0:00:00.3 Kurt Baker: Want to take your business to the next level? Meet Kerri Fox, the powerhouse behind Fox Consulting. With expertise in marketing, operations and HR, Kerri turned her corporate experience into a lifeline for small businesses during the pandemic. Now Fox Consulting is the go-to for Taylor business growth and support. Today, Kerri shares game changing insights on strategic planning to help your business thrive. This is awesome. So I guess you’re one of a few that had to make a pivot during the pandemic.
0:00:35.8 Kerri Fox: Yes. Definitely.
0:00:39.2 Kurt Baker: Is this something you decided or something that was nudged along for some other reason?
0:00:41.4 Kerri Fox: It just happened.
0:00:43.7 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:00:44.4 Kerri Fox: I had friends with businesses being like… Well, at the time, I guess we were in our more early 30s than we are now ’cause it was five years ago. It feels like yesterday but just started businesses or just took over businesses from an older family member, whether it was parent or grandparent. And they finally got the keys to the kingdom. January 2020, some February. And then everything started falling apart. [laughter]
0:01:14.7 Kurt Baker: What? Nobody put this in my business plan.
0:01:16.9 Kerri Fox: No, this was not how it was supposed to be. So just being a friend was helping. I have a friend who just bought a preschool. We got her set up as an essential daycare so that she only lost about six weeks of revenue, which was huge ’cause they put a lot of their personal money and bet it all on black for this preschool. And then a couple weeks later, the world shut down. A lot of farm stands. I lived in Robbinsville at the time, so there’s a lot of those around there in that Jackson East Windsor and just along 130. How do we do this online? People don’t do farm and garden centers online.
0:02:02.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah. So what was your background? Obviously they came to you. So there was a reason they came to you. Right, so what was your…
0:02:07.1 Kerri Fox: I was working in corporate restructure at the time. And so anyone who’s seen Office Space, I know we’re speaking to probably a younger crowd here, but it’s a great cult movie. You should watch it. Yeah, you’ll see what a fax machine is.
0:02:22.8 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:02:25.3 Kerri Fox: So basically the tops, I would go in and be like, what do you do here? What does your day look like? And figure out who to merge into other divisions. A lot of times it was cutting a division in half and figuring out who has to go wasn’t the most pleasant thing. But I have a personality that I can look at just the numbers and…
0:02:49.3 Kurt Baker: So you’re like the Wall street person. Like the movie Wall street coming in…
0:02:52.0 Kerri Fox: Yeah. I can turn on the Gordon Gekko when I have to.
0:02:56.6 Kurt Baker: Got you.
0:02:58.6 Kerri Fox: Cause it’s the job. But it’s like I. I have three kids. Gotta pay the bills. Sorry, Fred.
0:03:02.2 Kurt Baker: True, true, true.
0:03:03.9 Kerri Fox: But so I was doing that, and I had a very different situation at home than some of the other restructurists even… I don’t even want to say, younger, older, ’cause some of them were my age and older, but I had three kids. The youngest was… Had just turned three. We just got back from Disney World because she turned three. ‘Cause like, we checked in day before and she was free. And my oldest was in eighth grade. And then I had a kindergartener in between them, so they were home. And also I have my two grandparents that I get their groceries and different things. But my grandmother’s health started declining very quickly. So because I worked for a big corporation and they saw the writing on the wall, they started saying, look, who wants to go?
0:03:53.8 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:03:54.2 Kerri Fox: Who wants to go? I said to my husband, showed him the severance package, and he’s like… ‘Cause I didn’t want… I wanted to go out on my own terms ’cause I was pretty good. And even virtually. And working from home, the vultures can circle your office just the same. I’ve learned.
0:04:13.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:04:15.4 Kerri Fox: And I said to my husband, like, look kiddo, this is what it is. And he was like, just do it. Just go for it.
0:04:22.5 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:04:23.5 Kerri Fox: And then I started taking a little bit for the advice I was giving other friends to help them, whether it was get their business online, establish a drive through, get through that state paperwork to be able to open or hook them up with different banks to get the PPP money faster. ‘Cause some banks were a lot faster with it than others.
0:04:44.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah. A lot of businesses had no idea. People forget a lot of of people… We had no idea what to do with small business, like, what? [laughter] That’s an unchartered territory.
0:04:49.4 Kerri Fox: I know. And then after you get the PPP money, a few months later came the forgiveness paperwork that a lot of people didn’t realize that they…
0:04:57.3 Kurt Baker: You want to fill that out too, just in case?
0:05:00.9 Kerri Fox: Yeah, just fill it out.
0:05:02.1 Kurt Baker: You want that part for sure.
0:05:03.6 Kerri Fox: Yeah. You definitely want the forgiveness.
0:05:05.1 Kurt Baker: Yep, yep.
0:05:06.4 Kerri Fox: And then once things started opening in this state, very slowly, but it did start. We were okay financially, me and my husband, and even though the kids were part time and then full time back in school, my grandmother still needed a lot of help, so just kept very slowly taking on clients, helping them with whether it was the operation side or some people just started a business like they were doing it on the side and decided, I don’t want to do my job anymore either. I want to do this. So getting them started up to really get that income they need monthly to sustain or how do we move forward after what we just did the past two, three years? How do we be a little more intentional versus just surviving? And now it’s grown to… I have a few consultants underneath me, and we have a herd of lovely young freelancers who do the support services, because obviously it was just me consulting to begin with. And then we realized a lot of people were finding bookkeepers, VA’s, social media managers, website developers through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and they were giving this person 500, 1000, 3,000, and there was no website that they got out of it there.
0:06:30.3 Kurt Baker: Oh boy. That’s not good.
0:06:30.4 Kerri Fox: Their social media, like, it wasn’t really worth it. So we started finding our own freelancers to be like, okay, well, we know this person is doing the right thing. We also have our eyes on it before it’s going to your page or your print, whatever the case may be. And it’s good because we’re using younger college kids and high school kids that want to do this eventually wanna build up the resume so we can make it affordable for those smaller businesses.
0:07:00.0 Kurt Baker: Okay. Wow, that’s awesome.
0:07:01.5 Kerri Fox: So, sorry, that was probably too long an answer.
0:07:03.3 Kurt Baker: No, it’s perfect. No. Obviously you had a great background, right? So that’s why I was like, you jumped. Like, all of a sudden everybody’s calling you. Like, what? Why are they calling you? But, okay, so they start calling you during the pandemic started, and we were literally… We didn’t really know where this road was going, right?
0:07:17.2 Kerri Fox: No.
0:07:21.9 Kurt Baker: And so it was like, all right, I need to make a living and I’m not going to work anymore. And so a lot of people pivoted and said, maybe this is time for me to go out on my own. Because a lot of people in corporate America are like, hey, my corporate job is fine. It has a lot of security. But also in that security it was just pulled out from under you. Like, well, I don’t have security right now, so maybe I’d go into business on my own is not such a bad option, and so they at least can take a shot at it. Right? And I think we had a lot of that going on. And many of these people are still, like, in their business now. Right? They’re still going strong now.
0:07:47.2 Kerri Fox: A lot are still going strong.
0:07:50.2 Kurt Baker: Which is awesome.
0:07:54.0 Kerri Fox: Yeah. Who wanted to go… When you figured it out and you made it work, generally, you’re the financial guy, but I think the norma if you can make it work for a year, you could just keep making it work.
0:08:03.8 Kurt Baker: Yeah, it’s usually that first couple years, it’s the tough part. It depends on the business, too. Some businesses start up pretty quickly, others may take a little bit of time. But yeah, if you get through that first, like one to two years, you’ve probably got enough inertia going where you’ve got a real business flying.
0:08:17.8 Kerri Fox: And people weren’t looking necessarily for their salary. They were looking for what they need to keep their household going.
0:08:25.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:08:27.1 Kerri Fox: So that gave a little more room, when you look at it that way.
0:08:30.1 Kurt Baker: Right. And a lot of times quality of life changes. Like, maybe they can work from home. They more flexibility. I mean, there’s downsides to being self employed, obviously, but there’s also a lot of upsides to it. But sometimes people look at all the upsides, they don’t realize that it’s actually a lot of work.
0:08:44.2 Kerri Fox: It is a lot of work. That’s where I come in to tell them and give them the reality check that there’s actually all these things.
0:08:50.7 Kurt Baker: Right. So why don’t you come back to the reality check? Like, oh, hey, look, I’m like, either I’m forced out of corporate America, or maybe I’ve decided I’m leaving corporate America. I don’t really want to do it this way anymore. And they go, hey, Gary, what do you think I should do? So how do you you start? Where do you go?
0:09:06.0 Kerri Fox: I generally come in when they know what business they want to do.
0:09:09.2 Kurt Baker: They already decide on a business. Okay.
0:09:11.6 Kerri Fox: So they have some direction. I am not a life coach. I really don’t have that in me to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.
0:09:18.8 Kurt Baker: I’m still working on that.
0:09:20.5 Kerri Fox: I can refer you to someone if you have no idea. It’s generally like, look I really like baking. And the cricket thing was a big thing that started with a lot of moms with kids at home.
0:09:36.5 Kurt Baker: Okay. So they have an idea and they’re like, hey, I’m gonna go open up a cricket facility or whatever. Right. Or something. Whatever.
0:09:41.9 Kerri Fox: I have a cricket machine. I’m gonna do it out of my house. Okay, so do we get you a website? Do we just keep it on social media? Websites are starting to not necessarily be a thing anymore.
0:09:54.0 Kurt Baker: Oh, wait a minute, Explain that.
0:09:56.5 Kerri Fox: People are buying things on these little makeshift. Like it’s AI generated. Sales website that’s through square or one of those.
0:10:06.1 Kurt Baker: Oh, I see. A website’s been… I know what you’re saying now.
0:10:08.4 Kerri Fox: It’s a website, but it’s a very watered down version.
0:10:12.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah, they’re templates.
0:10:13.3 Kerri Fox: You’re going to my website.
0:10:14.3 Kurt Baker: You can get a website up in seconds now.
0:10:16.2 Kerri Fox: Oh yeah. They’re so easy.
0:10:18.3 Kurt Baker: ASAP. Yeah.
0:10:19.2 Kerri Fox: But when you’re selling an actual good and you’re doing it mainly on social media, you’re making videos and posts and you’re putting in that link and a lot of like just starting out, they’re just linking it right to their square. Like just give me your money right now. Okay, so it’s not necessarily a website.
0:10:35.4 Kurt Baker: Gotcha.
0:10:35.9 Kerri Fox: Like we would define it.
0:10:38.5 Kurt Baker: Okay. Okay.
0:10:41.0 Kerri Fox: So do you want to do that? Do you want a full blown website? How are you going to structure it? Are we talking about like a couple orders a month? Like just a little extra fun cash? Go have fun. You don’t need me.
0:10:54.4 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:10:56.0 Kerri Fox: If I want to make 1000, 2000 a month. Okay. If you’re doing that out of your house, what does that look like? In New Jersey you need certain licenses. If it’s baking, if it’s just the cricket personalizing certain fun items. How many can you do in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year?
0:11:13.7 Kurt Baker: Awesome, awesome.
0:11:14.9 Kerri Fox: So although…
0:11:23.0 Kurt Baker: So once they decide they’re going to have a real business and not just almost like a hobby/business. Right. Just a bubble hobby. Obviously the IRS has a differentiator there.
0:11:31.2 Kerri Fox: Yes they do, $600.
0:11:33.1 Kurt Baker: Right, exactly. Because I know there’s a lot of people that have “businesses,” but it’s really just as you said, for fun cash, just to make enough money, they’re not really too serious about it. They have a skill set and they’ll just do the work as it comes along without a whole lot of concern about marketing and things. So if somebody says, hey, I do want to make a go with this, what conversation do you have now? Where do you start sending? I’m assuming every business is a little different, right? Depending on what it is.
0:11:58.9 Kerri Fox: Absolutely.
0:12:00.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah. So give me some examples of different business and how you might take them to that next step from fall.
0:12:04.8 Kerri Fox: So you have like your from home businesses. Those are as far as tangible products, usually like crocheting and baking and basically Etsy and baking. Or from home, there are a lot of people consulting, financial planning, insurance is a big one. Mortgages, real estate. Yeah, that’s those are all those little solo freelancers. Then you get to like more of your team sports, which I guess I fall into that now. Where do you have an office where you actually have employees? Do you have an office? Do you just stick to everyone being virtual? That office space is a big expense? Do you have the money to do that?
0:12:50.6 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:12:51.4 Kerri Fox: If you do have an office, how much do you need to make personally and your employees to sustain it? And then how much do you need to make in a given month to sustain you? ‘Cause when you’re a business owner, everything gets paid before you.
0:13:07.7 Kurt Baker: That’s true. You’re the last one in line.
0:13:09.3 Kerri Fox: I know they… I don’t know what that pay yourself first thing is…
0:13:14.4 Kurt Baker: First one when the bill comes in…
0:13:14.3 Kerri Fox: It doesn’t work.
0:13:14.4 Kurt Baker: You’re the first one in line when the bill comes in and the last one in line when the check comes out.
0:13:17.8 Kerri Fox: Exactly.
0:13:18.5 Kurt Baker: Pretty much how it works.
0:13:19.7 Kerri Fox: And then I work with a lot of restaurants and cafes just because we’re in Mercer county, like we have a lot of restaurants around here.
0:13:29.6 Kurt Baker: We do.
0:13:31.5 Kerri Fox: Seasonal. Do you get more people in a different season or do you have a regular sustainability in your customer base?
0:13:38.2 Kurt Baker: Okay, so once you’ve got a number. I need to make X to survive.
0:13:43.9 Kerri Fox: Yeah, I need to make X a week or X a month.
0:13:45.8 Kurt Baker: So how do you walk them through that process? I mean, you’re back in the middle of a business plan is what it sounds like.
0:13:49.5 Kerri Fox: Well, we look at how they’re making that money. Is it in so many clients? Is it in so many insurance policies sold? Is it in so many products sold? Like with a restaurant, Okay, I need to make $1,000 a night. Okay. What does that look like? What’s your typical two top, four top eight top make? What is your turnover? How long are people sitting there? Can you make that amount of money to do it and pay all of your bills? ‘Cause that $1000 you need for you, all of this is coming First.
0:14:25.5 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:14:25.8 Kerri Fox: So you break it down by how much you’re selling.
0:14:28.3 Kurt Baker: Okay. And you do a projection based on what? These are relatively new business. I don’t…
0:14:33.6 Kerri Fox: I do a projection based on the amount of time and…
0:14:35.1 Kurt Baker: I may not have opened my restaurant yet, right? Or have I? At this point, when you talking about… They already have something operating.
0:14:40.9 Kerri Fox: It’s both. I love to work with starters, but mainly I work with people who are one to three years in that either one…
0:14:48.0 Kurt Baker: So you’ve got some data to work off of, right?
0:14:49.9 Kerri Fox: Yes.
0:14:50.4 Kurt Baker: Which sounds like your restructuring background coming in to optimize this.
0:14:53.7 Kerri Fox: Exactly.
0:14:54.3 Kurt Baker: So what are some things you see? Let’s take the restaurant, for example. Let’s say, well, maybe I’m not optimizing, I don’t know, my tables or my turnover or whatever. Maybe I’m not doing enough velocity… O.
0:15:07.5 Kerri Fox: Yeah. We look at the actual space. Maybe we can… Maybe you have too many tables that it’s making your waiters and waitresses move too slow. So it’s deterring you.
0:15:17.6 Kurt Baker: Interesting. Okay.
0:15:18.1 Kerri Fox: Or sometimes it’s like, you can fit five more in here. Why don’t you.
0:15:21.7 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:15:23.3 Kerri Fox: Because generally, when you have smaller businesses, they’re not using a designer to design the restaurant.
0:15:27.8 Kurt Baker: True.
0:15:28.1 Kerri Fox: They’re using Pinterest. So I really liked this wall. I love these tables. This looks like what it’ll fit.
0:15:34.5 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:15:35.8 Kerri Fox: So their strategy in the actual layout of the room, and that’s just talking to the employees, like, ’cause I will go in, I’ll be like, okay, I’m going to talk to you. You tell me what you think your problems are, and then I’m going to tell you what I think your problems are. And if there are employees, then I talk to them too.
0:15:54.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:15:55.1 Kerri Fox: Because generally your employees see a lot of things you don’t see.
0:15:58.9 Kurt Baker: Oh, they’re on the front line for sure. Yeah, True.
0:16:01.5 Kerri Fox: So there was a waiter who said to me, like I can’t get through here. Like, I always get this section. And it’s the hardest thing because I’m tripping. I dropped a lot of plates, and I’m like, well, let’s just move this.
0:16:17.2 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:16:17.8 Kerri Fox: Especially ’cause if you’re dropping plates you’re losing revenue.
0:16:20.9 Kurt Baker: That’s definitely. That’s definitely revenue. Yeah.
0:16:23.8 Kerri Fox: So that Four top was really not worth it when you looked at the whole picture of he can move faster and turn tables over faster and you’re not wasting food that he’s dropping. Not that it was a ton, that it was that meaningful, but…
0:16:35.7 Kurt Baker: Right. Okay. So restaurants. So what’s some other. So you talk about drive through. So you turn people into the drive through thing. Because that was an interesting phenomenon…
0:16:46.0 Kerri Fox: During the pandemic. Everyone had to have like curbside pickup, right? Everyone had to become Instacart.
0:16:51.0 Kurt Baker: Pretty much.
0:16:53.5 Kerri Fox: But when you had a garden center that has been in business since the ’80s. They don’t have anything on a computer. Well, their POS system is on a computer. They don’t have anything. As far as, like people looking at what they have and that functional website.
0:17:10.1 Kurt Baker: There wasn’t a whole lot of need for that. You just walked in and you looked.
0:17:11.9 Kerri Fox: Yeah, you walked in, you looked, you got what you wanted, and we were done here. People even brought cash.
0:17:20.8 Kurt Baker: Sure.
0:17:24.1 Kerri Fox: But so how do we do that? So the start was people calling in and taking the orders and going a little old school with it and bringing people out. It’s like, okay, how can we make this a little faster? Because obviously small businesses really needed to push employees out to stay alive. So now there’s less of you. And you’re doing all the shopping for people that generally you just chilled at the counter.
0:17:48.7 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:17:49.5 Kerri Fox: So then it’s like, okay, like you said, a website’s really easy to make. Why don’t we do this? So at least now you’re not taking the orders, you’re just shopping them. Then it’s getting the word out. What are we doing? Social media, Calling former customers. Do you have that information? Giving maybe some incentive or… But really it was the use, the utilization of social media, putting it in those different groups, putting those videos up that people will share, engaging with chambers of commerce and different organizations that obviously weren’t doing in person things. But we’re really trying to help keep the business community alive. And these smaller brick and mortars generally don’t reach out to chambers. They just chill where they are.
0:18:36.0 Kurt Baker: Yeah. Retail 10. I noticed the chamber retail people don’t come very often because it’s hard to leave a retail operation and go to an event. Right. Because you’re open like all the time. Pretty much. It feels like, right?
0:18:45.6 Kerri Fox: It is.
0:18:47.2 Kurt Baker: But you touched on something very interesting, which I think a lot of businesses, especially small businesses, don’t pay enough attention to, and that’s nurturing their existing database of people who’ve come through.
0:18:58.8 Kerri Fox: They don’t even capture the information half the time.
0:19:02.4 Kurt Baker: Right. So, yeah, we’ve talked about this through other things that I’m doing. But it’s like it’s such a gold mine if you actually capture the information, give little incentives here and there, and the return is just astronomical because they’ve already come to your location. They’ve already walked through the door. Maybe they haven’t been there. Like plants. Right. Maybe I bought some plants three or four years ago, and maybe I don’t come very often. Maybe I’m not like a big gardener kind of person, but I do buy bushes and trees and things like that. But every once in a while. Oh, wait, I need another whatever. If you were nudging me along, I would definitely come back to you. But otherwise I’m like, oh, what was that place? It was over on 1:30 or wherever. I don’t remember which one it was. And then you just go and guess, right? You don’t really remember.
0:19:43.7 Kerri Fox: Yeah, ’cause there’s like four in a row.
0:19:45.1 Kurt Baker: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. And my wife and I had that issue. Like, I think it was that one, but it wasn’t that… But I don’t think every… Maybe I have. Maybe one of them has finally sent me something. But I don’t recall ever getting stuff from them.
0:19:56.3 Kerri Fox: No. Sometimes it can be little things, like email. It’s basically free.
0:20:01.8 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:20:02.6 Kerri Fox: How many texts do we get from stores once we buy one thing online? And then you get a text every day. This is on sale. That is on sale.
0:20:10.6 Kurt Baker: Yep.
0:20:11.2 Kerri Fox: I know. Carter’s in children’s place. Even though my kids have, like, pretty much grown out of their clothes. But because I bought from them in the past, I get two to three texts a day about this being 10% off and this being 20% off, which is great for my nephew, but… And there are times where I’m like, you know what, I did need to get him something for his birthday. And I just tapped the link that just came to my phone.
0:20:29.3 Kurt Baker: Exactly. It’s right there. It’s so convenient.
0:20:31.1 Kerri Fox: Whereas I probably would have went to Amazon if I didn’t get that text.
0:20:35.0 Kurt Baker: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So do you do a lot of… When you’re trying to get… Especially if they’re one to three years old, these businesses. So what are some of the things you prioritize? Like, here’s some things we can do to really ramp up your revenue to get you to the number. Because I assume that they’re not hitting the number they want when they come to you. That’s why you usually reach out for help.
0:20:53.0 Kerri Fox: And other thing, we don’t have, like this huge budget, like a Carter’s or something to work with. We can’t do these huge text campaigns. We can’t. Email is a good thing, but we don’t have the information a lot of the time. So how do we start to make something out of nothing? I’m a big believer in community outreach. Like, take these garden centers. They’re up and down 130.
0:21:15.8 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:21:16.8 Kerri Fox: So what time of year is it? Right now it’s Valentine’s Day coming up. Right.
0:21:20.3 Kurt Baker: I thought it was winter.
0:21:23.2 Kerri Fox: So the next thing people are buying stuff for is Valentine’s Day.
0:21:26.0 Kurt Baker: I know. I’m just kidding.
0:21:27.4 Kerri Fox: Presidents Day really only counts for cars and furniture. But Valentine’s Day. Let’s go. Valentine’s Day.
0:21:32.1 Kurt Baker: There you go.
0:21:33.1 Kerri Fox: Garden centers have flowers.
0:21:36.4 Kurt Baker: They do.
0:21:39.4 Kerri Fox: Flowers. Maybe talk to a chocolate shop. Like, all those on 130 are right by David Bradley. How do we merge these two? Do I give David Bradley a coupon to come get some flowers when someone buys their chocolate and vice versa, or do we put together a package so that both social media pages are marketing this and tagging each other and feeding off each other’s followers and growing their followership as well while doing that. There’s a movie theater right down in East Windsor. Flowers, chocolate, dinner, movie. Just go with the theme.
0:22:16.8 Kurt Baker: Absolutely. So one thing you were talking about, which I thought was very interesting, is sharing each other’s client database. I think a lot of times businesses are like, well, they’re a competitor because they sell something. They might sell candy in their store, but they sell mainly flowers. And I sell a few flowers, but I sell mainly candy. But the reality is that when you synergize, there’s a reason that Coke and Pepsi puts their machines next to each other. People are like, well, why would they do that? And now it’s not a decision of am I gonna have a Coke or not? It’s a question of which one am I gonna have.
0:22:56.2 Kerri Fox: Yes.
0:22:56.7 Kurt Baker: So you change the decision making process in your brain. So when you start sending something out from… Because one, if I go to Bradley’s as an example, and then you go to the garden center and they’re sending out, and Bradley. And I’ve already bought something from Bradley’s. And then with the chocolate place for people who don’t know what that is, and then the gardens If I send something out, that means that I know that the people at Bradley’s trust this garden center.
0:23:19.9 Kerri Fox: Yes.
0:23:20.3 Kurt Baker: Enough to share my information with them with something that they think I might be interested in, because I do buy chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Maybe I also want to buy flowers. It makes some logical sense. You don’t want to do it. You want to send. I don’t know… It’s like a car thing with the Bradley. I mean, you don’t necessarily want to do something that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but as long as it makes some sense, then the audience appreciates it too, because you’re sending me something that I will likely be interested in.
0:23:47.4 Kerri Fox: That’s just it. It’s just grouping everything together to make it more one stop, make it more cohesive. Chocolate and flowers. Valentine’s Day, it just goes together, and no one’s really gonna think twice about it. Like, we scroll all the time, and we see, like, okay, look. Oh, I do like that shirt. And then what happens? 50 other shirts start popping up.
0:24:07.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I know. It’s a little frightening sometimes.
0:24:09.4 Kerri Fox: I know when my husband is looking at a certain… Whether it’s boots or trucks or whatever, because it starts popping up on my phone.
0:24:16.5 Kurt Baker: Well, that’s really interesting.
0:24:17.9 Kerri Fox: Because we’re both on the same wifi. And him too. He’s like…
0:24:19.3 Kurt Baker: That’s funny.
0:24:20.3 Kerri Fox: You’re looking at shoes. But it doesn’t make sense as a small business to not utilize those things. Those algorithms are there to stay.
0:24:31.9 Kurt Baker: Correct.
0:24:33.5 Kerri Fox: The whole idea behind my business was corporations spend millions a year on having someone come in and just take a second look. Because when you’re doing it every day and you’re in it, and me too, like, even me, who does this for a business, this is still my business. I have blind spots ’cause I’m human.
0:24:50.4 Kurt Baker: Correct.
0:24:51.2 Kerri Fox: Everyone does. It’s not a judgment. It just is. Everyone can benefit from just someone else looking at it from a different vantage point. So it’s about letting the small businesses have accessibility to these services, because obviously, they’re not paying what my old corporation build out. They don’t have that.
0:25:11.8 Kurt Baker: Right. It’s all about return on the investment. So if they feel like, hey, if you’re helping me become more efficient. And a lot of this is, I guess we’ll get into this a little bit now, because a lot of this can be analyzed just yourself logically. But you also have the artificial intelligence is helping us with some of this too. And that’s really a tool to make it a little bit better. Like people say, well, I’m not sure what email sequence to send out to these people.
0:25:38.8 Kerri Fox: Yeah. What targets and different things.
0:25:40.0 Kurt Baker: But if you tell whatever ChatGPT or one of these things in a relatively detailed way, can you help me set up a nurturing sequence for blah, blah, blah, send out every Tuesday or whatever it is and based on my business and describe the business or link the URL in there or something like that. It’ll be pretty good. I mean, it won’t be a finished product, but it’ll get you started.
0:26:00.9 Kerri Fox: It’s a good rough draft.
0:26:01.0 Kurt Baker: It’ll get you started. Right. So it goes. Oh yeah. I should talk about the fact that Valentine’s Day is coming up and then maybe Easter and then maybe whatever it is, you’ll start getting an idea of like, here’s the things I should be doing. Because I don’t know about at least me as a consumer. I don’t think about Christmas six months in advance like retail people do. Right. They’re like working on it in June, me I’m like, I’m lucky if I get to it in November. December. Right. But if you start planning the whole year way out ahead of time, it’s a lot easier. It’s like done.
0:26:30.3 Kerri Fox: Absolutely. And with a lot of my clients, we put out monthly plans. We work it with them. What happens in January? Sometimes it’s just it’s winter, it’s dreary, dry. January, if you have a fitness based business, like, that’s your time to shine. February is obviously like lots of love and all these different things and prettiness. And March, St. Patrick’s Day.
0:26:54.6 Kurt Baker: Right. Get pretty and then you start drinking.
0:26:58.1 Kerri Fox: Exactly. April and May, that’s spring. And Easter and Mother’s Day is in May and Father’s Day is in June. Graduations are in June. And then you write out all that and then you figure out how that relates to your business. So if you’re a financial person in January, like, okay, what are those resolutions you made for your finances? How do we get them started and actually put them into play? A friend of mine is doing no spend January. Which is like, you don’t buy any extras.
0:27:35.0 Kurt Baker: Well, it’s easy for a lot of people. They spend all their money in December.
0:27:37.7 Kerri Fox: Exactly. I’m like, I’ve been doing that for years. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was just a necessity. February, Valentine’s Day, like putting the money away to get, a better gift than you did last year. Last year I just got a card. But I wanted something really big this year. St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t know. Try your luck with the lottery. I don’t know. I’m not a financial person. Clearly.
0:28:05.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah, we’re not big on lotteries or investments. Let’s just say that out loud.
0:28:08.6 Kerri Fox: Try your luck on the market. Not the lottery, the market.
0:28:11.5 Kurt Baker: There might be better options than buying lottery tickets, frankly.
0:28:13.9 Kerri Fox: So anyway, may, try your luck on the market instead of the lottery. Dream bigger. So something with a pot of gold, it’s there. I would have to flush it out a little. Spring, people, it starts getting warm. Do you have the money? You want to do those spring projects around your yard and May Memorial Day are you having a party? Are you financially there to have people over? Are you going somewhere?
0:28:42.4 Kurt Baker: Right. And you can overlay that pretty much on any business.
0:28:45.3 Kerri Fox: Yes.
0:28:45.7 Kurt Baker: Like, I’m thinking out loud because I remember I had a client years ago, and it was like a big snowstorm came along, and he had an auto repair shop, collision repair shop. And it was like… You asked him. He didn’t tell me this. I go, so do you guys, like, actually get excited when a snowstorm goes? He goes, yeah.
0:29:00.0 Kerri Fox: My husband does, and my best friend ’cause they go out and plow.
0:29:05.2 Kurt Baker: ‘Cause they know people are going to slide off the road and they’re going to get business. I mean it’s morbid, but that’s their business. So, you can lay this into almost any business, whether it’s a restaurant or auto repair or car sales or anything. Right. So almost every business has some seasonality to it. Even, like doctors, you have flu season and all that. If you think about it and you watch and look back at your business and what things happen at different times of the year just from your own experience.
0:29:35.0 Kerri Fox: Exactly.
0:29:35.8 Kurt Baker: Then you start putting that on top and just nudge your potential clients or your existing clients and say, oh, by the way, maybe you want to do this now because of time of year.
0:29:44.0 Kerri Fox: The biggest thing is about shifting any business owner’s mindset to be more proactive and reactive. Look up those national days. All those arbitrary national days. National Cookie Day, National Coffee Day.
0:29:56.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah. There’s like, about a thousand of them. I’m not sure how we did that.
0:30:00.1 Kerri Fox: National Save All Your Money day, National Spend all your money day because you could just Google those online. If you do it in January, then you’re not seeing, oh this was Daughter’s Day, three days after it happened. You have that proactive.
0:30:12.2 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:30:12.7 Kerri Fox: So it’s like what happens in the season then? What are these national days that apply to your business? And you could play with it. Even if you just have the rough draft, like the. The rough outline, I should say, you could be like I want to do a sale. I want to do 10% off for, say it’s a chiropractor, like National Spine Month.
0:30:32.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:30:32.9 Kerri Fox: So any new customer gets 10% off their first visit, and you can do that more on the fly. But you can look in February and start thinking about March.
0:30:45.0 Kurt Baker: And you know that it’s National Spine Month, which I had no idea. But that’s probably a thing. I don’t know if that…
0:30:49.4 Kerri Fox: I’m sure it is.
0:30:50.2 Kurt Baker: Oh, they do national. It’s something for everything. Every. Every association has a national month for whatever, right?
0:30:55.1 Kerri Fox: Exactly. Or maybe you want to hook up some fundraising aspect to your business for something that also relates to it or just something near and dear to your heart. It doesn’t have to be Spine Day for a chiropractor. Maybe we go back to that garden center and that person has someone Breast Cancer Awareness month is like the biggest one.
0:31:14.8 Kurt Baker: Sure. That’s a huge one.
0:31:15.8 Kerri Fox: That’s something that means something. Alzheimer’s is also becoming a big, very widely known month in, I think it’s June.
0:31:22.0 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:31:23.5 Kerri Fox: We just want to do that. We want to raise money for that. Any sale a nickel or whatever is going to this, and it becomes a marketing tactic.
0:31:35.0 Kurt Baker: So we’re talking about how we want to really engage with the, your client base, potential and existing. Right. And which is huge. And another part of that is getting them to somehow respond or somehow engage with you, whether it’s ’cause we talked about a little bit on social media, but you can do that in email and stuff like that.
0:31:52.9 Kerri Fox: You want to open the email.
0:31:54.4 Kurt Baker: How do you get them? I’m just looking for your insight on this because I know that there’s lots of ways to do this. But what are some things you think about when you say, oh, we’re going to send this out, because everybody gets a lot of emails. Everybody sees social media, everybody sees everything. The difference is you want them to stop and somehow have some engagement, because now they’re going to remember you or potentially make a decision. So how do you encourage or trigger some engagement potentially with people?
0:32:20.3 Kerri Fox: So my thing with any social media, email campaign, or even print campaign is you need to make them look.
0:32:26.8 Kurt Baker: Okay. Make them look.
0:32:28.4 Kerri Fox: It’s really that simple. You need to make them look.
0:32:30.5 Kurt Baker: Okay, so we hire Mr. Beast. Is that what we do?
0:32:34.7 Kerri Fox: Yeah, that would probably work. But since we can’t afford Mr. Beast.
0:32:39.7 Kurt Baker: Maybe scale back a little from there.
0:32:41.8 Kerri Fox: Okay, that’s a good goal. But with emails, it’s the subject line.
0:32:47.2 Kurt Baker: Okay. So what are some tricks? I don’t want to call them tricks, but what are some techniques that help people actually pay attention to a subject?
0:32:56.0 Kerri Fox: So you need to make sure the subject line fits in what the subject line would look like on a phone.
0:33:01.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:33:02.3 Kerri Fox: I understand on the computer you have a lot more room there, but most people are looking at their emails on their phone.
0:33:08.7 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:33:10.7 Kerri Fox: So you want to keep it short and sweet and to the point, but also drive them to open the email. So you also have to look back at that seasonality because everyone and their mother is sending Valentine’s Day is this many days away.
0:33:27.5 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:33:28.4 Kerri Fox: What are you getting your sweetheart? So, I mean, not that they don’t open those. You have to look at. You really have to look at your own analytics and see how people. How many people are opening your emails if there’s a certain time and look for it in there. But generally, the subject line, people generally stay away from the ones that like, they put in RE or FW just to try and make you open it. People scroll past those.
0:33:53.5 Kurt Baker: Yep.
0:33:55.2 Kerri Fox: I’m good with one or two emojis, but do not put a line full of emojis. Let’s say the garden center. And we go back to adding it with the chocolates. You can put that. Tony’s and David Bradley. Tony’s plus David Bradley package. And it’s like, huh, that’s interesting. Like, that’s like, What does that mean?
0:34:21.4 Kurt Baker: Make them think. Right?
0:34:22.3 Kerri Fox: Make them think. What does that mean? I want to tap on it.
0:34:25.5 Kurt Baker: Excellent. Okay, so you want to have an intriguing subject line. Right. Which gets them to think. Right. More than just…
0:34:37.9 Kerri Fox: Draw them in. Like, I want to know more. Don’t tell them what it is.
0:34:42.3 Kurt Baker: I want to know more. Exactly. That’s the key, right? So if they read it, they’re going to know just enough to say, hmm, that might be interesting to me. And it has to match the body because sometimes people do stuff that like they say the line, subject line has nothing to do with the actual content. And you’re like…
0:35:00.1 Kerri Fox: That’s annoying. That’s a great way to get people to unsubscribe.
0:35:03.4 Kurt Baker: Now you hate the person. Right. Or the company. Because, like, now I’m really annoyed. Right. Because you wasted my three seconds. Right. Which is crazy.
0:35:09.3 Kerri Fox: It should be relevant to the topic. Another big thing is salon, spas, or even a restaurant. You’ll see a lot of reservations are going fast. But maybe a better subject line is confirm your reservation.
0:35:32.8 Kurt Baker: Right. Okay.
0:35:34.4 Kerri Fox: It’s like, did I do that?
0:35:36.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I would be like, did I do that right? Yeah.
0:35:39.8 Kerri Fox: And you have the link to your open table or Resi like and maybe… And you can have it auto generate from OpenTable and Resi, like some open times that are still available for two.
0:35:50.8 Kurt Baker: Oh, that’s pretty cool. Didn’t know that.
0:35:51.6 Kerri Fox: AI can do a lot of things.
0:35:55.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, no, you’re right. I just hadn’t thought of that one.
0:35:58.0 Kerri Fox: I don’t personally completely know how to do it, but I know people who know how to do it. So I can tell them I want it to do this and they will make it do that.
0:36:04.8 Kurt Baker: That’s the important thing. You don’t have to necessarily know how it’s done. You just have to know that it can be done.
0:36:08.6 Kerri Fox: I would say I don’t know everything. I know a lot of things and for the things I don’t know, I know people who know them.
0:36:13.0 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I feel the same way.
0:36:15.2 Kerri Fox: Exactly.
0:36:15.6 Kurt Baker: Better off spending your time on the big picture saying, this is what the end result we want.
0:36:19.3 Kerri Fox: I’m never going to be an IT person. I’m not even going to try.
0:36:22.6 Kurt Baker: Right. And that’s a moving target anyway, even for people that are in IT, frankly. But there is a lot that can be done. So any other techniques? So you want to make sure you’re paying a lot of attention to your existing client base. You want to draw in the new customers and clients. So what are some of the ways you blend the knowledge you have about your existing clients to go out and maybe find some more people that are similar to those that already know they like you?
0:36:52.0 Kerri Fox: You can use the demographics of your existing client base to create those targets for different ads or different posts or different content.
0:37:00.4 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:37:00.8 Kerri Fox: If I have a lot of young moms or if I have a lot of senior citizens, obviously I’m going to create content for that type of audience because that’s the client base I have. So grow on that.
0:37:14.4 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:37:15.8 Kerri Fox: The other thing is referrals. When you’re sending those e-receipts or you’re saying thank you for your business, have a link to your Google reviews. Have a link to those social media pages. It seems, it seems like, oh, so many people do that. It’s so basic. But not as many people have it right there like you would think.
0:37:33.2 Kurt Baker: It’s shocking to me because when you look at businesses, some that are very successful, they don’t ask for the reviews, which is interesting to me because that can all be automated with the right partnership that you don’t need to. You can automate a lot of this stuff.
0:37:49.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah. You could have it just embedded because a lot of people send e-receipts now. Like you have a little square or clover, you tap. I want an email receipt. You can go into your clover, back end, and on the bottom of the receipt, there’s your Google review link. There’s all your social media links. Follow us.
0:38:06.8 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:38:08.1 Kerri Fox: Some people even have those. It’s very easy to create like a membership rewards program now with all the different apps out there. And that could be another incentive. Leave us a review. Get five points. That is what a lot of the bigger businesses are doing now.
0:38:22.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:38:23.4 Kerri Fox: Join our email list. There’s another five points.
0:38:27.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, you get that all the time when you go to. Whenever I go to a new website now, I feel like it’s almost always. I think it’s like 10% off if you sign up for our email. And then, and then you do that…
0:38:36.2 Kurt Baker: And then you get an extra one if you sign up for the text.
0:38:38.1 Kerri Fox: Exactly. And that’s exactly. Then you get another 10% off. You do the text messages. So now they got your phone number and your email. But you know what you’re getting into. Right. And if you get annoyed, you just unsubscribe. So it’s like, okay, I’m interested enough where I’m on the site.
0:38:52.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:38:53.2 Kurt Baker: So, yeah, I’d like to see what you have to offer. And then if somebody becomes overwhelming. I remember there was one nonprofit that was like, I signed up for it and like they were sending me texts like twice a day. And I’m like, dude, you guys gotta like, chill here, man. And after about three weeks of this, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one they backed it off to maybe once or twice a month. Because text is very personal. So you have to be very careful about how often you text people. I mean, email is one thing you can automatically, like, file and all that stuff, but text is like, right on the phone, so you don’t want to blow up people’s phones constantly.
0:39:20.9 Kerri Fox: And the texts, I feel like, are easier to stop because you just reply, stop right there. And then it’s like, okay, goodbye. Sorry.
0:39:26.8 Kurt Baker: Right. If you’re doing it too much, they’re gonna cancel it right away.
0:39:29.1 Kerri Fox: It’s like you click on the unsubscribe link. You gotta check off all these things. It’s so much more effort.
0:39:34.2 Kurt Baker: Right. And I’ve had people accidentally unsubscribe, like, oh, shoot, I didn’t mean to do that. Because they were, like, going through and just getting rid of stuff, and they didn’t… Because they weren’t paying attention. They were just, like, getting rid of. ‘Cause every once in a while, people just purge. They’re like, I gotta get rid of all this stuff. And they’re like, wait a minute. Actually, I wanted that I wanted actually.
0:39:49.0 Kerri Fox: I know people who will unsubscribe when they start getting them and then when they go to, like, buy something.
0:39:53.9 Kurt Baker: Oh, then resubscribe.
0:39:54.5 Kerri Fox: Once you unsubscribe, it takes you off the list.
0:39:56.6 Kurt Baker: Correct.
0:39:57.5 Kerri Fox: So now I’m just gonna resubscribe and get the 50% off again.
0:40:01.3 Kurt Baker: That’s true.
0:40:03.5 Kerri Fox: I’m like, I don’t have that time but…
0:40:05.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I definitely don’t do that. So what are some other things you do with the new business? Obviously, the customer base, the client base, the interaction.
0:40:13.5 Kerri Fox: So that’s all on the marketing side, the operations side is we look at your day-to-day.
0:40:17.7 Kurt Baker: Operations. Okay.
0:40:21.0 Kerri Fox: How are how are you structuring your day? Is there a way you could be more efficient in some areas? Are there ways that are costing you money that you don’t realize?
0:40:28.2 Kurt Baker: So what are some typical things you find when you start looking at people like what if…
0:40:31.3 Kerri Fox: This time of year? I didn’t do any actual bookkeeping until now that my accountant is asking for. And I realize QuickBooks has a thousand notifications for me for the entire year, and it’s so out of whack, I have to go through my actual bank statements and sit down like I’m trying to solve a burner and figure this out. What was this charge? It’s like, okay, well, instead of taking a week out of your life every year, why don’t we take like five minutes out of your day once a week to just tap on these little things and fix it.
0:41:07.3 Kurt Baker: Right, Exactly.
0:41:08.3 Kerri Fox: Because yes, AI is great and all that, but it’s not perfect.
0:41:11.3 Kurt Baker: Well, plus you’re going to remember like, what was going on when you do something a year later and be like…
0:41:16.9 Kerri Fox: What was that?
0:41:20.4 Kurt Baker: What was that $37 for? I don’t remember. With like some weird name that doesn’t really make a lot of sense necessarily.
0:41:21.3 Kerri Fox: Exactly. It’s still fresh in your mind. And I’m going through with people like, what is this? A credit card maybe. Okay. It’s a credit card now.
0:41:30.3 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:41:33.8 Kerri Fox: And because people aren’t getting statements hard copy anymore.
0:41:39.4 Kurt Baker: Right. That’s rare.
0:41:39.7 Kerri Fox: Which is accountants are getting these boxes and boxes of statements to go there.
0:41:44.4 Kurt Baker: Just log into QuickBooks and download it and go on their mirror.
0:41:46.9 Kerri Fox: But it’s like, good luck finding it in your email. So you got to, like… And even still, it’s not in your email anymore. You have to log in and go back through all the statements. It’s a big to do when you have to figure it out.
0:41:57.2 Kurt Baker: True.
0:41:58.8 Kerri Fox: And sometimes even when it’s on the bank statement, you could look up just the little name, and be like, okay, well, it was to this. What’s this? Oh, that’s what that was.
0:42:09.7 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:42:10.8 Kerri Fox: But you’re still draining a lot of… I had clients that like basically the entire month of January, they’re doing their bookkeeping for the whole next year. So you’re basically losing work for January.
0:42:20.6 Kurt Baker: Lose a whole month.
0:42:22.0 Kerri Fox: When you could have just taken five, 10 minutes. Because that is how easy it is when you keep up with it.
0:42:28.2 Kurt Baker: Right? Yeah, you’re right. It is very simple. If you just go in every once in a while and, we typically do, you do the payroll. Like, payroll is an easy time to go in and do that. Especially if you’re doing it through like a system like that. And each time you pay people, you go in, you just do the rest of the bookkeeping while you’re sitting there. Oh, okay. And it’s done and you move on. Spend an extra few minutes and you’re done.
0:42:44.4 Kerri Fox: Exactly. And then we grew to, you know what, if you really hate doing this that much…
0:42:49.2 Kurt Baker: Outsource.
0:42:49.5 Kerri Fox: We will give you someone once a month to fix it.
0:42:53.6 Kurt Baker: And there’s people who love… This was the joy that I found in my life. At one point, I found out that there’s this stuff that I hate to do, like bookkeeping that other people love to do.
0:43:02.2 Kerri Fox: Yeah.
0:43:02.6 Kurt Baker: And I’m like, go.
0:43:04.8 Kerri Fox: Exactly.
0:43:05.5 Kurt Baker: It’s all yours.
0:43:07.1 Kerri Fox: And a lot of smaller business owners…
0:43:08.5 Kurt Baker: I do not enjoy this at all. I’m glad you love it.
0:43:11.1 Kerri Fox: A lot of small business owners, especially when they’re first time small business owners, they feel like they have to do all that stuff themselves. No, the beauty of being successful is paying someone else to do the stuff you don’t like.
0:43:19.9 Kurt Baker: And that’s interesting. I mean, we have to go here in a few minutes, but I mean, as soon as you can outsource something that you hate doing, do it. Because then it frees up time for you to do your thing, which is probably marketing and selling to people that you like, and you’ll actually enjoy it more. So as soon as you can afford getting rid of something, just get rid of it. And people hesitate. Well, I can’t afford a couple hundred dollars a month for that because I’m only making blah, blah, blah. But it’s like as soon as you get rid of that, you probably make five, six hundred dollars a month. And you gave them 200. Right. You’re gonna make more money 99% of the time than you’re spending.
0:43:53.5 Kerri Fox: Exactly. When you don’t like to do something it takes you longer to do because you have to force yourself. So you’re procrastinating, and it’s a whole thing.
0:44:00.3 Kurt Baker: Okay, so any words of wisdom for our small business owners out there that are getting things cleaned up a little bit?
0:44:06.8 Kerri Fox: Just sit down and actually make proactive plans versus just doing everything as it comes. It saves time and it saves money.
0:44:14.8 Kurt Baker: Awesome. Thank you, Kerri. Appreciate it very much.
0:44:17.9 Kerri Fox: Thanks for having me.
0:44:19.3 Kurt Baker: You’re listening to. You’re listening to Master Your Finances.