Foreign and welcome to the Pat Accounting Podcast with me, your host Vicki Clark.

I'm going to help you get to grips with your finances, save you lots of money and take the stress out of doing your tax return.

So let's get going.

Welcome everyone.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks.

If you're listening on the podcast afterwards, if you have any questions again just pop them in the comments.

You don't have to do it now even if you do it later.

And we'll pick them up.

As you can see, I'm not with Lee today.

I am with the lovely Carly Edwards who is a pet business strategic and coach.

So welcome to the Pet Accountants podcast and group and everything very much.

Thanks for having me.

Absolute pleasure.

It's nice to have a non tax related sometimes.

We like to give people a bit of a break from all the tax boring stuff and have our trusted partners on here to do a live so that people can get to know you, who you are, what it is that you do in case there's people there going I don't know who Carly is.

That's absolutely fine.

Sometimes we go on lives and people don't know who the hell I am.

So we get people on here guys to showcase what they can do and how they can help people in the pet industry.

So let's go and start with who you are and your background and what it is that you actually do.

Yeah, for sure.

So I am a pet business strategist and coach as well.

So what I do is essentially help pet professionals and this is now ethical and service based pet business owners as well.

It's very, very important to me actually that I work with ethical pet business owners who are all about the force free, the positive side of things.

Yeah, it's a big debate obviously in the industry, but yeah.

And post today, was it today about colors?

Yeah.

So there's, there's still a lot of aversive methods and techniques about.

I, it does surprise me actually.

I thought we'd come a bit further on than that.

I thought you'd gone like.

Yeah, I thought things had changed a little bit more than that but it seems, it's just, it's still everywhere.

There are still very much aversive trainers, balanced trainers out there.

But I only work with positive ethical pet business owners and mostly female as well.

So I really like to empower female pet business owners in this industry.

Yeah.

So I help you guys to make more money and to, and essentially just create more freedom in your lives and create a business that really works for you.

So I Am someone.

I talk about this quite a lot in my messaging.

I am a super, super introvert.

So I don't get my energy from being, you know, around other people.

I'm not a very kind of extroverted person.

I get my energy from being in my own space.

And a lot of people that are drawn to me as well, yeah, they are introverted and they get that side of things.

Yeah.

Well, what I help PET professionals do is really build a business that aligns with them, that is aligned with their personality and their energy levels.

Because you don't have to build your business like the, no, like everyone else is doing.

Like the extroverts out there are doing it as well.

Because often we can see people like showing up on video all of the time or they're doing like dancy reels and things.

It's like, yeah, I know what you mean.

Yeah, it's just love.

I see them and then I'm like, oh, I couldn't do that.

I mean, I, I, this is probably my limit is doing lies like this.

I'm actually being on camera.

It's not really something I like doing.

I've been doing, obviously for years now and I still don't like.

Which is why, you know, when Tegan was doing the social media up until recently, it was always her face on the social media because she looks weird, she loves it, she doesn't mind.

Whereas I'm a bit more.

So when I'm the same as you and I see someone doing like dancy reels on Instagram stuff, I'm like, fair play to them to be able to do that.

But I couldn't.

You'll never see me.

It's on the pet account doing a DY reel.

But yeah, come and join us.

It's just, yeah, it's not, it's fine.

That's fine.

And that's for other people, but it's not for everyone.

Like, people don't, not everyone wants to be doing that.

So it's about growing your business in a way that, you know, it's really going to work for you where you're doing, you know, you're marketing yourself in a way that works for you.

You're delivering your services in a way that works for you as well.

Boundaries are a big thing that I talk about also.

That's like, that's essential in business, particularly if you're an introvert.

If you're someone that has like health conditions as well.

Because I talk about that a lot in my messaging.

I do have a couple of Chronic health conditions.

And it's important, it was so, so important for me that I was able to grow my business in a way that allows me to step away when I need to.

So know that everything is ticking over in the background and people are still buying and all of those things.

And I've got this fully functioning operational business that has all of these systems and strategies going on and I'm still, you know, bringing in the revenue, bringing in the income.

I know that I can just, I can go and chill out if I need to or go and recover, take that downtime because, like, things can be super draining as well, particularly if you're, if you are promoting your business on social media, say, like that is a, that can be an exhausting environment to be on all of the time.

So a lot of what I do as well is, is giving PET professional strategies and systems to ensure that they can show up without having to be on social media all the time or without having to constantly be marketing the businesses all of the time.

But getting, you know, it's about having these smarter strategies in place essentially, and not, not having to work harder, but working smarter.

Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense.

Think social media.

When I first started out, I was on it like all of the time, every day, multiple times a day, even at night.

You just have to get obsessed with it and it is draining.

And I think especially because a lot of things, there's been a lot of change in the way things work since COVID A lot of people are moving more online with things and I think a lot of trainers especially have moved on to online courses and, you know, selling guides and videos and, and whatever online because they need to.

And like you say, it's a steady form of income even, you know, we've got the stuff that the, our digital products that we sell, the courses that we sell and they just, they just tick along in the background once you've made them and once you've done it, like that's the hard bit and you put them there and they just trickle along the background.

And I think people need to maybe look at that element of things because that's the way the world's going rather than in person stuff.

And why not share your knowledge?

And I think a lot of people don't realize that what they know doesn't mean that everyone else knows it.

You know, we've done a free agent course.

Just because we know how to do free agent doesn't mean everyone else does.

And that knowledge there is there to be sold.

And I think Sometimes it's a mindset issue with people that, you know, if you've got that, if you know how to train a dog or you, you do, or you know how to groom a dog or, or whatever it might be, use that knowledge and, and build something for people to purchase.

Yeah, that's a big, big part of what I teach as well is, you know, teaching people how to set up these passive income streams, how to make money online.

Because yeah, you're absolutely right.

You have a lot, you know, a lot of prep professionals.

They have this amazing bank of knowledge and they can sell that.

They can create an asset for their business and sell it over and over again.

And it means you can put it on your website and people can just go there and buy it at any point.

And then like you're not involved in that process anymore.

You created the thing which is amazing, like this amazing asset and you can just, yeah, continue to sell that over and over again for years and years to come.

Obviously you need to have a marketing strategy behind that because you can't just like everyone's just going to buy that instantly.

You need to like be constantly promoting it, having a system or a strategy to promote this.

But yeah, you can create something like that and then you got passive income coming in which is a lovely something.

Could be as simple as like Grimas, like how to, I don't know how to maintain your dog's co op between grooms.

Yeah, it could be you know, or how to train your puppy not to wee in the house.

I don't know like, and then people might think oh, but they know how to do that.

They can get it online, but not necessarily.

Yeah, and it's not about.

Yeah, you can search for like some things online for sure.

Google is great but you're delivering it in a way that's going to be like crystal clear and step by step teaching them how to get there as quickly as possible.

Like that's what they're paying for and they're paying your expertise, you know, they're relating to you as well as a person.

Rather than just go into Google and they're possibly not going to like actually action that by the end of it or not get a straight answer as well.

Because Google can be absolute minefield for things like that.

Well yeah, especially when Google stuff about tax you get like 1500 different answers.

So it's fair.

Which again you could probably Google free agent stuff.

But doesn't stop us doing the course because people want ease, they don't want to spend time searching Google, they just want to find something, click on it, buy it and have it done.

So and what sort of like what sort of businesses do you work with generally?

Then what sort of clients come your way and what do they generally want as like a thing that you've seen?

Yeah, so I work with a number of different service based business owners.

So I don't work with product pet business owners because it's a whole other, it's a whole other area really and a way of actually marketing those, those people is slightly different.

So service based pet business owners like groomers, dog groomers, dog walkers, pet sitters, dog trainers, behaviorists, nutritionists that, physiotherapists or the under that bracket of like they offer a service.

So it's helping them to essentially grow most of the time their in person business because they already have like a face to face service that they offer people and it's all like yeah, they go there and they're trading their time for money and they offer this service which is great.

So it's about growing that in a way that's going to work better for them as well.

And then strategy in the systems to do that to get the clients that they need but also do it in a way that allows them to make lots and lots of money doing that but also be able to add as well.

Because what I see often is people massively undercharging, not charging their worth and then they're at capacity potentially or not at capacity and they're just really run down and close to burnout and that's a good place to be.

But then also yeah, growing their online business as well.

So giving them what's the tax side of things that they need.

Because I know that a lot of like a lot of the clients I work with, actually a huge amount of the clients that I work with, they do struggle with the tech side of things.

I'm one of those big sticking point.

Yeah, it's like all of that like, oh, I need to create like a lead magnet and set this up on any more marketing system.

How the hell do I do that?

And then I need to create you know, this course, like record this online course.

How do I put that onto a like course platform and then how do I get people to actually buy this course?

How do I set all that?

There's, there's a lot, there are quite a lot of moving parts to this but when you get it set up, it's done then and you don't have to, you know, worry about it.

It's Just something that do again and again and again.

So I understand that that whole tech side of things can be a bit of a nightmare, but you can learn it, you can easily learn it.

It's something that can be learned.

It's not like you can just say, oh no, I'm terrible at tech because I, I see that a lot.

And they're just like self confessed technophobes.

That's me, that's it.

It's like you learn these things so everything is fine if you, if you want to learn.

Yeah.

If you don't want to, you can always outsource these things as well for sure.

But when you do learn it, you know the ins and outs of the whole process and then you can just do it quickly again be really simple to set up.

It does help.

I mean we use Kartra and it's massively expensive, it does do everything.

But we outsource our Kartra technical bits like funnels, the emails and stuff like that.

Because I am a self professed technophobe and Lee is very good at tech but just doesn't have the time.

So we thought we'd outsource it.

But then like today with the expo, the link crashed for whatever technical reason that crashed or some technical reasons behind it and I couldn't fix it because I didn't know how to use it.

So you know, there's a benefit of learning to do it yourself because then I could have potentially fixed it myself.

I can do the courses and stuff, all the courses we've built after myself that side of it.

But if you ask me how to do a funnel and things that I would not have seen Scooby Doo idea of how to do that.

So yeah, it is that for that reason it is a good idea to just have a bit of knowledge around like how do I log into this and how do I make some simple changes to this thing so that you can just.

If something does happen and it is an emergency and things crash, you can just go in quickly make that that change.

Lesson learned.

Yeah, I think just spending a little bit of time just learning some of these things, it's just like it goes a long way.

I think it's quite reducing the stress as well because there's nothing worse when you've outsourced something to someone as well.

You have no idea how to fix this problem and they're not responding to.

You and you've sat like this.

Look, me phone.

Come on, come on, please.

Yeah, it's just, yeah, we just don't need that stress in our lives.

So know these things in the beginning.

What systems do your clients use or even culture.

Is it like mailchimp and things that.

There are so many different systems that I teach.

So the one that I use for all of my courses, my memberships, my group programs is called Member Vaults.

That's a really, really good one.

Like the guys that created that whole platform are incredible.

They're like, they just, they've got a whole community there.

They're fully involved in that community.

They like listen to what people want as well.

Like any feedback, any features that they, that they, the users want to see.

They're just like, yeah, we're on it.

We'll, we'll sort that, we'll do that.

But you don't often see in, in other platforms like that.

So Member Vault is a really good one.

It's, it's one of the more cost effective ones as well for posting things like online courses and memberships and things.

I use Mailerlite as the email marketing platform again because it's more cost effective to get started on that.

So if you, yeah, if you're just getting started and setting yourself up, up to 1000 subscribers is totally free.

Like you don't have to pay a penny until you get to 1,000 subscribers.

And then even then it's much cheaper than the others.

So there's like active campaign, you probably would have seen a ConvertKit and all of those others.

Mailchimp.

Yeah, there's lots of options out there, but they're, they're generally less intuitive, like user friendly and they're more expensive.

So if you're, if you are someone that struggles with tech, Mailer Light is going to be your best friend for this because it is the easiest views.

Yeah, it really is.

There's lots of other things that I use as well that I teach, so things like Thrive Cart is a great one for like a payment system to get people to.

When people are paying for like your online courses, your digital products, your memberships, your group programs.

It's a whole like checkout system essentially in itself like a standalone.

And it means that you can add things like order bumps and upsells and downsells to each of your offers.

So you can get more value out of every single customer and you can create these beautiful checkout pages.

So often when you've got like, yeah, with Member vaults, with Cartra, probably you don't have, you probably don't have that functionality to add like order bumps and upsells and things like that, do you do you know that?

I don't know, but I don't think it does.

I don't think you can add stuff on.

Like if you went to the checkout to buy something, it wouldn't then give them the option to buy the other products as well.

I, Look, I could be wrong because I don't, I don't get involved.

Yeah, I've been told that by the person that does it, so possibly not.

They generally don't, these platforms, they don't have that functionality.

But with ThriveCart it does.

And it just means that, yeah, if you've got like, I don't know, like a seven pound course or workshop or something that you're offering to people at that checkout, then they can just like toggle little things, add like a £37 digital product to their order, which people often do.

And.

And then it goes on to like the next page, which is another upsell.

Like, like, wait, your order's not quite complete yet.

Here's another kind of thing that you then purchase and it just means that, yeah, you're instead of someone paying for seven pounds, the front end product, you then like, potentially it's like a hundred pounds per order value.

So yeah, that's, that's another really, really good one as well.

A standalone thing, ThriveCart.

Yeah.

So could you add it into something like Kartra or is it like its own platform where you'd have its own thing?

It's its own thing.

So you set up the individual products themselves.

Like you'd be like, yeah, this, this particular online course, whatever it's called, set up the price for it.

You can set up like what happens after they bought.

So when they're added to your email marketing system.

And email.

Yeah, do that in thrivecart as well and then you can connect that to a course course platform as well.

They do have a couple that it automatically connects to.

But yeah, sometimes you need another thing called Zapier to connect everything up.

So yeah, there are some like moving lights.

It's confusing for people.

Like if any, like, I just don't even know what she's talking about.

I'm in that same boat.

I'd be like, I mean, Aline hates Kartra.

He thinks it's a bit crap and we pay an absolute fortune for it.

I think works out, it comes out like in dollars, but it, it works out something like £180amonth.

Which I think the problem is, obviously we've got everything on there.

So the courses are on there, all the products are on there as email lists and the funnels and then the different email lists.

And you can, you know, you can set it up where they buy one thing and then they'll get like a series of emails linking them to other things.

And, and for me, I mean, I don't mind cart job, I think because it's an all in one thing, but it's the scary thought of going, well, if we move to something like ThriveCart or Member Vault, it's the pain in the arse of having to somehow transfer all of that data.

I mean, our mailing list is in excess of 12,000 people now, so it's a big old list to shift.

And as for me, it's just like, oh, I can do without that headache.

I mean, I don't know, can you swap them over?

Can you take your email list and like dump it into another one?

Yeah, you can, you can literally download it to like an Excel spreadsheet pretty much and then upload the Excel spreadsheet to the other platform.

So it's not as daunting as you think.

Reset up all the funnels and things.

Yes, yes, you would.

Yeah, that's often why.

Yeah, it can be difficult to move from one platform to another when you set everything up.

You might be just easier just sticking with what you've got.

If it's working for you, you know.

Then, yeah, that Thrive Car does that.

If, because we were going to put stuff onto our website to sell, could you add ThriveCart to the website or does it not work like that?

I'm sorry if I'm putting you on the spot.

If you just.

I do like the tech questions.

I'm like, yeah, I love like connecting all of this stuff up, but it's like, yes, you can.

So what you would essentially do is have like a sales page on your website, like for whatever that digital product is.

Then you would create like all the copy for that, you know, sell it all the bells and whistles.

You done the button that would then just link to the Thrive Cart checkout page.

That's essentially what do there.

So you.

But then it's not like you integrate ThriveCart with the website, like link to it from a page.

I was just gonna say hopefully he's not listening, but he is because he's just sent a wave, which means he'll be, he'll be googling Member Vault and Thrive Cart.

Now can we get rid of Karter and use these instead?

So hopefully he stops listening.

Can you put a link to the cart supply, please?

I'M assuming we can put all these links and things.

We'll put them in the comments.

I'm sure Carly will put all of the different comments and all different comments, all the different links to all of these things that we've mentioned in there.

And obviously if you do need help with these guys, if you do have digital products, and obviously give Carly a shout because she might be able to help in other ways as well.

So we'll put all the links and Gubbins, but no chance.

Time for a change.

No, just no, that's it to where this is where we argue.

And he's like, yeah, get rid of it.

And I'm like, no, maybe after the conference is done.

Maybe after the Expo with like member Vault as well.

And obviously you're able to pay, people are able to pay you through Kartra.

Like you can really, really simple with membervault, it has its own like payment system within that.

So just set it up so that you're charging X amount for this online course, membership group program, whatever it is, and then you link your PayPal and your Stripe to that and it's all fine.

It's just that ThriveCart, it just has some more advanced capabilities.

That's, that's the thing with this.

And it is about increasing the order value of every single customer that comes through your, through your doors and making the whole process super, super sleek as well.

The more you can do that, the more that you're going to get people actually buying.

You're going to remove those barriers to purchase the big thing here because sometimes.

Wants to click on something and it'd be a pain in the ass, like your link doesn't work.

And I was like, no, I've sent that out to like 15 groups, you know where I was like, oh no, kill me now.

Yeah, I do see checkout pages that are like, they're ridiculous.

They make you jump through hoops to actually buy this thing and they'll send you like, you'll have to click this button and it'll send you to another page.

And it's like you get thought, what is going on?

Like, yeah, you're going to lose people in the whole buying process if you've got loads of different like steps, essentially steps that they have to jump through.

So yeah, it's just about making it easy, easy as possible for, for your customers.

But yeah, ThriveCart's really, really good one for that.

And it's just a one off payment as well for that.

It's not like an ongoing monthly thing.

Can you stop with a positive?

It's going to be some downside to them.

But no, that's really good.

And it's good to get that stuff out there that people don't know they exist.

I didn't know that existed.

So there you go, you learn something new every day.

So, so just for the people who are listening then, what sort of things do you do?

Like do you have memberships, what do you offer?

What can, if they wanted to come to you, that if you've got different services and products that.

What is it that you got?

Lots of different things.

So I've got like a.

And it's what I teach as well.

I've got a very kind of multi layered approach to business.

I work online, so all of my services that I offer are all online.

I don't work in person and this is why this is big, this and help people to pet professionals, to bring their businesses online because it's a lovely thing to be able to do that, to serve people online like I can.

I've got people in my programs and my memberships and bought my online courses that are in Australia, that are in like South Africa, Italy, whatever, all over the world.

It's just a lovely thing to be able to create that worldwide impact.

So I've got like workshops and online courses that are from like £7 to, I don't know, £200 probably that help with things like.

So I've got the double your revenue workshop which is a really good one to get started and that's only £7 and it gives you five steps to double your revenue.

So it gives you a strategy, very simple strategy to do that.

I've got other things around email marketing, so there's a whole course around how you can get yourself set up with creating a lead magnet, a funnel for that, getting yourself set up in Mailerlite, so all of the tech that needs to go with that as well, memberships.

So I am big on social media in terms of helping people understand the strategy behind it, the content strategy specifically as well, and how to get yourself out there, be visible because that's the, the way that you're going to be able to grow your business.

It's like getting yourself out there, getting your face out there, getting your message out there.

So I've got a membership called Yappy Social Society that's only like £9amonth, insane value for what it is.

And you get like monthly content, prompts, calendar.

So it helps you with understanding different ideas for what to share to social media each day.

You also get like a bonus business resource with that every month as well, which is anything from like an online course creation planner to the Scale it business journal to the money mindset makeover worksheets, things like that to help you more widely in your business.

You also get access to like a client only Facebook community as well where I do like a live Q and A every single as well.

So that's access to me each month.

My big kind of signature program is the Limitless Pets Academy.

So that is where you get all, you know this, where you get all of the access to me, like most of the access to me, all of my best trainings as well.

So this is essentially teaching you, giving the step by steps on how to make more money in your business, be wildly profitable, make it easy and fun to run and streamline things so that you can step away when you need to and create more freedom in your life and grow your business in a way that really works for you and aligns with you.

And that's what the academy is all about.

And that gives you things like face to face, zoom coaching with me every month you get live kind of behind the scenes of my own business, learning from what I'm doing.

Take that for your own business.

And there's one to one coaching as well via Voxer.

So that's like a voice note and like text messaging might do as well.

So that's from like 11am to 3pm Once a month as well.

And then yeah, there's a lovely Facebook community in there, things like accountability pods as well to keep people on track.

It's just a lovely program to give you all the guidance to support the advice that you need to grow your business and keep you on track and motivated and moving forwards and getting you to where you want to be.

The two sides of that are to grow your business, your in person business.

So if you're looking to just do that and create a business that works for you in what you're doing already, that's fantastic, come on in.

But also if you're the other side of things and you're looking to grow those online revenue streams, that's also what we help pet and stoners with as well.

So it's kind of like a two.

Pronged thing, but covers all this.

And I think you know, owning a business can be lonely and sometimes it's hard to implement these things because then you doubt yourself, you think I don't want to and then you haven't got the support.

Whereas if you do something like this You've got that person there and other people who are in the same boat sort of giving you a bit of a nudge.

But you've missed something out.

What did I miss?

Your book.

My book?

Yeah, it's because.

Yeah, you're right.

It's because I've got lots of different.

Things on I think hand that you can hold up.

Oh, I've got the proof copy.

Let me just go.

Just put on the spot now because I didn't.

I wasn't gonna ask you sure this but it's important because if people want the information then you can, you can put a link in there.

So there we go.

So it's all upside down.

You can't really read that.

But it's your limitless pet business.

So you can buy this on Amazon.

It's a great little book.

So it's all of my like, it's not even.

It's not like a thick book that you need to spend ages and ages reading.

It's an easy read, really easy read.

You could read it in a day.

Actually, I think I did read it in a day when I was like proofing it.

So it is giving you all of my best strategies like the steps to grow a business.

That's going to work for you on your terms.

That makes you a lot of money as well.

Fabric.

There we go.

Got you to plug your book.

But everyone loves a good read.

Business expense.

There we go.

So make sure you get involved.

Give Carly a message and she'll put all the links to all the things you might see.

A few posts from Carly in the Facebook group, so feel free to check those out.

Carly is a trusted partner of the Pet Accountant, which is on our website as well.

So if you go through there, you can capture through that and also anyone who subscribes to our mailing list.

You will also get a few emails from Carly on anything she's got coming up, anything she thinks will be helpful.

You will get those emails as well.

So make sure you keep an eye out.

Sometimes they do go to spam.

So if you're sat there thinking I'll never get an email from the pet accountant, then please just check the spam folder because sometimes they do sneak in there and Carly is getting involved in the Expo doing one of the online workshop.

So again you will have a chance to have a session with her if you do get an expo ticket because there will be some online workshops leading up to the event as well.

Apologies if you have been trying to get a ticket to the Expo.

The link did crash temporarily this morning and I had an absolute meltdown because I couldn't fix it.

Which is.

There you go.

Lesson learned from what Carly said, know how to fix your tech.

It's all sorted now.

So if you want to click back on and buy tickets it then you can.

There are still a few available and we'll catch up with Carly nearer the time and all the links to the different carts and things we will put onto the group as well.

But just make sure you check her out if you need help like you say, either online or in person.

And it's good to get your information out there and get it earning you some money because people will buy it, I'm telling you people do.

People want the easy option, so make sure you do it.

Um, but yes, thank you so much for giving us half an hour of your time.

This will stay on Facebook for 30 days before they boot it off, but we will this will get turned into a podcast which are released on Mondays and it is also going to get put onto our YouTube channel when that's finished so everyone can watch all the videos back and not miss any because sneaky Facebook has decided to delete them all.

But we will work around it people, we always find a way and but thank you so much for listening.

I hope you found it really helpful.

And we will be back next week, which I think might be me and Lee for a change next week because I've had quite a lot of guests on over the last few weeks.

So mainly we'll be back just before he goes off to sunny Mexico.

I will make sure I get him on.

I know it's all right for some but no, thank you so much Carly.

If anyone's got any questions, put them in the comments.

Have a good, good week as always and we'll catch up next week.

Cheers.

Thank you everyone.

Thanks for listening.

If you've enjoyed my podcast, don't forget to subscribe for me and if you want to speak to me, please visit my website@www.petaccountant.co.uk and if you'd like to join my Facebook group which is full of like minded pet professionals, then search accounting for pet professionals in Facebook and I will see you there.

Sam.