218 Introducing Stock Doctor

Catherine Erdly: Have you ever felt like you wished someone else would come along, take a look at your business numbers, take a look at your stock, for example, and tell you what to do with it. If you’ve ever felt like that, then today’s episode is for you.

Hi, I’m Catherine Erdly. I am your host today, as well as the founder of the Resilient Retail Club.

The Resilient Retail Club is my membership group and mastermind for product business owners. You can find out more at resilientretailclub. com.

Introducing Stock Doctor

Catherine Erdly: And today I’m so excited to tell you about a brand new service that I have been working on for months. And it is going to revolutionize the way you look at your business numbers.

So the service is called Stock Doctor. I have been trialing it since the summer with a handful of retailers and it has been absolutely fabulous. And so today’s episode, I wanted to explain a little bit more about what stock doctor is, why I came up with it and how it can help you and your business.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Erdly. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry and showing you how you can use them in your business.

This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy, accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good. Confidently plan, launch, and manage your products, and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

The Inspiration Behind Stock Doctor

Catherine Erdly: So what was the thought process behind Stock Doctor?

Well, I have been working with business owners for many years now. I have been working one to one with people since 2018, so six years. And over that time, I have worked as a mentor, as a consultant. And for the last year and a half, I’ve been running my mastermind, which is Absolutely fabulous program. And it’s essentially like inserting me into your team, a great opportunity for me to work very, very closely with business owners and work with them on their stock management, on putting together plans, on really looking at their whole business, their whole business strategy, and then making some changes across six months.

And so that is very much the top end of what I do with people really in depth And then I also have the membership group the resilient retail club, which is absolutely fabulous as well I love the resilient retail club. We have over 200 members. We’ve been going for four years. We have a whole library of courses, loads of information. And I also have my book which I wrote and published last year, tame your tiger, how to stop your product business eating you alive.

And I’m really, really passionate about the information that I share in the club and the information that I share in the book. All about how to look at your business numbers, how to understand what’s going on and how to improve the profitability of your business. I really truly believe that what retail businesses need more than anything is profit.

And I also believe that most people who start product businesses do not do that with a background in profitability and stock management. In fact, most people have never even particularly even thought about stock management in their businesses because it’s an extremely niche subject, extremely niche skill that I’ve acquired over many, many years working in big retailers.

And over the last six years, I’ve enjoyed enormously sharing that information with small retailers.

So I have these two ends of the spectrum, very, very in depth working with me on the mastermind and lots of information, but basically a self service model in the membership. Obviously we’ve got a community as well, which is brilliant, but it’s very much the emphasis is on the business owner going through, absorbing the information and implementing it.

And at one point I thought about doing a group program, something in the middle where there was more input than the membership. But it was not as in depth and intense as the mastermind, but it didn’t really sit right with me and I played around with the concept of it for a while, but what I came down to, and after I spent quite a lot of time doing some customer research into how people manage their business and what challenges they have, especially around cashflow and stock management. I realized that time is so critical for so many people. They just don’t have the time to really engage with some of this stuff, to teach themselves yet another skill. And I certainly know as a small business owner myself, the number of skills that you have to learn are enormous.

You have to learn all about marketing. You have to learn about managing people. You have to learn about structuring your offers and your products and so many different things, keeping your customers happy, retention, loyalty, all of these different hats you have to wear. And for a lot of people, especially if numbers weren’t their first love Which, you know, personally, I’d say though I do love numbers, but I know I’m in a minority when I say this.

Then for a lot of people, if that wasn’t their area of strength, then they found it really hard to devote the time and effort and energy it would take for them to look into their numbers and then also not really know if what they were doing was right.

How Stock Doctor Works

Catherine Erdly: So I decided that maybe what I needed was a done for you service. I needed someone to come in to look at the numbers for a business owner and to be able to sit down with you once a month and say, okay, I’ve looked at your numbers.

This is what it’s telling me. This is where you’re selling really well. This is where you’ve got stock that you’re not moving. This is how you make the most of it. And then also put together some plans. Here are some promotions you could run. Here is what you should be spending on stock this month. These are the key suppliers that you really must not run out of stock of and then support on things like having a sales plan, having a stock plan and having a plan for your key purchases as well.

And that was the vision. And what I knew was that I needed to find people who had similar experience to me who were also really entrenched in the small business world as well. So they understood the big business concepts, but then how to plunge small businesses and then work with them to offer this service so that I could say to people, okay, you don’t have to learn a new skill.

You don’t have to figure this stuff out yourself. You just have to let us look at it and then we will tell you what to do. And so that’s what I’ve been doing this year is playing around with the format, trialing it and talking to people to find the stock doctors who are going to be working with the retailers.

And I’m really excited because we have a couple of really fabulous people with great experience in big retailers, retailers like Clark’s shoes or anthropology. And we have tested this method on, as I said, a handful of retailers and it has been fabulous. It has meant that the retailer has been able to get on with the stuff that they love doing, which is being on the shop floor, choosing their products, talking to their customers and selling.

But with that real benefit of being able to check in once a month and have the stock doctor tell them this is what’s going on, this is what’s happening and this is what you need to do. And that is it in a nutshell. Done for you service that helps you take control of your stock management so you can focus on growing your business.

The Benefits of Stock Doctor

Catherine Erdly: And I think for me, why I feel so strongly about this and why I’m so excited about this program is that. Running business is tough, especially when you feel like your cash flow, your stock management is a mystery. You’re working really hard. You don’t always know where the cash is going.

Maybe you feel stressed about bills a lot. You’re nervous to spend because you’re unsure if you’ll have enough. And then you’ve got that creeping fear in the back of your mind that maybe things might fall apart or maybe you’re not doing things right. And it’s so difficult, I hear this all the time people will say to me, I’ve got so much access to information, but I don’t know what it’s telling me. And more importantly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do once I figured out what it’s telling me. And for me, I’m Really passionate about independent retail. I think that it’s such an important part of the retail industry, whether you’re an e commerce seller or a bricks and mortar store, then it’s so important that these purpose led exciting new businesses grow and thrive. But for a lot of people, they’re not going to grow and thrive if they are stuck in this frankly, really uncomfortable place with cashflow.

So cashflow issues, they don’t just impact your bottom line, but they also have a real knock on effect on your, on your confidence. So it can really knock your confidence when you don’t have a clear handle on your numbers.

After all, it’s really hard to feel sure about how to grow if you don’t know how much is going out or coming in.

What if you didn’t have to wing it anymore? What if you had a done for you solution where the heavy lifting is taken care of? And that’s exactly what Stock Doctor offers. It’s a service designed to help you get a crystal clear view of your cash flow and stock management without the stress of doing it all yourself.

You have done for you templates and documents that will help you optimize your stock and cash flow, an expert analysis and input on your business financials and also fully customized approach. This is not a one size fits all. This is somebody taking a look at your business, whether you’re an e commerce business or an independent retailer in helping give you peace of mind.

So it gives you that clear plan for success and it. Freeze you to focus on what you love, eliminating all of that stress and that guesswork.

So imagine waking up tomorrow knowing that you’ll have the cash to cover your bills because you didn’t spend too much on stock that you didn’t need. Or if you are spending on stock that you’re really clear it’s the stock that you need, you can look to pay yourself more, feel more confident.

Knowing exactly what you’re going to spend and why, and it really eliminates the guessing and the sleepless nights. It gives you that confidence in financial decision making, gives you a clear stock plan to help you ensure profitability, make sure not all of your money is going back into buying more stock, gives you that visibility into your business’s strengths and opportunities, and then also help you optimize your stocks so you can unlock that trapped cash and really improve your cashflow.

And just to reiterate, this is not a course. This is not you having to sit down and work out what you need to do. Now, if you want that, if you want to learn these skills yourself and to do a self service course, then please check out the Resilient Retail Club membership. We have the Tame Your Tiger course, which is based on the book and you can get the book as well.

And It’s all there for you. It’s all mapped out. It’s all available as self service However, if you think to yourself I want to know that i’m doing this better But I don’t want to have to do it all myself then come talk to us about Stock Doctor. This is where you have experts dive into your numbers, create customized plans, and give you the tools to move forward with confidence, so you can focus on running your business, not getting bogged down in the spreadsheets.

Who Should Use Stock Doctor?

Catherine Erdly: So who’s this for? It is for ambitious retail entrepreneurs, whether you’re not, you’re an e commerce business or an independent retailer, or if you’re growing fast. Or maybe you’ve hit a plateau, but you would really like to dig into improving your profitability. If you’re already established, if you’re approaching the VAT limit or above it, and if you curate or create products that you’re proud of, then this service was meant for you.

And it’s really all about, as I said, a tailored view. Why is now a good time to do it as well? Well, this is the perfect time for someone to go over your plans for Christmas. Take a look at what you’re aiming for. Take a look at what you’re buying for Christmas, help you check your strategy, help you check your buys. Part of what we do as well is we look at what stock have you got that you could be pushing, that you could be emphasizing to your customer.

So it’s about getting more sales out of the existing stock as much as it is about buying in the new stock that is correct for what you need to drive your sales. So it’s a really, really excellent time for you to come in and to start working on the program.

A lot of people have a nervousness at this time of year about taking on something new, but this is, not designed to be a time suck.

This is designed to be us taking the heavy lifting and supporting you. So through the fourth quarter and into the first part of the year, next year, you’re going to be able to work with someone who will help you put together the plan, your stock plan for stock and sales plan for 2025. Making sure you’ve got your budget set, making sure you know exactly what you need to buy, and also giving you direction on what you need to do in terms of making sure that you are not overspending and you’re making the most of the stock that you do have.

Special Offer to Join Stock Doctor

Catherine Erdly: I also have a special offer as this is the first time that we are launching it to everybody. We have got an early bird, which is 200 pounds off the stock doctor. If you book your call in to talk about it by the 21st of October. So we do have limited spaces in this first round and if you’re interested, then there will be a link in the show notes to book in your stock doctor call.

You don’t have to have had the call by the 21st. You just have to have got it booked in by the 21st so that we can manage that and get you your early bird special. So there are limited spaces. This is hugely exciting for me and I believe hugely exciting for you as well. So if you’ve ever felt like, I wish that I had somebody who was going to be able to take a look at my numbers and tell me what to do, then you will have access to that.

Go take a look at the show notes. Have a look. There’s a link there with even more detail about what the program is. If you’re interested, if you think like this would be something that would be good for you, for your business. Then click on the link and get your call booked in before the 21st of October, and you’ll be eligible for the early bird special.

So there you have it. I’m so excited about this new service. I have been working on this tinkering with the format, getting it into the shape that I feel like will be the most valuable for people.

And so I’m super excited to be finally launching it.

So if you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed by your finances and you’re ready to see real rewards for your hard work, then Stock Doctor is here for you. Get the support that you deserve and let’s start focusing on growing your business with more confidence.

Don’t forget to check the show notes for the links. And don’t forget that we can help solve your stock management issues, improve your cashflow and give your business the tools that you need to succeed. I look forward to speaking to you soon. ​