Our guest, Cindy Stradling, who is a resilience coach, has faced many difficult life challenges as a single mother with very little education and has developed the mental fortitude to keep going no matter what.
In getting from there to here, Cindy has shined shoes, waited tables, cleaned houses and was a parking lot attendant while building her business. Undeniably, she knows firsthand what resilience is.
She has developed it through her journey and has developed a program, Thrive, to inspire others to be their personal best and keep moving toward their goals.
If you set your mindset right and have discipline, you can be successful at whatever you want to do in life.
During this interview, you'll also discover...
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The importance of knowing your goals and objectives
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How the value of consistent approach will help you
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What are the keys to overcoming the fear of cold calls and sales
To learn more about Cindy Stradling, visit here.
For her LinkedIn page, click here.
For her Facebook, check this out.
For her Twitter, discover here.
For her Youtube channel, watch here.
To get in touch with Cindy, Email her at cindy@cindystradling.com.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Michael Palmer: 01:49 Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a fabulous one. If you've ever had to make a sales call or a cold sales call or have had an uncomfortable sales conversation in person, today's guest will help you with that. She's a resilience coach and accomplished speaker and the author of the book becoming a self-defined woman. She works with entrepreneurs, individuals and corporations such as three Canada Scotia, McCloud and CIBC to do what's needed personally to get where you need to go. Cindy Stradling, welcome to the podcast.
Cindy Stradling: 02:28 Well, thank you so much, Michael. I'm super excited to be here.
MP: 02:31 Yes. And now, Cindy, first off, you have an incredible story of your own personal resilience. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey that has led you to being a resilience coach and really an expert in having sales conversations.
CS: 02:48 Well, Michael has started a long time ago. I was joking say that I, I'll only admit to 25 years in sales, but I've been doing sales, but actually I believe people do sales all their life. They just don't realize. They're always telling their ideas and things like that. But on a formal basis, I've been in sales for well over 25 years and 13 years ago I, I was actually doing a, what I call the cold call clinic. I hesitate to say that now because it scares people. But when I was speaking with the lady who had hired me, she told me that the sales people were not happy. The people that, because they had done a program in the morning and they weren't happy with what they got delivered to them, and it was the program on a communications. And so I went in and I addressed the elephant in the room and then I understood that they had a crappy morning and I said I was going to proceed.
CS: 03:39 And uh, but if they, you know, after half-hour I'd check-in and see how they're doing. And they were fine. At the end of the day, we went through the whole cold called clinic and everybody was happy. And when they spoke with the lady at the end, she was walking me back to the reception area. And I knew that I had multiple people that I could've connected or to, and I said to her, I said, um, what would it be like to have one person that you could be connected that could connect you to all the trainers and facilitators and coaches that you would need? And in that moment, I decided that I was going to start my own business because I was so well connected. I was doing a lot of this stuff organically anyway. And so I just started, I had my son build my first website.
CS: 04:23 I just started getting out there calling and I mean I still do cold calls today. I'm warmed them up as much as possible, but I still do them. And like every other entrepreneur I was up and down and you had really good days and then you had other days and I realized that it was going to take something to keep going. And so after about three years of being in business, I was really struggling financially and I knew that I was at a point where I either had to quit altogether or I would do something that would afford me some, some income while I was building the business. And so I became a shoe shine girl for a year and I work part time. And what was great about that was I could still run my business from the shoe shine tables, the chairs, sorry. And a, in fact the lady who run the business encourage that.
CS: 05:14 So cell phone in hand and all my information and people I would call and people call me back and I would shoe shine. And then on the weekends I also was a parking lot. I attended and I, that's what it took and was like, and I realize that that's the difference between someone who really, really, really wants their business to work or someone who's just in it for as thinking it's going to be easy because I meet a lot of people who don't really know how much it takes cause it takes you right down to your eyes and it takes you right down to your soul. It really comes down to you've got to love what you're doing. Um, because why else would you go through all of that? So that's what I teach people I work with is because too often people give up too soon.
CS: 05:58 They don't even know how close they are to success and they give up or they get discouraged or whatever. And my experiences working with entrepreneurs, especially women in sales, there seems to be a lot of negative mindset around that. And we teach them how to be authentic in their sales and how they can move forward, move their business forward. I've had a people say to me that they've done more in the first six, eight weeks working with me than they had done in the last year. Things like that. So most of it is, a lot of it is mindset I should say. And I'm think you know that from, from your own experience and our experience of working together. Um, if you can get the mindset right and you put the disciplines on the habits, you know, you can be successful in whatever it is that you want to do.
MP: 06:43 Absolutely. I just love hearing your story. You know, it just, for me, it's, it's that grittiness of what it takes to get something beautiful and wonderful for yourself in your life. Like it, it's, it's almost, you know, there's the old saying, the sweet is not as sweet without the better. And I think growing a business as similar to that in that it, if, if you just came easy, you wouldn't value it anyways. Right. Uh, and, and what, what, what I think happens, and I can see in your story, is that you, along the way you discover wonderful things that you wouldn't have, have discovered about yourself and about your clients and about your life really, that you've brought now to your business, which makes it even better.
CS: 07:31 Yeah, no, and it's true. And people, it's funny because when I talked to people after this length of time, I've got a lot of longstanding customers and they always said they knew they could depend on me. They, they trusted me. In fact, when a client of mine just emailed me, she's doing a conference and needed last year she needed five speakers. This year she needed three and she was speaking to a colleague of mine and they said, why do you Cindy? She said, because I just trust her and she just takes forever. I send her because she knows I do my due diligence. And I think that nobody can underestimate the value of being consistent. Even with your followup, you know, you're creating, you're always creating your reputation. And I think if I learned nothing else that even though you know I will spend, I dunno, maybe a year, year and a half trying to connect with someone between linkedin or sending information or, or whatever it is.
CS: 08:25 And it may take eight or 10 touches. But when we do connect it's almost like they are, we already know each other. It's crazy. It's, it's, you know, it's, if it works it really, really works and all those times and you say you're going to follow up in three months and then you follow up in three months and then you follow up again in six months or four months or whatever you say you're going to do and then you do it. You are building that reputation and whether you realize it or not, you're actually building rapport and trust even if you're not having interactions or doing with companies.
MP: 08:56 Beautiful. Isn't that the, the secret really right there in though and what you've said is, is consistent approach to anything you do is, is train and teach the people that you are, you're someone to be trusted.
CS: 09:11 Yup. Cause that's what people buy from is people that they know and trust and really understanding your value. I know for you with bookkeepers, I mean each one of them, they do certain things that are the same as everybody else, but everybody brings their own unique personality, their own unique way of doing things. And that's what people have to leverage. Whenever you're in, I won't say commodity, but where when you're in a market where there's a lot of competition or a lot of likeminded people and does it matter who I've worked with, they always can find something that's really unique about who they are, how they work, these little added extra value things that can differentiate them from the, from the the guy next door, but the person that's really willing to invest in themselves and actually explore that is, is fantastic. The Sky's the limit in my opinion. It's because there's nowhere to get on. I'm going to be learning till the day I die. I'm going to continue to take courses, I'm going to continue to read, I'm going to continue to grow. And I think any entrepreneur that doesn't do,
CS: 10:12 I think they, they really do themselves.
CS: 10:14 The disturbance
MP: 10:23 Agreed. And this listener, our listener right now is likely somebody who can relate very much with you Cindy, because they are either thinking about starting their business, they've just started their business, they've gone through struggle. We have a listener that's sort of hit every single one of your journeys. And I, I would almost, you know, almost guarantee that at some point our listener has had to do something that wasn't necessarily something they wanted to do, but they did it because they knew they needed to in order to keep their dream alive of having a business that works for themselves. And just, just yesterday I was reading a post on in our group, The Successful Bookkeeper group on Facebook. Wonderful Group, wonderful people sharing themselves, sharing what's going on for them. But One lady said, look, I just need to hear some stories of resilience to help me with, it's this tough week that I'm having.
MP: 11:18 And, you know, there was like 50 posts of people telling their story about what, where they were and what they needed to do. And a lot of it is just keep on going. You know, it's like, look, you're having a bad week. You, you know, do what you can but you know, take a deep breath and just keep on keeping on. But you know, for her, for this woman that asked this question, it was, you know, almost soothing of the soul to say, look, you're not alone. There's so many other people out there that doing it. So I think one of the little things that we'll probably point out here is surround yourself with people that are doing things like you and have been there and are going where you want to go.
CS: 11:58 100%. And that's the key is mastermind groups. Um, and I have accountability partners. I've had coaches. I totally have been so supported around me. And you're one of them, Michael. I mean we, we got our coaching together and um, you know, what do they say that the five people around you will determine your income, the five closest people that you associate with the most, something along those lines. I'm not sure of that.
CS: 12:23 You're the, you're the average of the, you're the average of the five people that you're like, that you spend the most time with. I think it is one of them. It's probably tied back to that's the generalization. But yeah, if you hang out with people that are hanging out on, on, on the couch watching Game of Thrones, well guess what? You're probably one of those people. So, uh, yeah. And it's not to say anything negative about that. I mean, people have choices and do what they do, but look, you want to, if you want something so bad, like what you, when you told me your story, my father has a similar story with when he was starting, his business actually hadn't have actually started as business, but it was in the early eighties he was laid off work. I mean, there was an incredible recession and the interest rates went through the roof and
CS: 13:14 that what it was like 18,20%
MP: 13:16 Yeah, it went from like a very low number. I don't know what the number was, but maybe seven or 9% up to like 18% and it was literally going to lose the house unless he did something. And he's like, he's not going to sit back and just lose the house. He went and he picked apples, picked apples, he did whatever he could do. He worked everywhere and anytime I like dawn until dusk doing whatever he had to do to keep the bills paid. And it's like he was resilient. Uh, and, and in business he was, he did whatever he could. Now why I love working with bookkeepers is one of the reasons I believe he wasn't over successful in his businesses, that he didn't have a great bookkeeper, he didn't have somebody looking out for him in terms of to give, to give him to be his conciliary, if you will, to say, look, Dave, you need to do better here with your numbers and manage these things.
MP: 14:04 And take care of that. So it wasn't an issue that was a big, I remember growing up and seeing that. Uh, and so it's why I love helping our audience, our community is because your helping people like my dad, these are people that will do whatever it takes that want to win, but something that they might be missing something. And Cindy, you're one of those people for me, your story of, of going to shine shoes absolutely love it. Every time I hear it, it makes me want to just, you know, work harder and you know, find a way to help others, uh, you know, do the things that I do really well and, and go and do it right. It's that, that, that drive and that, that grit, if you will, but I don't want to step over to, is that your boss, the woman who own the small business? I want to honor her because she was a person who was like, look, I know this is just a stepping stone in your pathway to wherever you're going. And she encouraged you to grow your own small business. And, and that woman, tell me a little bit about her and her philosophy because I think that is, is so, so powerful of a message around small business.
CS: 15:07 Oh, she's amazing. I, she's, she has, uh, three locations. She, it just happened to her. She was at a, some conference or something in the states many, many years ago. And like her, she wishes she was a financial advisor for crying out loud and she met someone and they talked about shoe shining or whatever and it just really appealed to her. But hers is very, very classy. She's Royal York, uh, the, um, first Canadian place and TV center. And so she has a lot of people. She had another lady who also had, um, a massage business. So it was a part-time things and when she was getting it off the ground, and that's what she loved to do, was to help women. She still does it. She works a lot with actors and actresses because they have lots of free time and things like that. And she encourages everybody to run their own business.
CS: 15:54 And not, she's still doing it today. And her name is, it's penny loafers is the name of the business is Penny Simmons. And she's just been fantastic. She's, we're still friends. We go out a couple of times a year. In fact, I wrote a speech on a lessons learned from a shoeshine girl. And there's some real lessons to learn. Believe me, when you're sitting at the bottom of a sh, very thrilled. $3,000 pair of shoes and the guy with, you know, all these fancy suits or Monnies and all this kind of thing. And the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to, it was a moment, you know, even those moments, Michael, where, and it was that moment where up until that point it wasn't, it was sort of going to be fun. It was going to be all these things. So the actual day that I first stood there and I had this chai, my first pair of shoes, and part of me just wanted to run away.
CS: 16:42 It was like, I don't want to shine anybody's freaking shoes, excuse my French. And, and, and then I thought, okay, Cindy, you've got two choices here. You can run away and say you're not going to do this or you can be the best GD shoeshine girl that used to be. And that's what I decided in that moment. And I, Shawn and I talked and in fact a lot of the guys are, you know, big, successful businessman and they were on my side. They give me great tips cause I told them I was there to support my business. I was not ashamed. I had one lady once, I was doing a talk and, and I shared this story and she said to me, well, do you think you should tell people you were a shoe shine girl as well? It's not like I was a hooker, you know, it was an honest in honest, it was a very empowering time for me.
CS: 17:28 And you know, I think anybody I've ever worked with, you know, when they get stopped and they get afraid because there's no growth in your comfort zone and it's when you go through, and I just had a girl the other day who was resisting, resisting, resisting, and I just said, you know what, just do it. And then she could call me back and she goes, oh my God, that was so easy. So what stopped her was her mind was all the things that she thought would go wrong and she didn't, she picked up the call, she made the call and it was successful and she was like, for the next time she has those feelings, she's going to remember. Oh, I remember. So she's creating that experience for her, which I believe now is the foundation of resilience.
MP: 18:14 Beautiful. I just love how your story weaves through with your own resilience penny, who is a mentor and really in my mind, a small business hero. She's a, she's a person who's making the world a better place through small business. I just absolutely love that. And now here you are, she's coached. And mentored you and provided a stepping stone for you. And now you're helping women that are getting started in business and growing their business that, you know, need to get over whatever they need to get over to face their fears and do what they're doing and you're helping make the world a better place by helping small business. So it's, for me, it's just, I love the story. I love hearing it. Um, so let's, let's talk a little bit about that. What are the ingredients to getting over our fears when it comes to conducting a cold, like a stock, call it a cold call, let's call it a, a sales call, a followup call, a sales conversation, whatever we want to call that. But what are the ingredients to, of overcoming that fear?
CS: 19:16 Well, I think the most important thing, Michael, when I work with people is I have them practice. I think a lot of people just pick up the phone cold. They haven't actually practiced, they haven't set the objective for the call. They don't know what the outcome they want to be. The things I recommend are simple things like wearing your headset, walking around. In fact, I do most of my, most of my coaching calls standing, I just find to have a different energy when I do that. The practice, like practice first, I always have people randomly call me and then I'll give them a bit of a hard time so they can practice how they're going to, you know, continue the conversation and then call themselves, get on their cell phone and call, call them from their landline call. He listened to what there's, oh that sounds good.
CS: 19:58 Oh No, maybe I'll just want to change that. Record your voice and then I'll listen to it. But I think that's the most important thing is a lot of people just pick up the phone and the fear takes them over. Where is the, as soon as they practice, cause you and I both know your unconscious mind doesn't know the juror theme real or imagined. So if you're imagining you're doing it, if you're practicing that, you're doing it, you're actually creating that muscle so that it will be familiar. And after a while it becomes habit. I don't even think about it anymore, but in the beginning I used to have a little sheets where it was like, if they said this, I would say that if they said this, I would say that, and I said, practice it over and over again. So become automatic and through time, did I get it right?
CS: 20:41 No. Lots of times I screwed up and I would get off the phone and then we think, okay, next time I'm going do this, or next time I'm going to do that. But it's never about getting it perfect. There's no, in my opinion, there's no one line. It's knowing who you're calling, why you're calling them, and then practice. Spend a few minutes and say, okay, Mr John, and just practice before you do take two, two minutes, three minutes. And I don't think enough people do that. I think they, their fear would overcome. We'll just take them over and have them not say anything. And so to me, the most important thing is know your objective of why you're calling. Always ask permission. Always. Always, always ask permission to continue. And even in the sales call, people will give me kicked back and they'll say, no. If you ask, they're going to say no, and he said, that's not true.
CS: 21:27 A lot of the times, in fact, I read a book and it actually works and this is a great tip for anybody. At first I was so counter-intuitive, I resisted it, but I've been doing it. So normally what we say is, is this a good time to call? And people will say no, but it honestly, in this book it's called question-based selling. As I said, I'm always reading and it was once something my sister read and it was counterintuitive to say, is this a bad time for me to call? This is a bad time for you in our, in all of our training. That would be no, no, don't say that. I have to tell you as since I started using that, not one person has said no. Every person has said, you can almost hear their brain go, oh no, it's okay because they, what they called it emotional rescue. I've started using it and it's amazing. It's totally amazing. Not One person has said no. Whereas when I said it's going to catch you at a good time, they're all saying no,
CS: 22:21 I've never been. It's never a good time. That's actually, that's actually something I picked up from a book called predictable revenue. Forget the fellow's name, but he was the, he was the fellow that helped grow a salesforce.com from a little tiny basement apartment to a $1 billion company in 10 years and that was a key, one of the key moves was that specific question when opening a call is, is this a bad time? And in the book he talks about, you know, if you say, is this a good time, there is never a good time. And I think it's, it's such a pleasant thing to teach. It's like, yeah, it's like, you know what it, I think it has a lot of caring and it is like, is this a bad time? Like Yup. Because
CS: 23:08 Yeah, you're giving them permission to say no, you're actually inviting them to say no. Whereas the other ones, the expectation is that people on a positive spin, and now you even use it in my, in my followup email, so someone who might've connected with on LinkedIn couple of months ago, I'll send them a note and say, is this a bad no, I'll say w setting up a time to call it. This is a bad time. Let me know. I can't even tell you the number of people that email that would never email me back or haven't emailed me back and over here, email me back and they go, I, you know, I'm traveling this week, but how about mid May?
CS: 23:40 Yeah. My, I honestly, this has become, I even say it with my friends. Am I catching you at a bad time? Yup. Because that's how I say it. Am I catching you at a bad time? I mean it, it, it is
CS: 23:51 automatic.
MP: 23:52 It's now automatic and I just love the question because they're like, no, this is good time. Or, or if it isn't, they're like, you know what, I'm going into a meeting. It's like cool, call me back. And so thanks for bringing that up and giving that beautiful gift to our listener. I think it, it adds this please everyone add this to your daily routine, your calling, use it. It will only provide more, uh, more fluid and fabulous experience throughout your day and make you a lot more money I think is probably the key. Uh, so that's fantastic, Cindy. We kind of got a little off on a side. I was like, I'm enjoying this conversation. So, um, so getting back to, uh, overcoming the fears. You, you mentioned something around in the early on is this whole desire, right? You really want it to be successful in your business and you did whatever you had. How do you choose, how do you alter the context for people around even just taking the action of making the call?
CS: 24:59 Just to do it. You know, people will say to me when we're coaching, they'll say, hey, I don't know how to do it. I said, well, the only way to do it is to do it because that's the only way you've learned anything. And then if you get, it goes back to your value. I think Michael, because if people get their value, and don't take this as a conceited thing, but I have an attitude that they're lucky day that I'm calling them because I know that what I do for them can save them so much time and time is money and time is also stress and all those things. So I think the biggest thing is to have a plan. First of all, start small. Say, okay, today I'm going to make two calls or take one call and just do one because you and then evaluate it.
CS: 25:44 But you have to practice, you have to understand your value. So you know when most people go through their whole process of studying up their business, they do their unique selling proposition. They do all those kinds of things, you know, keeping that top of mind because a lot of people when they're in the experience think they're bothering people and if they come from a place of I'm bothering them, then that's what they're going to be doing. Whereas if they really get their value, I had a lady once say to me at a talk, she put her hand up and I was talking about call every three weeks and blah, blah, blah, and she said, aren't you bothering people when you're calling them that often? I said, well, if you think you're bothering them, then you are. You shouldn't be calling. You should know what you're, what value you bring. Get really clear on what the deliverable, what the outcomes. That's what people are buying. They're not buying a widget or a program or whatever. They're buying outcome.
MP: 26:38 Yeah, no our, for our listener, no, nobody wants to buy bookkeeping. In fact, they'd love. Just imagine that it never even, it's not even a thing. It's not there. It's like the, the tax department doesn't exist. Right. So it is a shift because our listener is a technician. They, it's what they do. They're passionate about it. They love it. They spend their whole life working on it and thinking about it and, and what they do is so important to them. You listen to right now, bookkeeping is so important to you, but it is not the case for your customer, your client, your ideal customer, the business owner. It's not for them. It's what they do that's so important. So what you do for them is this value that Cindy, I think you're talking about is be really clear on how awesome you are and how you're going to make their life so much better. Uh, and that if you, you know, just like me, every day I'm thinking how I, I make the lives of bookkeepers so much better. It's what I get out of every morning. I wake up and I step into that and that leads to me doing what I need to do. And it's, I love it. I love it. So making a call, calling a bookkeeper, man, it's like I'm calling to make their lives better. I mean, who wouldn't want to have a call like that?
CS: 27:53 Absolutely. And I think that's the key. And then not, you know, and examine your beliefs around whenever I do a program, we always examine the beliefs around, I feel in salespeople and a lot of it is in a lot of negative stuff from the past because sales nowadays is nothing to do with coercion or, or just for somebody into taking something that they don't want. It's a collaborative experience. It's a, it's a partnership. And if you look at it that way versus, cause those days are gone. People can go on the Internet and they do, I dunno somebody, I don't know, 85% or 90% I don't know the exact number, but you know, they do the research before you talk to them. So really what you're looking for when you're calling someone is how you can collaborate and partner with someone. So I think when I think of my accountant to, I think about peace of mind. I think about, I don't have to worry about this. I can focus on the things that I need to do in my business. Because when I was doing it myself, it didn't work so well. And you know, sometimes that's what you have to do in a business is you have to be able to offload the things or outsource the things that you don't do very well and bookkeeping or accounting, all of those kinds of things I believe are one of them. So all of your bookkeepers, I bringing huge value to other entrepreneurs.
MP: 29:25 So true. So true. Now you help people get through this and do these sorts of things. What you know, if someone wanted to learn more about what you've been speaking about Cindy and more about yourself, what would be best way? What's the first step to somebody waking up in a day and going, oh, I can't wait to make calls and call and help all these business owners out there. What you know, if they're not there that right now, what's the first step to helping them get there?
CS: 29:54 Well, first identify who you're putting your best customers are like, who's your Iowa, what we call your ideal customers, where would you be most likely to find them? LinkedIn and social media. Now I build it. I'm a firm believer in LinkedIn. You know, once you can start to identify if, what size of company, I'm sure they have them all over North America, the best companies to work for small, medium-sized companies. Like there's all kinds of lists and different places that you could go and you just need to start out with a few. What I think that's what the big thing is, is a lot of people, they think they got to do hundreds of thousands in CRM, then all the, you don't have to do that in the beginning. I think baby steps and you grow that muscle and you get more confidence. And another one is look at your existing clients is you know, who do you know who you working with now?
CS: 30:44 Are they able to give you a referral? A lot of people are a little hesitant to give referrals or even ask for referrals. I think it's a natural form of getting new business, you know? Do you know, is there anybody else you know that might be of interest that might be interested in or that I should talk to? Or would you, you know, you could even, you know, leave information with your customers. But I think the most important thing is to have a plan. So if you got to say, okay, I'm going to call five people a day to start with, have your list for one week, spend the time, make your list. These are the companies that I'm going to call. This is the position I normally call into and start to do your research. You'll reach out to them on LinkedIn, start following them.
CS: 31:27 I'm putting, you know, liking their articles, things like that. Just simple things. But it's small because if you get too big, then you're going to get overwhelmed. So I think baby steps in the beginning and you don't believe it or not, once you start, you're going to be going, you'll all of a sudden you'll pick up momentum. It'll, you'll realize that, wow, people really need my services. People really want my services. It's crazy. And maybe they don't want them today. I have a saying that no only means no today. Right? And timing is everything. So again, if you talk to somebody and they say no, they're happy with who they're working with, that's great. That means they, that is a potential client. Then you find out a good time to follow up or, or you just create your own time to follow up. Could be a year from now, then you check back in with them.
CS: 32:10 Okay. I mean tell the number of customers I've gotten because I talked to them at one point and they were happy but I followed up six, eight months later and they weren't. So the timing was really good. So the most important thing is to set up a system, have a system where you're constantly going to be adding new people in every week. You got to add in more, keep your fun the fall. Because what will happen is you'll get a few new customers, you'll get busy and then you'd be focused on your customers. And then when their running status quo and everything's running smooth, you've got to start from scratch again. So that's what really stops people is that they give a lot of momentum. They start creating some, they get new business, then all of a sudden the business becomes smoother or they got everybody on their own system or whatever, and then they've got capacities, they still have capacity or you have a few people leave or whatever, and then they got to start all over again. But if you're consistently adding new people, whether it's two, three, five, 10, whatever it is for your business every week to the funnel, then the likelihood of you having to start from sort of ground zero again is now. Does that answer your question?
MP: 33:16 It does. It does. And you know, there's something that I, I think the, the, the mindset right now of many of our listeners will be, I, you know, uh, many of them have already too many customers, right? And so the, the objection will be, ah, well, you know, I've got too many customers right now. So if I start calling people, then you know, I'm going to be overwhelmed. And I always like to bring up that when you have demand for your product, the higher the demand and if the supply remains the same. If you're just want to always remain a solo bookkeeper and not have staff, I mean obviously if you want to scale your business and have staff, well then demand means we can add supply and with that the business will grow more revenue, more profit, all that good stuff. But if you want to keep just for yourself, demand increases, supply stays the same. There is upward price pressure, so you're pro, you can charge more for what you do, the value you deliver, you can shoot, you can charge more for the value to that as well. You get to choose or be more choosy with who you work with and so
MP: 34:20 Yeah,
MP: 34:21 don't think about it as being a bad thing when new people are coming in, it's like, Hey, you know what? I kinda like you better than the one I've got over here. It's like, yeah, if your customers have, you're working with people that are not making you happy, not delivering into what you're doing are not part of your program, then this is the way to almost sure firely ensure that your business is growing but growing with great customers, customers that value you, that do what you tell them to do and so systems. I truly believe and I'm sure the listeners going, yeah, Michael, I know system driven business. That's the way whether you want to be a big business or just remain a solo practitioner. Systems driven is the Shangrila lights where it will what will get you to where you have a business that's both profitable fun and enables you to do the things that you love in your life.
MP: 35:11 So totally love that you, you brought that up Cindy and provided a pathway to actually creating and maybe making it happen. Don't do this one-off. Make this apart of your daily ongoing. Why? Maybe it's one call a day. You know, that's, if that's one call a day, I, I would, I would believe Cindy, I think there's many listeners right now that are making any calls. So one call a day was like, that's five calls a week. That's, that's, that's is that 20 a month that would now happen. I mean this is incredible growth just from one call a day.
CS: 35:46 Yup. And that's what I said and everybody can do one call a day.
MP: 35:50 You Bet. You Bet. Cindy, this has been so great and I know you have limited time because you're busy helping the people that you help. And I want to thank you so much for your generosity and giving your time for our listener today. You know, where can people find out more about you? And if so maybe even work with you. What's the best way for them to do that?
CS: 36:16 They could just visit my website. That's probably the best way is Cindystradling.com it's super simple. It's a, it's got all my contact information there and talks about my programs, my coaching, everything.
MP: 36:28 Beautiful. Well listen, we will put the link in, and again, thank you so much for being on the show.
CS: 36:34 Oh my God, pleasure, and thank you for having me, Michael. CS: 36:36 That's been my all, all my pleasure.
MP: 36:40 That's great.
MP: 36:41 That wraps another episode of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and what a fantastic episode it was to learn more about today's guest and to get access to all sorts of valuable free business-building resources. You can go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com until next time,
MP: 36:56 goodbye.
