Jacqueline Snyder: Stop Chasing Sales! How to Build a More Profitable Product Business | Entrepreneurship | E424

Starting a business has never been easier, so why do so many entrepreneurs struggle to turn a profit? Jacqueline Snyder, founder of the multimillion-dollar business The Product Boss, believes that profitable growth isn't just about selling more products or working longer hours, but making smarter business decisions. After years of working 70-hour weeks, she restructured her business and achieved 30% more profit with 30% less personal involvement in just 60 days. In this episode, Jacqueline shares how entrepreneurs can identify profitable bestsellers, fix hidden profit leaks, and make more sales without working themselves into the ground. In this episode, Hala and Jacqueline will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:36) Why Modern Businesses Struggle With Profit (04:33) Jacqueline's Early Entrepreneurship Journey (09:24) How to Identify and Grow Bestsellers (15:31) How to Price Products for Higher Profit Margins (24:14) Hidden Profit Leaks That Drain Revenue (26:13) How to Grow Sales Without Relying on Paid Ads (29:09) Social Media Strategies for Product Businesses (39:00) Building Trust and Community Beyond Online Courses (47:50) Fix My Product Business With Jacqueline (1:07:52) The Three Stages of Entrepreneurial Leadership (1:11:23) Hitting 30% More Profit With Less Work Jacqueline Snyder is an entrepreneur, product business expert, and the founder and CEO of The Product Boss, where she helps creative entrepreneurs build and scale profitable businesses. With decades of experience in fashion, product design, and business strategy, she has advised more than 100,000 businesses on profitability, distribution, and operations. She previously founded Designer Consulting Co-Op and created Cuffs Couture, an accessories brand worn by celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Carrie Underwood. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. HeyGen - Create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at HeyGen.com/profiting. Life at the Speed of Play - Learn how to test ideas quickly and identify the ones worth pursuing with Mark Pincus’s book. Get two books for the price of one at getmarksbook.com/yap. Whatnot - Grow your business through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W H A T N O T, in the App Store and start selling today. MOD - Connect with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness. Visit MOD.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with code PROFITING. See the website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen - Support your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and superfoods. Get a free Immune Support Bundle with your first subscription order at DrinkAG1.com/PROFITING. Resources Mentioned: Jacqueline’s Website: theproductboss.com Jacqueline’s Instagram: instagram.com/theproductboss Jacqueline’s YouTube: youtube.com/channel Jacqueline’s Workshops: theproductbossworkshops.com Jacqueline’s Podcast, The Product Boss Podcast: bit.ly/TPB-apple Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new LinkedIn Creator Club - Skool.com/linkedin-creator-club Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Founder, Networking

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Indeed, and Northwest Registered Agent. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without being constantly behind the camera. Get your first three videos for free at heygen.com/profting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/profting. Indeed helps you attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/podcast. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/YeahFree.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  If you build a brand and people are attached to the brand, that's what they're going to pay for. And so I really talk to my clients about not just being a commodity, but being a brand that has some sort of connection to the customer.

• 1:03Hala Taha?

  My guest today, Jaclyn Snyder, has been behind the scenes of more than 100,000 product businesses. Now she's the founder and CEO of The Product Boss, a multimillion dollar company helping creative entrepreneurs build profitable product businesses.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  My life coach says math, not drama. So let's take the drama out of it and the emotion out of it and look at your numbers and ask yourself your costs versus what you're selling for. Where are the money leaks? And that would be the first thing. Don't avoid it.

• 1:28Hala Taha?

  If somebody has like a lot of different products that they sell, what is like the telltale sign that they have a bestseller? Because you say every business should really have a bestseller.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  People think that they need more to sell more, but if people can't refer you to something or refer somebody to you for something, it starts to.

• 1:46Hala Taha?

  You had mentioned your bestseller, you always recommend it increased the price by like 15%. Why do you think that that's a good thing to do?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Again, you look at what the market will bear, love it and they want it, they're going to buy it.

• 1:58Hala Taha?

  And how do you raise your prices without pissing off your customers?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  You don't tell them.

• 2:02Hala Taha?

  You just do it.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  You have to do it because they're not paying attention. Now listen.

• 2:07Hala Taha?

  Jaclyn, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

• 2:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah, thank you so much for flying out here. We were talking offline and I was saying like, I've seen your podcast fall over. Like we're in the same space and I feel like your information and your expertise is going to be so valuable for our audience. So thank you for flying out here.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:26Hala Taha?

  So my first question to you is that it seems easier than ever to launch a business with AI, with all the stuff that we have on the internet, with Shopify. It's just so easy to actually get a business off the ground. But it's actually harder to be a profitable business in 2026 than it was five or 10 years ago. Talk to us about why.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think especially in like the product space, I keep seeing all the AI things online where it's like, you could do this and start, you know, your Shopify store and all these quick ways that people want to say it. But the thing about product is that it takes money to start it. It takes money to build it, you know, like starting a podcast, starting an online education company or something like that. It doesn't take as much resources. I think profitability has really dropped because one, minimum wage has gone up. Import fees, there's been all of the duty taxes and things like that. It's much more competitive, but I just think things are costing more. And there's this mindset that comes out where people want things cheaper, but the cost of goods is everything. And I live in LA and so I always joke about how my organic free range eggs are $14. And then people online are like, then get chickens.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  And I was like, great, I live in LA, I can't get chickens. But everything costs more now. And what happens, I think sometimes is that the customer doesn't necessarily come up with the cost of goods coming up. And so there's, there's more to it than just, you know, saying like, I get to be profitable.

• 3:49Hala Taha?

  I totally agree. And the other thing is that even though you can use AI, for example, to launch your business, it's actually very expensive to use AI, right? It costs money. Everything costs money, even though it seems like so easy to do. So you've got all these different systems, right? You are the owner and the inventor of Product Boss and you basically teach people how to have successful businesses. And you've got five different systems that you talk about. Can you walk us through at a high level, these systems and which ones tend to be the weakest usually for entrepreneurs?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So entrepreneurs are squarely and they love all, they have so many ideas and they love every idea that they have. And so I would say like, one of the very first things that I do with clients is literally talk about focusing and leaning into their bestseller. And so bestseller is the number one system that we've basically, I think one of the biggest differentiators for us at The Product Boss, people think that they need more to sell more. And a lot of times the first analysis I have with people when I talk about their product, where they're at is like, what's your bestseller? Cause you get to double down on what the bestseller is. What people want is easier to sell than the thing that people don't want. So I'd say that was probably one of the biggest ones. The other thing that people miss is like, we talked about profitability. There is cost of goods to product. I think that there's this misnomer. Everyone's like, well, I don't want to be in debt. I'm like, there's not debt. It's you're leveraging cash, especially with product.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Because sometimes like I come out of the fashion industry, it might take us an entire year to design, develop, produce, get it shipped in, then get paid by the stores. And when I've worked at big stores or for big stores, they pay 90 days later. So cash flow is a huge issue. And so profitability is the place that keeps the company going.

• 5:24Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And we're going to get into all the different profit leaks you talk about and we'll really dig into the bestseller stuff. But first I want to hear about your story because it actually revolves around kind of having a bestseller. You invented something called a couture cuff. Tell us about that and how you first launched and got your first customers.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's cuffs couture and it was from my partying days back in Hollywood. Like I was in my twenties and didn't want to carry a purse. I had a best friend who like had the Mary Poppins purse that had all the stuff in it. And for me, I was like, I literally just need my lip gloss, my credit card, my keys, and I'm good. And so I invented this wearable wrist wallet, but it was more like an accessory where it looked like a bracelet or something cool that a cool girl would want to wear when she went out partying. And what I did is what I teach so many clients is I launched a website. I invested in a website, an e-commerce platform. This is pre-social media really being what it is now. We're so lucky now with social.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Launched a website to crickets, like nobody bought, nobody knew I existed. I always joke and I'm like, nobody's typing in wearable wrist wallets to wear out with your friends. So I had to really pivot and I wasn't running ads. I didn't have the cash for that at that point. I pivoted and I got wholesale. So I got onto other people's shelves in front of other people's audiences and then also in-person markets. Where, you know, I'm in LA, so I could do where the cool girls go and shop, get right in front of them and get feedback and get them to sell. And so I really did that. And then we were on shelves in LA and Carrie Underwood discovered my products. Kim Kardashian wore my stuff. So I have like huge names that were discovering it because it was on shelves in front of other people's audiences versus me having to pay to get their attention.

• 7:03Hala Taha?

  So she just said something called other people's audiences. We've all heard of OPM, other people's money. Talk to us about what OPA is.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I call it my OPA method. I'm like, OPA. One of the hardest things to do, especially for e-comm brands, is to run ads to your website to strangers and have them convert on your website. And I'll say this is particularly for a lot of people who are bootstrapped that are figuring it out on their own. And I did it. It went to crickets. Again, no one's Googling and there's no way to do that. I think we're in an AI moment right now where there is, we're teaching our clients how to be searchable and found on AI. But let's go back to Google. And so really the idea here is how do people discover you? And I'm like, the places I've always taught is multiple sales channels, multiple distribution points. In stores, you discover stuff in stores that, you know, you don't have to know the brand. A lot of times you're not like, let me look them up on social and see if they're on social too.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  If you like it and you're there, you buy it. In-person markets, Amazon, last I checked, it was like one in four households had Amazon Prime. So they trust the platform, their, their credit card's already in it. And so they discover your product there, they do that, or marketplaces like Etsy. So I usually teach my clients, how do you go where your customer is? Where you don't have to pay for the traffic immediately. The traffic is there, you get to present in front of it and then we get to work on driving traffic to your website.

• 8:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And for so long, the focus was online, but now in-person events are becoming popular again, especially with younger audiences, right?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Oh, it's insane. So what's kind of crazy is in 2026, it's still five out of six dollars are spent in person.

• 8:38Hala Taha?

  Oh, whoa.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know how much of that is grocery, but the consensus is five out of $6 are still in person. And Gen Z is bringing back the mall, which makes my like eighties and nineties self so excited. My kids like to go to the mall again. And so if you actually look at malls, you can see that a lot of the stores happening in the malls are for younger kids. Like they're kind of like those teenage stores. And then, you know, the Crate Cultivate had like this incredible women's festival and there, I had multiple clients that had booths there. I have like goosebumps telling you that because I'm just so proud of my clients. And so people are wanting, in the age of AI, at one point we're analog and we're like, let's go digital. Now in the age of AI and everything being digital, and I think coming, you know, the last six years of being in our houses or working from home, people really want to experience people again.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  I just believe that people are always going to be where people are. And think, I just want everyone to think about like what they've discovered in real life. I actually want to say the Home Goods stores and like TJ Maxx stores. So Home Goods, if you think about Home Goods, you go in there and there's only ever like two to four things of like a vase. Not, you know, there's like, you're in discovery. People love to discover. They feel like they're at a market and they're discovering something new and they know if I don't buy that one vase, I won't be able to get it later.

• 9:51Hala Taha?

  Like, there's not so many of those vases at Home Goods.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  And so they have to buy it in the moment.

• 9:55Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  So, you know, they feel like excited, what am I going to discover? They go, they explore, sort of like a marketplace. Home Goods is just, I think they just opened up 800 new doors.

• 10:04Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Which shows the idea of in-person and discovery and what people are craving.

• 10:09Hala Taha?

  I love that. That's so insightful. Like, I didn't even realize that that was going on.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  It's cool, right?

• 10:14Hala Taha?

  So, let's talk about your bestseller strategy. If somebody has like a lot of different products that they sell, what is like the telltale sign that they have a bestseller? Or like, what should they be thinking about? Because you say every business should really have a bestseller.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I call it your hero product or your core collection. So, if we think back to shoe companies, for example, like Tom Shoes, when Tom Shoes came out, or Javiana's, right? It was one shoe and multiple variations. They didn't think that they were going to have high heels and sneakers. And it was like one shoe variations. Or there's a core collection. So, if you think about like a cosmetic brand or skincare, they're creating a regimen. So, it's like a few different things that they're going to put on. I come out of fashion, so we had collections. When I used to design swimwear, I knew we were an Italian lingerie company and people loved the skimpy stuff. So, if I was designing the collection for swimwear, I had lots of tie-side bikinis, tie tops, like tiny little

• 11:09Speaker 01

  bathing suits. And then maybe I'd have one, um, one piece. Because you've got to look at what the customer wants. So, when we think about bestsellers, a lot of times I tell people the Pareto Principle is 80/20 rule. And when they really look at their numbers, they realize that 80% of their revenue was driven by 20% of their products. What happens, I think, is people think that they need more to sell more. If I had more things to sell, people, more people would buy from me. But if people can't refer you to something, or refer somebody to you for something, it starts to, it starts to get messy. So, candle companies can have lots of variations of scents. Jewelry, you might be like, okay, I do really well with my necklaces and my thin chain necklaces. So, maybe you're not going to make chunky

• 11:51Speaker 01

  necklaces. You're not going to put all your money into bracelets or earrings if they're not there. So, I think it's really looking at what the customer wants and what you're best at, and to put more of your focus there, because the revenue is going to be driven from it.

• 12:06Hala Taha?

  Yap, fam. These days, it feels like I'm starting a new LLC every month. In fact, I recently bought a commercial property that has tenants, and I wanted to keep that venture separate from Yap Media and my personal assets, which means another LLC. So, of course, I turned to Northwest Registered Agent. That is my go-to for business formation and registered agent services. I can get an LLC application started online in less than 10 minutes, and their filings have been super quick. Northwest also helps you build your complete business identity. They give you a business address, operating agreement, website, professional email, phone number, and built-in privacy. And when I miss a step, a real person from Northwest actually texted me to help. Starting another business should feel exciting and not like another full-time job. And Northwest has a lot of free resources

• 12:51Hala Taha?

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• 13:12Hala Taha?

  Hello, young and profiteers. Black Friday is almost here and customers are ready to buy. The only thing standing between them and your business are all those steps you keep overthinking before your launch. And I get it. When I launched Yap Academy, I was thinking about everything. How should the website look? How are people going to pay? How is it supposed to build all that? I'm not a web developer. I don't know how to build websites. So, I built my storefront on Shopify. Their ready-made themes helped me get up in just a few days without needing to be an e-commerce expert or a web developer. And the Shopify checkout made it really easy for people to pay. And with the holidays coming up, Shopify even has an AI assistant called Sidekick that can help you plan promotions and get ready for the rush. So, if that business idea is still sitting in your notes app,

• 13:54Hala Taha?

  maybe it's time to give it a storefront. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/proffiting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/proffiting. Go to Shopify.com/proffiting today and hear your first...

• 14:12Hala Taha?

  Yap, fam. I have an expensive confession. I need an outfit for practically every interview. And I love designer clothes, so you can imagine what that does to my budget. And after talking to Haley Sachs, who's a financial expert, I was unfortunately reminded that I can't just assume that every outfit is a business expense. You guys know that I love hosting live streams and webinars, and I love selling. So, I'm planning on opening up a pre-owned designer shop on Whatnot. Whatnot is a live shopping app where you can show off products, interact with buyers in real time, and turn shopping into a fun, interactive experience. And you absolutely do not need designer clothes to get started. People sell everything from sneakers and beauty products to sports cards, Pokemon cards, and collectibles. All you need are your products and your phone. Whatnot handles payments and provides shipping

• 14:57Hala Taha?

  labels. So, I recommend you take a shopping trip through a few live shows, see how it works, and maybe you'll be inspired to start selling too. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. Yeah. And you always say to not reinvent the wheel. Like, just iterate on your current product for like a slightly different audience, or tell us more about that.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I say you can't reinvent the wheel, but you can redesign it.

• 15:22Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I always go back to Juicy. So, I'm just going to like fully date myself on this podcast. And so, Juicy Couture, if you think about them, I actually bought way back in like 97 denim from Juicy. And this is prior to them ever coming out with the tracksuits. And once they hit on the tracksuit, they made every single variation of it. Like, every color, they made shorts. They had ones with puff sleeves. They had all these different variations. And I bring that up a lot because like, you think those women wanted to keep making every, like, they were probably, please don't show me another piece of velour fabric to look at a color. But the money, the money was there.

• 15:55Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  And so, what I do with my clients is really just thinking through, like, well, where is the money? And you want to run it long enough that it still generates, but not too long that it tanks the company. And Lululemon's doing that right now. Lululemon, like, went off the cliff because they didn't, they didn't change fast enough.

• 16:13Hala Taha?

  So, you're saying Lululemon took it too far?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Lululemon did not update their styles for too long. So, if you think about Aloe and Lululemon, like, Aloe stayed really trendy and sexy. Lululemon was like, nope, we're going to stay with the same styles, the same basics. But the customer started to shift. And so, they've just, I think they've just gone down about 20% in their, you know, revenue because they just did not update the bestseller, or update the bestseller to the time. So, if it was still leggings, let's keep leggings going. But they missed, actually, women aren't wearing leggings as much. They're wearing more of like the tracksuits and sweatpants.

• 16:45Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And so, they didn't shift fast enough into that.

• 16:48Hala Taha?

  So, aside from sales, like, obviously with your bestseller, you can see, like, this one generates the most revenue. But what other KPIs should we be looking at for our bestsellers?

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think one of the things to talk about is the more you make of something, the cheaper it is per unit. So, when, when you're making something and you're able to get multiples of the jars, the raw goods, and you're getting, the more you get of that, the lower you can bring the cost down to make the product, and labor changes and everything. So, really with your bestseller, I think it's also profitable. I talk about a client, oftentimes, that when I did look at her bestseller, it ended up being a product that front end was bestseller, back end was so problematic. It had breakage, customers were returning it a ton. It was taking up so many resources from a financial standpoint and team standpoint. So, we actually had to do, you know, these authors say, kill your darlings. And we had

• 17:40Speaker 01

  to kill the darling and say, okay, well, what's your second bestseller? Which was another product that was actually a much better product. She shifted to that, created all these variations of it. She did so well, she stopped selling wholesale because she was selling out every week and was able to sell direct to consumer. So, I think we have to look at the profitability behind the product, the complexity of it. And then, where there is always the pain, it's, here's the deal. Entrepreneurs get bored and they move on before the customer's ready to move on.

• 18:08Hala Taha?

  So true.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  So, you've got to keep, it's like, like I said about the Juicy Couture tracksuits, it's like, it might make you crazy, but I'm like, do you, would you rather make money or be creative? I'm like, let's make money.

• 18:18Hala Taha?

  But to your point, like, you can't do the same thing forever. At some point, it gets stale. So, like, what are the signs to know, all right, it's time to pivot? Or how do you pay attention to better?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  One of the things, as a fashion designer, my whole entire job was to pay attention to culture and to travel and see what's going on. It's kind of a superpower that I have that I can be out and just see, oh, I see this thing coming. And being on the backend of, you know, I've been on the backend of like 100,000-plus businesses. So, I think what you have to look at is, are the numbers dropping and why? Like, what's happening and why? Sometimes there's something broken in the business, but if the trends are moving on, then you might want to shift it. So, I'll go back to candles. Let's say candles, people were doing it, and they were doing it with synthetic scents and synthetic wax. And then there was a major shift towards health and a conversation about what you're burning in your house.

• 19:08Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  If your clients care about it, you either need to adjust to what your clients care about, or you keep being, you know, there's other brands that still exist because people don't care. They just want the cheaper product. So, then you have to just pay attention to culturally and then match it back to your customer and say, is it time? Is my customer asking for something else? Or is something broken on the backend?

• 19:28Hala Taha?

  And let's talk about pricing, because you just talked about the cheapest price.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:32Hala Taha?

  With platforms out there like Temu and things like that, what's the problem with wanting to be the cheapest out there?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's really hard to race to the bottom. And whenever, I always tell my clients, I'm like, you're not competing with Target. Like, Target is literally not your competition or Walmart. We've got to compete with small brands and sell to people who have money. As a small business, the privilege to be able to sell to people with money is great. And I think a lot of my clients might start locally and their environment does not match necessarily the product. So, it's kind of thinking bigger and thinking on a national scale or an international scale. The problem with racing to the bottom is there's no margins. If you're coming out with a product that is specifically margin-oriented, cheap, you want to sell lots and lots of units, and you're able to scale, great. Most people aren't necessarily there yet. And I, and so, Temu has knocked off several of my clients.

• 20:24Hala Taha?

  Really?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  So, I'm very anti Temu. They'll actually like use their physical pictures and put it on there. I even had a client knock herself off so she could compete with Temu.

• 20:32Hala Taha?

  Oh, my God.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's some changes right now happening with imports, and that's going to help maybe even the playing field with them. But the thing is, is if you build a brand, going back to Aloe and Lululemon, if you, we can go on Temu and get knockoffs of all of that right now. But if you build a brand and people are attached to the brand, that's what they're going to pay for. And so, I really talk to my clients about not just being a commodity, but being a brand that has some sort of connection to the customer. And... Yeah, we'll lose a percentage of clients to cheaper stuff. But if you want your business to thrive, we've got to sell to the right customer and match them. Actually, I tell a lot of people to raise their prices. Because a lot of times when you raise your price, you actually start to attract a better customer. They might not even be buying because they might think it's cheap. What's wrong with it?

• 21:18Hala Taha?

  I totally agree. Can you give us an example of a type of product that makes sense to try to be the cheapest versus a product that doesn't make sense?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I work with a coloring book company. She's actually based out here in Austin. She has coloring books for adults. And it makes sense to be cheaper. What's funny is she started at $5, she's gone up to $8. She's selling at Whole Foods, Target, like all these huge places. But as a coloring book, we've got to think, well, what's the value behind it? And will customers reach that? Plus, she can sell tons of those units. So I would say products like that on the cheaper side.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  When I'll go to like pricing higher, I joke about Oil of Olay, like the product. So if you go to CVS or you go to a grocery store and you're trying to buy skincare, but then La Mer is $200 or $300 for two ounces. I ask clients, like if you looked at them, which face cream do you think would be the thing that would do good to your face? And they always bet the more expensive one.

• 22:13Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And so we've got to think again to the the customer, what they want, what the end result is. Because even if you're, you know, I've got my pricing margins and markups. But sometimes we could mark up more and more and more because the customer will pay it. It's better for you to have a bigger margin. And it actually equates value for them.

• 22:35Hala Taha?

  Now, how about something like a candle? Like you can have a candle that's 30 bucks and you can have a candle that's 300 bucks. If it's the same type of candle, what's the difference there in terms of being able to charge higher?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the brand. And I think that's where people get lost. And I've seen this happen for people on Amazon and Etsy where they're making a product. And when customers come find it, they're looking product to product. Where's the cheapest mama necklace I can get on Etsy? Or the best reviews, but they may be looking price to price. Or on Amazon, towel to towel. With thinking about the candle business, I mean, I actually did just burn a $300 candle that I didn't realize. So my sister-in-law gifted me this candle.

• 23:14Hala Taha?

  I hope it was good.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  It was so good. And I found out, so she gifted it to me. She's, she is very wealthy. Like she wears Chanel, like that's her clothing, everything, not just a bag, but like what she wears. So her price point at that $300 candle was a giftable product, the same way that a $30 candle would be giftable by someone else to someone. So I think we were attracting the right customers. This is what I was saying about the markup. They could literally be the same price for the jar and the wax and the wick and the fragrance. All of that can be the same, but it's the brand that you've established. I joke about Chanel bags, actually. Like you can knock off a Chanel bag, but they're buying the brand name to it and what's associated with it. And so I think that's, that's the difference between it is the brand is the thing that's going to elevate it.

• 23:58Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Or just qualify it for some people.

• 24:01Hala Taha?

  And I also feel like having such a high price point makes it exclusive by default. So these people are like, well, only, only like, you know, the richest people can buy this $300 candle. Therefore, it is more valuable because so few people can actually buy this and gift this.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's a play even with like Hermès and Kelly bags, right? Like you have to spend a certain amount at Hermès to even be able to have them position and sell you one of these bags. And so that exclusivity attracts a very specific customer. And Espresso did this back in the day. We lived in New York City and there was an Espresso Cafe. And it was before everyone had them. And so we felt so bougie. They gave us this little leather key fob. We'd go in, we'd scan it. They'd be like, oh, nice to meet you, Mrs. Snyder. And like, this is, these are the coffees that you buy. And they had it all in the register and they'd pour me an espresso. And it was so up leveled. Obviously, the brand has grown and it's, and it's been more to the masses. But they were on Fifth Avenue with the people that lived in New York City.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  And they were creating a vibe so that then eventually it could, let's say, I wouldn't say dilute, but then be more mass market.

• 25:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it like started off really, really exclusive. And I remember like Espresso used to be like very expensive.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:18Hala Taha?

  Yap, bam, I've interviewed some of the world's leading health experts. And those conversations have really changed how I think about my health. I stay active and I eat well. But you know what I realized? There's still so much I don't know about what's actually going on inside my body. And I've been hearing so much about body scans lately, so I finally did it. I got my whole body MRI at Prenuvo. The scan is radiation free, which I love. There's no needles and it takes just about an hour. Prenuvo evaluates major organs and systems, including your brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis and more. And they give you a full, detailed picture of your health. I just got my results back and nothing serious, thankfully, just a little scoliosis. I'm looking forward to reviewing my results with my Prenuvo provider, where I can ask questions and better understand all my results and what's going on in my body.

• 26:03Hala Taha?

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• 26:42Hala Taha?

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• 27:25Hala Taha?

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• 28:08Hala Taha?

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• 28:52Hala Taha?

  Heygen.com/profitting. Okay, you actually have a really cool formula for pricing for like most products. You say, basically you double for wholesale and then you double that for retail. Help us understand that framework.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's a super simple, simple, like just, you know, if we were to work together, we'd really get into the nitty gritty. But it's cost of goods times two at least. And then that's your wholesale price. And then your wholesale price times two at least for your retail price. Retailers typically, at least in the fashion world, will actually mark up from wholesale to retail about 2.2 to 2.3%. But that's like the most basic because so many times I see people from cost of goods, they're not including the right labor. They're not including all the pieces that need to go into costing of the product. And then some people are like, well, I'll never sell wholesale. So they, they want to skip over that middle part. And it's just not going to work because in this moment, if you make that decision, fine. But I'd rather, I'd rather you guys make as much profit as possible and as much margin

• 29:49Speaker 01

  because that allows for the business to grow, that allows you to pay yourself, build a team. And so, yeah, it's a 2X times 2X. And then depending on the business, if it's, again, like skincare, or if it's jewelry, or if it's fashion, we could go up to like, you know, cost of goods times four, times four. It just really depends on the category you're in.

• 30:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah, this might be a really dumb question, but for people who are not in product, like what is exactly wholesale? Is that just like direct to consumer or is that like what?

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Great question.

• 30:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so wholesale is what we sell it to the stores for before they sell it to the customer.

• 30:19Hala Taha?

  Got it.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:20Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  So if I was making a product, like my cuffs, they were $5 to make. I sold them $11 wholesale. And so let's say Boutique A bought it for 11 bucks and then they sold it to the customer for $25. That means, because we're in partnership with our retailers, so it allows profit and margin for us from cost of goods to wholesale. And then wholesale to retail price is what the store will make. Obviously, if you sell direct to consumer. There's a way better margin. But then, you know, you're dealing with your own marketing and all the other bits that come with it.

• 30:51Hala Taha?

  And you don't want to be significantly cheaper, I guess, than what they sell in the stores. So then you'll end up making a lot more money online then because you'll be at that higher retail price without the middleman.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always tell people, don't ever undercut your retailers. They're your partners. And so when I sold to Macy's or bigger brands like that, there is MSRP, the manufactured suggested retail price. You'll see that on a barcode. That's because when you're selling to bigger stores, you can't undercut like the Macy's or Whole Foods, right? So when we start to expand into these bigger retailers, there's more rules at play. But listen, you guys, like if they're in a shop, we want them to buy from the shop. They're your partners. We don't want them to jump on your website and like look at your website and it's undercutting them or go to Amazon. In fact, a lot of my clients price higher on Amazon because the shipping and the two day is included. So yeah, so it's really the amount that you sell it for. But then if you're selling direct to consumer, the margin's there for you.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  And so that's why this mix of sales channels and distribution channels, that means we've got little pieces of the pie everywhere. And so if one faucet turns off, you've got another one you can turn on.

• 31:52Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And for my listeners out there who have agencies, I have a podcast network and an agency. And I also do a similar formula for whatever service that I offer, whether it's running people's LinkedIn or Instagram. We usually just double how much it costs to actually do that service in terms of pricing it. Because that way, like we can incorporate our tools, like executive leadership, whatever. And then we, we always end up at like a 30% profit margin because there are other things that cost money that you like, don't really realize when you're like pricing it out. So talk to us about some of these profit leaks in product businesses.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, one of the things that people don't think about is just marketing expenses. So if you're selling on a channel, like if you're selling on Amazon, there are massive amounts of fees for the seller that come out. If you're selling on Etsy, there's a percentage they take out. People sometimes like, well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to get on it because, you know, it's going to cost me money. But when I was running my company, I didn't have access to all these tools. I had to do it all myself. So I'm like, it's the cost of doing business.

• 32:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And so a big profit leak tends to be that. I would say other ones is they're not doing the right margin or markup. They don't renegotiate for their, their raw goods. So there's so many times that we can go back in and save money versus make more money. So how are you going back in and asking for the votives, like the candle vases to be less? Or you're buying more in bulk for wax, so you can get that lesser. There's a few levers that I have them pull when it comes to that. But really it's this idea of like, how do you save money without affecting the quality of it? And, and then also that's why pricing is so important is that you have the space for these margins, for any of these deductions.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  You know, listen, I sold to like revolve.com at one point and we had to give an 18% off discount for marketing and for selling to them. So like they will take discounts as well. So we just, if you have the right margin, you've got the room to move things around.

• 33:50Hala Taha?

  And one of the ways that you can save on marketing is actually back to OPA, other people's audiences. Like podcasts, like you're on, I'm sure I'm going to be generating sales for you. What are some other audiences where you can just like collab and not necessarily have to pay for traffic, like paid ads?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I call it pop marketing, which is paid organic and partnership. Paid is what we're talking about. And you know, there's, the thing with product is if you pay for ads, it's like cost of acquisition plus your production. So it's very fine margins there. So organic is social, organic is getting on the podcast, organic is whenever you can get in front of them. Traditional word of mouth, like we discovered, like if I was like, oh my God, your lashes are so cute. What's your mascara? You'd be like, this is what it is and I'd go buy it. So that's the thing, I think it's the organic part of it. And we're so lucky in this day and age to have access to humans around the world. I would have had to, you know, I had a buying group in Japan that I had to work with to get to Japan. Organic is just whenever you can get in front of people.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I'll go back to partnership. So partnership is with creators, partnership is collaboration. So, you know, if you're a baby brand and you sell pacifiers and this person sells baby pajamas, can you collab together and get in front of each other's audiences? It's what we do here on podcasts, right? And so partnership is anything with creators, anything with collaborations and brands, pop ups. Anytime that you can just be in partnership with people. And so it, marketing really crosses over with sales. But I really dig into people doing organic and partnership before they ever pay for ads.

• 35:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah. At what point do you feel like somebody is ready for paid ads? Or is it a strategy that you never really recommend?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  No, I do, I do recommend, recommend ads. I think the difference is it just depends on their sophistication in their business. And do they have the money to run it? Cause you're going to pay an agency. Don't recommend you guys run your own ads if you don't know what you're doing.

• 35:41Hala Taha?

  Yeah, you'll just waste a lot of money, trust me.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  So much money. And it's needing a lot of content from us. So like you really need to do that, right? The problem with paid ads, if your website doesn't convert, you're driving traffic to something that's broken. And you have three seconds, I call it the grandma test.

• 35:56Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  If my grandma were to land on your website, would she know what you make and sell? And would she know where to go, well, the user experiences? So if we're going to run traffic there and it's going to break, then what's the point?

• 36:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  So there's two issues usually. It's, it's traffic and then conversion. And then when we're converting, are you making enough money again, that it pays back for the ad? That it pays for the product, that it pays for shipping? And then we, we have a formula where you've acquired the customer, then it's the lifetime value. Like how quickly can we get them to come back in and buy again, once you've paid to acquire them? So I think some clients, a hundred percent, we've done it in their first year because they're like, yes, I want this. Yes, I'll pay to get a site that converts really well. I'll pay for my user experience and for ads. And then other people are like, well, you know, I just, I'll never tell you to waste your money, ever.

• 36:39Hala Taha?

  So let's say you're a founder who doesn't have a lot of resources, but you've got access to Instagram and TikTok and LinkedIn. You say there's really a difference between posting and promoting. And a lot of people kind of mess that up. They think, well, I'm posting all the time, but I'm not generating sales. So what are like the red flags of a creator that might be posting a lot, but not generating sales?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you have to really think about why someone's following you. I think social has been taking a bit of a turn. I mean, if you guys follow brands, you may not be buying off that brand page, right? Like I follow Nike, I don't, Nike doesn't pop up in my algorithm and that's when I purchase. But maybe I see someone I love, like a creator, wearing it. I'm like, oh, I like those. And I see them in a store and I'll buy them. Promoting, really what people miss is the idea of promotions. So what are we focusing on every single week of your business? If you are a bigger brand, you might be sending five emails a week. I want everyone to send at least one email a week. And so if it's like, okay, I'm dropping my fall collection, here's the fall collection. And then on social, we want to really highlight the fall collection, why it makes sense to the client in the season.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  They can see it being worn or used in the environment. So they're, they're starting to imagine themselves using it. Then the next week might still be the fall collection, but the best seller and the fall collection. And now we're like highlighting the best seller. And I think that, you know, I see so many people post like, I'm at this market this week. Okay, that's turning it into like an informational page.

• 38:03Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Versus how do we engage with it? I used to, there was this brand a long time ago that was a pajama brand. And as they were coming up, they had all their beautiful like model photos. They're gorgeous. But the things that went the most viral were pictures of baby animals sleeping. So think about it, it's a pajama company, it's associated with sleep. And they were going viral with the baby animal sleeping, like a little duck falling asleep or a bunny. And so while it didn't sell the product, if social media is social to be engaged with and to share and to comment and to like save, then we've got to create moments like that where they associate it with the brand and they follow and they engage. So they'll see the models, but they're also enjoying the content you're putting out there.

• 38:42Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And then they're basically raising their hand and saying, hey, you can DM me. And, you know, it will be receptive because it's like, hey, I noticed you engaged on this content. Here's my link to XYZ product or, or whatever. So it shows some sort of connection to it.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  And I think just to add in, one thing that people really love is behind the scenes. So anytime you can show how it's made, like manufacturing of it, if you're hand doing it, like anything from behind the scenes, they love it. People love to close a loop. They love to watch something happen. So in a time of your small business and it's you as the face, take them along on the journey. Cause that's why they're following, they're not following to be sold to.

• 39:21Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? So I recently caught a really bad summer cold at the worst possible time. It was right before my interview with Gary Vee. Everything turned out okay, thankfully, but it did remind me how quickly getting sick can throw off your plans, especially when you're running a business. So I've been taking my health routine way more seriously. And one habit that I'm sticking with, it's AG1. It's a daily nutritional drink with 75 plus ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, pre and probiotics, and superfoods, all in one scoop. I just mix it in with cold water every single morning. Plus AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials with key nutrient levels improving within three months of consistent use. There's also AG1 Pro, designed to support performance and recovery.

• 40:05Hala Taha?

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• 40:34Hala Taha?

  Yeah, fam, I have an expensive confession. I need an outfit for practically every interview. And I love designer clothes, so you can imagine what that does to my budget. And after talking to Haley Sachs, who's a financial expert, I was unfortunately reminded that I can't just assume that every outfit is a business expense. You guys know that I love hosting live streams and webinars and I love selling. So I'm planning on opening up a pre-owned designer shop on Whatnot. Whatnot is a live shopping app where you can show off products, interact with buyers in real time, and turn shopping into a fun, interactive experience. And you absolutely do not need designer clothes to get started. People sell everything from sneakers and beauty products to sports cards, Pokemon cards, and collectibles. All you need are your products and your phone. Whatnot handles payments and provides shipping labels.

• 41:20Hala Taha?

  So I recommend you take a shopping trip through a few live shows, see how it works, and maybe you'll be inspired to start selling too. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. Now, what if you think you have a boring product? How can you take them behind the scenes?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I think we think it's boring because we're so in it.

• 41:40Hala Taha?

  Yeah, because people would, even if it's like making toilet paper, if you go to the factory of how you make the toilet paper, it's interesting.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, show me how the paper is compressed. I think, you know, whether you're packing boxes and showing yourself busy, I've seen reels go viral where somebody's just printing out all their labels. And people watch it. Because like you asked me what wholesale was, people who aren't in product, they don't even realize, oh, those labels have to be printed and there's a machine for that. So I just think that there's so many different ideas. I've had people do packing boxes, like, oh, this client ordered this and this, and they put it in. TikTok did so well, I got so sucked into this a few years back, where it was interactive, because live selling is doing really well too right now. And I was watching these women with like crystal shops that had these huge vats of crystals. And then you would actually like comment, it was very live. And you're like, you comment, I want a five-pound bag. And then they'd be like, oh, hey, Jaclyn.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  And they'd be scooping up the crystals and be like, you got this one and this one. And it was interactive. And so you just really have to think, like, we've got moments. How do we engage with them and keep them on the channel and keep it fun?

• 42:41Hala Taha?

  Yeah, what do you think about platforms like Whatnot?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it is not aligned, probably most likely right now in its current state for people with brands. It's a lot of people doing off-price things or discovering, you know, here's a Louis Vuitton wallet or cheap, cheap, cheap stuff. The struggle that my clients have had is that they want it to be so cheap, like it starts at a dollar. So Whatnot like has this way, if you haven't been on it yet, it's live selling. And then it has this way of, oh, here's this vase again. And it's like starting at a dollar and then it's like you keep putting, it's like an auction.

• 43:14Hala Taha?

  Got it. So it's good for like, if you're like trying to get rid of like your designer bags or something like that? Okay.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  It's just not yet built for a brand. And I'm sure some companies, people might message me and be like, no, I'm doing it. Great.

• 43:24Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  But where this started actually is I used to work with one of the top 10 sellers of Lularoe. Did you ever know that brand?

• 43:33Hala Taha?

  Kind of sounds familiar.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  It was like an MLM, direct sales. There's a whole documentary on it. And I used to work with these people that were making a million dollars a month from their barn, selling on camera in this kind of auction style. And so these direct sellers were doing this behind the scenes. They were making a million dollars in apparel sales from a barn. And it also had like a downline and all this. And so live selling works, especially if they're in, it goes back to the Home Goods situation, where it's in discovery. So Lularoe worked really well because it was like, I have one lipstick legging in this size. And people are like, I want it. And I've got this one t-shirt. And I think that works better than.

• 44:11Hala Taha?

  That makes a lot of sense.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  I have a whole inventory of this one bag.

• 44:14Hala Taha?

  So is TikTok shop better than for like, like what is good for live selling for brands? Or is there not yet a platform you think is good for that?

• 44:21Speaker 01

  If you, this is what I tell people about social media. If you're going to do social media, get good at it. Stop half like doing it and being like, why doesn't it work for me? It's like, if you want to do TikTok, I work with one of the top, top, top TikTok shops. TikTok flies her around and like to present on different things. And she's really good at it. So yes, TikTok shop works and it's up to certain price points. There are, it is a cheaper price point to sell on there. So yeah, it's a great platform. I think Instagram never really fully caught up with it, but TikTok's there. And if you're going to learn it and do it, great, let's go.

• 44:54Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I mean, I interviewed Gary Vee like a month ago. And he's like, all, he's like, get into live selling. If there's one piece of advice for young entrepreneurs, it was live selling for him. He really believes in that.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  I think he's always been super behind that. And I agree to a point, and then we just have, you need a customer to catch up with it.

• 45:10Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  So it's like, where are you capturing? There, I'm not going to argue with Gary Vee. He's Gary Vee, right? But like, is your customer watching it? And QVC and HSN just like filed for bankruptcy, actually. And I was just talking to one of their top, top, top sellers. And I think she might have actually been on this podcast. But I was talking to her about it and she's.

• 45:28Hala Taha?

  Forbes Riley.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yes, I was just like, two nights ago. And we're talking about it and it's like, she's so good at selling, she can sell anything. And I had like the secret dream that one day I would be a QVC seller, because I love selling and I love interacting.

• 45:39Hala Taha?

  Well, now you can just do it on TikTok shop.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  I could do it myself, exactly. So, so I think, yes. And, you know, I think where QVC and HSN kind of, you know, that they didn't move where the customer was. If they moved to TikTok shops, if they moved to like where the customer was, because who watches TV at midnight anymore? Right? And so it's just really knowing where your customer is and matching them.

• 46:01Hala Taha?

  I can't wait until one day I have the time to open up some sort of live selling. I feel like I'll be so good at it. Whatnot is actually one of my new sponsors. So I'm like, I think I'm going to do like, because I've got lots of like designer bags. And you just gave me a great idea that I can basically just like sell a lot of my designer stuff in my closet. And to your point, it's like that Home Goods model where it's like, this is like size 5.5 shoes, ladies. Like anybody who's that size, like, you know, come watch my live show.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I think when you have an audience, especially, I mean, there are people growing on there without it. And you're an early adopter, you can get in really fast. But when you have an audience, for sure. I think Joy Cho, she's amazing. She's always had this like design brand. She would have closet sales and people in LA would like come. And she'd have all of her stuff out and people would come by from her. And I thought that was so cool. So she probably is someone who's like, could also do it and create it. I mean, Whatnot's amazing. It just hasn't yet worked yet for my clients, I think.

• 46:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I think it's really cool. And it's such a new, it's such a good new thing. So I feel like it will just like keep evolving.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  I wish it would take off for us, though, because it would be amazing.

• 47:03Hala Taha?

  Yeah, great platform. Okay, so how about like what kind of content we should create? Sometimes it's not really about being like overly edited or overly fancy. Like what has actually worked for you?

• 47:13Speaker 01

  You know, it's actually funny because I actually will put a stake in the sand and say, you don't need social media. So I actually do push back sometimes on social because there's so many brands. I had a client with a $25 million company that she's joined my program for social. I was like, girl, you got a $25 million company. You don't need this, right? But if you're going to participate in social, you've got to know the platform you're on, who's watching, what the customers are wanting. TikTok and Instagram, like I work with one of the top TikTok shops. Her Instagram is smaller than her TikTok, because it kind of converts in a different way. They love to see loops closed. So if you're using the product, if you're dressing somebody with the product, how can they experience it? Or how do you associate another feeling to it?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So Nike with Air, like if you've ever watched the movie Air, it was really about how Nike got into the basketball game, Michael Jordan, when he was young, and sponsored him. And so it was like, how did Nike get into the athletic shoe? They found really an influencer back then. And then started having the top, top, top basketball player wearing the product, which validated it. People wanted it. They thought if they wore it, they could be like him. And then it eventually trickled out into the streetwear and what it means. Because Nike really wants to be presented as it's high performing for an athlete, but anyone can wear it. So I think this is something that we would work on, you know, within your brand and figuring out what it is. If it's cosmetics, is it before and after? Is it people using lash stuff? You know, Kylie Jenner, when she launched hers, it was, she had her lips

• 48:43Speaker 01

  and she did her lips all the time. And people were obsessed with her lips and how she did them. So it made so much sense to come out with a product and then continue to show how to use it. So I think it depends on the product.

• 48:51Hala Taha?

  And I know you also do courses. So is there a difference in terms of how you promote courses on social media?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so courses for me have sort of started to shift away from where we used to be with it. Because now I think people just need more support. Like they, because I come out of one-on-one consulting. And that's what I did for 15 years. And they just are like, but what about me? What do I need to do? What I think, though, from, like, if you're an online educator or a service business, one, it's why are they going to, we're in a trust recession. I'm sure everyone's talking about this trust recession. And I think it'd be with product and with people. And so it's like, why are they going to trust you? Like, what about you is attractive to them? What's going to make them stick around? So there's this idea of the kind of content that they're going to be like, yeah, you get me. And I do really well with quotes, like quotes on product, actually.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Like I'll mock up like a hat that says, you know, things about entrepreneurship. And people love those quote ones because they're like, oh, you see me? And it stops the scroll. Then I think once we get them into our world, then it's like showing them we know what we're talking about. One thing I actually stole from Hermosy was speaking from stage and then recording myself coaching. Because I've been a coach, I've been, I'm not even a coach. I'm an advisor and a strategist. Coaching is like a newer thing in the term. I've been a business strategist for 20 years. And so showing me in action, you can't fake that. It can't be an AI carousel of whatever. It's like, this is me in action. So I think the more you can show the differentiator, personality, values, value alignment. Like I'm a mom with two kids, so this is what it's like.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Plus, this is how I run a multimillion dollar business.

• 50:29Hala Taha?

  Yeah, so you're actually taking clips of you coaching your clients and you're posting that online.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  And from stage. So not even Zoom anymore, like.

• 50:37Hala Taha?

  Got it.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Nobody wants to watch a screen.

• 50:38Hala Taha?

  Nobody wants to watch a talking head. So you're saying coach, like Q and A on stage? That's brilliant.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I started doing more in-person events. Because I do think just, like we talked about with product in the beginning, it's just getting people together, that's what's sticky, like.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  The emotional connections, the real people, the fact that like people become friends and family through all this. And so, yeah, I just did an event a few weeks ago where I was onstage coaching with my mic and clients were able to ask hot seats. And then it's just the back and forth between it and it's crushing.

• 51:08Hala Taha?

  Yeah. How has the actual offer of your courses changed?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's been the last year and change of my business. Last year, things got really dicey. In the first half of the year, I was like, why is nothing working? Part of it, in the beginning of 2025, this is when the whole tariffs conversation came up with products. So product people were already really scared. And then I think coming out of the pandemic, nobody wanted to sit, like, it's like the last thing we want to do is sit on a screen and watch something and consume it by ourselves in our houses. People want that experience of life. So what I ended up doing was thinking about what have I been best, best in the world at? And back in 2007, I started, which was my original company, Designer Consulting Co-op. That's where I literally was like the designer. I say I was like an architect and a contractor. People come to me with ideas. I'd

• 51:57Speaker 01

  ideate, I'd make the product. We'd go through the whole process and help them grow the company. This is pre-product boss. And so I was like, what did they need? They needed human brains. They needed experts talking about all the different things that they needed. So what I did is I took all my courses and put it into a program called The Collective, which, because I really believe, especially as women, as a collective, we rise, not by stepping on each other, not by being competition, but literally like together, we all got to rise together. And so, and that now has live feedback. Like, you can get asynchronous coaching. There's my education, so you can watch specific learning moments. There's AI, there's live sessions every single week. We've got coworking sessions and live events. And so, that's really the

• 52:37Speaker 01

  community that I want to create. And it's almost like the third school. So it's not design school, it's not business school, it's for the creative entrepreneur that's like, okay, how do I build this thing? And when I have a question, I actually can ask somebody.

• 52:51Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And how do you deal with like not, like, for example, now, everybody wants like one-on-one, right? But you're running so many things, like, it can't possibly be you on every single meeting, every single Zoom call. What do you do to kind of scale yourself when people probably want to talk to you?

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%. And they can, but just, you know, it's, I could take less of those people, and it's a much higher investment. So that's what I did in The Collective. I built a board of advisors, and I'm continuously like building to it. So I have advisors that are experts at, you know, social media, or Pinterest, or SEO, paid ads, leadership and personal development, you know, so AI, team. So I've actually built in a board of advisors where I believe that clients can come, and then they can get the advice that they need. So I'm like, we're paying for the experts that you need in your company. And so, in this program, we do have this, because I need to figure out, how do you scale one-on-one?

• 53:46Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Right? And so, we created this way with our advisors, there's a team of them, that my clients can submit a question for feedback every single week. They don't need all the questions. If they're working on their website, then we've got to like get feedback on the homepage and then adjust that. So that's how they're getting this like asynchronous. And then I have advisors that pick up the question and might send a video back, a voice note, an email, something that helps move them through the process. So I think that's the way I've been able to scale it. I do have a mastermind that has, my advisors are also in that. So they do get access to me, but I'm starting to outsource. I know a lot about a lot of things. I've been doing this for a really long time, but I don't have to know everything anymore. Like, I got

• 54:26Speaker 01

  to really be in leadership and now just hire really amazing, incredible advisors that can do better than I can, because they're experts at what they do.

• 54:34Hala Taha?

  And so, do you hire them full-time?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  No, no, a lot of them are running their own companies. I have some that are clients of mine that want to come back in and advise, there's people with agencies. So, right now, it's really, at this level, it's not yet.

• 54:47Hala Taha?

  Is it like a rev share? Like, how are you compensating them?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Um, they get paid per thing that they do. So depending on if it's like a feedback, or there's a flat fee per month, like, it depends on what they're doing. If they're answering questions in the community is different than if they're taking on personal things. Some of them, actually, I have two higher levels, where those clients get one-on-one calls once a month. And so, there, it's more of an investment for the client, but then I'm paying the expert for their hour.

• 55:12Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I've personally seen like how all this core stuff has changed. I feel like AI has completely just transformed the way that you have to sell courses, because to your point, people want live, people want accountability, they want something that AI can't do for them, right? So I actually had like a LinkedIn course, and now we just, just launched on School. Have you heard of School, Alex from Ossie's platform?

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am.

• 55:35Hala Taha?

  Yeah, but you've got something on School, too?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  For the, not yet. Because I was like, I think I might be doing too many things. I had submitted to be a part of his like creator program.

• 55:41Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that's what I'm in, right?

• 55:42Speaker 01

  We can talk about that offline.

• 55:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I'm happy to get you in it. So that's what I'm in. I'm doing like my big launch, actually, like, I think like two days, I'm doing a webinar, and I'm pushing people to school. And we're going to have like accountability sessions, where it's like I give them prompts for the week, and we work together in a session, and I'm gonna have other LinkedIn influencers help me, because I can't certainly do, like, to have that much meetings and stuff, it's just not possible with my schedule. So it's like, I need to have other people, people on my team, because I have an agency. So I was asking you all those questions, because it's like, I'm actively trying to work through, like, how do I, like, you know, provide value, but not necessarily have to be the one that shows up every single day?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  And I think, I think that's also the big shift. It's like, I'm not planning on selling my company, but I think the idea of when you're the face of your brand, is it, you know, a lifestyle brand, is there something to sell? And what I really believe in, and my core tenet goes back to my mom, and she was a creative, but she really fully believed she didn't know enough about business, and she was a mom, and she was an artist and designer. And she even at one point, went back to art school, but then just didn't believe in herself enough. And I went to design school, I have a bachelor's in fine arts, it's one of the top three schools in the country for fashion. They gave us a quarter of entrepreneurship, because they were training us to go work for other people. So I think what we miss a lot of times is like, how do we help creatives build thriving companies, especially when we're creating

• 57:06Speaker 01

  physical products? And there are tons of people out there that teach like kind of, you know, if you want to source this product and get the million dollar, you know, whatever, launch. And for me, I really align it with people's lifestyles, and what do they want? And especially when it comes to women, and they're holding so many different things.

• 57:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  And so, I think that, thinking about scaling this company, it's great that we have access to all these advisors. What I want to say is, if people, if more information was the thing, we'd all be good billionaires, right? Podcasts, YouTube, AI, like-

• 57:35Hala Taha?

  You've got plenty of info, yeah.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, we all have so much information. So it's like, what applies to you? When do you implement it? And in what order?

• 57:41Hala Taha?

  So, I want to play a game with you before we go, called Fix My Product Business. So, I'm going to give you a scenario, and then you'll tell me, how would you fix this business? What would you do? What would be like your next steps? Sound good?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  I love this. Let's go.

• 57:57Hala Taha?

  So, scenario one, the candle business, making sales but no money. A woman owns a candle business doing $500,000 a year. Her best-selling candles sell for $40, but after materials, packaging, shipping, advertising, she only keeps $3 per order. She's thinking about launching five new scents to drive more sales. How would you fix this business, Jacqueline?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  $3 is insane.

• 58:21Hala Taha?

  You're like, shut it down, shut it down.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Like, we gotta raise your prices or find better, but you're so-

• 58:26Hala Taha?

  Take it behind the barn.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  If she's only making $3, like, so the fix-it, for me, would be like, let's fix why you're only taking home that margin. And so, it might be that costs are too high, it might be that the labor is, you know, so we would look at the tinkering behind the scenes, because to me, that's a backend problem. I'd look at the cost of goods, I'd look at the labor, I try and really understand the numbers to know, why are you only taking home three? Because at a $50 product, you know, it's wholesale at 25, let's say, then, again, 11 bucks should be what she's selling it for. So there's gotta be more margin there. So there's something broken in the margin that we dig into first.

• 59:04Hala Taha?

  In terms of somebody looking at a product, like, what, as like a leader of your company, like, what numbers should you absolutely know, like, on the top of your head?

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, one, cost of goods, like, what it costs you to make each individual unit? Average order value, that's a huge thing I ask my clients, like, what's your average order value? And that's like the easiest tweak sometimes we could make, and make so much more money in the company, by just raising that up a bit. Yeah, so average order value, I would say lifetime value, or how often the customer comes back. So the repeatability of the customer, and cost of goods, your wholesale price and your retail price.

• 59:38Hala Taha?

  Something that I didn't get to ask you before, that you just reminded me of, is, you had mentioned, like, your best seller, you always recommend, I think you like increased the price by like 15% or something like that. Why, why do you think that that's a good thing to do off the bat?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  So I had a client do breadboards. Like, she had these like custom engraved breadboards, and she could not stop selling them. And she's like, they just keep buying them. And so, I'm like, then raise your price, and see if it'll slow down the amount of inventory that goes out. And so she raised her price, and it kept selling. And so she raised her price again. And a lot of people will use that methodology to like raise the price, because they want to slow down sales. And listen, if you're selling and you're making more per unit, amazing. So it's not always 15% more per product, but again, you look at what the market will bear, and if they love it and they want it, they're going to buy it. We just have to make sure, there's a psychological thing to pricing as well.

• 1:00:27Hala Taha?

  And how do you raise your prices without pissing off your customers?

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  You don't tell them.

• 1:00:31Hala Taha?

  You just do it.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  You have to do it.

• 1:00:33Hala Taha?

  So you don't like tweak something, or like, make it seem like something changed, changed the branding? You don't just change it?

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  You know, I'm wearing bangles from a client of mine, that they're, they're gold bangles. And when gold went up, because gold keeps going, and silver. So gold and silver keep going up in price. And if you tell them, we're raising the price, because gold has gone up, when the price comes down, they're like, price is down, or you're dropping your prices again. And they don't understand the cost of doing business. If you're selling wholesale to retailers, you may give them a warning. This is, our prices are going up in 2027, or you know, whatever the next year is, we're raising our prices around this season. This is our last time to get it, get your orders in, because we're, again, we're in partnership. If you tell your customers, I mean, people will tear you down for anything. They don't, most of the time, they don't notice. And this is the biggest fear jump that I see my clients do. I just got a message from a client. She was at a market a couple of weeks ago. She's like, Jaclyn, I raised my prices.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  I was freaking out and nobody blinked an eye. And I was like, yeah, because they're not paying attention. Now, listen, if you go from like a $25 product and you raise it to $65, we're moving customers. The, the market is different, so we've got to shift it. But if we're going up a few dollars, just raise the prices and deal with each individual.

• 1:01:43Hala Taha?

  And I feel like if it's a habit product or, or something that's part of like your ritual or routine, that might be harder to change the price versus something that you buy once or like once a year or something, because people won't remember exactly what they paid. Is that right?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and though, like, think about it, like, maybe like our face creams or I think about Sephora shelves, like, I don't know that I would know if I went in and said, oh, I spent $34 or $36.

• 1:02:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  I don't know that I would actually pay attention. Now, if it went from a $30 price point to 48, closer to 50, now we've left categories. So I think it's a yes and you're going to have the people who are very aware, but way less than you think.

• 1:02:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So it's like, you don't, back to this example, she doesn't need to launch five new cents. She needs to get more profitable and figure out where the profit leaks.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Hala Taha?

  Why is it, why does she get nothing at the end of it? And she can also try to raise her prices.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, if it needs a raise, 100%. And, you know, I worked with a client that was a million dollar jewelry business with a 10% profit margin, wasn't paying herself. Like, why? Why do you have a million dollar headache? So I was like, I'd rather you have a half million dollar company with a stronger profit margin to pay yourself and all the things. And so, um, again, with product, if you expand, why I would say don't do the five cents is because you're just going to leak money across the board and keep taking, unless you're selling at volume, fine, $3 at volume is great, but half a million dollar company is still a very small company. When you could get to a million dollars just by, if she's got slightly more profitable, we'd be making the money easy.

• 1:03:13Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Scenario two, the dream retail deal. A skincare founder makes $300,000 a year selling online. A major retailer offers her $100,000 wholesale order. She'd need to use all of her savings to manufacture the products and she wouldn't get paid after delivery. Should she take that deal or walk away?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Hmm. I've been on multiple sides of this kind of deal. So it goes into a deeper conversation. I had a client turn down Bloomingdale's once because she's like, I'd have to mortgage my house. This is why I think leveraging money is so important for product people. Nobody's sitting on tons and tons of cash. So always having lines of credit. You know, there's SBA loans, there's credit cards for short term paying out. Well, when we'd look at the margins, so if she's getting $100,000 order, though, what is the margin? What will it do? Will it break the business? I have a client right now that's dealing with a really, really, really big brand and they're not paying her for 90 days every time she ships. So she had to actually let go of team because she can't actually afford to run her business because she's making all this product and not getting paid for a long time.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  So we've really got to consider if it's going, if you have the savings, but you're also generating money, then we can have a conversation. But if it's everything you have, it's, it's not worth it. We just turned down, one of my clients just turned down the Today Show because they wanted her to make 10,000 units of something and it would have broken the internal part of the business and they wanted a discount. So if, instead of like, great, how can we make that same amount of money, not break the business, sell more profitably? So I would say if it's going to break the business, we turn them down. If you're like, I've got the 100,000 saved and I'm generating, so profit's still coming in, I'd say, let's go.

• 1:04:51Hala Taha?

  There's companies out there that will basically like pay for your, in advertising, it's called like your IOs. Like, for example, if I get, I get sponsorships for people. So if I'm like, I have a million dollars in IOs, but they're paying me in 90 days, there's companies that will pay us. Is that a thing?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  In fashion, there's factors. And so you'd have to have a certain amount of sales generated. But when I used to do this in fashion, they would front us the money. So they'd get the purchase orders from the retailers. They'd front us the money to go into production because a lot of times you have to go into production before you're going to get paid. So they'd front us the money, they'd take 5%. And then they'd make sure that the retailer qualified, kind of like a business check.

• 1:05:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  And then, so they'd front the money, they'd take 5%. You'd ship on time, it'd all be great. So for sure, in fashion, there's that. And I think that's why it's really important to work with your banks, have like the right financing. And depending on the category, you know, or you're working on a deal with your, if, if you have someone manufacturing for you, you also can extend terms with them. So I can have them manufacture, I have a 90 day term with them, I have 90 days with like who I'm shipping to, and then the money all kind of comes at the same time.

• 1:05:54Hala Taha?

  Oh, that's really smart. I didn't think about that.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just actually talked to someone who was working for like a billion dollar brand, she was on my podcast, and she was saying, even internally on a billion dollar brand, they would try and get the payments they had to make, like, because this cash flow thing is always an issue, they'd try and push out the payments as far as they could. Can we get that for like after this month, after whatever? Because they needed the cash in the bank before they had to pay out. So we're always just kind of in this game of moving money around.

• 1:06:22Hala Taha?

  Yeah, how about taking investor money to front some sort of deal like this?

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm actually an investor in a fully FEMO funded, um, brand. And I think, I think there's a difference between if you want to do invest, if you want investor money and how you're going to set up your business for it.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Or there's things like Kickstarter, like I've had, like I have a client that was on Shark Tank that really went from Etsy to where we got them to a million dollars in their first year by doing a Kickstarter campaign. So there, I think it depends on if you, what kind of business you want to have. Do you want to do self-funding? Do you want to ask friends and family for a raise? Or do you really want to grow this into something where you're taking on capital?

• 1:06:59Hala Taha?

  Okay, next scenario, the skincare brand, nobody buys twice, which I'm glad we're doing this because we didn't get into this. A skincare business generates half a million dollars a year. Customers love the product, but only 15% come back for a second purchase. The founder wants to double her advertising budget to acquire more customers. Jaclyn, how would you get these customers instead?

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Like immediately? No, we're not doubling.

• 1:07:22Hala Taha?

  No.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Because there's something broken.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  So, you know, the thing about skincare is it's consumable. And so the question would be, if I lifted it, would be, are they using it? Are they moving through the product? Is it too big of a product, right? Like, sometimes people are just trying to sell like bulk stuff and it takes a whole year to go through something versus something that's smaller and they use it. So I'd first probably identify, why are they not coming back? Is it not having the effects that they want? Is it having some sort of adverse reaction? We'd probably know that data from, from returns and customer service emails. So more ads to singular product, especially consumable. I work with clients that have stuff that maybe people would only buy a couple of, but at consumable, there's something wrong in the result of it. And so we'd really want to fix what that is or understand it.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Another thing is people don't always know how to use the product. And so maybe it's this idea of, like, again, a skincare regimen or how you use it, or I, there's this one brand I follow and they're like results after second month. And then they say the skincare is a monthly amount. So, so basically it's like, this is a 30 day supply. And so they sell you three at a time because they're like, results are after the second month and the best deal is getting all three. So now they've sold three to them.

• 1:08:36Hala Taha?

  That's really smart.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  But they may not get that customer back for, you know.

• 1:08:40Hala Taha?

  Three months.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Three months, three to five months, depending.

• 1:08:42Hala Taha?

  Yeah. But at least they sold three because not guaranteed.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Which is raising the average order value.

• 1:08:47Hala Taha?

  You actually talk about four repeat purchase triggers, replenishment, ritual, gifting, and upgrade. Do you want to tell us about any of those?

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so replenishing for sure. I think what we're saying here too, and that's something I would fix on that skincare brand, would be like, are we reminding them to come back and buy? They're just as busy. They might be sitting with that jar empty on their counter being like, I have to order it, but they haven't had the ability to do it.

• 1:09:09Hala Taha?

  Yep. 1-800-GOT-CONTEX does that so well. I, I work contacts and they're always like, are you, I'm like, yeah, I, I am running out of contacts.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  So leave a message and say like, your, your prescription's about to expire. You should get it in. Same, I buy from them too. So exactly that. It's like that reminder where you know you need it, but you just need someone to encourage you to it. So I'd say that's the replenishment. The other thing is just this idea of, of giftable. You know, if they've bought for themselves, how do they then think about it for somebody else? So you just always have to have your marketing in mind on and thinking about like, how do I just remind them that this stuff exists? And then how do I make it make sense to them in this moment to buy from me again?

• 1:09:49Hala Taha?

  And in terms of gifting, since it's Q4.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Sure is.

• 1:09:53Hala Taha?

  A lot of people are scrambling right now or trying to think of like, what can they do to drive sales for Q4? What would you say?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  I, I've just done like, this is like, this is our season. This is like Super Bowl season. People have their wallets out, they're going to buy. It's such a good season because if we think about fall, it's a transition of flavors, it's a transition of how we decorate our homes, it's a, it's a transition of what we wear, the weather changes, we've got holidays to plan for, gifts to have. So many things are happening, more than just gifting. I recommend that people participate in Black Friday or some version of that. I hear a lot of times people saying, well, if I do that, I'll train my customers to expect discounts.

• 1:10:29Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  They're not going to buy from you that weekend if you're full price. So if you want to participate in it, let's go. If you don't, then you get to opt out. And I have clients that have chosen their sale dates at other times. We just got done with the beginning of October. Target and Amazon did their holiday like prime earlier, even earlier, like in the beginning of October, because we're also all competing for dollars. So if you could create opportunities to buy a discount or promotion. So it's like gifts under 50, gifts under 100, gifts for her, gifts for him, gifts for your dog. Because it doesn't always have to be the discount, but it has to be something good and special in this moment for it to make sense for them to buy.

• 1:11:10Hala Taha?

  What's your like thoughts around discounts? Like, do you, I knew you just sort of mentioned that, that sometimes you train the customer. I'll give an example. Allison Olivia, very expensive clothing brand. I love them. And when I first started shopping there, I bought everything full price. And then, you know, I realized that they, every season, they have like a massive sale. And I'm like, oh, God, like, I just like wasted all the stuff that I bought is half price now. And it really pissed me off. And I was like, well, I'm not never doing that again.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:40Hala Taha?

  So talk to us about like, when is it the right time or the wrong time or the right product or the wrong product to discount?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  The suit I'm wearing actually was full price, but then like went on sale like a week later. And this company was like, we don't, we don't price match our own sales. I was like, well, that sucks. So agreed with you on that one. Um, there's a couple of things with product and e-comm. There's usually that, have you ever opted in? There's like the opt-in, give us your email address and you'll get 15% off your first order. So that's this idea of like giving them a little, like you dangle a carrot for them to buy. And 10 to 15% is not significant. There's play on like whether these are working or not. It's kind of like when you go to Costco and they have the samples around. It's like, I'm going to try the thing before I have it.

• 1:12:18Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Bigger brands like Allison Olivia and things like that, they do have to go on sale because they have to liquidate inventory. We want to turn your inventory back into cash. Black Friday is named Black Friday because it was getting companies back in the black. They were in the red and it was turning towards the end of the year and they needed to turn their money back.

• 1:12:33Hala Taha?

  Fun fact, I know, I knew that, yeah, no.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's like, they had to get back in the black. And that's why they would turn product back into cash. We just, because otherwise your inventory is money on the shelves and what's, it's no use to us. So that's the origination of Black Friday, turning it back into cash. So it's the same thing with product. We have seasons that we run it. And then if it's a seasonal product, and I teach this to my clients where Halloween, we're going to put stuff on Halloween sale, after Halloween, or even leading up close to it when you're trying to move that, or early Halloween sale. So I saw Halloween in the stores in like July.

• 1:13:06Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  And it's right. And so if they put it on sale, you're like, oh, I'll buy now because they, they made a certain amount of inventory and they want to move through the inventory and turn it back into cash. Um, so there's always going to be seasonal, especially with fashion in particular, to move it out unless you're luxury good. We're never going to get sales at Louis Vuitton, right? Like, that's not going to happen. So certain designer brands will not do that, but then things that have to move inventory. I think that don't be afraid of sales, but don't use it to generate sales. And if we think about the clothes that you bought, it was seasonal. So you're okay, and especially because we both live in warm weather environments. Like, we can probably wear summer stuff longer in the year. You also can train your clients or your customers into scarcity. So it's sold out, get it before it's gone. Like, you make a certain amount of quantity.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  So then if they do wait, they just may never get their size once it does go on sale.

• 1:13:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  So I think it's like a, it's, the whole point of sales and promotions is not to drive sales. Unless you're kicking off an early season, it's to move product to turn it back into cash.

• 1:14:05Hala Taha?

  Same thing also, just to like bring it up. Same thing can happen with shipping. Like if you offer free shipping.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:09Hala Taha?

  It's pretty similar to discounts. Like you train people that, that they always want free shipping. Is that right?

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really, truthfully, we don't want to pay for shipping.

• 1:14:17Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Ultimately, humans don't, humans, people, customers.

• 1:14:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  No human.

• 1:14:22Hala Taha?

  Um, Amazon trained us.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, I've even added stuff to cart. So what I treat, what I train people in is like, how you raise your average order value is put a free shipping threshold that's slightly higher. So if your average order value is $50, can we make your free shipping $75? So they add one thing to cart, extra.

• 1:14:41Hala Taha?

  So smart.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  They'd rather get the thing that they didn't know that they wanted or needed than pay you for shipping. And then that automatically just raises everything.

• 1:14:48Hala Taha?

  All right, this is the perfect scenario to go to our last segment of the show. So a business coach makes a million dollars annually selling online courses, but most of her revenue comes from two exhausting live launches. She works 70 hours a week. She personally runs every webinar and feels like she just can't even take a vacation. How would you redesign her business so she could generate more profit while working less?

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Sounds like me in 2024.

• 1:15:16Hala Taha?

  That's what we're going to get into.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  So we used to launch with challenges, which were five day challenges. We'd have like 15,000 people in it, a lot of community in a short amount of time to hold. And then to do these challenges, like the whole lead up and all that. So funny enough, I actually do run webinars and I run weekly webinars. But I like, I love selling, like I go back to KVC. I love teaching, I love talking to people, I love selling. Um, because selling is just matching.

• 1:15:43Hala Taha?

  So it gives you energy, like you like it.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  I'm an extrovert. I'm like, take me to New York City.

• 1:15:47Hala Taha?

  Me too.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  I'm so filled up. Yeah. Like, let's go do podcasts after, you know? Um, so I think it's looking at what the systems are and like the two launches. And this world, it feels very hard now to be super reliant on two launches. There's some stories of people right now doing it. They're newer to the industry, they're doing these launches, it's new, new to the product. I think that it's consistency. We did just switch to an evergreen. We took the thing that worked. I did, I've done webinars every week and we did the thing that worked and we started to run it evergreen daily because people are going to opt in more often.

• 1:16:17Hala Taha?

  Tell me what that means, like for people who are like, don't know that. So basically, like, when you say you run it evergreen, is it a pre-recorded?

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I basically do it twice a week, live. And then we took my best recording from a few weeks ago and took that on a replay. So it still looks live and I actually have my team in there live. Because people are again, are not just watching and being like, oh, I'm just watching this recorded thing and then they're leaving. So we're still making the experience live.

• 1:16:43Hala Taha?

  Because there's people in the chat.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  There's people in the chat and my team, I was in the chat this whole weekend. I was like, I'm going to be in here and like chat with people and see how it goes. Because we take people to sales calls now. We're no longer click a link and buy a product because the collective is a higher ticket program. And it requires a higher ticket or a higher touch, right? For that ticket. Here's actually what I would say. Take the thing that works and repeat it, which is the best seller. What works? How do you repeat it? And how do you make it easier to do? Um, I'm going back to live and going back to my live webinars. I feel like there's just a few things that we still want to work on. And then I'll, I'll get it to evergreen. But if I get it to evergreen, then there's still more that I'm going to do live that's really specific to what's needed. So maybe it's content, maybe it's doing more podcasts and speaking on stages.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  So I think what I would say is you want to find out works and then repeat it versus the two launches. Um, I also don't know why, if you're doing two launches, why you're working 70 hours a week. So it's really identifying like what it is that you're working on. And then do you have the right team to support you in it? Or are you just doing too much?

• 1:17:43Hala Taha?

  So speaking of that, you have like three phases of leadership, essentially. And a lot of the people tuning in are CEOs, we are entrepreneurs, we're building companies. Take us through like the doer.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  I think a lot of us are doer. And like, you could be a multimillion dollar business and still be the doer of a lot of things. Um, and so the doer is a person kind of either has like such a tight grip and like no one else can do it the way I do it, and it's got to be my way or no way. Um, or they're just someone who in their mind thinks, if I just do it all, I'll save money and be more profitable. But at some point you become your own bottleneck and you can't expand past that. This happens for product people, especially my makers, where I'm like, we're going to get $10 million business. Like, I could not possibly make a million candles, let's say. Like, well, you wouldn't be the one making the candles at that size business, but they can't get over yet. Um, so the doer is the person who's still in it all or answering emails on weekends

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  when you have a team member that can do it, or micromanaging, or you're just still a solopreneur. And there might be things you could start to release. And I say you can either, you could, some of these things you just stop doing, just stop. I actually stopped Instagram for a hot sec. When we were recalibrating, when I was that burnt out 70 hour a week person, I was like, social in this moment is not driving my business forward. I can not feel so, like, I don't have to do it as much because what is actually driving my business in every focus? Then we get to owner, which is really ownership. Who's in ownership of outcomes in the company? This is where we start to professionalize and hire people that are experts at something. Experts at ads, experts at marketing, your emails, your podcast production, whatever it is.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Um, because there's KPIs, which are key performance indicators that are attached to that and that they're holding it, like I did with my board of advisors. They're better at it than I am.

• 1:19:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  They're the Amazon expert, go to the Amazon expert. So who's in ownership? And then for me too, or you as the owner, what are you in ownership of? So for me at the product boss, I'm in ownership of right now still curriculum and what they're taught and front-facing. So speaking, opportunities, podcasting, everything that's like getting the brand out there. That's what I'm in ownership of. Those are my KPIs. And then boss, I say boss because we're the product boss, but ultimately it's CEO. Um, and boss is where you allow the company to run without you. And I do this thing where I'm like, if I said you could go on vacation, no laptop, no phone for two weeks, would your company thrive? You know, survive or collapse? And it's like, mine thrives. My team is like, bye.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Go, go, go back to Costa Rica, you know? We've got it. And, um, and so it's this idea of like having systems built into the company, having repeatable things, having team members that are in ownership and knowing what I'm good at and what I don't need to be doing.

• 1:20:26Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I love that. And I feel the same with my business. Like, I feel like I've really done a good job of hiring incredible people where like I can just work on the business and not necessarily in the business. But to your point, there's certain things that I'm still in that owner box that I'm still like, it's maybe newer parts of the business or something new that I launched that I'm like more involved in. Right? So but then you, the goal is to get really good people to then run it without you once you've got it off the ground.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think we get to be dangerous at everything. Like as entrepreneurs, we've got to know a little bit about a lot of things. And so, yeah, if I try something new, I try it and then I can teach the system, make it repeatable and then hire someone or hire someone that's better than me. I just hired an operator who worked for 10 years at this massive company and I'm like, take it.

• 1:21:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah, you know, you know, you know more than me. Yeah. So you actually had this goal, I guess it was in 2024, where you were like, I want 30% more profit with 30% less personal involvement. What was the biggest change that you made? Like, what did you actually do?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that was actually the year, it was actually last year, it was 25. And it was when my mom passed away because I'm on battle cancer for five years.

• 1:21:32Hala Taha?

  Sorry.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Thanks. And, um, and so it was crazy as I had said that as my goal, I want a 30% less doing of things and 30% more profit. And then I literally was halted. Like, I remember sitting in the hospital being like, everything has to change. And what a blessing it was to you and this idea that I, I, I, not that I called that in, but like I called in this idea of I actually physically can't work in this moment at my capacity. So what's going to happen? And that's what I teach in my, in my program, we do these 10 week game changer sprints, not even quarterly, I call it game changers. So in 10 weeks, we could be really focused on something like me, I was 30% more profit, 30% less work. Then my brain and my plan had to be, how do I get there?

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  That was my overarching. So then in 10 weeks, I could look back and say, I did it. I did it in 60 days, even in grief, where, um, you know, by the end of the, it was June, then July, I was like, oh my God, we hit it. We hit the 30% profit and I physically, my team sometimes is like, do we have to lock you out of stuff? Cause like, I'll try and like get back in, but I physically at that moment couldn't do it. But I was so focused. I was like, this is what works. I go back to the best seller. This is what works. This is a repeatable process. This is a system. Let's just keep it going and we did it.

• 1:22:46Hala Taha?

  It reminds me of, we were talking about Boss Babe before Natalie Ellis. Uh, I think when she was like pregnant, she basically had to do the same thing. Like she was like, well, I'm going to be pregnant and having a kid, so I gotta get out of the business.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  And she's so prepared. So she was like prepping all the way before it. But I think that's, and that's what Natalie's so good at too, is like rhythms and systems built in the business and how do you get your business to function in a rhythm? And so she was the master of that and then was able to take that time off.

• 1:23:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Well, Jaclyn, what an incredible interview. Like we went through so much. I feel like all of my young and profiteers learned so much from you. So I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests. For all the listeners tuning in, what is one actionable thing they can do today to be more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Look at your numbers. Um, my life coach says math, not drama. So let's take the drama out of it and the emotion out of it and look at your numbers and ask yourself, I would say like your costs versus what you're selling for profitable, where are the money leaks? And that would be the first thing. Don't avoid it.

• 1:23:41Hala Taha?

  Yeah. You, you definitely inspired me where I was like, I need to call my business partner and be like, every, we need to know every profit margin of every single thing that we sell.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Hala Taha?

  And we've, we've done that before, but it's like, sometimes you need to do it like, you, you haven't done it in a year or two, right? And new things have happened. So it's like, let's reevaluate, what is our most profitable product?

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let's go to the data.

• 1:24:01Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  And then data will tell us what to do next.

• 1:24:03Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And what is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  I know that money is a replenishable resource. It will always come in, it'll always go out. It's like the ocean, right? High tide, low tide. Time is not replenishable. So what I had learned years ago from one of my first coaches was pay for all the help that you can afford. And that's what I do now. And so I'm able to profit at life because I'm able to actually like have the time and pay, pay for that so that I can be with people I love. Cause life is short and that's what we're here for.

• 1:24:34Hala Taha?

  I love that. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Thanks. So anywhere you listen to podcasts, it's the Product Boss. So just click on over and subscribe or on YouTube, it's the Product Boss Podcast. On Instagram, the Product Boss. And then if you ever want to attend one of those workshops that I do, and it'll most likely be live at this point, or maybe it'll be evergreen and you could ask in the chat, um, it's theproductbossworkshops.com.

• 1:24:56Hala Taha?

  Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:25:01Hala Taha?

  Young and profiteers, I love a good home goods run. There's nothing like spotting the perfect phase and knowing that if I don't grab it right now, it might be gone forever. But after talking to Jaclyn, I realized that feeling isn't an accident. In the age of AI, most shopping still happens in person because people love to discover. And that brings me to the main concept from today's conversation. Jaclyn's five systems for building profitable product businesses. I want to quickly break them down for you guys because whether you sell candles or coaching, there's something here for everyone. First, we have the best seller. Most of your revenue comes from just one or two products. So stop chasing every new idea and double down on what your customers already love and buy.

• 1:25:44Hala Taha?

  Don't just get so comfortable that you stop evolving though, like Lululemon did when ALO kept up with the trends, but they didn't. Then we've got pricing. A good starting point is to at least double your cost of goods to get to your wholesale price. And then you can double that for retail and make sure you're counting your labor. Charging more often doesn't scare off the right customers. So don't be afraid to do that because it can often attract better ones. Next is OPA or other people's audiences. The worst thing a brand can do is pay for ads to a broken funnel. So go where the traffic already lives, like marketplaces, retailers, pop ups and partnerships. You've got to move to where your customers actually are hanging out. Then there's marketing. We're in a trust recession. So show people who you are and how your product is made.

• 1:26:29Hala Taha?

  Go behind the scenes. You can't fake that. And finally, there's the owner. And this is the one I think is especially important for all my listeners. So many founders are running million dollar businesses and still acting like the doer, holding on to every single task because nobody else can do it right. At some point, you become the bottleneck. Find what works and repeat it, build systems and give your team real ownership of the outcomes. So Yap Bam, here's my challenge to you today. With Q4 here, look at your own business. Do you know your cost of goods and how often your customers come back? Are you reminding your customers to replenish? Is your free shipping set just above your average order value? And what is one task you're holding on to that somebody else could own?

• 1:27:12Hala Taha?

  Because the key to living a profitable life isn't doing more. It's building a business that pays you and gives you the freedom that you deserve. As Jaclyn put it, aim for 30% more profit with 30% less involvement. And pay for all the help you can afford so you can profit at life. And Yap Bam, if you want to take this even further, check out the Product Boss Podcast. Jaclyn goes even deeper on pricing, marketing and scaling a product business with less burnout. Thank you so much to Jaclyn Snyder for joining us today and sharing her wisdom. If you listened, learned and profited from this conversation, please share this episode and drop a comment and drop us a review. And if you prefer to watch your podcasts on video, you can find us on YouTube, Spotify video and Apple video.

• 1:27:55Hala Taha?

  You can also connect with me on Instagram, TikTok and X at Yap with Hala or find me on LinkedIn under Hala Taha. A huge thank you as always to my fabulous Yap team. You guys are absolutely rock stars, the hardest working team in the business. And I appreciate every single one of you. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA the Podcast Princess, signing off.

• 1:28:18Hala Taha?

  Hey Yap Bam, if you're growing an audience on social media, but struggling to turn those followers into actual customers, I've got a podcast recommendation for you. It's called Build Your Tribe, hosted by social media expert and entrepreneur Brock Johnson, right here on the Yap Media Podcast Network. Brock shares practical strategies to help entrepreneurs and creators grow their online presence and turn engagement into revenue. Whether you're trying to create content that gets noticed, grow your email list, launch a digital product, or figure out how to monetize your audience, Brock breaks it all down into simple, actionable steps you can start using right away. Because growing a following is one thing, building a profitable business around it, that's a whole different game. If you're ready to grow your audience and turn that attention into something bigger,

• 1:29:03Hala Taha?

  check out Build Your Tribe. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen or watch podcasts.