Cyndi Thomason of Women-Owned Ecommerce Brands & best-selling author of Profit First For Ecom Sellers shares her favorite way to differentiate your store from the competition and how to “bank in the bank” and not in your head to increase your cash flow.

Marc: Hey, it’s Marc Rodill with 10 Minute Ecom Success and today my guest is Cyndi Thomason, founder of Women-Owned Ecommerce Brands, best-selling author, Certified Profit First Ecommerce Accounting thought leader, mompreneur, and just launched Ecom Profit Partners, which is an initiative designed to help ecommerce business owners better accelerate long term, sustainable cash flow growth in their business.

So basically she wears a lot of hats. And with that said, Cyndi, thank you so much for joining me here today.

Cyndi: Thank you, Marc. I’m excited to be here.

Marc: I’m very excited to be here as well. So my question for you is, with your ecommerce accounting background in particular, what is your single favorite or your best ecommerce business building strategy or tactic that’s working really well in the world of running a successful ecommerce business for you or your clients?

Cyndi: Well, working with my clients, I think really getting their hands around, what it is they’re wanting to accomplish, and how they can make sure that their life aligns with the goals of their business.

I do work with a lot of mompreneurs and so oftentimes they feel like the answer is “out there” that somebody else can tell them how to run their business. And what I try to encourage them to think about is, “What is it that you’re really trying to do?” Because if you’re operating from the standpoint of, “This is what’s gonna serve my life, this is what’s gonna serve my clients,” that’s really the best place to start from.

Just going out and copying somebody else’s Success Formula may not work for you at all, because it’s not authentic. And so I really work with our clients to help them understand “What is it you’re really trying to accomplish? Who are you?” And let’s bring that forward into the brand, and into the products that you bring into the world. And it’s funny, it’s like they overlook that. They feel like the answer is not within themselves.

The answer is outside of themselves.

Marc: Right. Okay so when you start doing that approach, where you’re looking within, and you’re trying to see what’s really driving you. What are some of the things that you might run into at first, when you’re starting to think about, “Hey, what do I do next?” in order to make it tangible for the listener.

Cyndi: Well, one of the things I like to do is just, is a lifeline. I ask them to draw out a grid and put across the middle of the page. So you’ve got “High” at the top and “Low” at the bottom, and across you’ve got a line, and it’s every five years of your life.

And look at that lifeline and think, okay, what were the high points and what were the low points? And those things really do impact us and help form who we are, and what we’re trying to accomplish in the world. And so just by looking at that lifeline, they can start to get clear about some of the messaging that they can start to use in working with their clients, or in the way they present their products.

A lot of times, why they even chose that product, has something to do with something on that lifeline. And when they really get in touch with that, they can start to see that there’s something about them, their makeup, that is unique, that nobody else can duplicate. Because they’re the only “them,” right?

And so when they get in touch with that, then they can start to put more of themselves into the into the marketing of their product, into how they develop their products, and shape their business overall.

Marc: And so that’s a differentiator because. There’s no one else who’s you, right?

Cyndi: That’s right. That’s right.

Marc: All right. Okay. And so, how does that tie into what you’ve currently been working on? I know you’re a profit first accounting coach. But, so, you’re launching what you call a cash accelerator for ecom stores. So, does this concept tie back into that?

Cyndi: Yes, because honestly the all things are made easier with cash. And I see it a lot. This mindset of accountants and business coaches that come out and say, “We’re going to make things simple for you.” And my philosophy is, it’s not simple.

I mean, anybody that’s in business can tell you that you may figure out how to make one thing simple, but there’s 5,000 other things that are not simple. And so I feel like the one thing that really can make things work better for our clients, is if they have their hands around and understand the cash flow in their business.

And that’s not simple either, but getting there is a process that can be undertaken and really tighten up what your expenses are, really focus on how to improve that revenue. Through things like, getting in touch with what it is you’re wanting to promote. And once you have the cash flow dialed in and figured out, then you’ve got a little bit more freedom and runway, to actually invest in the things that are important to you.

That may be hiring an assistant, so you can go home and be with your kids. Or maybe it’s launching a new product. But cash makes all of those things possible. And I think it’s a metric that is really ignored. A lot of people focus on profitability, and profitability is great. I have focused on it for a long time.

But what I see happening is people don’t understand that if they look at a bottom line that’s profitable, money is still leaking out of their business that doesn’t show up on the P&L. Things like paying debt, that principle doesn’t hit the P&L. Paying yourself if you take owner draws, that doesn’t hit your P&L.

Buying inventory, that doesn’t hit the P&L until you’ve actually sold it and you have a cost of goods sold. So there’s a lot of confusion out there, of people thinking that they’re running a profitable business, and yet, there’s not cash in the bank and they don’t understand why.

And I feel like focusing on cash in the bank will help our clients really get clear on what’s important, what they’re doing, that is making a difference. And if they can understand that piece of it, then the other aspects of their business get made a lot more, I won’t say “simple,” but a lot more of it just comes, with a little more ease.

Marc: So there’s these hidden costs in business, right? And I was going to ask you, you went right into it. But you went into a little bit about how your accounting background with ecom stores has really shaped your approach to cashflow. And I think you covered that quite well, actually, is that sometimes you have a profitable business, but then you’re left wondering, why the bank account balance is the way it is.

So based on that is there anything about, particularly when working with numbers with clients, which is a little bit different than thinking strictly about marketing, but it all ties back together. Because we all want more cash flow and we all want to be profitable at the end of the day, right? And so you combine both worlds really well, especially when you start looking towards what’s really driving that person, and how to include that back into their marketing.

So what would you say about your background with being numbers focused, how that shapes things differently than say, someone else, who might work with them to increase their cash flow?

Cyndi: I’ve just realized, after… I wrote Profit First for eCommerce Sellers over almost 6 years ago now. And after working with clients, I realized there’s some of them we just don’t get things solved. And that’s bothered me because I know financially, it works. I know mathematically, it works. But for some reason, we weren’t getting the lasting change.

When I had a business owner come to me and we get them out of trouble, and then they go off, and then they come back, and they’re in trouble again, I’m like, “What’s going on here?” And I started to realize, it’s not what’s on the P and L. It’s what’s happening up here in the mind.

And so I’ve spent the last three years really working on developing life coaching skills, because I feel like that is the way to really get to the bottom of how to help people make a change that’s going to last for them.

Yeah, I can come in and help them tweak the levers in their business. But when I go away, if they haven’t had a transformation in their mind about how to transact business differently, then I’m leaving them to come back, and we’ll do it all over again.

And as much as I like working with people, I want them to be successful when they leave. Not have to go through it all again and come back.

Marc: Great answer. Yes, that’s perfect. And so that is about all the time that we do have today. So let me just ask you, how does someone who wants to find out more about you and what you do, how can they best find you?

Cyndi: They can reach out to me at CyndiThomason.com, and there’s lots of ways to contact me there, blogs on there to learn a little bit more about what I’m doing specifically with women, and pretty soon there’ll be a splash on there about the Ecom Profit Partners Your Profit Team. By the time your listeners hear this, hopefully it’ll be out there and ready to really start accelerating cash for these businesses.

Marc: Absolutely. And thank you so much, Cyndi, for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Cyndi: Thank you, Marc. Enjoyed it.

Marc: Bye for now.