Resources:

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kathi Burns: Hi, there I'm board-certified professional organizer, Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs, just like you, who wanna take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming.

The Organized Energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at the podcast@organizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at organized energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show.

Hi everyone. This is Kathi with Organized and Energized. Thanks for tuning in. Today I'm speaking with Susie Carder. Now Susie started out a low paid hairdresser, trying to support her two little girls on her own. So she decided she was gonna do whatever it took to create her own business. And after much blood, sweat, and tears, she created not one, but 10-million-dollarllar companies.

Her core genius is the ability to simplify complicated issues by creating simple proven systems that are guaranteed to create dramatic growth. She's helped up over 100,000 entrepreneurs, and increase the revenues by more than 3000%. So buckle up kids, cuz this is gonna be a high-flying and fast podcast. I will see you then.

Hi gang. I'm back. This is Kathi with Organizing Energized a podcasts. Of course, you know that cuz you're here, but what you don't know is who I'm going to talk to. I'm talking to the prophet coach, Susie Carder. We're gonna 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.

[00:01:53] Susie Carder: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to play with you and support your community and your tribe. Love working with powerful women.

[00:02:01] Kathi Burns: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I know you have the big backstory. Tell us a little bit 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.

[00:02:13] Susie Carder: I am a rogue entrepreneur. My formal training and my vocation is 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. I immediately had my own business, which I didn't. Cause that industry you're a booth renter or you're strictly commissioned. 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 mama, with two little kids, I had to figure out how to eat and eat quick. Loved what I did, loved my vocation, but only 15% of what we do in business is your vocation. So as a hairdresser was how I color, 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, people who I always said, I wanted my clients chemically dependent on me.

So clients who were investing in hair color, clients who loved chemical work cuz 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 was way before the internet. I'm a little bit seasoned. Y'all if you're listening to it, , I've be in business for 30 years. 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, which to give you context, the average hairdresser, I didn't own the salon. I was a booth runner.

The average hairdresser at that time made about $30,000 a year. And so I said, oh 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? 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 lovely. Do you have a book? I'm like, no, I don't have a book. I just wanna share the good news. They're like, oh, if you had a book, we would buy it. And I'm like, I'm gonna write a book and be famous. . You got some books back there. And so I wrote my first book. Oh, 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 and not knowing the business model. And so wrote my first book and the first publisher approached rejected me. And the great thing about entrepreneurship. If you're an entrepreneur, you definitely know the stories like, oh, don't tell me no. I created my own publishing company and then from there student,s said, oh my gosh, love the book, hate to read. do you have it on audio? I'm like, Ugh. No I'm just a hairdresser, right? 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 created audio and really that's how the speaking started. People would just go, Hey Susie. Oh my God. I love that spreadsheet. Can I buy it? How much would you pay for that? That Kathi was my pricing strategy in the early day. How much would you pay for that? 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 kind of 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 it, but the end result, which was I made a difference and I got clients was so well worth it. In the early days, that's how I started speaking. That's how I started, making money.

Then I wanted, I was building this online platform back in 1999, nothing about 1999 there was no Google. There was no word share. There was no software share. There was WordPress. There was no Infusionsoft, no click funnel. You had to build everything from scratch. So oh, back in the day, I was like, you just need eyeballs. You just need people to see your side and then you'll be rich. Me and my rich bananas. Oh, you'll be rich. Build this site. You'll be rich. I had to learn how to raise money cuz it was a half a million dollars Kathi. A half a million dlars to build this website. That has bananas, I think, back at it. So yeah, it's crazy.

[00:06:49] Kathi Burns: It was expensive back then. It was so expensive back then.

[00:06:53] Susie Carder: So expensive. Like I had to walk miles in the snow. That's what it feels like. I went to this millionaires forum, cuz your business had to do a million dollars and they were teaching you how to raise money. 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 gotta teach people how to build a business. You're teaching 'em to raise all this money and then their businesses fail. And he's 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 you'll be great. Do it. So he really got me into the general market entrepreneurship. I was like, oh my gosh. I was so scared. Kathi, how many times do you sabotage yourself out of fear? So nervous oh my God, Kathi's gonna judge me. Oh my God. We had doctors, attorneys, graphic designers people that ran amusement parks, people who like all doctors and surgeons and only 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. And I did 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 laying 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, wow, perfect. I'm just gonna charge double. So the next event I went to, someone said and in my head, gave the price, it was double what I was charging in the beauty industry. And they're like, perfect. Where do I sign? I was like, oh, yay. Oh, . So I had to figure out, each business that I signed up and that's when I realized business is business is a business.

You have units of things you wanna sell. You have a price point you have to sell at, you have cost of goods that take to create that product and you have fixed expenses and then there's profit left over there should be right. Profit is planned for. I took the same systems that I had built with high end salons and spas, and just changed the language. Cuz business is business. And that's how I got into the general marketplace of entrepreneurship kicking and screaming. It wasn't like it wasn't just, oh, okay. I'm gonna do this overnight. 30 years later, I'm an overnight success, but I've built 10 multimillion dollar companies over the 30 years of, and thousands helped my clients make thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in their own business.

[00:09:38] Kathi Burns: 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% if yo,u don't know those nuts and bolts or those tactics that you need to grow and thrive and get the clients. I tell people that all the time that wanna be pro organizers, I'm like do you know how to market. You're not just gonna be in people's homes, helping them get organized or whatever. You're gonna have to know how to get the people to get you in their homes.

[00:10:11] Susie Carder: Exactly. My students are the one that call me the profit coach when I was doing the brand for this brand. My clients were like, I was like strategic coach, executive coach. They're like, no, that's not what you do. I'm like, it's not I love it. It's it was a focus group, not knowing I was doing a focus group. And they're like, Susie, you're the money? You're the profit coach. Like you just bring us money every time I'm on a call with you. I can see the money all around me. Like you're a profit coach and took it to my marketing team. They're like, we love it. So my students came up with that. The profit coach. I didn't give myself that name, but I love to find the money in business, cuz 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 work, the vocation work, which that's 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, I know 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, right?

People who like, just love 'em okay. But the fans aren't paying our bills, right? Clients I'm done pushing people, a pill. I wanna 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, right? It can be fun, cuz we're doing this. We do this more than we spend time with our family. So I wanna make sure that I love it. I wanna make sure my clients love it. So they're not going, Ugh, this thing called entrepreneurship. I want it to be fun. I want it to be, amazing for them.

[00:11:49] Kathi Burns: Yeah. And people go in peaks and valleys and when people get burned out, what advice do you give them? Whatever they just can't see. They can't see air to come up outcoming water. What would you tell them?

[00:12:01] Susie Carder: We really hit burnout because we're not taking care of ourselves. And especially if you're a woman, entrepreneur, we have been trained to provide and 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. Let take care of, let me take care. 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 taking care of yourself. I'm like what do you mean? What do I need from me? They're like, what do you need to relax? What do you need to take care of yourself? I'm like what do you mean? I couldn't even comprehend Kathi. I'm like, I don't understand the question. Cause my whole life had been about provid taking care of everybody else.

And so I literally, I had a list. What were something called comfort tools. So when I was stressed out, burnt out, what are the things that made me happy? Cause when you're stressed out, burnt out, you can't think what are the things that make you happy? You just wanna take a nap, watch Netflix and chill, grab a glass of wine or cocktail or whatever, or food or sex, whatever your vice is. And that's not necessarily healthy in the short term. It's a little escape, but if you're doing that on goingly, and I think mine was I started seeing myself drinking. Okay. After work, I'm drinking after work, I'm drinking. Oh, I think I'm getting into a problem. And so what are the things that you need to take care of you first?

It's like the old airplane adage put the mask on before you give everybody else's, easier said than done. And so when we hit burnout and I've hit it several times over my career is then 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, right? You're creating money. You're creating spreadsheets. Cuz most people who are linear go, I'm not creative. Oh yes you are. Have you seen, 'em put an Excel sheet together?

[00:14:02] Kathi Burns: You created a business. So yes, you are a creator. You created a business. Even if the business isn't exactly where you wanted to be, you are creating. And even if it's initiative, someone else is in maybe they're just gonna be a hairdresser, that is a business. And that is their own unique business cuz it's their own un way of doing business. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I think a lot of people get stuck in saying I'm not that. I love the idea. I would welcome all of you listeners out there to go ahead and make a comfort sheet. Like what does bring you comfort when you're in hat stressed out situation, you can go look at that list and say, I'm just gonna go sit in the sun for five minutes or whatever it is so that you can fall back into what, already predetermined relaxation technique, so to speak. Cause I agree, Susie, when you're in it, sometimes you're just like, no, I'm just gonna binge on Netflix. I'm not gonna do what really revitalizes me. That's just like hiding.

[00:15:00] Susie Carder: So I even had it to the point. It's like, when you, 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. And I created a place of here's my favorite restaurants. So when someone, man said, Hey, let's go to dinner. I would look and go, oh, let's go here. Cuz you forget, you don't remember when you're stressed out. And I traveled a lot. So I was traveling from Sunday. So new Saturday night, come back Sunday. Monday night, and then I'd go back to work in the salon on Tuesday. So I was look, Fred died, laid to the side. I was exhausted. So was looking 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. Like you just forget. And the reality is friends fuel you, right? Relaxation fuels you, exercise fuels you,and going, enjoying a nice dinner somewhere fuels you. And if you don't have that idea, then you go eating somewhere where you don't really enjoy. And to me, having someone else cook and serve me can be an a itmazing experience where versus just food.

[00:16:05] Kathi Burns: It's so funny. We all know we don't want so easily. It's I don't want Indian and I don't want Thai. I don't want Greek. It's what's, what are you left with? I love having the idea of, places that you know, that you love that are fallback. My husband and I, we joke is we just want a good atmosphere. Like we can eat any kind of food cause we like every kind of food, but let's give us a nice atmosphere where we get waited on where it's relaxing and so that's as close as we get to what we do want.

[00:16:30] Susie Carder: I want some good service, the challenge, like I cook better than most restaurants, so I'm very picky right. I hate to spend a hundred bucks on food and then it's nasty.

[00:16:39] Kathi Burns: Exactly. That's really great advice all the way around actually for everybody. Tell me about what you're gonna offer the listeners. And then we'll jump back into a few more questions, but what do you have out there that I can put below that's a link that they can download, look, read experience more of Susie.

[00:16:58] Susie Carder: So I just finished, it's been two years now. I launched it during COVID. My new book called Power, Your Profit, book number 10. And it's the roadmap of taking your business from 10,000 to 10 million. I've been giving you my, a free copy of my ebook. It's published by Simon and Schuster. It's a juicy book, right? And I walk you through, what did it take for me to build 10. What did it take to build multimillion dollar compaines. Then what's the system I used cause systems give you freedom, right? That comfort tools 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 read that the system, or recipe is a system.. I'm a great cook so I follow recipes and then you tweak the recipes, right? So this is a recipe book for your business to go, what do I need to do to get myself in stock?

What do I need to do to check my mindset? What do I need to do to manage my business all in one place? Cause when I started this. I gotta go this class and I gotta write that, get that book and that I'm like doesn't somebody have it in one place. I wanna 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 followed my roadmap. I say it over and over again.

[00:18:21] Kathi Burns: I'm with you. 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 that was very interesting about your story is that you did have that gods seed or soul spirit, or whoever knocking on your shoulder all the time. Saying what about this? And what about this? And, you were in denial partially, but then you came out of denial and you say yes, and I find this an entrepreneur, the easiest thing to say is yes and then see how you're gonna figure it out. But why I bring that up 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 right? 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.

[00:19:27] Susie Carder: Absolutely. I think I am 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 look when the fear steps in and what was the difference? I just was scared of the people, cuz I didn't have that piece of paper on the wall. Right that degree, that was so important, that I made that up and go, oh, 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. So 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, right?

A new belief system birthed. Now I don't have to do the cosmic boot. I do it for myself, I just got off of, a month of vacation to go that's my cosmic boot. I'm gonna take a month off to really get perspective of what do I want to do now in this season? Do I wanna keep doing what I'm doing? Do I wanna reshape that? Versus I gotta get ran 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 like in the side of those lessons, the gift that came, it came wrapped in sandpaper, right? It wasn't a pretty gift. It was a horrible gift. It was a painful gift, but it was a gift all the same. 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. Cause I was so busy being busy. And now when I have the cosmic boot and I stopped, it was like, oh, here is kind, man. He's taking care of me. He does not know me that well. I think we had been dating mayfor be three weeks or a month. Something really small, but I'm like, ehh next he's not the one he doesn't fit my box, but saw him for who he was versus my busyness of, this unrealistic checkbox of going, oh, here's a man of character. Here's someone who cares for me and doesn't know me that well. And so I think don't wait for the cosmic boot, listen to the whisper. Oprah had said on 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. Like how many times you wait till you run over me, physically run over right before I would listen to what's next for me. Or relationships would blow up when you knew those little voices were saying no 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 wanna be? Am I being the kind of mom I wanna be? All that takes reflection time and we make it bad. I wanna give you permission to make it good. Yeah, you go, oh, you don't always have to be busy, to being busy.

[00:22:56] Kathi Burns: One of my talks is stop getting stuck in yand our busyness and get down to business, stop doing, doing, doing, spend more time being. Ron Dos, I don't know if you're familiar with him,he wrote the Be Here Now, he had a stroke and he stroked out and he couldn't speak as fast as he could think. And so he wrote a book called Still Here. And it was all about the pauses in between the speech. And he got so much deeper into his spirituality because, basically the breaks were put on his output. He's prolific and the breaks were put on his output and he was better able to formulate his soul connection or whatever you would call it out there. But I thought it's what happens. I know I broke my wrist one time when I really needed to just slow down and there you have it.

[00:23:44] Susie Carder: That's the cosmic boot girl. So cosmic slow down before you break your back, break your neck, break your the wrist, break your leg.

[00:23:50] Kathi Burns: Yeah, and th at's taken the time that's taken time to put in daily practice of just pausing. Be don't do 24/7, right? Is there anything that I should have asked you that maybe we should touch on besides what we've already discussed?

[00:24:08] Susie Carder: The number one reason I see people not succeeding because 80% of small businesses fail in the first five years. Out of the 80, 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 so when I look at that 80% of small businesses that are still in business are doing less than a hundred grand a year. Go get a job. You can get a job for that. And so when I look at that, I'm like why? And it's because we're not disciplined enough to write the plan out.

We all think about the plan. We all talk aboon the plan. We go, oh, I have a plan. That's in my drawer. I have a plan. That's in my computer. No, I'm talking about a living breathing business plan that you can keep going to. There's two types. There's a capital plan. So when I was raising money, cuz that looks different, cuz you're gotta, you gotta enroll people in giving you money or there's a working plan that's just for your team, right? That's for you and your team can be, subcontractors that you work with. They don't have to be independent contracts. 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, right? But it feels like magic cuz you get so crystal clear, stop spending money before you really clear on how you're gonna get clients, how you're gonna make that happen? I wanna see you win and succeed. And so the first chapter in my book is building a profitable business model. Don't just pull it outta your genius zone that could be your hiney, that could be your heart, that could be your head. Whatever your genius zone is, right? 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 and ask you questions and you fill it out to go, oh, is this a viable business?

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. I wasn't looking at, yeah, I paid myself, but I didn't pay myself. The reality is I shouldn't have paid myself because I was a negative 70 grand. And that was an eye opener. Like how do you do a million dollars and lose money and what am I doing wrong? Because again, I had a pieces of a plan, but I didn't have a plan. 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 it so that you don't lose money.

[00:27:07] Kathi Burns: I was gonna say, what's your favorite organizing hack, but I have a feeling that you're gonna say put together a good business plan.

[00:27:13] Susie Carder: A good business plan, but I love Trello. I love me some Trello, right? Cause I can stay organized and I can see all the plans and my team can see all the plans and look that, and to me it's been the, 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. Cause some of them are more linear than I am, which is perfect. I need them on my team. I like pictures. Like I gotta see it to understand it and so it helps me visually.

[00:27:46] Kathi Burns: I love Trello. Yeah. It really floats my boat too. And it's such a good team collaboration tool. Yeah. I love Trello, so good. Yay. All right, girl. 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. So that's important for you. Even if you think you have a business plan, I guarantee you're gonna find some things that maybe you missed a few dots of your eyes and crosses of your tees after you go through it. And I know also that you're now one of the ring leaders of the Evolutionary Business Council. So I figured we should maybe put a talk about that just for a minute. I'm a member and I reaw ll be released, but let's i we have coming up. I'm not sure when this podcast is gonna be released, but let's just talk broadly about the EBC real quick.

[00:28:32] Susie Carder: Yeah. So the EBC 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. Right? 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 with. So if Kathi needs somebody, I can call upon Kathi. So it's dynamic, there's high level networking. There's some badass individuals there and we just wanna help each other build and grow your business.

[00:29:07] Kathi Burns: Yeah. And I will put the link to the EBC down below the Evolutionary Business Council so that you can check it out as 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.

[00:29:19] Susie Carder: Thank you, Kathi. I appreciate you. And thank you for all you do for all of us entrepreneurs.

[00:29:24] Kathi Burns: Absolutely, take care Susie.

Hey, thanks for,listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you wanna hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me, have a stellar.