689: Being Money Aware with Jamie Trull
Sponsored By:
Time to Pet. Go totimetopet.com/confessionalfor 50% off your first 3 months.
Pet Perennials- Visit: https://petperennials.com/pages/register-for-a-business-account
What if the biggest thing your numbers could give you isn’t stress—it’s options? In this episode, Collin sits down with CPA and financial literacy coach Jamie Trull to unpack why so many pet care business owners feel overwhelmed by money. Jamie explains the difference between “compliance” (taxes/bookkeeping) and using financial data to run a smarter, more resilient business. They dig into common blind spots like ignoring labor costs (even when you’re solo), running too lean, and missing opportunities hidden in your service-level margins. The conversation ends with practical mindset shifts around pricing, differentiation, proactive CEO habits, and building a business that can scale—and potentially sell.
Main topics:
Compliance vs. financial clarity
Money awareness and curiosity
Pricing for real margins
Cash flow and payroll timing
Differentiation vs. commoditization
Main takeaway: “If I want to grow, there are two things I can invest in my business: I can invest my money, or I can invest my time.”
Most of us started by bootstrapping with time—wearing every hat, doing every visit, solving every problem. But eventually, time becomes the bottleneck, not effort. The shift is realizing that investing money in the right places isn’t “wasteful”—it’s what turns a job into an asset. When your time is finite and demand is real, letting your money do some of the heavy lifting is how you stop being busy-broke and start building something sustainable.
About our guest:
Jamie Trull is a Certified Public Accountant and financial literacy coach who helps small business owners step into the role of their own CFO. She specializes in making business finances practical and approachable—without requiring an MBA or a love of spreadsheets. Jamie is the author of Hidden Profit and shares free education on topics like profitability, taxes, and business money systems through her website and YouTube channel. She’s especially passionate about serving the pet services industry and helping owners build sustainable, resilient businesses.
Links:
Give us a call!(636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet services industry, business finances, financial literacy, compliance, profit margins, cash flow, business growth, CEO mindset, employee management, business asset, differentiation, business sustainability, financial planning, business scaling, investment strategies.
SPEAKERS
Jamie Trull, Collin Funkhouser
Collin Funkhouser 00:00
Hey, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today. We're brought to you by our friends at tying to pet and pet perennials, understanding our business finances is more important than ever as we look to scale and grow or just understand where we are as a business that impacts what we can do, how our business operates, and what opportunities are before us. And who better to have on the show than the one and only Jamie troll to talk about this. Jamie, I'm really excited to have you on. Had the honor of meeting you at the dog Coast summit that last year, and thought that this would be a fantastic topic to have you come on and discuss with us. So for those who aren't familiar with you, please tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Jamie Trull 00:46
Well, I am pumped to be here. Collin, I'm so excited. We've been talking about this for a while, so I'm glad we're finally getting it done. As I've said many times, the pet services industry, and I mean this wholeheartedly, is my favorite industry. It really is. I'm a pet owner myself as well. So I just adore this industry. So I love any chance to kind of come in front of this audience. And so if I don't know, if you don't know me, I am Jamie troll. I am a certified public accountant. I know, super cool. I'm generally a giant numbers nerd. So I love all things numbers, which I know may not resonate with everyone, and that's okay, but I love to really help small business owners step into the role of being their own CFO. So I target a lot of smaller companies that you know really aren't at a place where they can go hire their own CFO, right? That aren't making millions and millions of dollars to be able to afford one on staff, and that means that, by default, you are the CFO of your own business. So I love to give people the tools that they need. You don't have to be a CPA, you don't have to have an MBA in order to get really good at business finances. So I love to teach all the fun things around numbers and make it actually really easy to listen to.
Collin Funkhouser 02:01
So if you're not a numbers fan, just take a big breath, right? It's gonna be fine. We're not gonna It's okay. No, Matt, we're not
Jamie Trull 02:06
gonna talk about EBIT out here today. I promise.
Collin Funkhouser 02:10
No, I love what one of the things that you describe yourself as is a Financial Literacy Coach. And I really think that gets across kind of what you're trying to do with helping people better understand this. And one of those things is that that struggle with with money, I mean, that seems to be a roadblock for a lot of people from from your experience, why? Why is that?
Jamie Trull 02:29
Well, I think it's a few reasons, right? A lot of times, especially in a business like Pet Services, right? You probably didn't go into it thinking like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to go to college and get a business degree. You know, that's probably not what you were excited about from it, right? It's probably something you got into because you love animals and it was a way for you to serve and to be able to make money and have the flexibility that you wanted. There are a lot of different reasons, but it probably wasn't the excitement over, you know, yay, I really want to be a business owner so that I can manage all the finances. And so I think we kind of get into it for the the love of it, right, or for the flexibility of it, or the passion for it, and then we realize there's a lot more to, you know, business ownership and to entrepreneurship than maybe meets the eye. And so that's where it kind of competes sometimes, with the things that we love, and then also now we have this added layer of all the stuff we have to do that maybe isn't necessarily in our wheelhouse, but is, you know, foundational to running a business. So I think that's very normal for people to feel that way and to feel overwhelmed like nobody. Let me be honest, even myself, I don't like dealing with taxes like Nobody enjoys that, but it is one of the things that we have to figure out how to manage through in the best way possible, right? Yeah, I
Collin Funkhouser 03:51
think that that have to those obligations that come along with this. That's been something that I have been more and more hyper aware of as we've run our business and the longer we've been in it. I mean, just now we're looking at tax planning for the new year, up ahead, and moves that we can make in our business. And it's always like, Hey, what are the opportunities here? But also, what's the overhead that comes along with that? What's the other work that I have to do to make this actually feasible for me? Because there are a lot of like, blind spots to what we do and how we operate. And I was curious, what are some big financial blind spots that we that you see?
Jamie Trull 04:25
Yeah, well, I think one of the biggest ones that I see a lot is when people think about finances. Even in this conversation, people are probably listening to this right now, and they're probably thinking about all the, what I call compliance things, which are things like bookkeeping, taxes, all the filings you have to do, right, all the frustrating things that none of us want to really have to deal with. But I think one of the blind spots is when we over focus on compliance, and when that's what we think of when it comes to our numbers, it makes sense that we're not necessarily investing time and effort. Into systems to keep up with our numbers year round, because we're seeing it more as a thing we have to do. It's for taxes, you know, versus really realizing how much data is actually behind your numbers and how that can actually help you run a business. Better be able to grow and invest in your business, be able to pay yourself more, by the way, right? And so I think sometimes we kind of tend to put these blinders on. We're like, oh, I don't want to look at my numbers. I don't want to deal with that, you know, because we're thinking about it from a tax perspective, and forgetting that there is so much information. And I think sometimes even when we realize there's a lot of information, maybe we still want blinders on, because we almost don't want to know what those numbers are going to tell us, right? Like that happens when we know, like, Oh man, I know I'm probably not charging enough, or I know, you know, I may be spending too much on XYZ. So instead of, you know, like facing it head on, we just pretend it doesn't exist. But we know, then it just becomes kind of that, that thing sitting on our shoulders. We can feel the weight of it, even if we aren't really looking at head on. And I tell people that, you know, the most important thing we can do is to look at our numbers. And it's probably not as bad as you thought, and if it is as bad as you thought, right, if it is, because maybe it is right. But at least now you can make a plan. At least now you can sit and say, Okay, I can look at my numbers and figure out what I need to do going forward, rather than just kind of living in la la land and pretending that it doesn't exist.
Collin Funkhouser 06:29
Yeah. And I think some of that mindset comes from when we come from a world of being a w2 employee, or, you know, fresh out of college, or whatever we tax time and numbers is a one time a year event, right? You show up. I always had this picture of you show up to your tax count, and you just kind of dump all the receipts on their desk, and you walk away, or you do using the software on your computer, and you do, click, click, click, and you're done. That really is a different mindset, though, to shift into year round numbers, year round data. You talked about the importance of that data, though, what's there? What are we missing when we don't
Jamie Trull 07:05
look at that data? Yeah, so I think a lot of times we don't, I think the biggest thing we're missing often is opportunities, right? So we're afraid to look at it, because we're like, oh, it's gonna confirm that I'm what I thought, which is, I'm not good with money or whatever. There's a lot of, like, personal feelings and emotions that we have tied up in it, but what we're really doing is missing the opportunity. Is to say, okay, you know, I'm not going to take this personally. I'm going to look at this as, you know, the information that it is. And maybe I need to adjust my pricing. Maybe I need to get rid of, you know, a offering all together, because it isn't profitable, maybe I need to package things a little bit differently. Maybe I need to look into my costs, because my costs have started creeping up to the point where now it's becoming harder and harder to pay myself, right? So all of that are things that you can see behind the data. And like I said, it doesn't go away just because you're not looking at it. In fact, it gets worse and worse. We know that, right? So when we take the time to do it routinely, it becomes a lot easier, and it also becomes a lot easier to understand what your numbers are telling you. And guess one of the things I hear a lot is like, I don't even know what to look for, but once you kind of just just, like, rip the band aid off and start looking at your numbers and comparing, say, like, this month to last month, right? Or this year to last year, all of a sudden you start to pick up on patterns. You start to become more money aware, and that allows you then to get ahead of problems, also before they come. And that's the thing that I love most about it too, is that we can now prepare. We can now be proactive rather than being reactive. And nobody likes to be reactive, but that tends to be sometimes, how you know the pattern that we get into, right?
Collin Funkhouser 08:43
Yeah, that money aware. I love that. I love that idea of just kind of knowing generally where things stand, and that first big number of, what did I make this year versus last year? Because then
Jamie Trull 08:55
it doesn't need to be to the penny, right? Like people get I don't care about that. Your tax accountant can care about to the penny. I don't care about that. As a CFO, you it's big picture. What are the big numbers that matter? That's what you need to know. It's not about knowing all the accounting rules in the math and all the confusing things. It's the big picture things that really move the needle.
Collin Funkhouser 09:15
Because then those those questions, like you said, they naturally come up. I made more than last year, huh? I wonder why, right? Like, what happened? What did I do differently? And all of that you can dig into, but if you never look, you're never going to ask those questions. I think that's really what you're talking about here. Jamie, of like, starting that process,
Jamie Trull 09:32
and it's and it's to your point. Collin, it's about getting curious, right? Once you start looking at it, all of a sudden you'll feel like a curiosity rise up and you're like, Huh? I wonder what happened here, or we did really well this month, or we didn't do as well this month. And your curiosity then leads you to kind of look into it, and you'll be surprised at what comes out of that, right? So just follow your curiosity when you jump into it, and that's where you're going to find the best insights.
Collin Funkhouser 09:58
It really you mentioned. One of the key driving factors for people to avoid this, though, is that fear, that anxiety. But what other kind of beliefs stop us from that and how we interact with the money?
Jamie Trull 10:11
Oh my gosh. There are about a million different beliefs. And I always say this like I can talk about where you are now and give some, you know, some help for being aware of where you are now, but there's so much that comes from you know, your past, your background, how you were raised, what you were taught about money, if you were taught anything about money, right? Like all of that. And I'm not a therapist, that's something you can talk about if you want to get into the why like, go, go chat with a therapist, because I'm sure that they can help there. But I always say that just being aware of your patterns, right? Just being aware of what are the patterns that are getting in your way? And this is true about money, but this is true about pretty much everything in your life. There are certain ways that we get in our own way, and just having that pattern awareness where we can say, Okay, I'm doing this thing. I'm ignoring this, or, you know, I'm chasing this, you know, sometimes maybe it's just chasing various different things, and we're kind of getting that shiny object syndrome. There are. I have actually seen people who, who, and I was one of these people for a long time who actually was afraid to invest in my business, and so I ran so lean, which in some ways was great, in other ways, really hampered my growth for a while. And so that might be your issue, right? Or maybe there's an overspending thing that comes into play. There are a million different ways in which we might have patterns that we are in when it comes to money. They may or may not be the same patterns you have with personal finances. So it just depends. You can kind of look at it separately. Maybe I've heard of people who are one way in their business and a complete opposite in their personal life. So I think just the awareness of those patterns, and then as it starts to happen, you can realize, oh, wait, this pattern isn't really serving me right. Like this pattern has not led me to a good place in the past. How can I do something different now, right? How can I take this a different direction and see if that puts me in a better place?
Collin Funkhouser 12:08
I think people may be surprised to hear that running too lean can harm your business, but that when you said that, it really struck me, because something that Megan and I realized last year is our tendency to run way too lean. And it started because we started pet sitting and dog walking in graduate school to make money to pay for graduate school. So it was very easy for us to take 100% from the business and throw at our expenses, which left, looking back left. The business withered. It had nothing to do anything with because we were taking everything out of it to pay our expenses. And that mindset of take everything out of it, because I got to pay, take everything out of it, because I got to pay, is we realized kind of the last year or two was was limiting our ability to help our team advertise, invest in tools and resources, because we were just taking everything out of it instead of going you need some of this to survive business, and have that mindset of business over here, me over here, and they are separate.
Jamie Trull 13:06
Yeah, yeah. And if you you know there is a trade off, right? So in the beginning, at least, there is a trade off where, especially if you're this, happens the most when you're maybe a solopreneur, and you're trying to hire, and a lot of people feel like they can't hire, and there could be pricing issues and things in there that are preventing that. But the fear is, okay, if I hire someone now, all of a sudden, even with the same number of clients, I'm making a fraction of the money, because so much of the money is going out to pay this person. And that's true you for a limited time, right, as the owner will be able to take less out of the business, assuming you move all those clients to a new person. However, all of a sudden you have a lot of time on your hands now, right, which you can either reinvest into the business, if you want to, and get more clients or grow your business, right? Or you can use it because, you know, take some vacations once in a while. Think about that, right? Crazy, right? I know. And so what I always the mindset that I tell people when they run too lean. And this is what finally got to me, because I was running super lean. I was I was afraid to hire, afraid to commit. I was hiring, like, just part time contractors, and refused to, like, really commit and say, this is a business that I want to build. And what I realized finally is there are only two things, if I want to grow and scale my business if I want to grow, and thus my income right if I want to grow. There are two things I can invest in my business. I can invest my money, or I can invest my time. And usually we're doing a combination of both of those things. But I realized, the more money I invest in my business, the less time I have to invest. And I think at the very beginning of a business we usually are. We are more ample on time than we are on money, and so that's where bootstrapping comes in. That's where, like, Hey, we're doing all the things, we're wearing all the hats. But once you have a sustainable income and you've grown a business, and you've got customers, and you've got demand, and you know, you have all that, that kind. Down, all of a sudden, the equation shifts a little bit. And that's where people kind of get into this running ragged, and they you kind of hit a wall. And you know when it is, right? You know when you hit a wall and you're like, Man, I feel like I've capped out at this point. I'm tired. I don't want to do all of this work. Well, now it's time. And actually, probably before you got to that point, it was time to start letting your money do some of that work for you, right? You don't have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. And in fact, and people think like, oh, it's financially irresponsible, if I'm, you know, spending more money, that's not true in a business. That's, that's a negative. That's, that may be true in your personal life, right? That's not true in your business because you're investing in an asset. That asset is growing your business, right? And when you use and invest your money to grow an actual asset that is going to produce money for you over a longer period of time, that is the best use of your money. So I just kind of whenever, if you're running into a wall, right, if you have demand, you don't have enough time, and you feel like you're just exhausted and burned out, then it's now time and again. Probably was time a while ago to really be utilizing your money more as that investment tool. And now I kind of have a different view where, where? Whenever I start to feel like I have so much to do, I start thinking, how can I invest my money to free up more of my time, right? How can I bring because I have, now, at this point, more money than I have time. My time is limited. It is a finite resource. There's only so much I have two young kids. I you know, I want to be able to enjoy my life. Time is is more precious to me now than my money is. And I think that's true for most people, but
Collin Funkhouser 16:35
we don't act like it, right? Yeah, we say, we say, what's important to it, but we act completely different. And I think that gets a lot to the belief or understanding about what our business is. And you hit it there, Jamie, when you said that we're investing in an asset. And for most of us, we don't view our business as an asset. It's a job, it's a thing that we do, but it's not an asset. And that that is a again, this that's that's a heavy mindset shift to take when you look at your business as an asset versus just a job and tasks?
Jamie Trull 17:07
Yeah, yeah. Because if you grow it to be something that can generate income for you, whether you work or not. Isn't that the dream most people have, right? But so often we're not really taking the steps to get to that place. And there are lots of reasons why. I'm not saying that it's an easy thing to do. It's an easy switch to make. It is not managing employees brings it to a whole nother level to you know, problems in business. It doesn't just get a hunky dory once you hire people to help you. We know that, right? Anybody who's hired anyone knows that's true. But it's still worth it, right? It's still worth it for what it can provide on the
Collin Funkhouser 17:44
back end. Have you heard of time to pet? Dan from NYC? Pooch has this to say? Time to
Speaker 1 17:51
bet, has been a total game changer for us. It helped us streamline many aspects of our operation, from scheduling and communication to billing and customer management. We actually tested other pet sitting softwares in the past, but these other solutions were clunky and riddled with problems. Everything in time to pet has been so well thought out. It's intuitive, feature rich, and it's always improving.
Collin Funkhouser 18:11
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confessional well, you kind of that's different scale with different with adding employees, with growing talk about how money struggles change across scale of business, and what we need to be
Jamie Trull 18:30
watching out for. Yeah, I think, I think there's definitely grass is always greener situation with this right, where even people who have teams like, there are times that I get nostalgic for back when it was just me, right? Because now all of a sudden, in my brain, I forgot, oh, I was working like 70 hours a week in my business and crying, you know, the time, and lost it, right? But now I'm like, Oh, it was so fun to bootstrap and try these things and all, and didn't have to worry about, you know, managing people. And this the some of the frustrations that come around that. But then, you know, on the flip side, right? If you are in that zone of like, it's all on you, the idea of having others to share that and to help you, probably sounds amazing. And so the the the things that will get in your way change. There will always be things to get in your way. There will always be things to work through. Those challenges will always exist, right? It's just the challenge of building. And so in different stages, you're going to have one issue. Then once you're on to the next stage, you're still going to have issues that are just going to change. And we need to resist the urge to try to go backwards, right? Sometimes people do that where they maybe hire their first employee, it doesn't go well, and they're like, I'm just going to do it all myself. Right? This is why it confirms like, this is why I didn't want to hire anybody to begin with. It's better if I just do it myself. But there's also a lot of growth opportunity I know, for me as a recovering control freak, a lot of growth opportunity in hiring people. And I have the most amazing team in the world. Do they do everything? Exactly the way that I would do it. No, did I struggle with that mightily for a long time? Yes, did I let it prevent me from delegating in the way that I should have Yes, have I now gotten to the point where I'm like, You know what? It's okay if they don't do it, they're not in my brain. They don't have to do it the same way that I'm going to do it. If it's 80% of the way there, great. I didn't have to do it anything, and that is worth it, right? But it's but it is all growth like I just think entrepreneurship forces you to grow, especially if you want to grow something that is sustainable, it forces you to also grow yourself at the exact same time. And that's the difference I see between business owners and entrepreneurs that are really successful is if they say, You know what, I realized that I also need to grow. I need to grow into the leader that I want to be, and I'm not going to stay stagnant. And so people who listen to stuff like your podcast, right? Like, that's because they want to learn and they want to grow. So that's the mindset you need to have in order to be successful in business, that's like more than half the battle, I would say,
Collin Funkhouser 21:05
knowing and knowing that things can and should change. I think that's the other thing too. With this of as you grow, sometimes it's, it's not just, oh, I can't operate the way I used to. It's, I shouldn't operate the way I used to. Because as that growth happens, you do expose things in your business, where you know, when you had five clients, you could operate a certain way, and then when you've got 500 clients, well, I can't operate. And same thing with our finances, too, where all of a sudden, as I grow, it's not just I'm adding more money in my pocket. It's sometimes there are some really serious things that you uncover as you add scale to that?
Jamie Trull 21:40
Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, it's things that you know, inefficiency in scheduling when you have five clients, it probably isn't doing a whole heck of a lot right. Inefficiency in scheduling when you have 500 clients, all of a sudden, that probably 1000s of dollars out the door, you know, every month that you're missing out on. That's just some tweaks and efficiency could help fix and so it does it. Problems that already exist, as you grow are going to become more and more visible, right? And so the more we can kind of tweak along the way. Again, that's part of looking at your numbers is not waiting until it's a massive, huge problem, which is often when people look at finances, when I see people buying my programs, I our business does amazing when the economy is not doing well. And I find it interesting because I'm like, you know, had people been interested in this, in the good times, they would have had the stores, the, you know, the rainy day funds, things like that, they would have already been kind of in that adaptable phase, but now all of a sudden they're scrambling later on. And so I think that's a normal thing, right? Like, we don't want to address a problem until it's like, right in front of our face, but the more proactive we can be on our finances, the better that we're going to be, no matter what happens economically, no matter what. And that's that's like, what resiliency really is, right?
Collin Funkhouser 23:03
Yeah, well, and that resiliency starts, like you said, with that rainy day fund, which means that I have to have excess money in my business to set aside. And that's really hard in a business like this industry where we have razor thin margins, not quite as bad as like grocers, where it's like, oh, I made 1% profit on my stuff. So it's like, Okay, we are a little bit better than that. Better than that. But how should that? How should our understanding of our profit margins and our money that we have in addition? How should that impact some of these decisions around pricing and and profitability in our business?
Jamie Trull 23:37
Yeah, I mean, I think first, like knowing your profit margins on a product or service basis. A lot of times people know, like, overall, okay, you know, I brought in $100,000 I kept $20,000 at the end of the day. So I have a 20% profit margin that I was able to pay myself out of okay? But if you break it down on a product or service basis, so in this case, you know the various different services that you have, what's bringing in the most money? What's the most profitable not just from a what you're charging for it, but when you consider the cost of labor. And what I tell people, This is huge. If you're a solopreneur, and you're like, Well, I don't have a cost of labor because I'm not paying an employee. Yeah, you do. You do, right? And so it's your time, and your time is worth money. And so you have to think about, if I were to hire an employee to do this for me, how much would I have to pay them, and how much would I have to add, you know, if I'm paying them as an employee in taxes? Okay, now I need to take that number and increase it so that if I do hire someone down the line, right, I don't, all of a sudden, have to increase my prices for all of my, you know, clients now because of the fact that I have no margin so people who feel like, Oh, I can't hire. Like, that's a very common thing with service providers who are solopreneurs, they're like, I can't hire. I wouldn't make any money because you're not priced, right? You need to, need to be priced, not just as you know. You need to be paying yourself more than you would be paying yourself if you went to work for somebody else who. Had a pet services business, right? If you are paying yourself what you know, then go get a job. It'd be much easier, right? Like, let someone else manage all of the things. So you need to be building in margins that not just pay your employees, but also pay you as the business owner, which can feel uncomfortable because you, may be competing with those low margin you know, solopreneurs, and you might be thinking like, I can't actually increase my prices, because then I'm not going to get any business. But that's where, you know, there are other things we can do around that, right, cost control, differentiation, marketing, all kinds of things, but ultimately, we need to make sure that we are priced profitably on all of our products and services, and that can be very difficult to ensure, and we need to make sure we have good cash flow, right? So ideally meaning even if you're profitable, right? But let's say you're not billing until after your visits. Well, now that may have been fine when it was just you, but now when you have an employee and you have to pay them before you've received money from the client for that visit, all of a sudden you end up in these cash flow crunches, which could end up bringing you into debt, even if you're profitably priced. So you know, when you hire employees, that's another one of those things that happens where we have to think about cash flow wasn't as much of an issue. Now, now that I have employees, cash flow is a big issue, because I can't just not pay my employees. That wouldn't really work out very well. They wouldn't be in my employees for long. So profitability is part of it, but so is kind of looking at timing of cash flow, and when your cash is coming in and when your cash is
Collin Funkhouser 26:33
going out. I think a lot about that transition for pet sitters from Christmas into January, because Christmas you get your team has all of the hours, all of the time is put in, and then but, but that check doesn't go out until January. And are you making in? Are you bringing in a lot of payments for January to pay for December? No, no, you were not. And that's immediately when we feel that pain, when we try to make that transition, if we don't have that cash flow managed. That's just like a really, real world example that I've seen over and over again, and that time where people go, you know, I need to hire. And I love how you mentioned, like, you got those, those low margins solos, and again, can be fine when you're solo, because what expenses do you have? But when you go to make that thing, all of a sudden you're going, Oh, I can't, I can't do this. But unfortunately, I was busy sometimes because I was so cheap, because my prices were so low, and now I need to grow, and I feel like I have cash, but I don't have enough. Like, you get this really messy middle when you try and make these leaps across the scale.
Jamie Trull 27:34
Yep, absolutely. And so that to your point, exactly right. You might be thinking, well, I need to hire because I don't have enough time, because I have so many bookings, but you maybe you have so many bookings because you're not charging enough, right? And so it's this, it's this interplay. Everything has an interplay. Yes, when you increase your prices, you're probably going to get less bookings, but that's okay, right? That's okay because you might be still making more money and working less. Like, Why is that bad? Yeah, right. I think there's just a lot of fear sometimes between making that decision. And I think that there can be, and this, I think, is rightfully so, right? Sometimes we worry about our clientele, but I tell people, like, don't get in your clients pockets, right? Like, don't suppose you know what their situation is, what they can and can't afford, and you're the boss, you can always make a decision if somebody that you really want to stay working for can't afford an increase. Okay, fine, then on that case by case basis, you don't have to do it, but I think when we try to keep our prices low to be accessible, it can actually shoot us in the foot. And then we're, we are at risk of not being a sustainable company, right? And you're when you're at risk of going out of business at any point in time. That's not helpful for your clients, that's not going to be good for them. So it's important just to be a sustainable business, to have prices that actually support you. When I'm hiring service providers, I wouldn't want if I heard them tell me, like, Oh, I'm barely making it, I'd be like, I'll pay you more. Like, charge more. Why? You know, I don't You don't need to do that on my behalf, right? They don't want that for you. They want you to be doing well enough that you can continue your business and continue what you're doing for them and what they appreciate, right?
Collin Funkhouser 29:09
Yeah, we sent out a client survey to all of our clients, and some things came back to them. And one of them, you know, said, Okay, we love your community, your communication, your training, blah, blah. But I was shocked by the number of people when it said, we have a question that says, What do you hope we never stop doing? And the number of people that wrote, being here for me, being here for me, being here like, Okay, I'm on a mission now. What do we need to do? How do we need to price? How do we need to structure to be here for people?
Jamie Trull 29:40
And that's your tagline too. So not even just structuring it that way, but marketing it that way, if that's what your clients see in you. So like talking about differentiation, okay, you might be worrying I can't increase my prices because competition all that. Okay, but how are you different? And why would people pay more for yours if your competitors are charging less and you hit the. Nail, right? Like, ask your customers why they hire you. That's like your new tagline, Collin, like, we're here for you, right? And then you and then you build that that's now a company culture, and you build it into everything that you do, and all of a sudden you're like, this giant behemoth of a company, because people know what you stand for. Your customers love you. You do what you're saying you're going to do, and you're there for them the end. And people are not they're going to and they're going to rave about you to all of their friends, and you're going to have more referral business than you know what to do with, right? That's how you do it. When we compete on price, we lose all the time, 100% of the time. If price is your main form of setting yourself apart from somebody, your business will not stay around long, and you won't get the clients that you really want either they don't value your your services. You're just the cheapest, right? Yeah. So that's something to just keep in mind.
Collin Funkhouser 30:49
Well, you know? So this is really about, like, commoditization of an industry and, and I think we watch other people do it and think, oh, man, those industries look at them from for people, I think first, what it truly is commoditization, and what are the dangers to an overall industry, in our individual businesses?
Jamie Trull 31:07
I you know, what's interesting is, I think that there are industries that have become commoditized, but even in those industries, you see outliers. So commoditization is like, everything's kind of the same. There's no real major differentiation there. You know, it's everything. You know, customers are pretty much just looking at price. That's typically, if something is a commodity, they're not going to shop around based on preferences, things like that. Now, I think the thing that helps is there is always in this industry, like the fear of commoditization. The people that should fear commoditization are the people that have absolutely nothing special or different about them, right? If you are, if you can't say why you are different than any other business around you offering the same thing you are, you are in jeopardy of of being a commodity. But even in a situation where other people may feel like they're in a commodity business if you act as if you aren't right, if you make choices that say, You know what, I'm not. I, at one point, was giving a talk and talking about commoditization, and I was talking about water, right? And I was like, you know, there are certain things that like, it's really hard to differentiate. But then I looked at the people on the Zoom meeting that I was with, and one of them was drinking like, you know, a tap water that they just got out of the tap. One of them was drinking like a Kirkland bottle from Costco. And one of them had one of those, like, liquid death, which costs like, five times the amount of, you know, this Kirkland 30 cent bottle or whatever, right? And I was like, even water, right? Even water like that's the most commodity of commodities I can think of. And yet, they've found a way to stand apart and have people pay five times as much for the basically the same thing, right? So the beauty of marketing and branding and all and having like something that you stand for, people will get behind that you just have to be clear on who you are. And so that's kind of when, when people talk about pricing, I'm like, How are you different, though? Because people will pay for something that feels different, right? And you have to tell them why you're different, too. You can't just assume they know. That means you have to know.
Collin Funkhouser 33:15
And I you know that that takes having an opinion as a business owner, and that's that is difficult, I know, like when we look at our marketing messages, you know, sure, we'll go look at other people in our error area who are offering similar services and things like that, and go, if I were to cover up their name and this photo, could I tell the difference between us? And there are times where we go, no, no, there can't, because it's all because we just wrote generic. I love pets, I'm professional. I'll serve you like my family. I'm amazing, you know, like, it's like, oh, oh no. Like, I didn't have an opinion, I didn't have a direction for the business to make me just stand out in just that way, alone. Now we have to have the services and stuff to back that up, to really, you know, justify what support that? However, it starts with that cleaving off of the message and having that opinion as a as an individual and as a as a business.
Jamie Trull 34:11
Yeah, absolutely. And the more you run that way as a business, it also gives a framework for how people, how your employees, are going to make decisions in the field, right? Like, if you're if your thing is, like, we are here for you, right? If your employees know that, then they know if something, something happens, right? Like, they know what they need to do. They don't have to call Collin and be like, What do I do in this scenario? They they are able to say, like, Okay, what would I do, you know, to make sure that I'm putting their needs first and showing them that I'm here for them, right? And so it's like, maybe you you walk into a house and there's a leak or something, and it's like, what do I do in this scenario? Well, no, you know, you contact the client and you tell them about it, because all of a sudden they're like, oh, they were really here for me. And that's not even part of their job, right? So it's things like that that, um. Really can just set you apart. But it does also, if you have a business with employees, it gives, even with one employee, right? It gives a framework for decision making, and that's been really key for us, too in our business. Like, one of the things that we always talk about for our business is we, we come to meetings and my employees will talk about their wins and their wows. And the wows are ways in which we've been able to go above and beyond for a customer, right? So there's been something that, you know, maybe they ran into a roadblock, or whatever it was, and so they know, like, Hey, Jamie wants me to spend my time doing this, you know? So if there's an opportunity, your team will see those opportunities to differentiate themselves, right? And that's the beauty of it. And then you can celebrate those things, and that will just continue to increase your brand image and make you just something everybody needs to tell people about.
Collin Funkhouser 35:53
I love that basically, okay, commoditization is this race to the bottom, undifferentiated services. How do we avoid that? By choosing to not do that right, like it's a conscious effort on our part. You're an adult, you can just do this, right? I don't know what they what big commoditization doesn't want you to know. You can just choose not to, yeah, be different,
Jamie Trull 36:15
you know, be different somehow.
Collin Funkhouser 36:16
Yeah, and it really makes that. It makes a it impacts your your clients, your team, you as well. When you have those, those those guiding principles around your business,
Jamie Trull 36:29
it gives me, yeah, like, I'm just thinking of different ideas of you know, maybe you're the the easiest to book, right? Like, so you put a lot of effort into your your booking methodology, to make it really easy and flexible for your people, or what. There's so many different ways you can differentiate. And then, you know, let that become your brand image, right?
Collin Funkhouser 36:51
If you've been in pet care long enough, you know the truth, the way that we show up during the hard moments is what clients remember the most. Pet perennials helps pet businesses do exactly that. They create beautiful sympathy and milestone gifts for pet parents, and their gift perks program makes it easy to send those gifts directly to your clients. No inventory, no packing boxes, no running to the post office. You simply choose the gift and pet perennials takes care of the rest. They also include a handwritten card and colorful gift wrap at no additional cost. It's just a thoughtful way to support grieving pet clients, while also building the kind of long term loyalty that great pet businesses are built on. Learn more and open a free gift perks account at Pet perennials.com allowing yourself to again and then you're living out those values. It's not just corporate speak. It's not just, you know, on your website or stuff. It's not just this meaningless drivel. All of a sudden, it's yeah, it's really impactful to make decisions. And it's real. It's real, yeah, it allows you to make those real world implications. And you mentioned the cash flow earlier. I know a decision that some business owners start trying to go between is, how much do I cash flow versus? How much do I use debt and use that in my business to grow or to make these initiatives? What's your opinion on that, especially for small service providers?
Jamie Trull 38:12
Yeah, I am generally. In general, my rule is where possible, outside of specific circumstances, I prefer to use yesterday's money, not tomorrow's right? If I'm using yesterday's money, my money is now working for me. I'm rarely going to go into debt to invest in my business, unless, unless. Now, I don't think debt, all debt is bad. I think debt can absolutely be used as a tool, but I don't think that our culture encourages us to use it as a tool. I think, you know, when we see even the little things that are like, Oh, you can get your money three days, you know, faster, two days faster by paying this 3% fee, right? We don't realize that, but that actually is a form of debt we are paying for access to our money, where there may be ways that we can actually just move around our cash collections and things like that, where we don't run into these cash crunches in the same way. So I say debt is not a great thing if you're plugging holes, right? If you're just trying to pay today's bills with tomorrow's money, that's not good debt now you're in a habits really hard to get out of that practice. Really, really hard. It takes a lot of intentionality, socking away a little bit at a time to make sure that you can kind of get back to where you don't have to do that any that anymore. And but there's a feeling with that kind of debt, where that you're always behind, right? And like, that's not a good feeling for anyone to have. You don't want to sit in that feeling. So I tend to, you know, like to invest with yesterday's money. Now there are situations where, like, if you are going to buy a facility like that, and you have a business plan, and you've looked at the profitability and done all your projections, right? That's a great use of debt. That's, you know, again, if you do it responsibly with a plan, and it's for something like that, that's a very specific use that you're going to use to, like, actually see a return. Investment. So that's the key. Are you going to get a return on that debt in excess of the amount you paid in interest? If the answer is no, you're just borrowing from your future self, right? If the answer is yes, then that's an investment in your business. So that's kind of the framework that I use when I'm trying to decide if debt makes sense
Collin Funkhouser 40:19
or not, yeah, especially in the context of what we talked about earlier, of that cash flow with payroll, I know many businesses who are taking out small monthly loans to make pay finance your
Jamie Trull 40:28
payroll, because now, all of a sudden, like you're now your employees, you think cost X amount, well, now they cost X amount above that, because you're having to finance it, right? Yeah, I'd rather honestly pay my employees more, if that's the case, then to pay interest to the bank,
Collin Funkhouser 40:45
absolutely you'd rather, because then you are again investing back in your business, because you're spending it anyway. Yeah, exactly. Might as well instead of just
Jamie Trull 40:53
giving it away, exactly, right? Or split the difference like half goes your employee and half goes to you. Great. Everybody's happy, but the bank ain't getting it. Benefactor there, right?
Collin Funkhouser 41:03
Yeah, as we look to go from busy to profitable, or, you know, because I often see a lot of people who are busy but broke in their businesses, what other kind of shifts do we need to make in our business?
Jamie Trull 41:16
Oh, my, I mean, I think again, like it depends on the person. It depends on the person and where you are in your business, but I think the biggest shift is just thinking about your business as a business. That's that's the biggest thing. Oftentimes, when you start with more of a solopreneur or like a freelancer mentality, right? That's when you almost, it's almost kind of similar to what you said, Collin, it's like having a job, right? And that actually works. If, for some people, that's what they want, they want, that is totally fine for them, where they're in that kind of trading dollars for hours, but for a lot of people who want to grow and scale past that, and want to not and want to be able to take a vacation every once in a while without their income dropping, you know, significantly to do so, right? That's when you shift into more that kind of CEO mentality, where now you're running a small business, right? And I think terminology matters there too. Like, what do you call yourself? If somebody says, What do you do? What do you answer? Right? Like, what's your answer to that question? And I was talking with a group that I'm part of recently, and I asked that question, and I was the only one in the room that said, Well, I and they're similar businesses to mine, but they were like, Oh, I'm a content creator, I'm this, I'm that, and I'm like, I'm a business owner. Like, that's how I see myself. And when you make that shift, you will make different decisions, right? Like, when you see yourself as not you know, a pet sitter as not what, whatever it is like, however you you, you know, you voice that when you change that to like, I'm a business owner. I own a business, all of a sudden you make, you start making decisions like a business owner, right? You start seeing differently. You start seeing your role in the business differently. You don't feel bad for your employees working more than you do, because that's kind of the point, right? Like, that's why we hire them, so that we can have I remember people talking about that when we were at dog co like, Oh, I feel bad, but that's that you're hiring them for a job. And then you get to focus on the things that only you can do. There's a different mentality there, right? And then, you know, you get better at delegation and outsourcing and and systems and all of those things. But if you don't see yourself in that way, if you don't make that mindset shift, it's really hard to to really be able to function, you know, in that role.
Collin Funkhouser 43:34
Yeah, because you stop you stop reacting, and you can actually start, like, designing your business. I don't it was a shit. It still is a shift for me when we go to business networking things or Chamber of Commerce events or things like, people, what do you do? My first reaction is to say I'm a dog walker and pet sitter. Like, that's just because for 10, for a decade, it was just Megan and I, and so to now say I run a company who provides premium pet care services to people in our community, right? Like, like, it sounds like, I'm not a big person who believes in, like, ooh, like, words have magical power, who can stuff things, but what it does do is it changes your mindset around what you do. Yeah, that's, that's where that power actually happens.
Jamie Trull 44:16
How do you see yourself, right? It's not about doesn't matter how other people perceive you. And I think sometimes we get wrapped up in that, right? But how do you perceive yourself? That's the key question there. And so I think, like, even, even with all the conversation about finances, right? Bringing it back to that, it's often the people who don't see themselves in that role that struggle the most, because they almost don't take that role on. They're almost avoiding it. They're like, No, I'm a pet sitter. Like, this isn't my role. Because I'm a pet sitter. No, you're a business owner, right? This is your role. This is part of it. And so when you make that shift, you're gonna look at your finances more, you're gonna realize, like, Okay, this is part of what I do to be a business owner, right?
Collin Funkhouser 44:56
I know there's also a middle stage that Megan and I worked through, of. We went from pets or dog walker to just manager in our business, and we didn't make that leap to CEO until after a little while, right? We kind of hovered in just that manager spot. We had that middle point of manager mindset instead of CEO mindset, and we sat in that manager mindset for a long time because we thought that's the CEO mindset, because look under I'm taking, but we weren't doing anything new. We weren't planning anything. We weren't sending any new directions. We didn't take that next step to be the CEO of our business that we really needed for a long time.
Jamie Trull 45:34
Yeah, that the E Myth, I think, talks about that, that book that was one of the first books I read when I started my business, but yeah, I think it is. It's a stair step, right? And so there is a time where a lot of your duties may be, we tend to to be holding on to many hats, and you may still be kind of in the operation phase on your business, right? So there's like the operator, the manager, and then there's kind of the CEO, more strategic side of things. And for a lot of times, we're doing all three of those, right? But I think the more we can identify with the CEO, who sometimes also is in charge of managing and sometimes also might be out in the field, right? But like your main the main thing that you bring to this business, your highest and best use in the business is as that strategic CEO, right? Everything else falls apart without that. And that's something you can't hire anybody else. It's gonna be really hard and or really expensive to hire somebody else to do that piece. So we can't lose that in the midst, even if, even if, maybe it's only 10% of your time is spent on that in the beginning, right? At least start with something with the goal of, okay, I'm going to get rid of the operator first. Now I'm going to kind of sit between this manager CEO, but that's not forever, right? And then I'm going to kind of slowly, as I have cash flow and profit to support it, get out of the that role as well, right? Whether you're hiring people to do it, whether you're systemizing, systematizing things so that you don't have to do as much day to day management, right? That's a goal is to kind of get more of your time at the highest and best use, right, right?
Collin Funkhouser 47:08
Well, and I know you mentioned earlier, one of the one of the goals that a lot of us have as a business owner, is to have that time back to do other stuff. I know another goal that more and more people are having, and this is something that I think the pet sitting and dog walking industry has really woken up to in the past, maybe five, 610, years, is I could sell my business, right? Like, this is, this is something I could do and, and it sounds what? If that's a goal we have. How do I start steering towards that from where I am right now, yeah.
Jamie Trull 47:42
And that is, you know, when we talk about building an asset, right? Like, What would someone want to buy? You need to be building something, not just doing and so I think when we, I think that's the same kind of shift, right? Is when we're working all the time in the business versus spending time as the CEO, right? We we really are building something when we can function more in the CEO. We're building something sustainable. We're building something marketable later, right? Because nobody wants to buy a business that's just you running around and, you know, like, and you don't want to sell a business that's just you running around serving clients. And in that case, maybe you're only, you know, selling your clients, but that has a lot less value to a buyer, right? Like you may be able to sell your clients to somebody for, you know, pennies on the dollar, but if you sell a business, then that's a whole different deal. If your business has employee and structure and processes and all of that, then somebody can come in and, you know, functionally, take over your business and make money off of it without them having to then be in the operator role. No, nobody buying a business wants to jump into the operator role. Otherwise, they just do it themselves. So I think that's the key. And I know we I said I wouldn't talk about EBITDA, but that is one of the things that they look at, is your your earnings. Essentially, it's your earnings before all the funny junk, right? So essentially, it's just, you know, revenue minus expenses. How much money are you making in your business? Most businesses sell as a multiple of that, so, but they will often back out, you know, anything regarding the owner, right? So they, they'll if it's just you, and you think, like, Oh, my profits huge on paper. Well, they're going to account for that, even if you don't, right? So it's not, it doesn't just all look hunky dory in that, in that case, right?
Collin Funkhouser 49:34
Well, and, and it is. It's wonderful to know. And I think this is where we get a lot of hang ups if we think again, oh, I'll get to it, just like our mindset around taxes, oh, I'll get to it when that time always Yeah, instead of hey, it turns out a lot of the practices and things I need to have in place in order to sell a business and do do good at that make money off of that will also help improve my business function today. Yeah. And so you get to. Reap those rewards early and sustained all the way through, as long as you keep your business.
Jamie Trull 50:06
Yeah, one of the things that I I try to live by, I don't always, but it is one of those CEO mindsets that I try to remember in the back of my head always is not to put the urgent in front of the important, right? So we there's always fires to fight. There's always things we have to deal with that need to be dealt with today. However, that means we're always putting this other stuff that doesn't have, like, a clear deadline on it, right? That becomes a tomorrow thing, and then and tomorrow, it'll become a next day thing, and then it just keeps we kick the can, right? So if we don't build that into our normal routines, we're just going to kick the can down the road, probably for eternity. Because let me tell you, if we're never putting the important first, the urgent will exist always. We will always be in putting out fires mode, because we haven't taken the intentional time to be proactive. We are living in reactive world, right? And that's true about finances. I do. I talk about how I do Money Mondays all the time, which is every Monday I sit down, even if, even if I only have an hour, that's fine. There's always at least an hour on my calendar that is to sit down. Look at my bank accounts, you know, look at my my bookkeeping. Make some key decisions, and again, like it becomes easier and faster every time. So I don't need four hours anymore. I used to, I used to spend a lot of time on that, and maybe when you're starting out, it is kind of digging in, but then you kind of get into a rhythm, and now all of a sudden, you're putting the important in front of the urgent. And, oh, look, you have less urgent things coming up because you already proactively thought about a lot of them, not all of them. That's not like a realistic goal, but I'm really, I think that that is a really big mindset shift when we get into that CEO level of you know, managers are reactive. Managers are going to be reactive. Operators are going to be reactive. CEOs are going to be proactive, and that is going to be benefit your business the most. And that's why I say that that's such an important role that you cannot skip out on, because it affects everybody when you're not proactively planning, right? We know this.
Collin Funkhouser 52:06
You know, because we'll take some conversations sometimes that if we're not planning, like we've tried to have conversations with employees where we're just like, hey, this is a problem. And immediately, what do they do? They look at us and they go, Okay, how are we going to fix that? Or what's your plan? And there are times where Megan and I would go, right? That's Oh, that was a me, oh, I, I didn't do that. Give me a day and let me get back to you. It slows down your progress. It makes things more confusing for you as you're working through if you don't have a plan, which means you don't have a direction, which means when you have decisions to make. You sit on them longer. You miss opportunities more. And when you when you think about it, with your finances of okay, well, do I invest in myself, or do I reinvest in the business? Do I Do I pay an employee, or do I get a CPA? Do I like all the stuff? If we just delay, delay, delay, delay, we end up in a much worse scenario than we if we would have had clarity in the
Jamie Trull 53:00
beginning with a lot less choices, right, right? You know, like our choices are now gone. Yes, I tell people when they if you get your P and L together for the year and you're like, Man, I made less profit than I thought. I'm like, well, it is what it is now, right? There's nothing we can do at this point. Then they often don't say, don't think the next step is like, Oh, well, how can I make it better this year? It's just back to business as usual. I'm like, the same thing is going to happen again, right? The exact same thing, unless we make and it's easier said than done, I recognize that, right? It's absolutely easier said than done. People are people. We're not always rational. We don't always do the things that we're supposed to do. Every one of us has a list of things that we procrastinate, right? And so even though money isn't one of those, for me most of the time, there are a lot of other things that I feel that same like, Oh man, I should be doing this. I should be doing this. But it is part of, like, getting out of the guilt and shame response, which is like, I'll just ignore it, and then I don't have to feel those hard feelings to realizing, like it's okay to have the feelings and then move past it right. Like, now we're moving on, and we're that's part of what I talk about with growth, right? We need to have that growth and that leadership to sometimes combat some of normal human reactions, which are shame, guilt or blame. If we don't want to feel shame and guilt, maybe we blame somebody. We blame our team. But at the end of the day, the more we can take accountability of all of these things in our business, the better leader we're going to be in the best, better business that we're going to have, and the more people will want to work for us.
Collin Funkhouser 54:27
You know, Jamie, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today and for encouraging us to have some better money mindsets and some healthier relationships with this and start working on some foundational stuffs in our business to help us, not just today, but in the future as well. There's a lot here. You do an awful lot. You're an author, and you're everywhere for those who are interested in getting connected, following along and learning more about this. How can people do that?
Jamie Trull 54:53
Absolutely. So Jamie trell.com is where you can go to just kind of see what we're all about. And has links to all the things. Also, just looking at my YouTube channel, which is Jamie troll, it's all just free help that you know you need, whether it's taxes, profitability, organization, those are all the things that we talk about regarding business finances. So come on over, like, subscribe all the things I'm supposed to say to do the book. Yeah, we I have a book that came out last year. So that's a great starting point. If you feel like, okay, I need to get the handle on this. 2026 is my year. To get my handle on my finances. The best place to start is the book Hidden Profit so you can find it anywhere you buy books. We do have bonuses still that are available. So Jamie troll.com, forward slash book. I'll give Collin all the links so he'll have them, I'm sure, and you can go check that out and get some fun free bonuses just for buying the book.
Collin Funkhouser 55:49
Awesome. And Jamie, I will have all of those links in the show notes and on the website, so people can get clicked into that and start getting those resources. This has been an absolutely fabulous conversation, Jamie, again. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Jamie Trull 56:01
Thanks for having me, Collin. I really appreciate it.
Collin Funkhouser 56:04
How are you investing in your business? I love how Jamie put it in two points. You can either invest money or we can invest our time, and sometimes both are required. Investing money in our business looks like having good policies and procedures, it can look like hiring employees and having admin staff helping and assisting our business. Investing our time is the door knocking, the networking, the up, leveling our skill sets and our knowledge base, and us putting in the time to make things better. Both of these are an investment, and what problem we are trying to solve in our business should dictate the investment that we are going to make that's commensurate with that. So again, how are you investing in your business? Too often we can refrain from investing and spending that money and spending that time out of fear, anxiety, uncertainty or lack of clarity around the problem or the direction that we're trying to head. And ultimately, what that means is that our business languishes. Our business will kind of level out to the biggest problem and never be able to advance beyond that. Take time this week to find that problem, narrow down the scope that investment that you're doing, and then focus on that until that's taken care of. We want to thank our sponsors today. Time to pet and pet perennials for making this show possible. And we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon. You.
