they're not teaching people what to do with the money. They're not teaching people how to build a business. So, I went to the founder and said, "Listen, you have to teach people how to build a business. You're teaching them to raise all this money, and then their businesses just fail." And he's like, "Great, why don't you do it?" I'm like, "I don't know anything about those businesses. I just know the salon and spa." He's like, "You'll be great. Do it." So, he really got me into general market entrepreneurship. I was like, "Oh my gosh." I was so scared, Kathi. How many times do you sabotage yourself out of fear?

Kathi: Oh, yeah.

Susie: I was so nervous. Like, "Oh my god, Kathi's going to judge me." We had doctors, attorneys, graphic designers, people that ran amusement parks, doctors and surgeons and all the fancy people. I let my smallness get in the way of my greatness. And how many times do we do that? Where the universe, I call it God, you can call it whatever you want, gives you an opportunity and you just go, "No, no, no." And I did no, no, no for years. People would say, "Susie, can I hire you as my coach?" I'm like, "No, I don't work in your industry. I just work in the beauty industry." And so, one night I was lying in bed praying, probably crying, and I'm like, "I don't know what to do. These people keep asking me." And I heard a voice that said, "Just charge double. They won't do it." So, I'm like, "Oh, perfect. I'm just going to charge double." So, at the next event I went to, someone said it, and I gave them the price that was double what I was charging in the beauty industry, and they're like, "Perfect. Where do I sign?" I was like, "Yay! Uh-oh."

I let my smallness get in the way of my greatness.

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Susie: So, I had to figure out each business that I signed up, and that's when I realized business is business is business. You have units of things you want to sell. You have a price point you have to sell at. You have cost of goods that it takes to create that product, and you have fixed expenses, and then there's profit left over. There should be. Profit is planned for. And I took the same systems that I had built with high-end salons and spas and just changed the language, because business is business is business. That's how I got into the general marketplace of entrepreneurship. Kicking and screaming. It wasn't, oh, okay, I'm going to do this overnight. 30 years later, I'm an overnight success. But I've built 10 multi-million dollar companies over the 30 years and helped thousands of my clients make thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, in their own businesses.

Kathi: I like what you said at the beginning, that especially when you first launch a business, it is only 10 to 15% of you doing what you love, which is why you're doing the business. And the other 85% is those nuts and bolts, those tactics that you need to grow and thrive and get the clients. I tell people that all the time that want to be pro organizers. I'm like, well, do you know how to market? You're not just going to be in people's homes helping them get organized. You're going to have to know how to get the people to get you in their homes.

Susie: Exactly. And my students are the ones that call me the profit coach. When I was doing the brand for this brand, I was like, strategic coach, executive coach. My clients were like, no, that's not what you do. I'm like, it's not? I love it. It was a focus group, not knowing I was doing a focus group. "You're the money. You're the profit coach. You just bring us money. Every time I'm on a call with you, I can see the money all around me." And I took it to my marketing team, and they're like, we love it. So my students came up with that. I didn't give myself that name, but I love to find the money in business, because it truly is all around you. There's money all around you, whether you know how to leverage it. Most people get afraid of it. Most people aren't doing the work they need to do to generate the money. They're doing the vocation work, which is great. I do have to deliver my product and services. But if I can spend time in your sales, in your marketing, to get you in front of your ideal avatar, to get you to look at, are you spending the money correctly to find the right clients and the clients that can afford you? Most people are marketing to fans, people who just love them. Okay, but the fans aren't paying our bills. Clients. I'm done pushing people uphill. I want to work with people who love and adore me, and I love and adore them, and we have fun together. You can build a business that way. It doesn't have to be a pain in the booty. It can be fun, because we do this more than we spend time with our family. So I want to make sure that I love it. I want to make sure my clients love it, so they're not going, "Oh, this thing called entrepreneurship." I want it to be fun. I want it to be amazing for them.

Kathi: Yeah. And people go in peaks and valleys. When people get burned out, what advice do you give them, when they just can't see air to come up out of the water? What would you tell them?

Susie: We hit burnout because we're not taking care of ourselves. And especially if you're a woman entrepreneur, we have been trained to provide for everybody else. Let me take care of my mom. Let me take care of my children. Let me take care of my man. Let me take care of my partner. Let me take care of them. Let me take care of them. And we're last on the totem pole. So when you're in burnout, the first thing I say is, what do you need for you? And I remember, about really taking care of myself, I'm like, "Well, what do you mean? What do I need for me?" They're like, "What do you need to relax? What do you need to take care of yourself?" I'm like, "Well, what do you mean?" I couldn't even comprehend, Kathi. I'm like, "I don't understand the question." Because my whole life had been about providing, taking care of everybody else. And so, I literally had a list of something called comfort tools. So, when I was stressed out, burnt out, what are the things that made me happy? Because when you're stressed out, burnt out, you can't think what are the things that make you happy. You just want to take a nap or watch Netflix and chill, or grab a glass of wine or a cocktail or whatever, or food, whatever your vice is. And that's not necessarily healthy. In the short term, great. It's a little escape. But if you're doing that ongoingly… I think mine was, I started seeing myself drinking. Okay, after work, I'm drinking. After work, I'm drinking. Oh, okay, now I think I'm getting into a problem.

Kathi: Yeah.

Susie: And so, what are the things that you need to take care of you first? It's like the old airplane adage, put your mask on before you give everybody else theirs. Easier said than done. And so, when we hit burnout, and I've hit it several times over my career, I stop and I take time for me. And now, when I take time for me, then I have time for you. My creativity flows. I have more ideas. I can see money differently. When you're just in that grind all the time, it doesn't allow you the freedom to be creative. And we are creative beings as entrepreneurs. Even if you're linear, you're creative. You're creating money, you're creating spreadsheets. Because most people who are linear go, "I'm not creative." Oh, yes, you are. Have you seen them put an Excel sheet together? You created a business. So, yes, you are a creator. You created a business, even if the business isn't exactly where you wanted it to be. You are creating it. And even if it's a niche that someone else is in, like maybe they're just going to be a hairdresser, well, that is a business, and that is their own unique business, because it's their own unique way of doing business.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I think a lot of people get stuck and say, "Well, I'm not that." I love the idea. I would welcome all you listeners out there to go ahead and make a comfort sheet. What does bring you comfort when you're in that stressed-out situation? You can go look at that list and say, "Okay, I'm just going to go sit in the sun for 5 minutes," or whatever it is, so that you can fall back into what you know already, predetermined relaxation techniques, so to speak. Because I agree, Susie, when you're in it, sometimes you're just like, "No, I'm just going to go binge on Netflix. I'm not going to do what really revitalizes me." That's just like hiding.

Susie: Right. So, I even had it to the point, it's like when your partner says, "Hey, let's go to dinner." We all know what we don't want, but we can't figure out what we do want.

Kathi: Always.

Susie: So, I created a place of, here's my favorite restaurants. So, when my man said, "Hey, let's go to dinner," I would look and go, "Oh, let's go here." Because you forget. You don't remember when you're stressed out. And I traveled a lot. We'd leave Saturday night and come back Monday night, and then I'd go back to work in the salon on Tuesday. So I was fried, died, laid to the side. I was exhausted. So, when you go, "Oh, what do you need to do?" "Oh, I like a massage." I even had a list of the friends that I like to hang out with. Because when you're in that space, you're like, "I don't have any friends. Nobody loves me." You just forget.

Kathi: Yeah.

Susie: The reality is, friends fuel you. Relaxation fuels you. Exercise fuels you. Going and enjoying a nice dinner somewhere fuels you. And if you don't have that idea, then you go eating somewhere you don't really enjoy. And to me, having someone else cook and serve me can be an amazing experience versus just food.

Kathi: It's so funny. We all know what we don't want so easily. It's like, well, I don't want Indian, I don't want Thai, I don't want Greek. It's like, well, what are you left with? I love having the idea of places that you know you love that are fallbacks. My husband and I joke, we just want a good atmosphere. We can eat any kind of food, because we like every kind of food, but give us a nice atmosphere where we get waited on, where it's chillaxing. That's as close as we get to what we do want.

Susie: Right. I want some good service. The challenge is I cook better than most restaurants, so I'm very picky. I hate to spend 100 bucks on food and then it's nasty.

Kathi: Yeah, exactly. Well, that's really great advice all the way around, for everybody. So, tell me about what you're going to offer the listeners, and then we'll jump back into a few more questions. What do you have out there that I can put below, a link that they can download, look, read or experience more of Susie?

Susie: Yeah, so I just finished, it's been 2 years now, I launched it during COVID, my new book called Power Your Profits, book number 10, and it's the road map of taking your business from 10,000 to 10 million. And I'm giving you a free copy of my ebook. It's published by Simon and Schuster, so yay! It's a juicy, juicy book. And I walk you through what it took for me to build multi-million dollar companies, and then what's the system I used. Because systems give you freedom. That comfort tools list is just a system. To go, oh, what do I like to do when I'm off? Oh, a massage, my toes, my nails. Friends, who are friends? That's the system. A recipe is a system. I'm a great cook, and so I follow recipes, and then you tweak the recipes. So, this is a recipe book for your business. To go, "What do I need to do to check my mindset? What do I need to do to manage my business all in one place?" Because when I started this, I'm like, "Doesn't somebody have it in one place?" So, I wanted to put a roadmap together for students and for clients to go, "Here's your roadmap. Just follow the roadmap." People go, "Susie, how do you do it?" I'm like, I just follow my roadmap. You work over and over and over again.

Systems give you freedom.

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Kathi: I'm with you on that. That's pretty funny. Okay, so make sure to download the book. It's really valuable. I've heard you speak so many times, and I always take away good nuggets of stuff that I can actionize. One thing that I think was very interesting about your story is that you did have that God seed or soul or spirit or whoever knocking on your shoulder all the time saying, "Well, what about this? And what about this?" And you were in denial partially, but you came out of denial and you said, "Well, yes." And I find this as an entrepreneur: the easiest thing to say is, "Well, yes," and then see how you're going to figure it out. Why I bring that up is because I wanted to tell all the listeners out there that if you have someone asking you, "Can you do this?" and you hear it like three times, and you're like, "No," then, guess what? You probably can, and that's probably why they asked, because they knew you could. So, there you go. That's a little tap on your shoulder saying, "Expand. Expand into your full greatness." Because people looking on at us, don't you think, Susie, that people see more of what we are than what we see of what we are?

Susie: Absolutely. I think I'm the human highlighter. I can see possibility in someone, in their tragedy and in their greatness. Now, in the beauty industry, I was so comfortable in that industry. When somebody said, "Oh, do you have a book?" I'm like, "Okay, I'll write a book." "Oh, do you have it on audio?" "Okay, I'll do that." "Oh, I'll create this membership site." "Okay." I think a bigger indicator is to look at when the fear steps in. And what was the difference? I just was scared of the people, because I didn't have that piece of paper on the wall, that degree that was so important. I made that up. So, I think it is important. God has always given me what I call the cosmic boot. I don't want that to happen to you. The number 10 is all around me. I've been in 10 car accidents. The last one, I had back surgery and neck surgery and had to stop everything I was doing. And each time that I've had some kind of car accident, it made me stop. And in the stopping, a new business was birthed. A new opportunity was birthed. A new belief system was birthed. Now, I don't have to do the cosmic boot. I do it for myself. I just got off a month of vacation. That's my cosmic boot. I'm going to take a month off to really get perspective on what do I want to do now in this season? Do I want to keep doing what I'm doing? Do I want to reshape that? Versus I've got to get run over by a car and get some surgery in order for me to stop and evaluate what I'm doing. So, I want you to look at the side of those lessons, the gift that came. It came wrapped in sandpaper. It wasn't a pretty gift. It was a horrible gift. It was a painful gift, but it was a gift all the same.

Susie: My husband, I was married 17 years. I was getting ready to ditch him when I first met him. I'm like, "Oh, he's not my type." And when I got in that car accident, he really nursed me back to health. He was there. He brought me food. He was like, "Can I do anything for you? Can I take you to the doctor?" I did not see any of that, because I was so busy being busy. And when I had the cosmic boot and I stopped, it was like, "Oh, here is a kind man. He's taking care of me. He does not know me that well." I think we had been dating maybe 3 weeks or a month. Something really small, but I'm like, "Nah, next. He's not the one. He doesn't fit my box." But I saw him for who he was, versus my busyness of this unrealistic checkbox: "Oh, here's a man of character. Here's someone who cares for me and doesn't know me that well." So, I think, don't wait for the cosmic boot. Listen to the whisper. Oprah had said in one of the interviews, they said, "If you had to do it all over again, what would you do?" And she said, "I would listen to the whisper versus waiting for the tsunami."

Don't wait for the cosmic boot. Listen to the whisper.

Kathi: That's really good advice.

Susie: How many times do you wait till you're run over? Me, physically run over, before I would listen to what's next for me. Or relationships would blow up when you knew those little voices were saying, "No, no, no. Back away. Back away." And to go, "Oh, taking time for you is not selfish." Taking time for you gives you time to reflect. Am I doing the things that I love? Am I providing for my family the way that I want to? Am I being the kind of spouse, partner that I want to be? Am I being the kind of mom I want to be? All that takes reflection time. And we make it bad. I want to give you permission to make it good. You don't always have to be busy being busy being busy.

Kathi: Yeah, one of my talks is "Stop getting stuck in your busyness and get down to business." Just stop doing, doing, doing, and spend more time being. I know I broke my wrist one time when I really needed to just slow down. And there you have it.

Susie: That's the cosmic boot, girl. So calm down before you break your back, break your neck, break your wrist.

Kathi: Break your leg. And that's taking the time. That's taking time to put in a daily practice of just pausing. Be, don't do, 24/7. So, yeah. Hey, is there anything that I should have asked you that maybe we should touch on, besides what we've already discussed? Am I missing anything?

Susie: The number one reason I see people not succeeding: 80% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years. Out of the 20% that are left, 80% of those people are not profitable and are not paying themselves a proper paycheck. Now that's scary. You can go get a job and make more money than you can running a business. And when I look at it, 80% of small businesses that are still in business are doing less than 100 grand a year. Go get a job. You can get a job for that. And so when I look at that, I'm like, "Well, why?" And it's because we're not disciplined enough to write the plan out. We all think about the plan.

Kathi: Yeah.

Susie: We all talk about the plan. We go, "Oh, I have a plan. It's in my drawer." Or, "I have a plan. It's in my computer." No, I'm talking about a living, breathing business plan that you can keep going to. There are two types. There's a capital plan, for when I was raising money, because that looks different, because you've got to enroll people in giving you money. Or there's a working plan that's just for your team. That's for you and your team. And your team can be subcontractors that you work with. They don't have to be independent contractors. They don't have to be employees. They're people who are helping you row the boat to make that happen. Take time to write a thorough business plan and look for the holes in the business before you run the business. It's not magic, but it feels like magic, because you get so crystal clear. Stop spending money before you're really clear on how you're going to get clients. How are you going to make that happen? I want to see you win and succeed. And so the first chapter of my book is building a profitable business model. Don't just pull it out of your genius zone. That could be your hiney. That could be your heart. That could be your head. Wherever your genius zone is. Take that time. One of my first business plans, I did it in a weekend. There's some amazing software out there that you can just download. It asks you questions and you fill it out to go, "Oh, is this a viable business?"

Take time to write a thorough business plan and look for the holes in the business before you run the business.

Susie: So, one of my first businesses, Kathi, the salon and spa. We did a million dollars. We won all the accolades. We were in every magazine. And that year, I lost $70,000. So I was a statistic. I was just excited to get to a million. I wasn't looking at profit. Yeah, I paid myself, but the reality is I shouldn't have paid myself, because I was at negative 70 grand.

Kathi: Yeah.

Susie: And that was the big eye-opener. I was like, "How do you do a million dollars and lose money? And what am I doing wrong?" Because, again, I had pieces of a plan, but I didn't have a plan.

Kathi: Okay.

Susie: And putting it all together to go, "Oh, I'm not charging enough." So, it's all the little things that we need to be looking at, that a business plan will help you poke holes in, so that you don't lose money.

Kathi: So, I was going to say, what's your favorite organizing hack, but I have a feeling that you're going to say put together a good business plan.

Susie: A good business plan, but I love Trello. I love me some Trello. Because I can stay organized, and I can see all the plans, and my team can see all the plans. And to me, I've used them all, and that one has been the easiest. It satisfies my creativity and my visual organization as well as my linear organization and my team, because some of them are more linear than I am, which is perfect. I need them on my team. And I like pictures. I've got to see it to understand it, and so it helps me visually. I love Trello.

Kathi: Yeah, it really floats my boat, too. And it's such a good team collaboration tool. I love Trello. So good. Yay. All right, girl. Well, thank you for your time. We'll make sure to put the download for your free book. That's very generous. Everybody go out and download that book. That's important for you. Even if you think you have a business plan, I guarantee you're going to find some things, maybe you missed a few dots of your i's or crosses of your t's, after you go through it. And I know also that you're now one of the ringleaders of the Evolutionary Business Council. So, I figured we should talk about that just for a minute. I'm a member and I really like it. I'm not sure when this podcast is going to be released, but let's just talk broadly about the EBC real quick.

Susie: Yeah, so the EBC was started for business owners like ourselves, where we wanted a collaborative that we could network together. We can share the truth together. Where does the superwoman take off her super cape? Where is that safe place that you can go, "I don't really know what I'm doing"? That's the Evolutionary Business Council. We've got an annual retreat every year. We've got different things that you can plug into. We like connecting other people. So, if there's a stage that I can't do, I can call upon Kathi. So, it's dynamic. There's high-level networking, and we just want to help each other build and grow your business.

Kathi: Yep, and I will put the link to the EBC, the Evolutionary Business Council, down below so that you can check it out as well. Well, Susie, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pure pleasure, and I'm sure I'll be seeing you sometime very soon.

Susie: Thank you, Kathi. I appreciate you, and thank you for all you do for all of us entrepreneurs.

Kathi: Absolutely. Take care, Susie. Thanks.