074 The Art of Pricing Your Offers for Profit with Sara Fins
linktree.com/AllEaseAccounting
Join me and my guest, Sara Fins, for this conversation from two accountants about pricing 101. For small business owners, it’s really not about the number that you choose. It’s about what you think of that number, whether you feel comfortable selling at that price, the value you add into your offers, testing an offer, running a beta offer, and more. Sara is a money coach who comes from an accounting background. Tune in for guidance on this really important aspect of small business finances. Be sure to follow Sara and get in touch with her at her website.
Connect with Sara:
On her website: www.sarafins.com
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/easybusinessbookkeeping
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/easybusinessbookkeeping/
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarafins/
In her Free Facebook Community, The Easy Business Bookkeeping Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/easybusinessbookkeeping
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00:00:00 Regan Bashara
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00:00:21 Regan Bashara
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00:00:50 Regan Bashara
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00:01:00 Regan Bashara
Ready. And we're so excited to meet you.
00:01:02 Regan Bashara
Visit the show notes to get enrolled and mind the gap today. Hi everyone. Welcome to money through ease. This is your host Regan and today I've got a coach with me who does money coaching. Her name is Sara Fins and she's here to tell you all about keeping your business organized. When it comes to the finances.
00:01:22 Regan Bashara
Talking about profit and pricing, how to price your offers for profit. And she's going to back me up on everything that I've ever said on this podcast. Sara, please introduce yourself to the audience and well.
00:01:35 Sara Fins
Hi. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I love the information that you share. So I am on the same page. It's all good. So my name is Sara fins like you mentioned, I'm a finance coach. I work predominantly with Solopreneurs coaches, Wellness professionals, those types of individuals who are in the first few years of their business looking to kind of get their finances in order they know.
00:01:55 Sara Fins
You know they need to do it, but they're not exactly sure how. They're maybe not ready to hire it out or, you know, invest in software, something like that. And so that's kind of where I come in to help them get.
00:02:05 Sara Fins
Organized I am have like a long kind of story. I'll give you the short version. I graduated from school with an accounting degree. I earned my CPA. I worked in corporate accounting for 10:00-ish years, and then I actually went back to school to become a health coach. And during that time I realized that so many of my colleagues didn't know how to manage their finances.
00:02:26 Sara Fins
And I was helping, you know, some other coaches who were friends. And I realized that it was something that I could help.
00:02:33 Sara Fins
Them.
00:02:34 Sara Fins
Organize that they can then have the information they need to grow their business, and that's kind of when I pivoted.
00:02:39 Sara Fins
Into doing the finance coaching and help you know, help those former colleagues and others get set up with with their money.
00:02:47 Regan Bashara
I see in your story a lot of my own story reflected back to me, except for the fact that, like I didn't go to school for accounting, I went to school for math and physics and then immediately upon graduation, I was like, I want to be a bookkeeper.
00:03:00 Regan Bashara
Honestly, not really sure how.
00:03:01 Regan Bashara
That's happening. That's just what happened.
00:03:04 Regan Bashara
But I have no interest in like getting my CPA and everything. I'm so cool with just doing the book, so it's nice to hear that.
00:03:14 Regan Bashara
Somebody who went to school for accounting decided to pivot but then found themselves back in the accounting sort of field because I and I see this too, like so many people are just unsure, you know, uninformed about taxes and finance and stuff. And yet they're trying to run a business. And I'm like this is.
00:03:32 Regan Bashara
The foundation of.
00:03:33 Regan Bashara
All of it. This is what we need to.
00:03:35 Regan Bashara
Work on first before you even learn to sell or market yourself.
00:03:38
So.
00:03:41 Sara Fins
Yeah, it's so true. And I think that as solopreneurs, it's very overwhelming because we wear all the hats, right. We have to do everything from our business, you know and.
00:03:50 Sara Fins
If finances is something people aren't comfortable with, they're not sure how to do it. It kind of gets pushed to the bottom of the To Do List until they have to file their taxes, and then you know they're scrambling to get the things they need together. And so yeah, I found that that the case, but it's super important when you learn to do it, especially at the beginning because as you.
00:04:07 Sara Fins
Grow. Then you've got your ducks in a row.
00:04:11 Regan Bashara
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I would love to know before we dive into our topic today, which is going to be really bringing up what to do when it comes to pricing. I think that's something so many people struggle.
00:04:21 Regan Bashara
But before we get into that, I'd love to hear what kind of your day-to-day experiences like in your business. What do you do exactly with your clients when you're coaching them? What kind of support do you provide? Yeah, sure. I'd love to share that. So I created a course called easy business bookkeeping and basically it's a program that helps you organize your finances.
00:04:41 Sara Fins
And it's excel based and the reason I created that was because like I mentioned before, I found that.
00:04:47 Sara Fins
So many in their first few years of business, they're not financially ready to outsource because don't have those types of funds yet and something like QuickBooks doing it on their own is way overwhelming. It's too much. It can be expensive, right? Yeah. It's really designed for people that are are doing bookkeeping. But so, you know, it's hard to kind of learn it, right.
00:05:07 Sara Fins
And so I.
00:05:08 Regan Bashara
Yeah, I mean, that's what I do is teach people how to use QuickBooks and it is not user friendly. I tell them like.
00:05:08 Sara Fins
Think that.
00:05:11 Sara Fins
Exactly.
00:05:13 Regan Bashara
You're not an idiot for not understanding.
00:05:15 Regan Bashara
Click. That's the lie. Like, don't worry about it.
00:05:15 Sara Fins
Yes.
00:05:17 Sara Fins
100% I've used it in businesses that I've worked with, you know, in some some in bookkeeping capacity and it's not really designed just for, you know, lay people to come in. And so it's very confusing. And so the, that's the reason I designed my program excel based and I I set it up to really just.
00:05:35 Sara Fins
Their finance is organized, so when a client comes to me and they're working with me in that program, they get access to the portal. And you know all the templates and then they can also invest in there. I have a self-paced option, but I have an option that includes sessions with me as well, where I'll actually walk them through how to do it for their business. You know how to set everything up.
00:05:56 Sara Fins
Answer questions. So that's my main. Uh, the main way I work with clients. I also do one-on-one coaching where someone just wants to talk through like this is what my business looks like. How do I set up my processes to keep track of my finances etc. You know because I find that people have questions but they often don't.
00:06:14 Sara Fins
Have someone to ask right or or they maybe they feel silly like asking their tax accountant or whatever and something like that and I don't do taxes so I'm not, you know, just a little disclaimer that I can't really give tax guidance but I can help help them streamline that process and give them some tips to get started. So and that also involves, like you said pricing, we're going to talk about that today but like.
00:06:16
Yeah.
00:06:20 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:06:25 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:06:36 Sara Fins
If they're not sure how to price their products.
00:06:37 Sara Fins
You know all those types of.
00:06:38 Sara Fins
Things I help guide them in that.
00:06:40
OK.
00:06:41 Regan Bashara
Yeah. And then something you said like they don't feel comfortable, they don't know who to ask, they don't feel comfortable asking their tax preparers, because I find that a lot of people's relationship with their tax preparer is so disjointed or detached. It's like they see them once a year. Some people don't even see them. They e-mail their reports and they get a tax return emailed back to them. And it's not even a face to face conversation.
00:07:01 Regan Bashara
And so they don't even know that they can't ask questions. And if it's during tax time, like we're recording this on April 5th, it is down to the wire tax filing season for people that do taxes, not us cuz we're.
00:07:13 Regan Bashara
Right. We're not doing that. It is down to the wire for those people. And so answering questions with their tax clients is like it can feel very rushed. And that's not because they don't want you to know. It's just because of the nature of the work that they do, that they really don't have time to sit down and talk to their clients about like what it all means, explaining their return to them.
00:07:34 Regan Bashara
And I find that too, that people are just like.
00:07:36 Regan Bashara
I just I need to know like can I deduct this or not and like what should I be looking for and they don't know who to talk to or who to ask or even what questions to ask and that is why you know services like yours that you provide and it's so valuable to business owners who are just lost in the sea of taxes and finances.
00:07:55 Regan Bashara
And need to know somebody that they trust and can go to and not feel ignorant or.
00:08:01 Regan Bashara
Right, or condescended to. And it's like you're not an account and you're not a taxpayer. Of course you don't know any of this. You don't.
00:08:09 Regan Bashara
Know what these words?
00:08:09 Regan Bashara
Mean. Of course you don't that.
00:08:11 Regan Bashara
Doesn't mean that you're not smart, or that you're not capable, or that you shouldn't be in business.
00:08:15 Regan Bashara
Like that is the experience that most people who run businesses that I see.
00:08:21 Sara Fins
Yeah, I agree with.
00:08:22 Sara Fins
You 100 percent, 100%.
00:08:25 Regan Bashara
Yeah. So thanks for sharing that and I appreciate that. Like you take it from that angle as well of like helping be that guide or that trusted advisor for folks to really understand what's going on in their business finances. And let's get started with our topic.
00:08:42 Regan Bashara
Pricing 101. The art of pricing gear offers for.
00:08:45 Regan Bashara
I have told folks this is like my trick for pricing. First of all, I believe that it doesn't ******* matter what number you pick, like as long as you can sell it, you feel confident selling it and that people want to pay you that amount of money, then that's the price. Like, what are you, what are your?
00:09:01 Sara Fins
Thoughts on that? Yeah. You know what? I agree with you 100%. It's it's like.
00:09:05 Sara Fins
An art right, because it's a little bit of.
00:09:08 Sara Fins
Energetics. It's a little bit of how you feel about it. It's a little bit about what the market wants and I think you have to look at kind of all those things together and also like where where you live, who you're serving. So if you're local, you know, in a small town and you only serve local people versus if you're online and you're working with people all over, you know, your prices can be a bit higher.
00:09:28 Sara Fins
So I think it makes sense to look at kind of all those factors.
00:09:28 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:09:33 Sara Fins
And the one thing I like to recommend is to just start somewhere, right? Start with something that feels doable to you and then you can increase it incrementally from there, right? Because like you were saying, you want to make sure it's something you feel like you can sell, right? So if it's a number that feels way too high to you, even though you have a coach that might be saying.
00:09:53 Sara Fins
Price at this or price at that.
00:09:55 Sara Fins
Or you have a colleague who.
00:09:57 Sara Fins
Has a program. At that price. It might not be the right price for you, at least not at 1st, and so I.
00:10:02 Sara Fins
Recommend picking one that feels good to.
00:10:04 Sara Fins
Start with. If you're launching a new program or or whatnot and then kind of incrementally increasing it from there as you get more comfortable.
00:10:12 Regan Bashara
Do you think that people should start there with a price that they feel comfortable selling and?
00:10:12 Sara Fins
Know.
00:10:19 Regan Bashara
And then, like grandfather, those folks into that price and have like kind of legendary legend pricing structure and then like if you do raise your prices, what do you think about raising the prices for the folks that came on with you at the lower price versus like keeping them at the lower price and only accepting new clients at this offer level?
00:10:40 Regan Bashara
Or your thoughts on that?
00:10:41 Sara Fins
Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think it depends on, you know, I guess what you're offering right and how often people are.
00:10:48 Sara Fins
New so like in my program, if someone comes in and they pay pay the price, that's it. Once they're in, they're in. So I would never go back and not charge them because there's, you know, that's what it is. But if you have some sort of, say, coaching relationship and there's a fixed term where.
00:11:00
OK.
00:11:03 Sara Fins
You know, it ends at a certain time. You get to decide, right. You can say I want to keep this client grandfathered in and I think that's great because I think it goes.
00:11:12 Sara Fins
Really far and like just the customer experience, right? So if you say to them, look, I'm raising my prices, but if you renew now, I'm going to grandfather even for the next year or whatever your your package link is at the same price. And then yes, when you put it out there to new people wherever you're marketing materials are and whatnot.
00:11:24
Yeah.
00:11:33 Sara Fins
I am.
00:11:34 Sara Fins
You can put your new price. What I also like to do and recommend is if you're thinking about raising your price and you say you have an e-mail.
00:11:42 Sara Fins
List right to.
00:11:42 Sara Fins
Your to people.
00:11:44 Sara Fins
Send an e-mail saying I'm going to raise my price On this date. If you're interested in purchasing, you have until this date to purchase. That's the original price. That can be a really good way.
00:11:52 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:11:55 Sara Fins
To get those people that have been thinking about investing to, you know, make the purchase and then in the future, you know you can, then you can raise the price of.
00:12:04 Regan Bashara
Yeah. And I recently did something like this with one of my offers for the trainings on QuickBooks Online, which I haven't built the way I do in terms of like how long am I spending one-on-one with the client? What do they get outside of that meeting with me, you know, and I built more value into the offer, but I it was still at the old price.
00:12:26 Regan Bashara
And I was like, you know what? I'm going to raise the price on this because I have added value. And the longer I do this work, the more value my services contain because I have that level of experience to draw on. I've just worked with more people, so I just have more data to pull from in terms of like, what are the best practices. And so when I was considering.
00:12:46 Regan Bashara
What I would raise the price to. I thought about, like how much time am I spending on it and what my hourly rate, what I want it to be and then like what are the other things that are not necessarily me spending time with that particular client, but I've.
00:12:59 Regan Bashara
On the work here to create something that is added on to this offer, I have like a workbook that I send to people. I have a video recording that I send to them, you know they get unlimited e-mail support outside of just the two hours of training that we do and so I raise the price based on the value that I like, just organically.
00:13:20 Regan Bashara
Have by being in business for how long I've been in and the other things that I've added to that offer over time. And I did the thing where I was like, alright, this is going to be the date that after this date if you book it will be the higher price. And I had many people come in and you know take the bait.
00:13:24
Yeah.
00:13:40 Regan Bashara
Like, that's a weird phrase I didn't really use that, but like I had a lot of people opt into that because they were like, I'm getting a ton more value and I can like lock it in at.
00:13:48 Regan Bashara
Lower price, right? So that was very effective for me. What would you like thinking about? OK, if I'm gonna raise my offer price or I'm gonna raise my price in general or just like, starting from square one and having an offer that you're like, what am I going to ask people to pay me for this? What goes into considering that number? Like, how much time you're spending on it with each client?
00:14:04
Hmm.
00:14:10 Regan Bashara
How much time you spent in development, what your level of experience is? What do we have to consider when we're thinking about what number we're going to?
00:14:16 Sara Fins
Yes, I I think you need to consider all of those things. Yeah. So first of all, you know, figuring out how much time you're spending and like you said, you know something that you said, what's the hours?
00:14:27 Sara Fins
And that what's the hourly rate that I want to be making, right? So that's a good thing to think of. Not that you're necessarily going to charge by the hour. In fact, I I don't recommend doing that. I recommend doing a package like you said because you can add you know add value and build things in. But looking at how much time you've either spent creating it or spend during the program and then.
00:14:35 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:14:47 Sara Fins
Also, you know how much time you spent on other things. I like to suggest you know.
00:14:54 Sara Fins
Not I don't want to say copying your peers, but just looking in the market and seeing approximately what people are selling similar.
00:15:03 Sara Fins
Services for just.
00:15:04 Sara Fins
So that you can get some sort of an idea of what the market will will pay.
00:15:08 Sara Fins
It so I'd like to look at that.
00:15:10 Sara Fins
Too and and.
00:15:13 Sara Fins
Again, you know how you feel.
00:15:17 Sara Fins
You want to there or what you feel comfortable making, but also something an exercise that can be really helpful and that my clients really like to do is think about how much money you want to make right in a year.
00:15:30 Sara Fins
And then work backwards and figure out how many of these would I need to sell in order to reach that, you know, goal. And if it's not, if it's not going to get you there, you have a few choices. You can either price it higher, you can add a different offer, maybe you want to vary it. Maybe you want to take more clients, whatever it happens to be. But that's a good way to see if I sold.
00:15:35 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:15:38 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:15:42 Regan Bashara
Hmm.
00:15:51 Sara Fins
X amount at this price that I'm thinking about.
00:15:53
Well.
00:15:54 Sara Fins
What would happen at the end of the year? Would I make my revenue goals? So I like to kind of look at all of that and tap in and kind of get a feeling As for like what?
00:16:02 Sara Fins
Feels like the right place to start.
00:16:05 Regan Bashara
That's really good because it there is so much that goes into it it I think maybe for people it is not knowing where to start, maybe it is.
00:16:13 Regan Bashara
Like there is so much I have to consider and I want to meet my goals and if I'm selling a $10 class or workbook or something like is that gonna get me to 100K that would require a lot of people buying a workbook right? And and if I don't have that audience like maybe that's not really feasible.
00:16:34 Regan Bashara
So I wonder, do you often find that clients like get stuck in that like that? Procrastination. But just like that mental block of like, yeah, I don't even know where to start. So I don't know. Just pick a number and then.
00:16:48 Regan Bashara
Yeah, do with it later. Like, yeah.
00:16:51 Sara Fins
Absolutely. And and that's what I recommend too. Just going with something because you can always change it, right? That's the beauty of having our own businesses is we can always change it. And if you think you know I'll, I've gotta put something out here at this price. And then if I decide to change it in a month, that will look so bad. But honestly, people usually aren't paying as much attention as we think they are.
00:17:06
Hmm.
00:17:10
You know.
00:17:11 Sara Fins
To what we're doing. So I mean it just is what it is.
00:17:13 Regan Bashara
100%.
00:17:15 Sara Fins
Right. Yeah, you know.
00:17:15 Regan Bashara
So.
00:17:17 Sara Fins
People won't notice, and also too I notice I actually noticed you did this with the course that you recently did, but having some type of a beta price right? If it's a new program for you and you put it out there and you can say this is a a test run, this is going to be the beta price. After this it's going to go up. Then you have a way of feeling out that price.
00:17:17
OK.
00:17:37 Sara Fins
Or testing the product or whatever. The reason is to do that and then you can add like you said more value to it once you run through it once you can see what can I add so that I feel good about bringing the price up and and what the questions people had and all those sorts of things. So that's another great approach I think.
00:17:37 Regan Bashara
Hmm.
00:17:45 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:17:51 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:17:54 Regan Bashara
Yeah, that. Thanks for validating that for me because it is all a big experiment like, yes, I do believe the course that I've created like has this level of value and you know, just the way that I've structured it, like the fact that people can pay once and it's a lifetime like your course like, I'm not going to like.
00:18:13 Sara Fins
Mine.
00:18:14 Regan Bashara
I'll charge you at any point like you've paid, and now you're in. You're welcome. You're here like, that's how I wanted to be. And I did want feedback and like.
00:18:26 Regan Bashara
For people to be part of the development of it too, because I can think like, oh, this is amazing and this is what everybody needs and it's the best thing that you need to have access to if you want to start a business and then that could not be people's experience of it or they're like, actually, I really need to know about this thing over here. And I've completely looked that out so.
00:18:48 Regan Bashara
Like pricing for instance, I don't think I've I haven't put anything about pricing in the course. So it's just like if you already have a price for your offers, we can talk about like setting your goals with those offers like you said, like working backwards from like an annual revenue goal.
00:19:02 Regan Bashara
With the offers that you have, but yeah, like if I am offering beta testing and allowing people to step in and be, you know, like a developer kind of of the material for a much lower price like they still are paying for value like there's still a lot of value packed into it, but they also get to influence like what?
00:19:23 Regan Bashara
Gets included like and I want it to be useful for people so you know that's that's a great.
00:19:29 Regan Bashara
Thank you for validating that that was.
00:19:30 Regan Bashara
A good strategy and and a good idea.
00:19:31 Sara Fins
Yeah. No, I think it's great. And I did that with my program as well. When I first came out with it. Well, first of all, I was offering it and this is something that I.
00:19:39 Sara Fins
Recommend too is.
00:19:40 Sara Fins
Like testing your your offer, I developed it and before I made it fancy and put it in the dashboard and did all the things and recorded the videos. I just put everything and.
00:19:50 Sara Fins
Box and I offered it beta at a very, you know, low cost. And I had people come in and help me make sure you know, because it's a spreadsheet, right? I wanted to make sure it was working properly. People tested it. People gave me feedback. And then once I was ready to build it out and give it more value and take those things into consideration, I was able to increase the price.
00:20:00 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:20:10 Sara Fins
You know, as I went along, but it's super helpful to just put it out there and I felt the same way. Like what am I going to offer this at? Let me just pick something I feel comfortable with and let's see how.
00:20:10
Hmm.
00:20:20 Regan Bashara
Yeah, yeah. What do you do whenever someone is sitting down and, like, playing with numbers? Do you do any sort of like somatic coaching or body work? Because if we have a number that is like?
00:20:36 Regan Bashara
Oh, I feel very uncomfortable even saying that out loud to people. How am I going to sell that? Do you work with clients on that level of like?
00:20:45 Regan Bashara
Like nervous system, like freaking out.
00:20:45 Sara Fins
Yeah.
00:20:47 Sara Fins
Yeah. I mean not in terms necessarily of nervous system, but I do have some exercises that I like to recommend. They go through really to bring out kind of our you know we all have these unconscious beliefs about money, right. So to help kind of bring them to the surface because.
00:21:04 Sara Fins
Awareness is.
00:21:05 Sara Fins
The first step right, I have a lot of people that are like I'm not a numbers person. I'm not good in math. I can't do this and and so these right. And so I'm sure you have right burned with people but one of the exercises that I love is to just jot down all the memories you have of money. They could be totally random like 1 from.
00:21:11 Regan Bashara
I've heard all of.
00:21:15
Yes.
00:21:26 Sara Fins
My life is that I have this.
00:21:27 Sara Fins
Memory of we.
00:21:28 Sara Fins
Didn't go out to eat very often when I was growing up, but my sister and my father and I had gone out for to celebrate something I don't know. And when the bill came, he went like us like he was so surprised. Like he made those listening, he, like, made this like look like and that.
00:21:39 Regan Bashara
Uh-huh.
00:21:44 Sara Fins
What he meant it as.
00:21:45 Sara Fins
A joke, but right that stuck with me and.
00:21:46 Regan Bashara
Oh yeah.
00:21:48 Regan Bashara
Huh.
00:21:49 Regan Bashara
Were you younger like a child?
00:21:50 Sara Fins
I would, yeah, I was like.
00:21:51 Sara Fins
Eight, maybe something like that. Know and.
00:21:53 Regan Bashara
And you maybe don't realize that it's a joke.
00:21:55 Regan Bashara
At first and.
00:21:56 Regan Bashara
Your childhood is like, Oh my God, we're going.
00:21:58 Sara Fins
To die right? Or like you know, it's normal to be surprised by the bill when it comes, you know, something like that. You know, things like that. And so just by uncovering those things, I find that it helps my clients to say, oh, maybe that's why I think this way, you know?
00:22:03 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:22:13 Sara Fins
But also to you know, to your other point. So I have something within my program and that I recommend for my clients that aren't in the program too, is to create a monthly money date where you go through your finances on a, you know, at least a monthly basis, put everything in your tracking to and whatever. But in doing that to make it a really comfortable experience, so.
00:22:24 Regan Bashara
MHM.
00:22:33 Sara Fins
Maybe you have a cup of tea, maybe play some music. Maybe you sit in your bed with your laptop instead of at your desk. You know, whatever makes it feel less scary and and kind of more doable so.
00:22:40 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:22:43 Regan Bashara
MHM.
00:22:47 Sara Fins
That's how I try to help my clients around those those emotional blocks.
00:22:48 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:22:52 Regan Bashara
Totally I this reminded me of an experience I was on a training with a client yesterday, and they were telling me like that since our last training, which I think was a couple months ago, they haven't touched, they didn't they log into their QuickBooks like they have not looked at it, they've been avoiding it actively and.
00:23:09 Regan Bashara
They've the entire.
00:23:10 Regan Bashara
Time been thinking like I'm avoiding this like they were.
00:23:13 Regan Bashara
Conscious of it.
00:23:15 Regan Bashara
But they just couldn't get past that like block. And I'm like, OK, well, let's explore like what you would need to have in your environment to feel comfortable or to like, stop the avoidance. Or can we, like, I'm a big fan of like, task chaining, which is something I do inadvertently. And I hate that. Like, I get extremely sidetracked if I'm trying to do like.
00:23:35 Regan Bashara
You know, pick up this room. I end up like doing laundry over here and the.
00:23:39 Regan Bashara
Dishes and like if I am somebody who tasks chains or like links up different chores and stuff like is there some way that I can make sure that I chain doing the books or just looking at my financials or plugging in numbers into the spreadsheet?
00:23:56 Regan Bashara
How often do I need to do that? What else do?
00:23:58 Regan Bashara
I do on that regular basis.
00:24:00 Regan Bashara
At the beginning of the month, I do flea meds and I change our air filter and those are my like 2 chained tasks. That's like in the first five days of the month. That's how I know that I definitely did the sleeve edges because I also changed the filter and I did that last night. And like is I was asking this client like is there a way that we can like do you want to have like a whole day?
00:24:22 Regan Bashara
Once a month, that's like the.
00:24:23 Regan Bashara
Whole theme of the day is.
00:24:24 Regan Bashara
Money. And do you need to have like a 10 minute dance party? Do you need to put on your noise cancelling headphones and play the Beyoncé album? Do you need to have like snacks? Do you want to order tacos to be delivered like yeah, what do you what is gonna help you be like excited about it the other day I was doing my.
00:24:43 Regan Bashara
Taxes. And I was like, you know what?
00:24:45 Regan Bashara
I'm gonna pick some ******* tacos before I sit down. Do this. Yeah, I know it's gonna suck.
00:24:48 Sara Fins
Yes, whatever. Right. It's whatever gets you through, right? Whatever makes it feel doable for you.
00:24:55 Sara Fins
I love that.
00:24:56 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:24:56 Regan Bashara
So you I think that's what you were saying that like if you need to sit in bed with your laptop versus at your desk or like, go to a coffee shop if you need to have, like, the body doubling experience of like other people in the room, if you're working from home all the time and nobody can see you, can you get on zoom with a friend? And that makes certain that you're going to be sitting in front of your computer.
00:25:15 Regan Bashara
Like not getting distracted and scrolling or like go live. I I have a friend that goes live on Facebook when she's like painting and that's to like, engage with followers. But like, you can't use your phone while you're live, so you're not gonna get distracted by sitting there and.
00:25:32 Regan Bashara
Scrolling, so finding ways to chain tasks and to like have it stack, I want to suggest that to everybody that like if you avoid the work and procrastinate on it, like let's hack it, OK, like your brain already does it, yeah.
00:25:47 Sara Fins
Yes, I love.
00:25:50 Sara Fins
Yeah. No, I love it. The like the the task changing, that's something that's new to me. I love that idea.
00:25:56 Regan Bashara
When I've like, I've like **** on myself for a long time about that. Like, man, I can't just focus on cleaning one room. I end up like organizing the closet in this.
00:26:04 Regan Bashara
The room, like how did I even get in there?
00:26:07 Sara Fins
I don't know. It's like that meme where it's like I saw this, and then I did that. And then I, I mean, we can.
00:26:12 Regan Bashara
All relate to that right? I know I can. The person sitting with like a Mardi Gras mask on and they're like, sitting in their bed like reading a book and it's like.
00:26:19 Regan Bashara
When you cleaned your room and you?
00:26:20 Regan Bashara
Found something really cool that you forgot about. Just like doing something.
00:26:24 Regan Bashara
Completely different. I'm.
00:26:25 Regan Bashara
Like, oh, if my brain is doing that.
00:26:28 Regan Bashara
Then can I work with that somehow? Like can I hack into that and that's what works best? Is the the flea meds for the pets and the air filter? Because that's OK. That needs to be done every month. Let's just say first of the month I'm doing it. I set up a reminder on my phone, but knowing.
00:26:48 Regan Bashara
We're seeing, like the dogs still have this many flea Med doses. That means I haven't given their flea meds. I look at the air filter. Oh, I didn't change it since last month, so I know that, like, both of those tasks haven't been done, because if I did one, I would have done the other so.
00:27:02 Regan Bashara
Like, let's hack our brains. Deal. Let's work with it.
00:27:06 Sara Fins
Yeah. So, right, so maybe you tie your money date in with something else that you need to do. You know that's business related, but maybe not necessarily finance related that you do at the same time interval and you can connect those things together and and make sure you've done it.
00:27:19 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:27:21 Regan Bashara
And I realized that like you've called it a money date that makes it sound very romantic and pleasant and, like, fun and something to look forward to. And I just tell people, read your reports once a month and they're like, OK, maybe I could take a.
00:27:33 Sara Fins
Softer approach? Yeah, I I found that it it takes a little bit of.
00:27:37 Sara Fins
So like stress away from it because it's a little bit more fun. And the reason I designed it in my program, it's like you mentioned, yes, like the kennel, but it's on zoom and there's no, you know, there's no teaching involved in that point. I mean they can ask questions if they if one comes up, but it's really just that accountability of like I have this twice a month. I have two slots a month that people usually come to one or the other.
00:27:42 Regan Bashara
Lighting scandal.
00:27:47 Regan Bashara
Uh-huh.
00:27:56 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:27:59 Sara Fins
Anyway.
00:28:00 Sara Fins
I'm. I'm there. They don't, they just show up, you know, if they want to. And they mark in their calendar. And that's my favorite part because we get to see.
00:28:02 Sara Fins
Pete.
00:28:10 Sara Fins
Each other too, so yeah.
00:28:13 Regan Bashara
I love that I so much of what you're saying is reflecting back and validating like what I've been doing. So I appreciate that, if nothing else.
00:28:22 Regan Bashara
What are your best tips for maximizing profit when it comes to pricing? Like besides just like how much do I want to make per hour? What are their values built into this? How much of like considering our businesses overhead and you know any direct costs?
00:28:39 Sara Fins
Yeah.
00:28:42 Regan Bashara
Related to the offer, like if you have to have a subscription to like Dropbox like you were saying, in order to provide this offer, do we need to consider that like how much, how do we figure out profit for a certain offer? How can we maximize that with while still staying in the range of like a price that we're comfortable selling? What are your tips?
00:29:00 Regan Bashara
For that.
00:29:01 Sara Fins
Yeah, that's great. I think like I mentioned, you know, I keep saying it's like an art, right? So the exercise that I mentioned before, we're working backwards to figure out how much you want to make a big part of that is looking at your costs, right? So if you're tracking your finances that you have that information at your fingertips, but if you don't, you want to look at what you're spending every month.
00:29:22 Sara Fins
You know what you're spending every year and making sure that you have all your costs accounted for, especially the fixed ones. You know, the ones that you know.
00:29:29 Sara Fins
You're going to pay.
00:29:29 Sara Fins
Regardless, and that's how much you know, you need to cover.
00:29:34 Sara Fins
To make your business break Even so you know you have to charge at least whatever it whatever will get you to cover that. And then of course, you want to pay yourself and you wanna, you know, you don't wanna just be breaking you. Then you wanna have room for some investing. But that might not come right away. Right. I work with Solopreneurs who are are like just starting and oftentimes in the first few years of our businesses.
00:29:36 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:29:47 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:29:55 Sara Fins
We're not making a ton of money, right? And maybe we're not having a lot extra leftover at the end of the day, and that's OK. But to know that and then to price your offers accordingly so that you can make sure you at least cover the basics, I think is a good way to look at.
00:30:12 Sara Fins
Too. Otherwise, you're not right. You're not making profit, so you have to kind of crunch the numbers a little to see that, I think.
00:30:20 Regan Bashara
Yeah, yeah. I was just thinking that, like we've talked more about what to do on the front end of like coming up with the price for an offer. Is there anything that you like to focus on when we're like, looking back like, if we are looking at last year 2023 is financial?
00:30:20 Sara Fins
Does that answer your question?
00:30:36 Regan Bashara
And considering maybe raising the price for current offers and what do we what do we look for to know that like this was priced appropriately or like maybe I actually lost money like selling this particular thing?
00:30:38 Sara Fins
Yeah.
00:30:47 Sara Fins
Yes, yeah. I mean this comes back to, you know, what you talked about as well, like the importance of tracking your numbers. So you can look back and you can see not only what does my tax return look like, but what's happening on a monthly basis.
00:30:58 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:31:00 Sara Fins
This how much am I selling? That way you can see if there are certain months where maybe sales are higher. I know a lot of times in coaching practices there'll be a launch, right? You'll have a launch. So what months are your are your launches and how much did those make compared to what, you know the months where you didn't?
00:31:10 Regan Bashara
Yeah.
00:31:18 Sara Fins
Is there a program you can create to kind of fill in the gap? So maybe you have some you know you have a program, but then you have some one-on-one coaching you use during those down months. So looking back at the profitability and the.
00:31:21 Regan Bashara
Hmm.
00:31:32 Sara Fins
Sales in your prior months and prior years can help you then decide how to plan that out in the future. And if you need to raise your prices and by how much because.
00:31:40 Sara Fins
You can look at your past profitability.
00:31:43 Regan Bashara
Totally. And I'm so glad you brought up the launching thing because especially when it comes to strictly online businesses and not just coaching, but like, I mean I'm I'm a virtual bookkeeping firm, like I don't have an office space. I meet with everybody.
00:31:58 Regan Bashara
Fine. And you know, a lot of the online business structures nowadays do have like a launch system or they don't necessarily yet have an Evergreen offer, which is something that is like consistently being sold. And you may have more sales for whatever reason during different times of the year, but.
00:32:18 Regan Bashara
It is so important to look at those numbers after the fact at a like monthly interval or a quarterly interval and seeing like do I have like a fee sent failing thing kind of going on. How is that like showing up?
00:32:32 Regan Bashara
And affecting the rest of my life. I know last year when.
00:32:35 Regan Bashara
I was like.
00:32:36 Regan Bashara
Bare like scraping by which was my first full calendar year of business like that is totally normal. It didn't feel great but it was normal like that is not extraordinary at all. And I just remember getting to this point in like October and I was like.
00:32:43 Sara Fins
Totally.
00:32:43 Sara Fins
Wrong, right?
00:32:52 Regan Bashara
I cannot have these like hills and valleys.
00:32:56 Regan Bashara
Yet, like, maybe if I had enough of a savings or like a cushion or something, I would be more comfortable. But like just having those peaks of, like really good time. Well, now that peak, all that revenue I just made is going to the credit card bill that didn't get.
00:33:01
Hmm.
00:33:12 Regan Bashara
Paid last month.
00:33:13 Regan Bashara
Like I don't want to live like that anymore at this point.
00:33:17 Regan Bashara
If it gets to the point where I have like a cushion or I'm in S Corp and I'm on a salary basis like and the business, can, you know, handle the peaks and valleys that comes with time. So in the beginning it is very important to look at.
00:33:30 Sara Fins
App.
00:33:31 Regan Bashara
Monthly comparison and just seeing.
00:33:33 Regan Bashara
Like, right? What are like?
00:33:35 Regan Bashara
The trends that happen, it's different for every industry. It's different for every business like they've got a client that does like outdoor services like residential cleaning services for outdoor. So like the winter.
00:33:40 Sara Fins
Yes.
00:33:45 Sara Fins
OK.
00:33:48 Regan Bashara
Not a lot of that going on. Nobody wants nobody needs, you know, like they're windows washed in the winter. They wait till spring to get that done. And so like, that's bumping right now, but he does holiday light installation during the winter so that like sustains him. You know, that's an offer that's like during this part of the year, a ton of people are going to be looking for that.
00:34:03 Sara Fins
Great, right?
00:34:09 Regan Bashara
It's not something that people want the rest of the year necessarily, so knowing that information is like so valuable and being able to look back at what are my different offers, what happens throughout the year? Can I see trends? Can I like planned for that? Or do I wanna change it completely? Like I don't like?
00:34:26 Regan Bashara
This I don't wanna do this anymore.
00:34:27 Sara Fins
Right and.
00:34:29 Sara Fins
Yeah, and that's all great. And then another thing too is like reflecting back after the launch too, like right away even and saying, you know and this can go beyond the finances. But like what worked, what didn't?
00:34:42 Sara Fins
Work. What? What should I do differently next time, you know, to try to keep increasing, you know the revenue as it goes along rather than also waiting until, you know, the following year or whatever it happens to be depending. Like you said on your business, but celebrating those wins to help keep motivated too.
00:34:57 Regan Bashara
Yes.
00:34:59 Regan Bashara
Yeah, it's not.
00:35:02 Regan Bashara
Are like socialization and our culture has not taught us how to do that. It has to be an intentional practice to sit down and say, alright, I need to acknowledge what actually worked. And like pat myself on the back, give myself the credit and the.
00:35:11 Sara Fins
Yes.
00:35:15 Regan Bashara
Kudos for that.
00:35:16 Regan Bashara
Because otherwise all we do is focus on the negative. What didn't work, what didn't.
00:35:19 Sara Fins
Right.
00:35:20 Regan Bashara
Happen that's not useful. I mean it is useful, but like it's just as useful to acknowledge what did work and then also to repeat it.
00:35:26 Sara Fins
Yes. And to to celebrate the like, say your lunch didn't yield exactly what you wanted to, but you did have X number of clients like that's a huge win. So instead of beating yourself up for what you didn't achieve. But what about what you did?
00:35:42 Sara Fins
Especially in the first few years as you're growing your business like it's so important to help, you know, celebrate the stuff that's going right, like you said.
00:35:50 Regan Bashara
Yeah, it's it's all a science experiment that has been the theme for every guest that I've had the last couple months. It's like, you gotta kind of be OK with collecting the data and seeing what's working, what's not working. So tell us about your offers. I know that you've got the course and we've got.
00:36:10 Regan Bashara
A free offer that you wanted to talk about as well, that maybe listeners will find valuable.
00:36:17 Sara Fins
Yeah, sure. So I created a guide called 3 Simple Steps to get your business finances organized today right away. So I share in there for the tips that you can use to get started.
00:36:28 Sara Fins
You know, without investigate a course and all of that, so to to get that you can go to my website Sara Fins.com/steps and download that guide and that will help get you started. And like you said, there's my course and there's the one I'm coaching that I do. So those are my 2 main offers. But yeah, I would love to connect and.
00:36:48 Regan Bashara
Amazing.
00:36:49 Sara Fins
And help help people get started if they're feeling.
00:36:52 Regan Bashara
Stuck. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing your story. Is there anything else you'd like listeners to know? Where can we go find you and follow you be in your orbit.
00:36:52
They.
00:37:00 Sara Fins
Yeah. Well, what I would like them to know, first of all, like 1 take away is that you can do it, like you said, you know, it's not something you're born knowing unless you're trained and in accounting or you're trained to bookkeeping and you're not going to know. So you can do it, take the steps you need to learn what you need to know. So that's what I want to, you know, leave your listeners with. But I would love to connect.
00:37:20 Sara Fins
On Instagram at easy business bookkeeping and you can find me on LinkedIn or Facebook under Sara Finns and on my website, Sara Finn.
00:37:30 Regan Bashara
Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for sharing your expertise and talking about pricing with me because that is sorely needed. The conversation about pricing folks need to know what to do, what to look for and how to how to get to that point where we've got the sweet spot of like meeting the markets needs at the price that they want to pay and also.
00:37:52 Regan Bashara
Creating a sustainable business for you, so I really appreciate you sharing all of that with us and make sure that folks go listen to.
00:37:59 Regan Bashara
Uh or not. Listen, go follow Sara. Go visit her website. Get her tips on getting things organized. Thank you so much, Sara.
00:38:07 Sara Fins
Thanks for having me.
00:38:08 Regan Bashara
Thank you for joining me on this episode of Money. Through ease. If you found value in today's discussion, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating and review your feedback really does mean a lot to me. And if you're ready to take the first step towards organized finances, be sure to download my free receipt organization.
00:38:28 Regan Bashara
The chaos to calm.
00:38:29 Regan Bashara
Visit the link in the show notes to grab your free copy. Now remember your financial journey starts with small steps. I'm here to support you every step of the way until next time. This is Regan Vishera from money through ease. Stay empowered.