Welcome to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm Brett Gallant, cybersecurity thought leader and founder of Adaptive Office Solutions. Here, we don't just talk tech, we unlock the strategies, stories, and mindset shifts you need to stay secure, lead boldly, and thrive in a digital world. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm very pleased to have Amanda Bedell with me today. Amanda is a business profit and acquisition advisor, and she helps business owners unlock hidden profits. Welcome, Amanda. So great to have you.

Brett Gallant

Thank you so much, Brad. Thank you for having me on the Adaptive Mindset.

Amanda Bedell

Hey, so, Amanda, can you share a little bit about your story and a little bit about who you are and places where you may have executed a mindset and overcome a limiting belief with this? There's so much we can unpack. Our conversation is going to go in so many different ways. It's exciting. So, yeah.

Brett Gallant

You believe it. When I saw adaptive mindset, I was like, hmm, I think my friends and family would probably say that I'm one of those people that adapts very quickly. So one of my kind of where I got my chops, if you were if you were to say that is through a bakery business. So I like to set the stage in that it was a hot August Tuesday. So I'm talking about over 90 degrees in Seattle, Washington. It was hot and it was in 2018. I did a post on my Facebook page that said, in the review mirror of life, I will be able to look back at this time and see that these experiences helped me receive my heart's desire and grace and imperfect ways.

Amanda Bedell

Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.

That post was excuse my French. Oh, crap. That is hitting the fan. Yeah.

Yeah.

I just bleep myself out. But it was code. It was Amanda code for things were not right, right? So four months after I had wrote that post, my life changed forever. It was through a decision, a series really of decisions that I had made over the course of almost seven years. I lost my bakery business. So for me, that was a huge public failure. I had started that business from a single farmer's market booth and bootstrapped it to a brick and mortar with a wholesale manufacturing facility too. We had a commercial kitchen. I employed over 20 people during like the holiday season. So we did 2.2 million in annual revenue. But on that August day, I had four maxed out credit cards. I had emptied my 401k, I was literally out of cash. It was so bad that the last credit card I tried to get, I got a $500 spending limit.

Oh wow, okay. You went through it a lot, so yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and you know the reason why I am so lucky to do the work that I'm doing now is that I get to look in that review mirror and say to myself, say to my reflection that you've made it, you got it to the, you got to the other side. And I can't tell you in 2020 or 2021 that I would have been able to see myself here. But here I am, nonetheless.

It's not what you lost, it's what you gained. Like with all that learning and that pain and that transition, what did you gain? You gained these experiences that you can help people and you've come out on the other side with an amazing story, but learning that you can help other people. I'm sure you've had that opportunity to do that.

that so many times. And, you know, I did. I don't I don't know how many people that are listening have done Unleash the Power Within the Tony Robbins event.

I always want to do that. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Well, he does it online now. And it is very I mean, there's nothing like being in a room of 20000 people doing the same experience. But online, there is still power in it. And that's what I did. It was in 2021 or 22. And during one of the exercises, I saw a long hallway that had picture frames of families. that I've helped. And that there was just like so many of them. Because when we're in financial trouble, finances and health are the most stressful things for us in these days. And I've had both overwhelmingly scary situations, one of which almost bankrupt me, another that almost killed me. So when we have businesses that function and do what we envision them to do, like the bakery for me was a global movement. It was, I have celiac disease and it was a gluten-free bakery and I was gonna build this amazing community. And, you know, letting that dream go was so hard and this, but, On top of it, it's that compounding stress of all of the money and all of the bills that business owners deal with all the time. I remember refreshing my bank account, hoping that payroll went through. So cashflow was a huge problem for me. And yeah, just on the other side of it, I'm here to tell people there's another way.

You were running a business that was running you instead of you running the business. I shared that yesterday, actually this morning. the about my own personal journey and I used to have have so much of this business to take my time, but now I've learned from speaking to so many people, like even with people like you, I've learned on the other side of that, you can control that and find something on the other side and make sure that you can inspire people and still serve and put the oxygen mask on so that you can still have, put that energy into yourself so you can serve people.

Yeah, the key lessons for me, I mean, I had no problems. We had lines out the door when it came to sales. So no problems with sales, lines out the door. It was keeping the money, right? So for me, it was like, oh, we don't just need more sales or butts in seats. I needed to understand finances, not from an accounting 101 perspective, from a financial management perspective. And that's the piece that no one's teaching. And strategic pricing and all that.

My bookkeeper has helped me tremendously over the last few years. I don't know if you ever heard of Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn says, watch the panties. I can almost hear his voice right now. So you've learned all these things. What would be the big takeaways you could share with our audience that you've learned that can help others? with your own personal journey and what you've done to help people?

Yeah, I have three takeaways. So the one, the first one is the biggest myth. So the biggest myth that keep businesses stuck is, you know, more sales will fix everything. and we know that that's not the truth, right? I just need more sales and then everything else will come. Profits come later is the other one in the biggest myths. Economies of scale don't work if your unit economics doesn't add up. So if your unit per sale, even in a service-based business, doesn't add up. I worked with a group in Eugene, Oregon. Her packages, it was a service-based company, her packages were $47 negative when we monetized everything that they do. So it was not a question of, do we need her to raise her prices? It was, we need to raise these prices.

Yeah, yesterday.

And it wasn't a message of, oh my gosh, COVID, oh my gosh, how labor is so expensive these days. It was, no, it was, here's the, all of the support you get. This is everything that comes along with this package, kind of a reminder. And then we said, this is the price, not new price. We just said, this is the price. And we ended up raising it 144%.

Yeah. So that's a big one. And you have to like, as business owners and consultants, we have to recognize our worth. And I heard this recently. Imagine all that knowledge you have within you, if it was taken away from you for six months, you lost everything, all that experience, all the experiences you had, and you had nothing. How much would you be willing to pay to get that knowledge back? your worth as a business owner, as a consultant is priceless. And you should never, ever underestimate your worth and what you bring and what you bring as a combination of your team that brings value to the table. We can never forget that. So that was tremendous how you helped that lady.

So like- Yeah.

Yeah. And has it made a difference in her life and her business now?

Oh my god. And that was just one. I mean, recently, just a couple months ago, I went into a small grocery store. And this woman had been running it for 16 years. And she's like, you can just see and feel the stress in her. And she's got this You know 12 page brain dump that she gave me when we first met of all of the things that were wrong with her company, and it was I skimmed through it, of course, you know, but I saw one thing, and it was. her and her staff were doing their math wrong on their units per sale. So as they were pricing every single product, they were pricing it with a markup strategy rather than a profit strategy or profit formula. So what that means is, you know, she wanted to have a 35% markup. So she was doing multiplying 35%, but that doesn't account for her profit for her business. So what she was seeing was her sales were, they were growing, right? But her costs weren't covered. So she was starting to get squeezed.

Her margin was getting smaller.

And it was getting smaller and smaller. Yeah. She's like, I just can't figure it out. She had spent probably $30,000 on different people to help her. And, you know, of course, that's something that I have to deal with all of the time is that I finally come along and they're like, Okay, yeah, Amanda, you can do this for me. And I'm like, No, I really can. But here's how and you know, so With her, we transitioned her formula from a markup formula to the profit formula, and she saw an immediate $30,000 within two weeks, $30,000 in additional revenue, and then in one month, $100,000. So with that, you know, with that example of the service based company in Eugene, and then the one here in Bend, Oregon, that I just started working with, those are two really big examples, of course. But there are strategies in which I may, and I did this with a builder, where I may decrease the profit so that we can sell more. But it all depends on the unique business, the industry that we're in and what we're talking about here. It's all holistic. Don't go away from this episode saying, oh, Amanda said I should just raise my prices and just do it without telling.

No, not one solution fits all. Yeah, yeah. But you bring up a good point. Most people just look at, they don't account for profit and the expenses and accounting for that. And we all know over the last few years, certainly with inflation and our cost of goods, everything has increased. So if we're not accounting for expenses, we're doing that calculation, we're doing a disservice to our organization. And I would argue our clients, because our clients are counting on our companies to be viable. so that we're there for them when we need them. And if we're not putting that the oxygen into the business and what it needs is good profit, then we're doing a disservice to our business and our clients and our communities. I believe that passionately.

100%. I mean, I work with construction workers, general contractors who see subs go out of business all the time. Really difficult. Same with, you know, working with cities and counties who are go, you know, hiring Folks in construction and trades and just seeing those those businesses go out of business. And there's a lot that goes into that, including the turnaround time for money because they're expecting a lot of capital to get these these projects going and then they don't pay for 30 to 60, 90 days. So that's a whole nother thing. But anyway, going back to the three things that I hope everyone gets to take away. The one is the biggest myth. So that the biggest myth, but the number two thing was the three numbers that every entrepreneur needs to track in their business. So three numbers that I really want you to hold as truth and follow those numbers very closely. The first one is your gross profit margin. For those that don't know, that's revenue minus your cost of goods sold divided by your revenue. So what that does is shows you if your profit margin, your gross profit margin is too low, it doesn't matter how many sales you make, you'll never have enough to cover your overhead and your payroll or growth. So that's a huge one right there.

Big one. That's a writer downer folks. So, yeah.

And then, I mean, with that, there's a burnout risk too, because if you're constantly chasing sales to stay afloat, you're running on a hamster wheel. And that's exactly what I did.

I know of a business owner in my industry that used to work 16 hours days. That's not sustainable, not for a good quality life. So yeah.

And I would say that it's actually dangerous because you risk your body being under so much stress that it then is the perfect place to harbor some disease. So that's what happened to me is I actually had cancer. It took two years and now I'm in remission, but we're talking about something that's really serious when we're talking about- Well, yeah, our body responds to that.

You're just making me think of a friend of mine that I worked with a number of years ago. He had cancer. And he said, Bretzner, I think something's wrong. We were running around for a race and I found out he had cancer and he ended up having to get treatment and he kicked it. But he actually made an email called kickingcancersassatyahoo.com. But our bodies do respond to stress and we can control it if we decide to, that stress, if we take action. Yeah.

And that's the fire behind everything that I do is that when you see somebody go from that stress to seeing their bank account balance being having some cushion. Yeah, I can't tell you how much joy that brings me. I've actually kind of tearing up.

You get energy from that, don't you? Yeah.

Yeah, it is. So because it's I just wish that I would have been able to have that happen for me.

But it's you know, I thought because of those experiences, You have that opportunity now, what you learned, that you went through that. And because of that, because of the pain in your journey, look at what you are now empowered to help other people. I believe that's so true in anything in life. Some of our darkest pain, we were given that sometimes for a reason so that we can serve others and make an impact.

So cool. Number two number for you to keep track of. So gross profit margin was one, right? And then number two is the operating expenses, which you made note of earlier in our conversation here. But the operating expenses is, are you spending too much to run your business? The formula there is the total operating expense divided by the revenue. And if your expenses start to creep up beyond the 30 to 40% of your revenue, your profitability is gonna take that hit, even if your sales are growing.

Yeah, you can't catch up to it, yeah.

Yep, it's like running toward something like, what are they called, mirage in the desert.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You'll never see.

I see those on the highway sometimes, yep. The water, yep.

Yeah. And then number three is the cashflow forecast. So your beginning cash plus your incoming cash minus the outgoing cash. So I have a business advisor. I actually have three different people that help me through my company now. I've got a coach, I've got an advisor, and I have a cashflow strategist who helps me because I want to make sure that I don't get it wrong this time. But cashflow is like lettuce is what he says to me. And he's just so adorable. Lettuce. Cash is like lettuce. The only difference between salad and garbage is timing.

Okay. Yeah. Yes. There you go, folks. True. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No cash, no options, that's what happened to me. Last case scenario, I had to hurry up, sell my company, sell it fast and sell it for far less than what it was worth because I didn't have my profit and my cash on lock. So yeah, those are the three numbers. So you don't need more sales, you need better margins, you don't need to work harder, you need to stay in control of your expenses and you don't need to hope for cash, you need to track it and then project it.

Do you think sometimes we overthink and say, you know, I've talked to so many different business owners about raising their price and sometimes it's just in their heads that I can't raise my price. But yes, you can. I heard this on a coaching call. You can raise your prices. It's just a decision that you have to make, but with the right info and making that decision. If you don't take that step, it's sort of like analysis by paralysis. You have to at least do something. So if you're feeling the squeeze, you have to take action. So raise your prices and control your expenses. Like look at that waste and see if there's anything there. Because everybody's got a little bit of, I call it, my bookkeeper called it shiny object syndrome. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah.

We all are, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur or a business owner, you have it, you have shiny object syndrome 100%. With the price, I can tell you when I present in front of a room of business owners, the minute I talk about pricing or increasing pricing, I get a total energy shift and sometimes people... even hold their breath. I'm like, okay, you can breathe now. It's okay, I'm not gonna force it on you. This is not my goal to like make you do something that you're completely uncomfortable with. And that's why when I was talking about that service-based business in Eugene, we went through and monetized everything. So she didn't have that mindset problem. It was like, oh my gosh, I'm paying my own customers to do my work, you know, or do the work for them. So it was clearly $47 in the red and that's for her, she needed that. I also have a formula that you can do on your own is, okay, if you're gonna raise your price by 10%, 20%, whatever that is for you, do the math on how many customers can you lose. Because a lot of times I do this in person, I show that formula saying, okay, I'm gonna do a 10% increase on $100 product. So $110, do we believe people will really leave? The answer is yes, some will, but to what extent can we have that customer attrition?

What's the threshold? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, what's the threshold? Well, the threshold for that example is 25% of them leaving. And that's just not gonna happen over a $10. difference, right? But the $10 difference makes a huge difference for the company because instead of them needing 33, you know, customers to hit 3000, they now need 25. So you really zero in on your ideal customers, those are customers that bring loyalty and just really love to work with you and you let go of some of the ones that may be costing you money anyway, because they're harder to work with.

And take up energy. I think every business has that dynamic. There's some clients that do take up energy.

So many. Yeah, there are.

Yeah. And that's just the reality. So we can't escape that truth.

Yeah. So the last thing that I hope that you all take away is adapt your business model.

Oh. Hello.

I think I internet glitched.

Yeah. So you were saying the last thing you can adapt your business model.

Oh, yes. So the third takeaway that I hope that people take away from our conversation today is how to adapt your business model for profitability without working more.

Yes. And what would you what would you say the key takeaway for that? And just besides that?

Yeah. How the heck do you do that? Yeah, yeah. So what I have is a free profit strategy call and Brett, you're gonna get a link that he's gonna put into the show notes for everyone. But on that free profit strategy call, we identify specifically where money is slipping through the cracks in your business using your numbers and how to stop it. And then I also uncover hidden opportunities that could put more cash into your pocket without adding any work. And the last thing that you get on that call is a clear, actionable plan to take control of your business finances and feel confident in your next steps. So that's the call and a big offer for everyone that's listening.

Okay. And yeah, we'll make sure that that's in the notes and encourage people to have a conversation with Amanda. I know you'll be glad you do. Amanda, I want to ask you something else. I like asking this to all my guests. Has there been any book or any knowledge that's helped you. And you did say this at the beginning, but if maybe there's perhaps there's another book that has inspired you, that's allowed you to pivot your mindset and belief system that has impacted you. I'd love to hear that. Sure.

So if you are looking for ways like let's say that you don't have a great revenue model and what you are looking for is more leads and more sales. very most impactful person that I've ever heard in the land of marketing is Dan Kennedy. There is no one that does this better and for longer than Dan Kennedy. There is a gap between marketing and sales and he seamlessly does it with what's called direct response marketing. It's very different than brand awareness marketing. So there's two different types of marketing. And I could go off on a whole nother tangent there, but Dan Kennedy, look him up. Russell Brunson brought back to life his podcast. So there's some of that there. And then what dovetails for me was I, grabbed a book called 10x is easier than 2x. And that's a very, very amazing book, but I feel like it also needs a compliment to it, which is a $10 million offer, Alex Hermosin.

I have to read that or listen to it. I did the 10X. I listened to it twice. I like to go for walks in the wilderness and hikes. And I invested in some really great headphones. And I get so much energy listening to that and the takeaways. That book is amazing.

It is really, really good. And then I feel that the next step with the 10X is finding your $100 million offer. Your $100 million offer is what shoots you into that 10X version. So I just felt like that was a perfect compliment. It happened sequentially for me that I ended up reading them that and then the next book. Yeah. So that's what I would say in terms of the marketing and that world, because that's kind of what I'm dialed into in my business right now.

Wonderful. And so question I never asked before, where do you see yourself in the next three to five years? What's in the future for Amanda?

What's in the future for Amanda? Well, she has 100 members in her membership program and all of that hallway of families that are financially stable. and growing and you can see it in their face that they have the money that they want in order to keep their life savings.

That is so powerful, that visualization. I want to narrow down on that for a second. What would you say for somebody to do with that visualization? What could they do to have that? Because I think of how many people I've inspired. And then you look back at that and you can see that. How do you do that? Is that something you can share quickly?

So how did I get to the vision?

Yeah, I'm sorry that you were led to that in the program, but there must be. I was. Yeah.

It was an intense lead up to it too. And it's like the way that Tony Robbins does that stuff. I mean, it's like you're yo-yoing from despair to joy and ecstasy, if you will. I don't know what the word is, but you're yo-yoing back and forth. And it wasn't until the very end that I finally saw like what that really was gonna look like. And I guess what I love about that though is that striving, it's almost like a life big hairy audacious goal. Like in business, we have a big hairy audacious goal. Maybe it's 7 million, 10 million, you know, however many like dollars or how many people served or whatever it is. So, you know, mine is a hundred people and it served. But my life, I see, you know, this hallway of families. So it's, yeah, that's what helps me, you know, do my run every morning and get going and like, yeah, so how to get there. I mean,

Go to Tony Robbins. That's what I was just thinking.

Or even meditation and being out in the wilderness. I mean, you get these messages that or inklings that you should be going in this direction or that direction. I really do believe in quieting down, slowing down. I did a post on my Instagram recently about just shut up. Shut up and listen. Yes, because the answers are there.

You're just so in an emotional state of hurrying and oh shit that when they come make sure you write it down capture it somewhere because sometimes I can't tell you how many times I've had this great idea. I didn't write it down. It was lost.

So I capture it as soon as I can watch for more than ideas and brain activity and and the idea might come, but how does the body feel? Like, do you feel a sense of relaxation or do you feel a tingling sensation? Like I say, I chase goosebump moments. So, you know, when I feel that goosebump moment, I know that I'm on the right track because it's like this worm and like, oh my gosh, this is so cool.

Your spirit's talking to you and you better listen to it, yeah. So Amanda, this was an incredible conversation. I'm so glad I had you here. There was so many great takeaways and folks, I do want you to follow Amanda on Instagram and LinkedIn. I know you'll be inspired and you'll learn so much and that offer will be in the show notes. And Amanda, do you have any last words before we go?

Yeah, listen for the Goosebump moments. I feel like that's a really good one.

I love that. Yeah, I'm going to remember that, especially today. Listen to the Goosebump moments. So, so cool. Thanks, Amanda. Have a great day.

You bet. Take care.

Thanks for tuning into the Adaptive Mindset. If you found value in today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to thrive in the digital age. Stay secure, stay adaptable, and I'll see you next time.