WTF! Women Talk Finance
WTF! Women Talk Finance breaks down the world of money. No jargon, no gatekeeping.
Hosts Candace Powell and Jackie Kuiper talk finance, capital, and investing with the people who know it best. Expect real conversations, smart insights, and practical tools to help you learn, grow your confidence, and take charge of your financial future.
WTF! Women Talk Finance
EP 14: Why more revenue doesn't mean more profit with Ginger Hansen
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Is your business growing... but your profits aren't?
Most entrepreneurs focus on increasing revenue, but Ginger Hansen argues that's only part of the picture. As the co-founder of Profit Doctor, she combines her background in Eastern medicine and finance to introduce a fresh way of thinking about business growth: treat your business like a patient.
In this episode, Ginger explains how to identify hidden "profit leaks," improve your margins, and build a healthier, more sustainable business without simply chasing more sales.
In this conversation, you'll learn:
✨ Why revenue and profit aren't the same thing
✨ How to spot the hidden habits draining your business
✨ The "Profit Doctor" framework for healthier growth
✨ Why solving the root cause beats treating symptoms
✨ Practical ways to increase profitability without adding unnecessary complexity
Whether you're a founder, business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur, this episode offers a powerful reminder that sustainable success starts with understanding the health of your business, not just its top-line revenue.
🎧 Listen now and join the conversation.
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I'm Jackie. I'm Candace. And this is WTF.
SPEAKER_02Grab your coffee, wine, water bottle, emotional support snack, no judgment, and let's get into it.
SPEAKER_01Hi, and welcome back to WTF. Thank you for joining us. We're so excited today. We're joined by Ginger Hansen. She's the co-founder and COO of Profit Doctor, where she helps CEOs fix thin margins, cash flow stress, and the sneaky profit leaks that make a business look successful on the outside while quietly draining the founder behind the scenes. And what makes Ginger such a baddie is that she brings a completely different lens to business health. Before Profit Doctor, she built deep expertise in Eastern medicine, functional health, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and health coaching. So she understands symptoms, she understands patterns, she understands what happens when a body, a business, or a founder is running on depletion for far too long. And we love this topic. We're here about self-worth, social capital, human capital, emotional capital, and how that translates into finance. So we're so excited to have you, Ginger. Um, let's talk about Profit Doctor right off the bat. And can I just add, you and your husband Ben uh help business owners stop confusing revenue with health, right? Because more sales don't automatically mean more freedom, more money, or more peace. And sometimes more growth just means more inflammation, more complexity, and more stress. So there's a ton of interesting um things to unpack. There are a lot of different pathways we can go down. But yeah, tell us a little bit about like Profit Doctor and Revenue and how you really got into like the profit space.
SPEAKER_03Yes, thank you for the wonderful introduction, Jackie and Candace. I'm so happy to be here with you today. And um, yes, so at Profit Doctor, we help CEOs of mid-sized service-based businesses double, triple, quadruple their profitability. Yes, there is a general myth that in order for a business to grow, they focus on top line, top line, top line, and growth, growth, growth, adding more complexity and so on. But often what drains the business and also the CEO is low profitability. And so we call that profititis for profit doctors. So we like to use some medical jargon. And generally, what happens when profit is low is that the business can't attract and retain quality employees, they can't service their clientele at the same level, the CEO runs low on his own energy, he is neglecting some parts of his life and really feeling like he is just one step away from losing it all. And so what we do is we really help capture the lost profit through these profit leaks and help them put some in their own pocket and then put some back into the business so that we can create that stable foundation that most traditional businesses really need in order for them to not just grow the bottom line but also the top line.
SPEAKER_01And when you're saying profit, like we're gonna use the word profit a lot. Are we talking about something distinct from revenue? Is it worth making that distinction?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And so revenue generally is top line. How many widgets you sell, whatever that price is, what you take in is top line revenue. And profit is after you pay for all of the expenses related to making and delivering that widget and running your business. And so, bottom line is basically what's left for you and the company, what you take home and also split and put back into the business.
SPEAKER_02So, simply said I want to talk about, you know, going a little deeper with you here on this, and I love that you guys kind of medical medicalize is a little word, the terminology that you use, because you have this background specifically in Eastern medicine, which is not about addressing a symptom. It's really about addressing a root cause, right? You're really getting down to really this like holistic approach. What was that transition like for you to take that lens and apply it to the business body, the financial body, you know, not just a physical human body?
SPEAKER_03Yes, that's a very interesting question, Candace. And so, you know, in Chinese medicine, what we generally do is we're taking a very holistic look at the body. When somebody comes in with a migraine, we're actually trying to figure out what pattern is causing that migraine. For sure, we know that there's some heat or inflammation involved. And heat travels up in the body, and so generally those symptoms are at the top of the body. And we're trying to connect that with other symptoms that that person might have but not complaining about. For example, they might also have insomnia, they might have a slightly rapid heartbeat, they might run hot, they might have very red lips or red tongue or a red face, right? And so we're trying to take a step back and take a look at the body holistically, and then figure out okay, what is the biggest thing affecting this body if we can pull that lever and kind of balance out their system, turning them more into a cooler person, not cool uh in terms of you know their style and so on, but literally their temperature, that is going to help balance out the system. And when we talk about the whole yin and yang, that's what we talk about. Like we want to balance that body so holistic holistically speaking, they're not showing this crazy symptom with migraines and heat type-related symptoms, right? And so what I realized is that when we're looking at a business, we're going about it very similarly. Like we will do a financial analysis at the beginning, and then we will see certain patterns in the body. Sorry, in the business, in the business body.
SPEAKER_01What would be an example of like a migraine in a business? Yeah, that's a great question.
SPEAKER_03Yes, so for example, a business that does not look at their financials, for example, they might have a variety of products and services, but they actually don't really know which one is making a big dent in their profit, which one is actually having a higher contribution margin or higher profit, and which one is actually losing the money.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of a question. Well, maybe, and you can tell me if I'm wrong or if I'm stretching here, but it's a little bit of like a company that doesn't look at ROI and say, like a migrant or something that's really hot, right? Heat in the body, say this company is like, oh my gosh, we've gotta be on social media, I've gotta be on Facebook ads. I'm gonna dump a ton of money into Facebook ads because that's what's hot right now. That's what's getting, and they've never done analysis, they don't realize their ROI on Facebook ads is like zero. Maybe they're a referral business. Like the Facebook ads aren't bringing anything in, but they're hot on it. They're like migraining on the Facebook ads. And yeah, okay. Yes.
SPEAKER_03And so we basically want to get a clearer picture about which areas of their business are not optimized in terms of profitability or are not balanced, right? And so we help them identify the bottom 20% of performers. So we have a principle we call the 50-20 rule. It's basically the upside down of the 80-20 rule, which is the Pareto principle. So, which says 80% of your output comes from 20% of your input.
SPEAKER_01And so we help them 80% of your output comes from 20% of your input, and that's a rule, meaning that's that's the average.
SPEAKER_03Uh so that's the Pareto principle. And it basically says that not all things that you do weigh equally for your success.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Same thing is said about the clients you spend your time on. You know, 20% of your client base is gonna result in 80% um of your revenue. Yeah, of your revenue. But then the same can be said too. I mean, it's you you can say the same about sometimes headaches like of a client base. It's kind of this general it's that's the rule, but it's amazing how applicable it is in so many aspects of the business. Yeah. I'm getting this idea that like I've served on a few boards for uh advisory boards, and I a hundred percent agree with you on so many businesses do not have a clear idea of some of their basic figures. Many of them have a, in my opinion, an inaccurate or incomplete view of even like some their their true costs. Um many do not know their customers. Uh, that is what's so surprising to me, going back to Jackie's, you know, dumping money into Facebook ads. I've seen that way too many times. And I'm like, you don't even know who your customers are. You need to get to know who that is, who who who you're serving, who's loyal, who who is that 20, right? Who's that 20? Because you want to attract more of them. And so let's get to know them. But I kind of look at this bringing it back to the to the medicalizing it, it's like your labs, getting your annual labs done. Like, don't just eat a bunch of healthy foods because you think that's what you're supposed to do. If you didn't get your baseline lab work done, you don't know that maybe you're low in a couple areas and you need to increase this. Uh, I don't know if that's uh if I'm catching the drift on the medicalizing term, but I'm amazed by how applicable this methodology is into a business. I'm guessing even personal finances at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I think when we can lead with numbers, whether that is in terms of our labs or if that is in terms of our business, we're actually going to get a lot more ROI from those chosen activities that we will do, right? And everything else needs to be cut out or fixed. And so that 50-20 rule that is uh Ben Hansen original basically means that we're going to help our clients identify what the bottom 20% is doing across their business, and we're gonna cut half of that, and when you cut half of that, that money goes directly to the ROI, right? To the bottom line.
SPEAKER_02So you're right. So in the opposite, it's taking a look at most are focused on increasing that 20% that's making up 80%. You guys are also addressing that 20% at the bottom end that is the absolute drain. Um, and that seems like such a brilliant approach because of course we all want to grow that top 20%, but if you still have that pain of the lower 20%, I mean, do you notice a correlation that as you're growing the top end, you're growing the pain points as well? Not to quote the great, the late, great notorious BIG, but mo money, mo problems. You're growing your, you're growing, and and we do see this too. You're growing and you're you you think you're doing better, but really you've also grown the problems. If you have low profits and you just keep growing, you're not actually solving anything.
SPEAKER_01Do you remember that show Mythbusters? I feel like there's a Mythbusters in here. There's a lot of rhetoric around like, oh, like Candace, we do a lot of like um like SIPA work. We're certified exit planners. We see a lot of people that want to focus on growth, scaling, and exit. And the growth conversation is so often focused on revenue, revenue, revenue. We're gonna grow revenue, we're gonna grow revenue. Here's our three-year projections, our five-year projections, here's revenue in 10 years. And I feel that there's room for a myth buster there. Like not everything has to be about revenue. What if you can maintain revenue or even, you know, what if you can allow for a little bit of like market flexibility, right, in downtimes and we're not expending all this energy, right? Focusing on the la on the wrong lab work, right, the wrong metrics. We can really focus our energy on the things that actually matter. Like we'd be busting a huge myth here. It doesn't always have to be about revenue. Pulling out the toxicity. Yeah, and like you said, if you're just adding more revenue, you can also be adding more problems. So if you just focus down here on profit, and you you mentioned before gaps. I'm curious, in returning to that conversation, like how and where and what are you looking for when you're looking for the gaps? But you plug those, and then it's like, okay, way simpler equation. Less money, less problems.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it's not, you know, we're pro-growth. We're absolutely pro-growth. Yes. And I think that playbook where you're growing, growing, growing, actually works very well for VC back tech companies that are aspiring unicorns. They have almost unlimited unlimited funding, and they want to take you know a lot of the market share, right, in their space. However, for the traditional business, that playbook doesn't actually work. You have to self-fund, right? You don't want to depend on the bank and pay interest rates and lose your bottom line on paying those interest rates. And so what we do is we to we do a profit leaks detector. And so we go across, you know, we take them across their clients, their team, their products and services, their suppliers, their markets or market segments, and we identify the bottom 20% across those business areas, and then we figure out which ones are the most powerful profit levers, and that's what we get cranking on. And that's why you know you can make such a big impact in such a short amount of time because you're not adding complexity, you're just trying to get rid of all the things that are toxic in the business. Whereas if you're trying to grow top line, that is going to require your time, more resources, more money. And then once you figure out what is the most profitable part of your business, you can actually get more of those customers, right? Or do more of those campaigns instead of just throwing money at the social media campaigns and you have no idea what the ROI on those are.
SPEAKER_01I think the difference too is talking about like incremental value versus exponential value. And we've had this conversation too before. A lot of people they they contact us when there's a problem, right? So it's really hard to have this conversation. There's room for an educational piece in here. How do you amplify value, even if there's not a problem right now? Obviously, if there's a problem, you gotta solve. You're troubleshooting, you're putting out a fire. But what if like things are just moving along pretty copacetic, but you want to really enhance value? I think you're right. People turn to like, how do I, how do I grow? How do I how do I scale this, right? How do I become a unicorn? How do I amplify all this? And that might not be the quickest or most effective way. If you can get down to your profit, which by the way is what, if you're looking to potentially exit, that's what someone's gonna be looking at is your profit. They're not gonna be looking at your revenue, they're looking at bottom line, what's your net profit, and then what's your multiplier? And if you've got your ship all like tight, you're running a tight ship, you've plugged those gaps, you know your metrics, and you're acting on your best ROI levers, that to me would scream like, we want to give you a much higher multiple on your business.
SPEAKER_03Yes, you can make a lot more money on your business if you just have your numbers down because people are gonna look at that. People, you know, even you could buy two identical businesses. One has all the data to prove they're multiple, and one is just kind of casually recording the past via accounting, and the one that has the numbers down is going to get a higher multiple. And we don't want to start treating a disease when we're on our deathbed, right? Yes, we want to get ahead of that and do preventative care. And I think just as humans, maybe that doesn't sound sexy to do preventative care, and we're not motivated, right? We act when we have this pain that makes us move.
SPEAKER_01That's one thing.
SPEAKER_02It's one mind girlfriend, because I was literally about to say, sometimes when we're in more of an advisory role, and we've we had, I've like, I've got a very recent example, and I'm sure Jackie knows which one I'm talking about. The work that needed to be done was not sexy work, and they really wanted to get this end number. And I kept coming in saying, you don't have enough data. Like this is you don't get to base this off of the lucky moments and cherry-pick these good, maybe good days, good months. You're you don't know your customer base, you're not actively recruiting or recruiting good talent and retaining good talent. Um, you don't have a very clear idea on your numbers at the end of the day. I I still, as an advisor, don't have clarity on which of your products is the most profitable. Um like that, you can't get this number without doing this homework. It's so important. And they really dug their feet in and they really resisted because it's just not the sexy work. It's it's just not. It's hard. You've got to invest time and energy to do that, do that work. Um, and I saw a lot of leaks. So, how does somebody kind of self-diagnose prophetitis? Because it was easy for me to go in and see it pretty quickly. Um it's probably like in the healthcare world, there was like a like a boil or something, and I'm like, oh my god, you've got prophetitis. I didn't have that word, that's your word, and it's brilliant. But how does somebody look at themselves and go, okay, my business has prophetitis and I need to address this?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think some people aren't just numbers people, and they just naturally are more aware of the bottom line, and then maybe the average person is not wired that way, right? Ben was very much wired that way when he was running his staffing and recruiting company, and so that came very natural to him. But then when he was helping some of his friends with profit, he realized that oh my gosh, most of the world does not operate that way. And so I think you could look at your average profit. If you don't know your profit uh that you have been making in the last couple of years, that's an indicator that maybe there might be an issue. If you're having cash flow issues, if you're thinking, oh my gosh, how am I gonna pay my employees this upcoming month, that might be a cash flow uh issue that ultimately is a disguise, a disguised profit problem. If you're constantly putting out fires, if you are growing your top line very rapidly, and if you don't really have any time scheduled to look at profit, then maybe that's an indication that you have a profit problem. And also if your top line number, revenue number is growing rapidly, but your profit line is not keeping up, then you might have a profit problem.
SPEAKER_01So those are some of the fast ways to listen to two of the things you said I think are so relatable. Founders, entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurs, busy career people, right? We get busy and busy and busy and busier and busier and busier. Candace, you and I have had this conversation about like why does everything feel harder right now? There's supposed to be all these tools to make things easier, but we're busier than ever before. We're more booked, we're more calendar, there's more to-dos, there's more emails, there's more text, there's more WhatsApp, there's more this, there's more AI, there's more that. When you said Ginger, someone doesn't even have the time carved to look at their financials. They don't know their profit and they're just putting out fires. That to me is a system that's inflamed and very reactionary, right? So, right there, like that's worth just stopping and exhaling and being like, Am I in this flurry doing this to myself? And could I be doing it different?
SPEAKER_00You can have a board, investors, advisors, and still have nobody you can actually talk to about what is really going on. That is not unusual. That is the founder reality. And we step in right there. I'm Tom Powell, and at the founder's office, we're proud to sponsor Women Talk Finance.
SPEAKER_02I think you're yeah, if you're spending more of your time putting out fires, in if you're in your reactive mode most of the time, would you say that that is a clear indicator without even looking at numbers that you might have prophetitis? Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Same thing in the body. If you are being reactionary and you're just getting by or just surviving, there's no way you're making the time or having the time to exercise, to cook your meals, to sleep enough, and to kind of decompress your mind from all the stressors of your life. And that will catch up. It takes a little while, but eventually that will catch up both in the business and also in the body.
SPEAKER_02I love this expansion of this idea of taking care of self, taking care of business, really like understanding it from a whole perspective. Um, and I think for some of our listeners who maybe don't have a business, but they these lessons are applicable to their own personal financial or personal goals. They're the even they're operating just their home, uh, you know, or whatever it is, that holistic approach feels very applicable across the board. Do you have any guidance on even just how to where to start outside of, well, we can start with our bodies, which most of us, all of us, probably have neglected to do in recently, but then expanding that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let me think of a good one. I think just taking a moment to take a breath and centering ourselves and taking a moment to write down what's important to us, setting our priorities and having clarity about what it is that we're trying to create at the end of our lives, I think that could be a great starting point. What what role is my business going to serve in my life? How about my body? You know, how do I want to feel? How do I want to feel when I'm 50, 60, 70? What do I want my family life to look like? How about my spiritual life? How about my financial life? And I think it doesn't have to be these huge shortcuts and hacks that we apply, but just nailing the foundation. You know, in health, that would be the four pillars of health, which are uh your mindset or stress management, nutrition, exercise, and sleep. You know, a lot of people are looking for this magic bullet and they haven't really nailed the foundation yet.
SPEAKER_01But if I take 36 supplements that are all designed to biohack, might get there.
SPEAKER_02Do you kind of see um AI, and we we've talked a bit about AI on here. Do you kind of see AI as like almost like being sold to us in the farmer world as like the newest, hottest drug for your business, for your life? But really, if you haven't taken care of those four pillars, does it work? Does it can it build some? I mean, sure, you can get results, but if you haven't addressed the four pillars, like you just mentioned, of your personal health, but applying that further to your business, I mean, I just I have a hard time believing that it can be the silver bullet, like you said.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um I think that's uh that's a very nuanced question. And I am not saying that you can't create overnight success with AI. Some people have done it. Who am I to say that can't be done? But I also believe that um it has a way of distracting most people. Like most people are not gonna find overnight success with AI.
SPEAKER_02I think too, if you didn't do the homework doing your four pillars like for your business, if you aren't solving your prophetitis, how do you know what to build with your AI? Because if you really did that deep inner work and then you utilized the AI tools to address those pain points, absolutely, I think that could be a really amazing and powerful solution, but they go hand in hand, right?
SPEAKER_01Part of this too is it relates to like allocation of resource, right? Whether we're talking about personal or whether we're talking about business, in personal, it's really an allocation of our time, our energy. And I think it's worthy of like, I love how you said it, Ginger, just take a breath and then maybe journal about like what do I value? What do I want this to look like? How many of us are just going through the motions without revisiting what we're really what's the objective at the end of the day? Why? What's it all for? It's almost like a time audit, right? Like, how do I spend my time? And the way I'm spending my time and my energy every day, does that line up with what I say I value? And then the same thing in the business. If I have an objective, but I look and do an audit, like, here's how I'm spending the resource, the money, here are all my expenses. Does it make sense? Am I spending my resource in a way that is getting me to the objective? And maybe Candace, maybe AI is part of that. Say you do the audit and you've got the pillars and you're getting sleep at night and you're clear on your values and you're exercising and your mental health is like strong, maybe then AI can be a super boost tool to like launch you a little further and get you even more sleep and more mental health. But if you haven't put those in place and we're just doing like the scramble, the mad dash hustle every day, you're just generating more. That's I don't know, to me, that's probably where a lot of the AI slop comes from, right? Clear, like lack of clear objective, lack of like clarity around how we're spending the resource, just heading in and like flurry, flurry, flurry, chaos. Then you get a product, an output that just adds to the mess.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one of the things that we help CEOs transform is their mindset. You know, for me growing up as a refugee, I had to have a mindset overhaul in a lot of different things, but especially with finance, because there was a lot of scarcity growing up everywhere I looked. And so I had to kind of overhaul that system in order for me to be able to grow, in order for me to uh let go of constantly just saving, saving, saving, but not knowing how to invest, not knowing where to effectively deploy my money. So I feel like the tools that we have at our fingertips can kind of um tie back to that mindset in terms of how it's going to play out for us. If we still have issues with our uh financial mindset, it's hard for us to grow no matter how we try it. There's just something that is holding us back. And that might just be a story about finances that we told ourselves when we were five years old, and our father implanted some kind of belief in us like money doesn't grow on trees. How dare you buy this, you know, $5,000 thing that you can't really afford? And so there's still at the base of it this mindset overhaul that we aim to help uh CEOs overcome.
SPEAKER_01I'm so curious, how and when did you realize that you needed a mindset, a mindset shift? Did you have like an external mentor or person you looked up to or someone or some event where you were like, I I need to think about this different?
SPEAKER_03Well, now that you ask, so for me, it was my discovery of God. I was in a lot of pain when I was in my maybe early to mid-twenties. Everything was working wrong for me. My health was down, I was struggling with my relationships, my family, my parents and my siblings were not doing well, my own personal finances were struggling because I was in school and I just didn't know how to use my resources well. And at that point, I hit rock bottom, and I just remember asking for some kind of a sign. And then I found this one mentor, his name was Dolph Barron, he still exists today, and he was selling this program where you would subconsciously rewire your system. And so it was a lot of money for me back then, it was $500 or something like that, and so I I invest in that system, and I realized that I was just in fight or flight. My whole life I've had been living in fight or flight, and that there is a way out. And so I was so committed to that program. I was rewiring my brain every single day, and then slowly but surely things shifted. I was able to get out of the family situation I was in. I had to break up with my ex-boyfriend because it no longer aligned with who I was at that point or who I was becoming at that point. I started taking care of my finances, and I was all of a sudden able to attract the life that I had always dreamed of. And so that's when I realized that there's just always more to go. And I just kept peeling more layers and more layers of the onions and realizing that there's even more layers of the onions that I can peel, and maybe I will be peeling these layers as long as I'm alive. But that's when my journey started. So it was circa 2005, 2007 or so. Yeah, so 20 years.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing that. That's more of I know I know that that's intimate and very personal, yeah. Um, but it's so, so um beautiful to hear someone say, like, I came to this because I had my own struggle and I worked through it. Whatever it was, what whatever the methodology, whatever the tool or the modality was, and maybe it was a whole mix of them, but I I needed something to help change how I was thinking about the situation, and that made all the difference.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And I feel that I'm able to break these issues that have been in my nervous system for generations. Yeah, you know, also really freeing myself and my siblings and my parents from some of these ghosts that have been haunting their hearts. So that feels really good.
SPEAKER_02That's what I was hearing as you said, it was like generational trauma there. And you know, all I think a lot of us continue to do to like self-harm in that space because, like you said, you hear when you're five something that has been said, especially it's you know, it was probably said to your parents and and your parents' parents, and um money doesn't grow on trees or whatever it is, um, kind of this idea of lack, and um you know, I think that is a really brave and powerful thing to to decide to take ownership of it and and really deal with it because a lot of times, and I I think we all have seen it, is people will internalize that or take it as the world happens to me, this is happening to me, and it's really easy to fall into that victim mindset, which is just furthering that that deep coding, right? And then going back to the holistic health, just further doing that harm, right? And and then you're seeing it in the external symptoms. So that is incredible. And the fact that you did that at such a young age that you had the ability and the the awareness to start working towards that and look at like look at the product 20 years later.
SPEAKER_01I'm really curious. Some of these things can carry a lot of like guilt or shame or embarrassment, things that um I'm I'm guessing like especially in the business world, it can be hard for some entrepreneurs to even set that first meeting because they know someone's gonna go into their financials and they're like, I know I don't know my numbers, and it's embarrassing, and I know what we've spent on this, and it can be very vulnerable to go into that environment and kind of like I don't want to say admit what you've done wrong, but like pop up the ghosts, right, and face them kind of head on. So I'm curious how you have leveraged your own experience, your own journey, your own alternative healing, and the work you've done in the body, and how you kind of use that within the business now to help others kind of navigate through some of the tougher feelings that's associated with doing this work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's an interesting question. So, you know, my growth came from a place of there is no other option. Okay, there is no other option because I can't exist. So I had chronic fatigue and I literally could not function. And according to my labs, everything was normal and I was fine. Yeah. And so what where I found myself was in a spot where I knew that there's a solution, and I don't exactly know where to look, but I'm going to look and I'm going to face it no matter what it is, because there's just no other way. So it was basically the pain was so big that you know, I'm just going to show all of my cards, just look at them, and you know, whatever comes out of it, it can't be worse than where I was or where I was at that point, right? And so um for our clients, I think we tend to attract the ones that are ready for that next chapter. I haven't cracked the code on how to help those that are maybe embarrassed or carry that shame about their accounting or their books not being clean or their profit being so low. But those are the people that we hope to serve because that's where I found myself at that time, and that's what I really needed at the time: somebody to hold my hand through the process of normalizing my condition and really just telling me, hey, you know, this is where we're gonna start, we're gonna take it step by step, and we're going to help you through this.
SPEAKER_01But you don't judge them, there's no judgment with it. And maybe you don't say it, but you're like, I get it, I've been there. I've yeah, I've I've experienced this symptom myself in a different way, but I totally get it. Let's, yeah, you have a process. Here's where we start. There's no judgment around this. Let's do it. This is exciting, this is the way forward.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and the positive way to look at it is if there's something wrong, there's also a lot of opportunity for growth. Because if we look at your books and nothing is wrong, everything is perfect, but your profit is low, we don't know what to do. But if we can find a couple of profit leaks, or the more profit leaks we can find in your business, the more upside there will be.
SPEAKER_02And don't you want that? I mean, like it going back to the medical side, you you don't go to the your health professional feeling terrible, hoping that they come back and go, I don't know, you're you're like you're hoping they come back and they go, okay, so this is in the normal range, but you know, it's on the lower side. So if we tweaked this here, you might start to feel better. And that's what you do. And I think there's this equivalent of, you know, going to the doctor and not wanting to like get on the scale, right? Like, I mean, I I to to simplify it that much, it's we you gotta be able to open up the data, right? So even if it comes down to your personal finances, you've got to be able to look at the big scary monster because you you gotta be able to address what's going on. Um, and so I I think it's just what you do is and what you've committed like really the bulk of your life to in looking at a whole picture and solving these deep pain points that maybe nobody's willing to look at is really amazing. Appreciate that. Thank you. I want to take a bit of a shift here for the last part of the pod, if we can, because you mentioned, Ben, you work with your spouse, and this is um this is kind of a common uh thing. There's a lot of businesses are uh operated or owned, at least jointly owned, uh, by spouses. About 10% of businesses are owned by spouses, and another 11% are jointly owned by spouses, but uh maybe not operated um by both. So we're looking at about one in five couples can relate, or one in five businesses owned by couples. You can, this is a relatable topic. How how do you apply some of these principles while working with your spouse? And you come from very different mindsets, right? Like very different practices. How does that align?
SPEAKER_03Yes, so it's interesting. So Ben and I, we have completely different personalities. You know, he generally is a perfectionist, and I'm a send it girl. I like stuff done quickly, I like speed.
SPEAKER_01I'm a send it girl.
SPEAKER_03Serious. So, you know, generally in our marriage, we have a very peaceful marriage. We have great communication, we generally get along, we generally respect each other, but sometimes in business it's kind of you know nails on the chalkboard because of our operating system and how that plays out in business. And so we actually had to learn how to communicate. We had to learn to balance, I don't want to say negotiate, but sort of balance our two personalities and learn when to stay take a step back. When um, and then we also assign roles to each other, you know, knowing our personalities, which tasks belong to ginger, and I can. Cannot touch that. Like, for example, the kitchen, he cannot touch. That's my vicinity, that's my jurisdiction. Leave my dishwasher alone. Don't tell me how to vote it. You know, I'm in charge of the household in general, for example. And in business, when he assigned something to me, I have ownership of that. And so if he wants to give me some feedback, he can ask if I would be willing to receive the feedback. And also we both have sort of this coaching background. And so we've learned to not cross each other's boundaries with that. So we will ask each other for permission to give feedback. Where we want to, you know, M each other, but generally those days are far less than initially when we just started working with each other. But we have a lot of fun, we have you know the same goals, and I think one of the things that is important to distinguish is whenever we have a conversation, we make sure the other person understands where this comment is coming from. You know, where is my heart? Where what's my intention for giving this feedback? It's not to criticize you, but it's actually, I want to make our communication about this project more effective. And that's why it's in my best interest and in your best interest to actually listen with an open ear, an open heart.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Uh my husband and I are similar. We are part of this, you know, 20% of small businesses owned by spouses. We're on multiple businesses in. We did not know that brilliant skill. We just, and we call it no unsolicited employee review, um, because nobody wants an unsolicited review. Like our children give us unsolicited employee reviews constantly. We're constantly getting, we're getting performance reviews regularly from them. They're never good. Um, but we cannot do that to each other. We have to we have to say, hey, can I give you feedback? But we didn't learn that till recently, like very, very like it's been decades in, and we're like, maybe we shouldn't just come hot off the press at the other one with feedback uh that's not even in our lane. So I think that's a really insightful um insightful tidbit for many couples that are that are running you know their small business together. Even if you're not, even if it's just one spouse's business, we we know that you're in it. As the partner, um, as the as the support person, you're still in it, right? And so um even if you're just doing some side things, um, communication is so important. So I really appreciate that. Absolutely. All right, Jackie, how are we doing?
SPEAKER_01I think we're good. I'm trying to, there's so much there's yeah, your your background is so fascinating, Ginger. And I'm I'm not gonna make a comment about Ben's personality because you're so different. I really like yours. Like nothing against him. But thank you for thank you so much for joining us and for sharing this. What would you like to share with the audience about Profit Doctor or the business, or um, how do we direct people to find you? You know, anything that we can close out with to just, I guess, encourage people to be open to the process. And we had this conversation, kind of how do you, when someone's not in, when they're not at rock bottom, right? When they aren't feeling the really intense and urgent, like critical today pain, there's still so much value here. So, what are like words to the wise on like do this now? Do this while you're not facing all the pain, do this while the body is not, like you said, on the deathbed, right? Better today than when you're actually in it, like in a really bad problem.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think preventative care is always best, both both in the body and in business. I think unless somebody has already worked on prof uh optimizing their profit, there might still be some low-hanging fruit that can very, very easily be captured and might actually free up your time, free up your headspace, free up your resources, your money to go after top line. Because we're we don't want to poo-poo top line. We think top line is very, very important, but just like a hot air balloon, if you're cutting off your drag across, you know, your your bottom drag across your business, that hot air balloon can actually grow or take off with much less weight. And that can lead to much faster growth. And also, it can be a lot more fun for a CEO to work in a business that he actually enjoys that helps him and his family build a strong financial nest and helps his employees also win financially and both as a team.
SPEAKER_01And if someone's getting sleep while they're doing it, we love that.
SPEAKER_03Maybe the abs, maybe have a cook that makes their meals. I think it could be fun for the whole family as well.
SPEAKER_01Lot of potential here. This is awesome. Thank you so much, Ginger. Thank you, Candace, as well. Um, we'll put in the show notes um for anyone interested, we'll put the link to Profit Doctor. So I to me there's so much overlap between personal and business, um, but definitely a worthy exercise to get the support, have a team that helps you first do the mindset work and then dive in and kind of look at where you, like you said, get time back, reduce some inflammation, um, potentially, yeah, really impact your life.
SPEAKER_03And what I wanted to mention also is that we do have a profit leaks detector on our website. And so you can go on to our website, I think it's profitdoctor.com/slash leaks, and that will take you to a page where you can watch a couple of videos and also download the profit leaks detector and then fill out that leaks detector yourself and sort of identify where your profit leaks might be and apply that to your business.
SPEAKER_01Love that. Awesome, thank you.
SPEAKER_03Awesome, thank you, Lady, so much for having me. I had a lot of fun and um I knew I was in good hands.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much. Thanks for trusting us, and we had a really good time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you'll love how we close this out. We just say bye. Bye. Okay, that was today's episode of WTF. If you left, learned something, or felt a little less alone, make sure you hit follow. And send this episode to a friend who might need it. Women don't gatekeep, especially not the good stuff.
SPEAKER_02We'll be back next week with more real talk, more stories, and probably more over sharing.
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