Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Michele Williams explains how she helps clients create a business that fits their life
• Michele describes her winding path to Scarlet Thread Consulting
• What fed Michele’s decision to quit corporate and start following her own path?
• How to overcome self-doubt and allow creativity to flow
• Michele’s hot take: your creative business is worth what you charge
• The five things clients pay for: knowledge, expertise, time, value, and stress relief
• Why should you pay yourself first?
• Vanity metrics versus meaningful KPIs
• Recognizing the value you add — more than just money

In this episode…

Many creatives doubt that their products or services are worth charging for. If it’s easy to do, it probably isn’t very valuable, right?

Wrong. Just because something comes naturally to you doesn’t mean it comes naturally to everybody. The years of effort you’ve put into making something seem simple is incredibly valuable — add in the time saved and stress relieved for clients, and that value shoots through the roof.

In this episode of the Measure Success Podcast, Carl J. Cox talks with Michele Williams, Founder of Scarlet Thread Consulting, about recognizing the intrinsic worth of your creative business. Michele discusses the debilitating mentalities that many creatives have, why paying yourself is a priority, and how to set measurable goals.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Michele Williams on LinkedIn
• Scarlet Thread Consulting
• Profit is a Choice podcast
• Jessica Yarbrough
• Mike Michalowicz on the Profit is a Choice podcast
• Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz
• The Vision Driven Leader: 10 Questions to Focus Your Efforts, Energize Your Team, and Scale Your Business by Michael Hyatt
• Michele Williams on Instagram
• Scarlet Thread Consulting on Facebook
• 40 Strategy
• Contact 40 Strategy
• Carl J. Cox on LinkedIn
• Opportunity International

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is sponsored by 40 Strategy.

40 Strategy provides strategic planning and consulting to help organizations realize and achieve their dreams by creating and measuring KPIs for success.

Unfortunately, most organizations only spend 2% of their time — or about 40 hours per year — on building an effective strategy.

Increasing the success of those 40 hours is what 40 Strategy does because your success is their passion — and that’s why organizations look to them for guidance.

Not only does 40 Strategy help you craft and implement an effective strategy, but they’ll also work to facilitate teams with proven practices and help with your scenario planning.

Harvard research shows that you can triple your success when you use the right Key Performance Indicators. Who doesn’t want that?

If you have questions, you can reach out through their website or email them at catch@40strategy.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Measure Success Podcast where we feature top leaders on how they measure success in their business and life. Now, let’s learn from their experiences.

Carl J. Cox 0:18

Carl J. Cox here on the host of the Measure Success Podcast, where I talk with top leaders about effective strategies that inspire success. This episode is brought to us today by Opportunity International. Opportunity International as a global nonprofit working to end extreme poverty. By empowering people with an opportunity. They provide small loans and training. So individuals can grow their businesses send their kids to school, and work their way out of poverty once and for all. So go to opportunity.org to create an opportunity for someone to change their life forever. At 40 Strategy. This is one of our key organizations that we donate to on a regular basis and we encourage you to look the same for them they do an amazing job. With that, I’d like to move forward to our shout out to introduce Michele Williams, who is our guest today. Jessica Yarbrough. Jessica, who developed powerful business growth strategies made simple for consultants, coaches and small businesses so they can make a greater difference and encourage you to learn more at jessicayarbrough.com. Thank you, Jessica, for making this introduction to Michele. And now we get to talk about Michele Williams. Michele Williams is the Owner of strategic Scarlet Thread Consulting. She’s a speaker podcaster author and strategic business coach serving the interior design industry. Her work helps businesses owners create strategic plans that are actionable, manage their business and finances properly and develop a framework for decision making that allows for a laser focus. As a result of working with Michele her clients reduce their workload, increase their bottom line and reclaim their joy time which joy and time I should say. She has a signature program program called aim with intent, where she focuses with five strategies that lead to wild success, strategies of foundation intention people process and profits. She’s also a certified coach in Profit First and fixed this next methodologies. You can already mentioned our prod podcast host prophet is choice and she earned a BS and Bachelor of Science in Management Information System Administrator management from the University of South Carolina. Michele, thank you so much for being a guest on Measure Success Podcast.

Michele Williams 2:33

Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Carl J. Cox 2:35

Absolutely. And and we will say up front for those who are watching and listening. I did not give Michele the fair warning that I was going to wear a tie today. I don’t normally wear ties. And and but unfortunately, this is our holiday edition. That’s why we have one of the sponsors being for Opportunity International. And so but, Michele, you’re working that hat great. You look great. You got you got your Scarlet Thread Consulting, which is absolutely awesome. And you got all your books behind. We both love to learn and to gain new knowledge. Michele, for our audience, tell people more about who Scarlet Thread Consulting and what do you do?

Michele Williams 3:15

Sure. So I am a business coach and strategist, as you mentioned, and Scarlet Thread Consulting. So my firm first started out I know we’ll talk about the story later, but it started out as Scarlet Thread Interiors. And then it morphed into Scarlet Thread Consulting. And so what I do is I work with those in the interior design industry. So it could be interior designers, decorators, stagers, drapery work rooms, I’ve worked with home builders, installers, upholsterers people in that creative industry. And I really worked with them to help them grow slash scale their business in a way that fits their lifestyle. Because you know, as well as I do, there’s more than one way to grow and scale a business right? It doesn’t have to look the same for everybody. And so I really like working with them to understand their God given talents and their dreams and their goals and then create a business that fits into their life instead of forcing their life to fit into their business.

Carl J. Cox 4:16

I think that’s such an important thing and so many times where we we follow our dreams, so to speak, right and we were finally doing something we want to do and then next thing we realize we hate our dreams. Right? Because we’ve overworked ourselves we’re trying to figure out how to make it work and and I love it how you’re trying to tie together the passion is still having meaning within whatever lifestyle they’re choosing. Right so some 60 hours is going to be comfortable and they feel good with that while there’s like no I just really want to work three to four days a week. Right and make a that’s how I’m gonna make a difference in the world. I love it how you’ve done that difference. So why don’t we go in through a little bit. You this evening just start doing this yesterday. You’ve been doing this for quite a while Michele Tell us a little bit about that maturation your own self, of how you got to this location. I remember you talked about you bought a school, you sold a school, you know, give our audience more insights.

Michele Williams 5:11

Crazy. You know, I want to say this. So among the not young, in the idea, like you said that I’ve just been doing this. And what I find is interesting is if we allow it, right, so I’m just going to throw a little all of my belief system out here. If we allow it, everything that we have done in the past can inform where we move forward in the future, even when it feels disjointed in the moment, right. So and I say that, because you mentioned that my degree from the University of South Carolina Gamecocks was in Information Systems administrative management. Well, my first job, I wanted to be an accountant. And then I met a bunch of accountants in school, and they didn’t really want to talk to anybody. So I thought I cannot be an accountant. Because people don’t have enough personality. For me easy,

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