Lighting for Profits - Episode 170

This week on the show we welcome Meaghan Likes, a CPA with over 16 years of experience, who empowers small businesses to understand their finances without fear. Known for her innovative approach, she disrupts the accounting industry with forward-thinking and tech-driven practices.

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Episode Transcript

To start and grow a successful landscape lighting business, trust is key

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All light. All light. All light. Powered by Emory Allen. Get rid of your excuses. Your number one source for all things landscape lighting. That's where the magic can happen. You can really scale a business.

We really had to show up for.

Each other from lighting design, install sales and marketing. You're a scaredy cat salesman, Kurt. We discuss everything you need to know.

To start and grow a successful landscape lighting business.

What do you think a hippo has to do with your business, Ryan? Usually it's some weird childhood thing, some bully kicked your butt.

I think the key factor here is trust.

If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, this show is for you

Here is your host, Ryan Lee Allot. all light. All light. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the number one landscape lighting show in Sacramento, California. Man, we are going worldwide. Got a lot of people following us from all sorts of towns and municipalities around the country. So excited, you guys. If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, you're definitely in the right place. We are here to motivate, we're here to educate, to help you dominate. So, we got a great show lined up. We got the one, the only misses Is it misses or miss Crap I suck at this. Megan Likes is coming on and, she's, she's a friend of the show. I'm a fan of hers. If you've listened to the show before, you've heard from her. She's amazing. she owns a bunch of businesses. She's super nerdy when it comes to numbers, but she makes it fun and she makes it interesting and she makes it practical because she has that real world business knowledge. So we're going to dig into some of her top KPIs on things that you should be measuring in your business to help you get traction. So I'm excited to have her on. So make sure you stick around.

I'm still begging for your five star reviews for the show

A couple of quick announcements. I'm still begging, pleading, for your five star reviews. Okay. I can't just send you an automated thing from nice job or anything like that and get your reviews. But if you want to do me a favor, just go to Apple or Spotify and give me that five stars. Write something nice if you've gotten value from the show. thank you. For those of you that have already done that, I really appreciate it. We're always trying to grow the show and plus, it just feels good to be validated. So please hook me up with one of those five star reviews.

Emory Allen launches Lighting Academy and Light It Up Expo coming up

A couple major announcements. If you've not heard yet. We've launched two new things. We've got Light It Up Expo coming up. February 28, March 1, Orlando, Florida were part of the Home Service workshop. So if you want to get information on Light it up, just go to lightitup expo. com and what this is, you guys, this is so exciting. It's a first of its kind where we're bringing together landscape lighting, holiday lighting, permanent lighting and event lighting all under one roof. Okay. No one's ever done this. Everyone has cool seminars and trainings and stuff, but they're on their own on an island. We're bringing everyone together. So if you want to bolt on landscape lighting or holiday lighting or permanent lighting or event lighting, or you want to bring your team and get them trained and you want to meet with vendors and you want to rub shoulders with these elite people doing millions of dollars a year, you got to be at, Light It Up Expo. Get your ticket now, because we're doing early bird pricing that will go up. Okay? We're going to be talking about pricing today. I'm going to raise my price. So go to light it up expo. com and I'm so excited about that. You guys. Check that out. also Lighting Academy, we launched Lighting Academy, which is also the first of its kind. It's an online course and also training. Right. And so it's not just a course, but you have access to weekly calls where you can get support with your lighting design, your lighting installation, where we have coaches and mentors that have been in the industry over 25 years handling these calls, handling your questions. So if you want information on that, go to lighting academy. net and I'm so excited for that. Let me know what you guys think. Go to Lighting Academy. Net music all right guys, you know this performance matters for a lot of things, including the lighting you use. So don't sell yourself short with your customer. By using budget level products, Emory Allen is at the top of their game when it comes to performance. Take their VA rating for example. It's the lowest in the industry. Well, what does that mean? It means efficiency. So with a low volt ampere rating, you're able to drive more bulbs on a circuit with a given transformer rating. With lower quality bulbs and the same transformer, you're not going to be able to put as many lights on the same circuit. So make the switch today to Emory Allen. It's a great time to do it. You won't be disappointed. A lot of people have made the switch already. If you haven't, all you need to do is email Tom g@emeryallen. com and he will hook you up with your contractor pricing. Mention that you heard about them, here on Lighting for Profits. To get that discount, don't go to their website because I'm telling you, you're going to get the hookup by emailing Tom g. @emory allen. com tomgmaryallen. com and, they have some sexy lamps that single source LED is super smooth at night. So go check it out.

This episode focuses on using data to help your business make smart financial decisions

All right, guys, remember, in just a couple minutes we got Megan Likes coming on. And, we're. It's. This is not going to be a boring, nerdy financial episode. We're going to dig into these top metrics that you need to be using in your business to make smart financial decisions to help you move forward and help you drive success. And it's not that there's ever a bad time to do it, but this is probably the best time to do it because the economy seems to be shrinking a little. People are struggling a little bit more than they were with leads and everything else. So we need more than ever data to make right decisions. And Megan's probably like, who is this guy talking about this? Because I'm not normally the data guy. but I'm telling you, you're not going to want to miss this episode.

Many entrepreneurs make excuses when they're starting out as an entrepreneur

Before I have her on, is it okay if I give you guys some real, just some, like, real world advice real quick? and, I came across this quote from Jim Rohn the other day, and he said, if you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. And, that hit hard because I'm guilty of this, right? But I see so many people making excuses. Every week I get the opportunity to talk to business owners, and to be honest, I hear a lot of the same excuses. You know, the leads have slowed down. I can't charge higher prices, not in my market. I, can't close as many deals as I used to. And you know what I think when I hear these excuses, bs. They're excuses. That's literally what they are. It tells me that people don't really, want what they say they want bad enough. And I like that quote from Jim Rohn. If you really want something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. And so if we find ourselves making excuses, we got to ask ourselves a question. Do we really want what we say we want as bad as we want? one of my, probably my favorite quote of all time is Henry Ford. Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. And, my kids probably can't stand this quote because it comes up probably on the daily in my house. But let me add to that quote. Believing that you can is way more profitable than believing that you can't, okay? And so many people don't believe in themselves, and they don't believe in their offering. And to be honest, most people don't even know what they're going after. They don't know what they're chasing. And so if you don't know what you're chasing, then how are you supposed to believe in it? How are you supposed to believe in yourself? I mean, have you. When have you really sat down and asked yourself, like, why are you doing this? Why are you torturing yourself? Because, let's be honest, being an entrepreneur sucks a lot of the time, especially in the early stages when you don't know what you're doing. Okay? And the first couple of years, you kind of lie to yourself because you're like, sweet freedom, I'm finally doing my thing. But after a while, let's face it, like, it's not easy. And so, like, why are you doing what you're doing? Is it better to just get a job? Or is there a better way for you to be a better entrepreneur? And so here's the truth. Thoughts lead to beliefs, beliefs leads to actions, and actions lead to results. And so many people are worried about the results. They're just constantly focus on the result, focus on the result, focus on the result. And they're forgetting about, these three things that happened before that when you should be worried about your thoughts. Okay? So even right now, as you're listening to this, if you're like, if you're thinking negative thoughts, like, oh, here we go again. Here's Ryan talking about mindset. When's he going to actually give me something practical? Practical? How am I going to raise my price? How am I going to get more leads? Right? Your thoughts are already in the negative. And so what. What is going to follow is negative beliefs, negative actions, negative results. Are you with me? And so what are your thoughts about? Like, how often do you have positive thoughts? How often do you have negative thoughts? What is going on in your mind, your brain, every single day? What's going on in your mind right now? Okay? What are your beliefs? Do you think that people won't pay 500 a light? Because guess what? You're right if you think they won't pay 500 a light. They're not going to. And I've got clients that used to think that they couldn't charge 500 a light and now they're charging 600 a light. So were able to overcome their thoughts, their beliefs, right? And so as long as you think that you'll believe that, and as long as you believe that you won't ask for 500 light, and as long as you're not asking for 500 light, you're not going to get the results. Okay? And this isn't just a one time thing like, okay, well, I'm going to try it, I'm going to, do what I can. I'm going to go ask for 500 a light. Because even that has doubt in it, right? You can't have doubt. You have to go all in on this. And so just because you try it once and it doesn't work, doesn't mean it didn't. Doesn't work, just means it didn't work the way you did it. Okay? And I'll tell you, the longer I'm doing this, I'm seeing the same trends for people, the same trends for people that are struggling and the same trends for people that are gaining traction and gaining momentum in their business, regardless of the economy, regardless of the city they're in or location or anything like that. And it comes down to the same things over and over and over. So let's take an example. Let's say you want to do a million dollars a year. That seems to be the first goal for people like, how do I get my lighting business to do a million dollars a year if you're already there? Well, maybe you want to add another million dollars a year. Go through this example, stop over complicating it. Okay? Start thinking and believing it. Start thinking and believing it. And this is, this is a simple, simple formula to succeed.

Okay, so you want to do a million dollars. So why are you complicating it

Okay, so you want to do a million dollars. And let's say your average job is $10,000. Well, that means you only need a hundred people. It's like you only need a hundred people to give you $10,000 to make a million bucks. So why are you complicating it? Like it's not that crazy. So let's say you're in a northern climate, you're in one of the northern states, which means you have eight months to generate that million dollars. You have eight months to generate a hundred clients. So that's 12.5 clients per month or 3.125, clients per week. That seems a lot More possible than a million. Like when you, when you think of about a million. Like, how am m. I going to do a million? I'm at zero right now. Well, your goal is to get three clients per week. So now your focus, your thoughts, your beliefs are, what are you doing every single day, every single week to get 3.1 clients per week? That is the only thing you're focused on. And if your closing rate is 50%, then how are you going to get 6.5 leads per week? How are you going to get 20, what is it, 25 leads per month? Okay. No more distractions, no more thinking. Well, maybe I should be doing this. I heard, there's a webinar on lighting design. Oh, I heard there's a webinar on this. No, your goal, your problem right now is how do I get 25 leads per week? That is the only thing you focus on. And if you don't think you can do that, you're not going to do it. If you think you can and you believe that all you have to do is get 25 leads per month into your system, to your ecosystem, and you're going to close 50%. You just made a million bucks. Not profit. We're going to talk about profit later, okay?

First goal is revenue; second is high quality leads

But the first goal is revenue. Okay? Now let's say, now there's a couple tweaks, there's a couple levers you can pull here. Maybe you're like, I don't know, man, 100. I don't know how I'm going to do that, right? And let's stick with the eight month economy, okay? Some of you are in southern states and these numbers are like, way easier if you have 12 months, okay? But let's just make it a little bit harder on ourselves and say we have eight months. Let's say, you know what? I don't know if I want to try for 100. Well, then you can increase your price. You can increase your average ticket to $20,000. When you do that, you only need 50 people, guys. You only need 50 people to give you $20,000. Make a million bucks. So now your goal is to get 6.25 clients per month or 1.56 per week. That's it. You only need one to two people a week to give you 20,000 to make your million bucks. Okay? and that's if you're closing at 50%. So another lever could be like, well, let's increase our closing rate. Okay? Play with these numbers. Increase our closing rate, raise our price, average Ticket. All these things are easy ways to solve simple problems, okay? Or maybe complex problems to you, and that's what you solve. So why are you thinking about anything else? Okay, stop thinking about things that might not happen, because what happens when they do? Like, what happens if success. When success comes, okay? And too many people are thinking negative thoughts, they're believing negative things, and they're not taking the right action. So few, levers to focus on premium pricing. And this is what we do in our, in our landscape. Lighting secrets. It's all about premium pricing out of the gate. If we can help you raise your price, you're going to have more money to invest back into your business, into hiring better talent, into paying for more advertising. but premium pricing is number one. Number two, high quality leads, okay? If your goal is just to get leads, then who cares? You're just wasting time. High quality leads and finally closing deals on the spot. Because, anything under 20,000, you can definitely close on the spot in 60 minutes. If you're overcomplicating it and you're focused on, well, I got to, I got to get a better design, and I got a bit. No, you don't like. It's a very simple sales process to get someone excited about lighting, close them on the spot and move on. Too many people are over, over complicating their sales presentation, trying to get more leads. Why? Who cares about more leads? If you're not closing the ones you're getting and, then you're thinking, oh, I just need. I just need help. And then you hire anyone. So recruiting is like a whole nother thing in training and building culture and all that stuff. But I just want to encourage you guys, you know, keep it simple, okay? Control your thoughts, control your beliefs. If you think that you can do this, because all you need to do is get. What is that, 12.5 leads per month to make a million bucks, then you can do it. If you're already doubting yourself right now, it's not going to happen. So the cool news, the cool thing is you guys get to decide right now if it's a priority for you or not. Okay? I can't. I can't force these decisions on you. you have to be the one to step up and say, okay, I'm going to give this. I'm going to give this a shot. I. I'm going to have positive thoughts. I'm going to believe I can do this. And that's where it all starts. Because it doesn't start with your Results.

Ryan Lee has a weekly ranting rant on his podcast

All right, I did it. I got off my chest. Let's get Megan. Coming on. You guys ready? I am. Let's, go. What is up? Megan likes.

Hello, Ryan Lee.

Hey. Hey. Hey. I'm good. How are you?

I'm great. Do you do that every week?

I. I go off. Yeah, I just have my, my weekly rant.

What is that called? What is. Yeah, Ryan's rant. Is that what it's called? The rant of Ryan? It could be the ranting Ryan. Like, what? It's like, it's like a. It's a mindful moment. Like, I didn't know you did that every week. I don't know. I'd have someone show, but I've never paid attention. I apparently just zone out usually. That was great.

Yeah. I just know it's just whatever's on my mind and like, what I. If it's common trends or like if I have a strategy session with someone or just something fires me up where I'm like, guys, this is it. I figured out the secret. They're like, what's the secret? I'm like, this is it. It's mindset. it's thoughts and beliefs.

I love that. I just came off of a week. I was in Atlanta last week and we're doing this, goal setting, budgeting strategic planning workshop. And it was three days and, every single person cried. Equal men and women. And I have not been in like, I was doing a budgeting workshop, guys. Budgeting with like numbers and sports spreadsheets and like. But what we did differently is we started with the why. Like, we started with the mindset. Like. And it's so funny. If we could just shift it, like, if we could attach. Somebody, said that we were attaching dreams to dollars, your dreams to your dollars. Then suddenly it's not just a spreadsheet. Like, suddenly it's like your nights, your weekends, your time with your kids. It's like your kids college tuition. It's. It's your dream house. It's like it's so much more than just numbers on a page. And so when you were speaking, I was like, wow, People love to overcomplicate it. I personally don't love that he used the million dollar business, because I think the million dollar business is just stupid and it should die. It's just like unicorn that everybody keeps saying is like, oh, yeah, that's my dream. Because it's. It's what my dream should be.

Yeah.

So I'm just going to edit Ryan's rant slightly and say insert your goal here, whatever that goal is. And I just had a client hit their first million dollar week and they're going to hit their first million dollar net month. And so even if it's a million, because Ryan and I always talk about our private jet. He's going to buy a private jet that's going to take me around everywhere. That's, that's the deal that we've negotiated. Right, Ryan? Remember that?

I don't know. Was this written down somewhere?

It was. I think we had a contract. But when Ryan and I are talking about our collective private jet, it's going to require more than a million dollar business. And so I just want you to thank you listener after that wonderful Ryan rant about like, why did you start, why do you keep going and why are you working so hard? And I feel like the mindset part, if we can anchor back to those things, like root back to that part, I agree that it has to have a revenue goal, but it's usually so much more than revenue. It's usually like freedom, right? Like time freedom. Ryan and I talk a lot about time freedom. We compete about who can work less. We both lose.

Right now I'm losing. No, you might be losing. I don't know.

I don't know. But it's like this is the fun part about business. And so what I heard you say is what I think you want to talk about today, which is, we have lots of options. Like, we have lots of levers that we can pull. There are lots of things that we can do.

Keep it simple with KPIs: Don't overcomplicate it

And before we get into all those strategies, like, I just want the listener to kind of sit with what you said, which is like, keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Like, what's important to you? Like what's stressing you out right now? And we're going to give you some laundry list things to go pull so levers you can go pull to fix that thing. But just because it's what your neighbor's working on, just because it's what like somebody in your mastermind group is working on, doesn't mean that that needs to be your next problem to solve. So that's what I love about KPIs is like, I get to sit down with my team, be like, what's hurting us the most right now and what do we want to go fix? Right? Or what, what's giving us the most potential right now and what do we want to go make better? Like that's, that's the Beauty of numbers. They don't have feelings. There's no feelings in the numbers.

I love it.

Ryan Lee did great training for Landscape Lighting Secrets on problem solving

Well, so you came on, it's probably been a couple months now, and did this training for us inside Landscape, Lighting Secrets. And I was, you know, I. I'm a learner. I usually take notes, even if, like, it's kind of a boring presentation. I still try to find one or two things. But this. I don't even know what it was called. A webinar, a discussion. Whatever you did, it was phenomenal. Like, it was literally one of my favorite ones. And I learned so much. And one of the things that I got out of it was that it was like, well, you need to. Because I just want to go sell. I just want to grow. I don't want to do KPIs. That sounds so stupid, right? And you converted me on this call because I was like, okay, this is how you decide what problems to solve. And I feel like I'm a pretty good representation of your average just lighting guy, business guy who has just succeeded because of grit, you know, like, I'll just outwork, outperform, whatever. But, man, it was cool to, to hear that. And for me, it was like a. It was a learning moment for me to be like, okay, this is how we decided because so many people are solving problems that don't matter right now, and they feel good because it's like kind of an easier one to solve sometimes. That's why I think that we do it. But it's like, why are you doing that? This. We just, we just went through the thing. Your KPI is low here. This is the one thing you need to solve. And then you also brought up, just do the easy one first. Like, and it's. This was awesome because it was really spoke to me. I was like, wait a minute. I think I meant to have Megan come on and do this training for our group, but somehow it turned into a, session for Ryan Lee.

And it. And it. It's a session for me too. I think there's a couple things that's common denominators about entrepreneurs. So if you're listening to this and you haven't fully, like, resolved yourself to be an entrepreneur, like, the sooner you can get there, the better you are. If you're in business, you're a business owner. And if you're not having fun being a business owner, then you should go get a job, because this is hard, right? But if you are going to keep staying business as a business owner, then you're an Entrepreneur. And so we should probably start, like, thinking about ourselves as entrepreneurs. And one of the beautiful things about entrepreneurs is they have grit. Like Ryan just said, they tend to be lucky, they tend to have a lot of confidence, they tend to be aggressive, and they're really, really good problem solvers. So what I like about this is, especially as a coach or consultant and like, I have my own imposter moments, like having a client break a million dollar week. Like, I was like, oh, shit, do I even have a right to be the person that they're paying the tens of thousands of dollars to tell them what to do next? And the reality is that's all I'm doing, is I'm being like, I don't know anything about that business because I'm in a lot of different industries. That's not my job. My job is to be like, so how'd it go, guys? Okay, that didn't work. So what are we going to try? Different. Okay, so how are we going to try that? I mean, a lot of coaching is that and effective coaching. And we can coach ourselves. We can be in coaching groups like Landscape Lighting, Secrets. But, effective coaching is actually not coming up with the suggestions. It's figuring out what's your lowest hanging fruit to go do next, what's the easiest win that will impact the thing that you're trying to impact next. So let's. Ryan doesn't want this to be all ethereal and he doesn't want it to be all fluffy. He really likes it to be actionable, like, give me the meat and potatoes.

Let's take an imaginary listener who's listening to this podcast

So let's, let's take an imaginary listener who's listening to this. And maybe you're sitting there thinking, I'm having a hard time paying myself. Or maybe you're sitting there thinking, I don't have enough money in my bank account, like, I'm feeling squeezed. Or maybe you're sitting there thinking, I don't have enough time with my family and I don't know if I can afford to hire somebody. Right. Like, are, those. What else? Those are normal, Ryan.

Those are good.

Okay. Those are pretty common. And Ryan and I have both been in all three of those spots. Well, I'll speak for myself. Ryan, you can speak for you. But me, Megan likes, I've been in all three of those camps at some point over the course of my entrepreneurial journey.

See, for me, it's just been easy. I've never had challenges.

Yeah, yeah, this is the mediocre white guy. And you're like, you're just like, born with this. You're just, like, lucky forever and ever. Like, you got it dialed in. I'm sorry, but the listeners know that we love each other, go way back. I didn't actually mean that. He really does work hard and tries hard. But let's be real. Have you had any of those?

Are you kidding me? Yeah, I've been in all those shoes. Like, I.

Okay.

Like, last week.

Okay. Yeah, like, yesterday.

Yeah.

Okay. you had so many good quotes. And, like, if you don't want to quit, you're doing something wrong. Isn't that one of the quotes? Like, or you're not trying hard enough. Like, this is hard work.

75% of business owners fail because they run out of money

So let's talk through those three examples. And one of the things that I like about when Ryan and I come together is I like sales. Like, make me cringe a little bit. They make me nervous. Like, I'm not a natural saleswoman. And Ryan, he's like, I just want to go sell. I just want to go outsell. And I am like, no, I want to crunch the numbers, and I want to make sure it's profitable. And then Ryan cringes. Usually he's like, no, no, no. I just want to go sell.

Yeah, but I. I'm seeing the light. Oh, do you hear that? Didn't.

I did.

I'm seeing the light. And, that's. That's why I know what I need. I just don't want to do it. Like, I don't want to. I still know that KPIs are good. I've always known that. Before I knew you, I knew they were good, but I still don't want to do it. I just want to solve.

This is where we're not attaching the dream to the dollar.

Yeah.

Like, I think we have to attach the dream to the dollar. So why I think there were so many tears at my workshop last week is I made every single person in the room start with a personal budget, and I made them do it together right then in that moment. Because what I have found after, you know, over two decades working one on one with entrepreneurs and a lot of failed entrepreneurs, like, 75% of business owners fail. And I, have coached through some failures. Like, it. It's hard. This is. When we think this is hard, we mean, it's hard, and the odds are stacked against you. but when they fail, I'd say almost always, it's because they run out of money.

Yep. That's literally the number one. People don't know that when you start a business, your Only thing that you have to do is not run out of money and you get to.

You get to keep playing another day. You get to keep. Yeah, you keep going. Right. But if you run out of money, then it's game over. It's like. And we don't get the three lives from, like, Mario Kart or something. Like, you're just game over. The end. You ran out.

That'd be cool. We should do. Remember. I don't. Did you know the 30 life code from Contra? Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right. B, A, B, A select, start.

No idea what you're saying.

That's a whole nother episode on Nintendo.

Okay.

But, yeah, that's the thing. We don't. We have. We have, like, one business life. Unless we have, like, a rich uncle or something like that. But most. If. If you did, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. Like, people don't come here because they're successful.

Like, or independently wealthy, usually.

Yeah, they're successful, but they. They haven't achieved the level of success that they know they're capable of.

Small business owners need to figure out how much money they need to feed family

Okay, so let's. Let's live here for a minute of not running out of money. And, And really, this is the hardest part is, like, facing it, like, getting our head out of the sand. I literally had a talk with one of my favorite small business owners this morning, like, very early. And I was like, you are stuck and you are ostriching, and you have to get your head out of the sand today. Like, I'm not coming back on Wednesday if you're not gonna get your head out of the sand. And the head of the sand moment is like, it'll be fine. And this is where Ryan and I kind of conflict, because, like, Ryan will be like, I'll just sell one more. Like, I'll just sell another one. Absolutely outsell the problem.

Yes, that.

That is his philosophy. And, Mike Michalis has a quote that says, you can't outsell an unprofitable business model because eventually someday it's going to catch up with you. So let's forget profits right now, and let's start with, like, the end in mind. And to me, the most basic need and in mind is feeding our family. So if we as entrepreneurs can't sit down and, like, figure out how much do we need every month to feed our family, then we're setting ourselves up to fail. Like, it's a guessing game that we're never going to get. Right.

And I. And I agree with this, by the way. And I Think I was fortunate enough and lucky enough potentially that like I do agree with what Mike said. Like, I can't, I'm not gonna out, I'm not gonna sell out of myself out of a non profitable thing. But I've always, I've. Even when I wasn't charging a premium price, I was charging a premium price. You know what I mean? Like, I've always been able to make enough money to like muddy the, the numbers. But I'm telling you, the more I get into it and the more I do a, a budget, a personal budget, a business budget, then it's like, okay, now all of a sudden the problems are glaring. So I like this, keep going well.

And I just like getting to terms with what you need to do. Like what do you, what do you actually need to bring home? And then it gets quite simple because then we can throw away that million dollar unicorn business and can be like, I had a couple business owners, I had one woman, and I think she'll be fine with me saying this. I'm not gonna say her name or her business or where she is, but she, she, she does over 4 million a year in revenue. And when we got through the personal budget and got through the simplified business budget, she actually dialed back her gross revenue goal because she didn't have to push so hard. And she could if she wanted to. She got to see all the pretty. I showed them what their cash bonds would be 15 months from now if we pushed through it. But she also got to decide if she wanted to like take her foot off the gas just a little bit. And to me that's the power of numbers. Like, the power of numbers is knowing where are you going, like what do you want to do? And then building an entire business around that. Like, how much money do you need to feed your family? Question number one, then, okay, how do we need to structure it? How do we need to price it to be able to achieve that outcome? And that's what I like about Ryan's, Ryan's pricing methodology is they have nothing to do with the industry. They have nothing to do with your neighbors, they have nothing to do with your competition. They completely have to do with you as a person, as an individual. Like there were people in the room last week that had six kids. Their personal budgets were bigger than people that had two kids, right? Like your personal budget drives your pricing and we get confused by that. Like, you might be listening to me, like this lady felt whack job. But here's the reality. Like if you can't feed your family, then you probably need to go do something else. Or we can dig deep and figure out how we can build a business that will feed your family. And I wish that we did not skip go. We did not like, I wish that we started here. And if you're listening to this, you probably didn't start here. So now we have to like start here. But it's good news because it's fourth quarter. It's the perfect time. Every loves talk about budgeting right now.

Yeah.

For nine months I'm gapping on my head and nobody wants to talk about budgeting. But now in October, suddenly like every week I'm booked for a budgeting workshop. Right.

Well, and budgets are, you know, people don't want to do budgets because they know that their head has to come out of the sand and that they can't buy a hot tub, they can't go on vacation. It's a very limiting thing to them. Talk about how it doesn't have to be like that, how it can be an empowering tool instead of I love it.

You made like light sound sexy earlier. You had like a couple of innuendos that were a little bit borderline. I was like, what is going on? This is how I feel about budgeting. Like we could. You said mindset earlier. Right. We could look at that as that is like a limiter that that is going to like put us in a box as entrepreneurs. We don't want to be put in a box. Or you could look at it as monopoly money. For me, when I play with budgets, I think about how I get to spend my money, how I get to direct my money. I could have in my budget that private jet next year. I could budget for that.

Yep.

I could have in that budget next year a new house. I could have in that budget next year that I want to take an eight week vacation on a beach somewhere. Like, I get to choose how I want to budget and when I take back the power of the budget instead of it telling me what to do. I love this expression. It's like I like to tell my money where to go instead of wondering where it went. And the way I tell my money where to go is through a budget. Like I direct it, I choose which direction it's going to go.

A lot of people overthink budgeting, right?

And so I hope that like you're feeling and if you want, we'll put in the show notes like, I've got a super simple personal budget worksheet and the rule is you can't spend more than 10 minutes on it. So a lot of us overthink the crap out of it, right? We're like, oh, let me pull up my bank account and I make people do pencil to paper budgets. No computers or phones allowed. This is a test. Do you know how much money you're spending? And if you don't guess what? Doesn't matter. You did your first budget and it's going to be wrong. And he got that out of the way.

It's definitely going to be wrong.

Better.

I, promise you. Everyone thinks they're spending way less than they are.

But that's a great exercise, myself included.

Because I just went and figured out what my expenditures were and I was like, dang it, I thought I knew stuff.

Yeah, well, there you go. But now you know more stuff than you did before you started that exercise. So I love that.

Landscape Lighting Secrets can help you do a business budget in 10 minutes

okay, so first step, do the personal budget. The next step is do the business budget. And the business budget for me is so fun because that's when we get to choose, like, how much revenue do we want to do. So if you want to do the million dollar business, like, that's fine. We are here to do the math with you. We are here to cheerlead you. That's all fine.

It doesn't have to be. It doesn't. It could be a 500k. It could be 500 million. I don't really care what the number is.

It could be 100k.

It's math. It's just math. That's all.

Well, and it's the math that's right for you and your family and your situation. So I, I like, start with the business, start with the personal, then figure out the business to feed the personal. Like that. So once you get to the business budget, then we get to start playing with the KPIs, because that's what's going to start showing you. Like, it was so fun the way the budget works. We can actually do a budget, a business budget in lots of 10 minutes. Also, like, people will spend like three days doing a budget workshop. And I'm like, no, no, no, really, I, give me 20 solid minutes of your full attention with your personal budget dialed in and I can do a business budget. So I'm going to walk your listeners through how they do a business budget in 10 minutes. Is that okay?

Love it.

We're not even going the direction you wanted to go. But here's the thing. They should totally join Landscape Lighting Secrets so they can watch the full KPI worksheet with the slides and all of that, like you should, they should do that. We'll give them good free advice here on budgets.

Yeah, it really is helpful because you can pause and rewind and all that stuff. But this is perfect. I, I'm still going to ask you a couple more things after this, but that's fine. That's fine.

But I got to get through this. I got to get this off my chest. This is like a, Ryan rant via Megan. Can I say that? Is that a lot? Okay.

You really just need like four inputs to make a budget

All right, so here's how budgets work. It's the craziest thing. You really just need like four inputs to make a budget. Four inputs. So input number one is you need to know how much does it cost you to deliver something? So what is your cost of goods sold as a percentage? Can you give them an idea for landscape lighting people? Like, what's a good target cost of goods sold? Yeah, I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but.

No, I'm literally taking notes. remind me, are we doing labor, in there as well?

Yeah, if, ah, you can.

Okay, so 40, we'll put 40% in COGS.

Okay, so your target cost of goods sold is 40%. If you don't know what yours is, borrow Ryan's. If your financial statements don't tell you that, call me and have likes accounting to your books. Because we would love, to fix that for you. But your book should tell you the story of how much money do I have to spend in order to make money. So our target cost of it sold, we're going to say it's 40%.

And we're just basing that vocabulary lesson.

Yeah, go ahead.

We're just basing that based on like, okay, if you sell a job, you have to, you have to buy materials. So you have to pay for materials and you have to pay for labor. So again, if you are a one man show, your cogs might be less because you're not paying someone labor to install it. This is kind of a whole nother shindig if we're going to pay ourselves and stuff like that. But also this is why I'm always like such a pricing snob is because you can actually change your cogs percentage based on your pricing. Like you can make that number go down really fast just by raising your price. So typically people bragging online are not charging a very high price and they're bragging about profits that are unreal. They're basically just, they're, they're saying their cogs is like, oh, just take out my 20% for materials, and I'm a billionaire. But they don't really, truly understand accounting.

Right. So Ryan and I would love to help you if that seemed confusing to you, but basically the idea is, for every job you go on, you had to have spent some money. So how much money do you have to spend? And we do. I do a really fun budget workshop for classes, like, and I run, like, a couple thousand dollars around the room so we could do a $10,000 lighting job. And basically what we're saying is that $10,000 lighting job, we're going to spend 4,000 of it on materials and labor to get the job done.

Yep.

Does that make sense?

Yep.

Okay, so then what that means Is that $10,000 lighting job, we have $6,000 left, right? Yeah. 4,000 is gone. That went to Emory Allen and to our technicians. And we pay our technicians well and we give them good benefits. I'm in California. That's important to me. Okay, so then we have to pay ourselves. Us, the owner. So, like, we deserve to pay ourselves enough. And see how my pricing is different than everybody else's to feed my family. So then I got to put in, how much do I need to make for every job? How much do I deserve to make? What if I said that you deserve to make 30% of every job? Dang, that would be nuts, right? That'd be crazy.

Yeah.

What if I said you deserve to make 20% of every job? What if I said it doesn't matter what I say. It matters what your family budget needs. Like, what's your mortgage, how many kids do you have, and what's your, like, lifestyle? Like, how much do you like to spend? Okay, but you need to figure out how much do I need to make as the owner to figure out a budget. And then you need to call your shot about how profitable you want to be. So most people, they wait until after all the accounting is done to figure out how much their net profit was. The way I like to budget is I determine net profit first. So we have a rule that likes accounting. In order to be able to work with us, you have to be double digit net profit. So we will not work with anybody who insists on, like, investing in the future success of their business or running it. Close the line to avoid taxes or whatever. We believe that you can do really, really well and still be double digit net profit. I'm a good friend of Tommy Mellows, and Tommy Mello is going to do. I can never keep up. It's like 250 million, maybe 300 million this year in 2024. And he's going to do it at 27% net.

That's so crazy.

That's insane.

That's insane.

I'm sorry. If Tommy can do it at those crazy numbers, then you can do it at your crazy number. And you know what it takes courage, good pricing, discipline. We all have that. We just have to dig deep to find it. So I say put in your net profit. That's important. And then there's like, we have to do a little bit of, like, a mental exercise to figure out the last input, and that is your marketing. So normally at this point, we'll know how much you have left. So that $10,000 job, we spent 4,000 of it on materials and labor. Let's say we spent 2,000 of it, on paying us. We spent 2,000 of it in profit because, like, we had to save for our profit. We only have 2,000 left. That, 2,000 that's left would be for all of our, we call them overhead expenses for the office, for the education, for the truck, for the insurance, like all of the other expenses that go into a job. And so that what we just were trying to do is called job costing. Job costing is way harder. Like figuring out every job. But budgeting, super simple. Because guess what?

Most people start with revenue at the top of their budget

Just like we did the personal budget in 10 minutes, you know how much your expenses are every month for your business. Roughly.

Yep.

We were to give you a laundry list, you would be able to tell us with, like, probably within a couple hundred bucks how close we were on your spending. Because our rent doesn't change, our shop rent doesn't change every month. Right. Our insurance doesn't usually change. Our salary for our office person doesn't usually change. So kind of figuring out what do I need to spend to run this business? And then here's the super fun part. Once we have those numbers, then it tells us what our revenue goal is. Do you see how we built a budget backwards? Most people start with revenue at the top, and they're like, okay, here's my cost of goods sold, and here's my owner's pay, and here's my marketing, and here's my fixed expenses, and then here's my net profit. Well, we didn't do it that way. We did all those inputs to figure out how much do I have to make. And if you do a budget this way, here's the guarantee you will always break even because you have to hit the revenue goal in order to get the other input.

Stuff and your profit.

Yeah. If you sit down, then you're like, and we'll give you a little worksheet for this. I've got.

When you say break even, the formula will break even. But you still made 20% if that was your number in there. So it's not truly breaking even.

It's breakeven plus 20% net.

Yeah.

Which is just healthy.

I think it's amazing because like you said, everyone else just does it backwards. And then they're like, man, where did all the money go? And it's like, well, this is where it went. And so when you budget plan, like, put the numbers in, it's like, what has to be true for me to be able to pay myself 20% and make 20%. Well, this is the formula.

And those percentages might be different for you. Like, you might be doing most of the labor. So maybe your percentages look different because you're an owner operator, listening to this. So take a minute to, like, really think about, what did she say? And use our little worksheet. But here's the epiphany that will happen after you use the worksheet. Most people, the number in the expenses row is too low. Like, they're spending way more than the budget allows. And that is an epiphany moment. Right. Like, we do the budget. We're like, oh, shit, I actually need to give myself a haircut. I actually need to. I had one person last week, and she gave up her office space. She decided that was just pure overhead that she wasn't using. It wasn't in the budget. She wrote the landlord during the class, and she gave up her office space.

Wow.

I had one person that said, you know what? There's no way I'm ever going to be able to feed my family. I have to increase the revenue goal. So she increased the revenue goal. And then we're going to get to what you do when you increase the revenue goal. That was huge. I have one. One person, she gave herself a pay cut because, like, that's the thing. Like, if you're paying yourselves too much and the business can't afford it and you're not willing to grow or sell more, then the place it's got to come from is your pocket. And that's why we start with what we need to feed our family. Because if you can't feed your family, then you can't afford to give yourself a pay cut. Right. So I really like budgeting this way because it kind of gives you some insights about where we're being. And I'm going to use aggressive language. So trigger warning, be careful where we're being lazy most of the time. That's what happens. We're too lazy to go to a budget. We're too lazy to look at our budget. We're too lazy to preserve our bottom line. And if you feel like I just attacked you, I did that on purpose to inspire action. Aggressive language on person. Yeah. So stop it, prove me that I'm wrong, that you're not being lazy, and go preserve that bottom line. Because as entrepreneurs, that's like our number one job. What did you say, Ryan? Our number one job is to make sure we don't run out of money so we can keep playing.

Yeah, no, I do feel attacked, but I agree with you, so I'm not going to argue. this is good, man. This is, You know, it just takes away the unknowns because people are always asking, well, how much should I pay a person to do this? How much should I spend on advertising? How much should I. It's like, well, it depends. And people hate that answer. But it's the real. It's the right answer.

Or what if the answer is how much can you.

Let's say you need to grow revenue by 60% or 100%

It's so many people talk to me about marketing last week and like Ryan and I, last time we got really into this because, let's say that you do this exercise and you need to grow revenue by like 60% or 100% like most people say, well, I gotta go give Google some more money. But what if your budget says you can't afford to give Google any money? Then what do you do?

Well, do you want to know what I would do?

I would love to, know what.

You would do, because I believe this. I think whoever can afford to spend the most money to acquire a customer is going to win. So I would raise my prices and make my budget work for what I need. If it.

So can we. So let's. So let's. I wanted. I want to hit that KPI because that is such a good. Like, this is like my favorite thing. So we're going to hit that KPI in just a second.

We gave you three KPIs to focus on in your budget

First, in all those things we just mentioned, we gave you three KPIs. So we. We're sneaking into this budget discussion is three KPIs. KPI number one that we gave you was cost of goods sold percentage. If you spent the next. Here's a shocker. There's only 10 weeks left in the year. If you spent the remaining. Okay, maybe when this records, it might Be nine weeks or eight. Look at a calendar. However many weeks are left when you're listening to this, it's less than 10. Okay. It's less than 10. If you, if you focused on your cost of goods sold percentage for the remaining weeks of the year, you would make more money. Like if you focused on bringing that percentage down. And Ryan's got lots of tricks for how you can bring it down. Focus on bringing that percentage down. You would end up with more money, bottom line in your bank account. So cost of goods sold is one KPI. net profit percentage. You should be looking at this every single month. And this is a game against yourself. And Megan said she won't even talk to you if it's. If it's less than 10%. And I really feel like there's no excuses. Like you could raise your prices tomorrow and fix it and be double digit in the next 30 days. Like, don't even, don't take the lazy button. Right? So, you need to focus on net profit. That's another KPI. And then the sexiest one, the one that Ryan loves the most and everybody likes to talk about is revenue. Revenue is actually a KPI. Driving revenue is a KPI. Focusing every week on. I'm going to go back to Ryan's example from his Ryan rant earlier. Did I get two clients at $20,000 this week? That's $40,000 in revenue. That is a KPI. If you didn't, then what am I going to do next week to get three so I can make it up? Right. So revenue is a KPI. And then let's go into. Do you feel like we can leave them with those three KPIs and we can go into your client acquisition cost?

Yeah, keep going.

Is that helpful? Okay.

Ryan says the person who can afford to spend most to acquire a customer wins

All right. So now Ryan started to go down a rabbit hole, which I love and hate this rabbit hole. I mostly hate it because it makes me feel dumb. So, Ryan, I need you to help me, like, not feel so dumb. John, do you know John K. Parmesan? Karma John. No, John Carmen.

Yeah, yeah, I know John.

Yeah, okay, John K. But I didn't.

Know it was by John K. I know John Karmazon.

Well, I have a hard time with those last names. So then I like, yeah, Karma John. Farmer John. John K. All right. Or Karmazan. I think that's his.

You just say it fast. But yeah, I know. Say it fast.

K, Coach K. Coach John. I don't know that guy. He has this math figured out and I must text him at least twice. A month. Ask him. What's the math again? Can you help me? I can't figure it out. So here's what Ryan was trying to say. He was trying to say the person who can afford to spend the most to acquire a customer wins. And what I found in business is none of you know how much you can afford to acquire a customer. So, Ryan, if you have a magic formula for them, I would love it. I'm going to start with my formula, then you can come back.

The KPI that we're talking about is called the client acquisition cost

So that KPI that we're talking about is called the client acquisition cost. So how much did we spend to acquire customer? And the way we calculate the client acquisition cost is our total advertising and marketing spend divided by our total number of new clients. And you can choose any period you want. So you can say for yesterday or for last week or for last month or for last year, but total ad spend divided by number of new clients in the same period. That is client acquisition cost. Once you know that number, most of us kind of look at me like, okay, well, I want to make it better, right? I want to spend less to acquire a customer, or in Ryan's case, more. But how do we know that it's good? How do we know how much we can afford? I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but you said, like, those that can afford.

You're asking me?

Yeah. I don't know.

Wait, is. This is not a rhetorical question? You want me to.

I literally don't know the answer. Only John K. Knows the answer to this, and I wish.

Can we do a lifeline.

John, John, help us.

We should have planned this better. So how do we know what the number is? Well, we know what the number is based on the budget. That's how we know. Because honestly, like, for me, I'm willing to spend more, but I also have more in it because I'm charging a higher price. So people that go, well, I don't understand how you do that. How can you spend fifteen hundred dollars to acquire a client? I'm like, easy every time. If you just, like, gave me a client that was going to give me $10,000, I would give you $1,500. And I would repeat that process as many times per day as possible because my budget allows for me to spend 15% of my revenue on that acquisition. If you are charging a lower price and you're like, dude, I can't. I mean, I can't afford that. I can only charge 300. Well, then you're not going to your Google Ads budget's not as big. You can't do direct mail like I can. You're not going to be everywhere your branding is. It's just not going to be as well known. So that's what I mean is like, if you can outspend your competition, if you can grow faster with your brand and do all that, you're gonna get to the state of momentum, which most people don't ever get to. You're gonna get to that state of momentum a lot faster than if you're just the $300,000 company. That's why I always use a million, because I'm like, really? You want to get to about 2 to 3 million? That's a cool gravy train to sit in where you, like, don't have to do a lot except for, like, go to the mailbox and get some money out of it. But there are people that want to stay small. And you can. But when you break your knee, like, good luck making money. So I think, I don't know, I like the number 15%. We didn't always stick to that because not everything's scalable. Just because you do a direct mail campaign and you spend $5,000 and it works really well, it's not like, oh, well, let's just double that and we'll double our success. Because the routes might be different. There's a lot of different variables there. So you, can't always scale your marketing spending and scale your business. This is why you have to measure these things.

I love that. And I did some math while he was talking. So he said 1500. And here's the crazy math. So back to the ranting Ryan or the Ryan rant, you got to come up with a betterment. Like, just got to have like a. We're going to coin something there.

Please do.

Back to that he shared with us how to build a million dollar business with a hundred clients. If we spend $1500 to acquire those hundred clients, we're gonna spend $150,000 this year in marketing. Most of you are gonna turn green in the face when I say those numbers. M. You're like, all, right. There's no way in hell I'm gonna spend $150,000. Well, here's the reality. Like, he knew to get to a million, he needed a hundred. In order to get those hundred that are the right ones, he needed to spend 1500. That was math. No feelings there. He now has the power. When you do a budget at the beginning of the year of $150,000. Imagine if you could direct that. Like, okay, Google, you get this much. Okay, Facebook, you get this much. Okay, dope marketing, you get this much. I'm telling you how much you get. And I'm telling you that this is when I fire you, is when I don't get the number of clients back that I need to get back. Right? Because I'm telling my business what to do. Now here's the crazy cool part about math, is when Ryan then said he was going to double his average ticket to $20,000, he only needed 50 clients. Ever. Remember that? Same million dollar business. Now we only need 50 clients, same $1500 to acquire them. Guess what happens to our marketing spend? It goes in half. Now we just have to spend $75,000. Now we can afford to spend 7.5% instead of 15% on, marketing. And this is really, I think, where the rubber meets the road. And that we were saying last week we were joking in the budget workshop. That's a budgeting 200 class. That's like the next level of class is when we start getting into nerdy, what we call marketing attribution.

Start with how much money you need to feed your family

But here's what you need to know for today. And I like, I hate when we get down rabbit holes and then people feel confused. So I want to bring us back to our clarifying point. Our, clarifying point is start with how much money you need to feed your family. Like, I think I've said that a hundred times, but until you hear me and actually do it, it doesn't work. So personal budget first, cost of goods sold. Like, figure out how much you have to spend to make money. Like, this is a real number that we need to get really comfy and cozy with. And then call your shot on net profit. Like, how much net profit do you want to make? And then from there you can actually set your revenue goal. And once you set a revenue goal, then you can set your marketing budget. Most people do it the other way around. Revenue goal, then marketing budget, then it all kind of feeds out, right? Oh, you don't like it? Go ahead, argue. I'm ready.

I love it. No, I'm, I'm like, this is perfect. And if it, if it doesn't work, if the numbers don't work and you're like, well, wait a minute, how am I going to buy my hot tub? Then you either don't buy a hot tub or you buy a hot tub and change something else in. Like, you have to. It's math does not lie. Like you said, it doesn't have emotions. Like, it's 100%. Is 100%. Like, as soon as you overspend a.

Hot tub, go put it in your freaking budget and then go make more so that you hate your budget. Right?

Like, but here's the other thing.

The beautiful budget is you can budget in the hot tub. Like, and you should. And I remember the first year we budgeted in a new computer or the first year we budgeted a vacation. I mean, it felt different. Like, it felt so sweet because we were like, now it's not like a. Usually like a stressful event. Like, are you budgeting a new vehicle? Like a new work vehicle that's always like, oh, the transmission went out and oh, man, I gotta go. But what if you. Like for like, hey, I know this truck's like, getting old. I'm just throw a new truck in the budget for next year. We're going to do it like next March and we're going to put 10 grand down. And then like next March, you get to start shopping for the perfect truck. Like, that's. You took the power back. Like, you made the feeling feel better. You're telling your money like, hey, I got 10 grand that I get to go spend, not I have to go spend.

I love that it's literally running your business instead of letting it run you.

Pricing is so important and it's hard for people to understand this

I think there's just a couple things that we should mention that you can change so you can. You can plan for it. I'm,

I.

Pricing is so important and it's hard for people to understand this. You mentioned earlier. Let's say you're making 10% net profit or 9. 9. But you need to get to 10 to. To work with Megan. Well, I believe in overachieving. So we're going to double. To double your profit. Most people just have to raise their price by 10%. Especially if you're making 10% and you raise your price by 10% and that money goes straight to your bottom line because you didn't buy a hot tub, you just doubled your profits. Is that. Math.

It's such good math.

That's crazy.

The first time I've been through landscape lighting secrets. For those of you that are like, listening this. I've actually, like, spent a lot of hours listening to Ryan and that class I like, watched three times because I was like, this is so good. He made it so easy. Like math. It's just math.

It's just math. So like, if the. If the formula doesn't work and like, wait a minute, I was writing down what Megan said. But now I got confused because where's the money for marketing? I only have like 2% or 1% that like, that doesn't have to be your reality. You can change the formula and make marketing 20% if you want. You know, like you can make it what you want. And I want to encourage everyone to understand that it's not just about that client. Today the lifetime value of landscape lighting is insane because one the average tickets like 10 grand. But then the they're going to add on lights. They're going to start with their front yard, do their backyard later, vice versa, they're going to get richer three years from now, build a new house. It costs more money. Do bigger, more lights. They're going to do their lake house, they're going to do referrals. If you're doing it right, if your customer service is on point, your follow up, all these other things that we're not going to talk about today, that's how you justify the higher spend. That's how you justify is look at that, look at the long term effect here. And if you, as long as you don't run out of money and you stay in the game long enough to play the game, you'll start to experience that momentum and things that come down the road and then you'll see, wow, my revenues keep going up and my, my budget kind of stays the same. So like you said, now all of a sudden it goes from 15 to seven and a half, six to five. I mean mine was always, I think it's five or six. I didn't get below that. But still, that's a good feeling.

you know, you know the fun part about that is that spread that difference. You know where that goes. Guys, listening to this. Your bank account.

Yeah.

When we say bottom line, we mean bank account. If you, when we went back to the beginning, if you're feeling like you are stressed for cash, you're feeling like there's not enough to pay yourself, we're saying we're, sorry, we've been there. That's a really crappy feeling. And take back that power. Go do some math and change your story next week. Favorite part about raising prices is it literally equals more bank money in your bank account next week. And can we leave them with one more math like confidence building exercise?

Do it.

Okay. Let's say, let's say we put on. I call them. I've got a woman that works with me and she called herself my hype girl. And she asked me all the Time. If I packed my big girl pants, they're like the. You know, the brave, like, courage big girl pants. And if I'm ever having, like, a teeny, tiny pity party or a moby party, she'll be like, do you need to go change? Like, I could have sworn that I saw you put in the suitcase the big girl.

Did you pack those? Yeah.

Didn't you pack them? Like, do you need to go put them on? You need a moment to go get your big girl pants?

Okay, I've got my big girl pants on right now. I'm ready for this.

Most of your listeners are men, so you can call them that sounds different, though. Big girl pants. Like, let's just call them big girl pants.

Let's just call them big girl pants.

Let's. Let's have a Mel Gibson moment about big girl pants. There you go. All right, so let's. Let's assume you got your big girl pants.

Let's just assume I'm wearing pants.

That's not like. That's just. That's a big assumption.

Meg Likes Money is a company that helps people make more money

all right, and you. And you decide. I am sick of being broke. I'm sick of being poor. I'm sick of being stressed out. I'm sick of not paying myself. I'm just working too hard. And I just got a big dose of confidence from Ryan's rant. So I'm going to go double my prices. Screw 10k. I'm going to 20k double my prices today. Now, what happens if we lost 40% of our clients because we doubled our prices? Here's the crazy part about the math. So, $10,000 average ticket. Let's say that 10 clients said yes. What is that? That's $100,000, right? Yep. Now we've got a $20,000 average ticket, and only six clients say yes. 120. $20,000. $120,000. You see what happened? We made more working for less.

Plus, it's way more profitable that 120k actually has.

Goes straight to the bottom line.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, I do, too. So go. Go find some confidence. Stop taking the lazy way. Yes. I'm saying aggressive language. Go do some math. Do a budget, and then celebrate with us. Tell us how it goes. Tell us how this changes your life, because this literally will change your life tomorrow. Starting tomorrow.

Okay. You're amazing. Megan. how do people get in touch with you? how do they connect with you? Online? What. What do we want people to do?

Yeah. so my online handle is Meg likes money because I really do like money. And my last name really is Likes. Meg Likes Money. my accounting company. If you're not. If your financials are not telling you a story that makes sense or they're just not speaking your language, that means you probably have the wrong bookkeeper. So reach out to us. Our accounting company is called likesaccounting. com and if you want to just connect socially, I hang out on Facebook. That's showing my age. Not yet into all the other cool things, but I'm a Facebooker, so reach out to me on Facebook. I'd love to get to know you and celebrate you and celebrate you feeding your family so you can do this. my mission is to inspire you to make more, save more, and give back generously. So I'm excited for that.

You're amazing. Thanks for giving back to, our community. thanks for all the stuff that you teach me all the time we meet. So, thanks, Ryan. Yeah, you're amazing.

And thanks, listeners, everyone.

Now the hard part, you just gotta go implement it. But we have very simple things, so go implement, guys. Go crush it. Go make some more money. Get that freedom in your life. Have a good one.