Aba, fam, It's time for the b a q A, the v a qa A, the v a qa. What's up? I'm Mandy Money. I powered through that song just for y'all. You know, I hate singing without Tiffany being here, but I am so honored and happy to be here to answer y'all's career questions on this week's ba Q and A just a little you know, I like to say, get your salt shakers out. This is a part of the show where I tell y'all who I'm not. Y'all know who I am, but I am not your financial advisor.
I am not unless you have a contract with me your career coach. I am not an accountant or an attorney or any of those incredible things. I am just a smart chica with a career coaching business who's talked to hundreds of women and had a stellar career of my own. So I know a thing or two about helping y'all achieve your wildest career ambitions. All right, So that's why I'm here today to take y'all's ba questions about your career. If y'all want to submit a question
for the show, you know what to do. Head over to ig follow us at Brand Ambition Podcast, and then slide into our DMS. You can type out your question if you want it to have it read on the show old school style. But if you want a shot at actually appearing live with us in the studio and having your questions answered live, submit a voice message with your question, and who knows, you could be selected by
our producer to join us in the stude. But I'm going to be reading some questions the old fashioned way today and these are some real, real juicy ones. I'm talking about, Ooh, I work for my mom and I kind of want to quit. I'm talking about Ooh, I'm kind of running out of options for my business is growing too fast. Let's get into it. Our first question comes from I'm still laughing at this and thank y'all for anyone who comes up with your own pseudonym. Thank you.
This one comes from listener who would like to be called stuck Bones and Harmony. All right, Stuck Bones and Harmony says, I am a longtime listener of the podcast, and I love the advice y'all give. You're both like sisters in my head. I'm writing you today because I am stuck at a career crossroads, and I don't know what to do. I'm a single mom in my early thirties and I work as a director of a child
care center for my mom. My mom has owned the center for almost thirty years, and although she often talks about retiring and tells me I would be the successor, I don't know when it's going to happen. She's been talking about retiring for years now and never actually pull the trigger. And even then, when she retires, her plan, she says, is to work from home and come in
when she wants to. My issue is that I only make twenty four thousand dollars and I know I have the potential to make up to forty K, but I feel like that's not enough for me. I live in a one bedroom apartment and I want to move to the suburbs and buy a house. I want a more affordable lifestyle for my son, and I feel like if I continue to work for my mom, I have to play the long game until I can actually afford the lifestyle I want. But I just don't know when that'll happen,
and it's not helping me now. Life is expensive, period, and I want more a house and I want a new car, but it's too hard to save on a twenty four k salary. So my question is should I continue to work for my mom and play the long game for legacy reasons, or should I look to work for a company that pays more. I would like to be in the project management field. I have a side business and event planning, but the money is very up and down and I don't want to fully depend on
that income. I've never wanted to be a teacher, but I'm a hard worker and I'm good at what I do. So if I leave, I know my mom is going to have a hard time replacing me. Help signed stuck Bones and harmony. Okay, stuck bone the harmony, I'm gonna just call you bones. Okay. Oh listen, where do I start? All right? So let's just remove the fact that she's your mom for a second, if you can just humor me.
I know it's impossible, because like she gave birth to you and all that, but let's imagine she was just a regular boss. Would you stay there if she weren't your mom? I think the answer is glaringly obvious. No. You would be out of there so fast because you see your potential to make more and you don't even really necessarily like what you're doing. So I would just say, be true to yourself. And if you're worried about your mom having to replace you, she's run a daycare center
for thirty years. How many other people over those thirty years have quit and had the daycare center closed? Has she had to shut things down? No, she probably knows how to find a replacement, you know, and maybe it'll take her a little while, but you could give her a nice notice, you could offer to help find a replacement. But I think that you need to stay true to yourself. You're so young, you know, in your thirties are a really crucial time in your career where you're especially if
you're pivoting. It's a cool opportunity to make a pivot in a new direction. You're a single mom with a family to support of your own, and you have your own ambitions and goals the same way that your mom did when she decided to launch a child care center. So I think that she'll one hundred percent understand now. She may not feel excited about it, she may not be jumping up and down that her daughter is leaving
the daycare center. But I do think deep down, eventually she'll come around to the fact that, Okay, I'm going to respect my daughter's choices because she is her own person and she has her own goals for her future, right And I'm and if you explain to her what you want, maybe she'll even support you more because twenty four K I'm like, where can you live on that kind of what? That's not much at all? And I'm just like, this also proves that just because you work
for your family doesn't mean they're going to pay you more. Okay, I'm like, can she give you a raise? So I think if you tell her you're ready to step away you want to pursue your own goals, or maybe you've already found a job offer and you want to take it, you need to give her, you know, your notice or whatnot that she will ultimately understand and then she can
do what any other employer would do. She can decide to try to fight for you and maybe give you a raise, or she can say I understand and you know, we'll part ways. Back to the legacy piece, I'm wondering if do you have to work there in order to inherit the daycare center. I mean, is that necessary? I don't feel like it is. If she really wants to leave the daycare center to you, she can still do
that when she retires. But right now you're like this, like you're letting her kind of treat you like a pawn on a game board that she's in control of, and she's like using you and placing you as like her own strategy for walking away. Oh, just you know, I got my daughter here, and when I'm ready, she'll
take it. She'll take over. And I would argue that maybe your mom is even using like a little bit of a crutch to stop her from looking really carefully at how she runs her business and making sure that she has a true succession plan in place, because right now she's relying on you. You're her entire succession plan. But it takes so much more than just having that one person to hand over a whole business, Like how do things happen at this daycare center? How does hiring? How
does staffing? What about regulars you have to file and comply, have to comply with and you know other compliance concerns. I mean, just seeing what goes on for my son's daycare I'm just like, this is this is a whole
frickin corporation in and of itself. It's very complex, and any good leader of any business should have a true, ironclad succession plan that shouldn't revolve around the only plan being I'm just going to give it to my daughter what I think at the at a bare minimum, you leaving the daycare center will force her to really do the good work, the important work of coming up with the real long term succession plan and listen, she should also know that she can't count on you to take
over the whole daycare center, like if you leave and brek on your own path, which I really am rooting for you to do because you're so young, and why do something you don't want to do just because you're good at it, Like life's too short. Do the thing you want to do. You say that your event planning business hasn't really taken off, Well, I would guess it's because between the hours and nine to five you're owned
by that day center. Imagine how much more you could invest in it if you were doing it on your own right. But I will say, like, if your mom really wants to pass the business down to you, having a frank conversation about what you want that to look like is important too. So maybe she could pass on, you know, ownership to you. But do you want to run that daycare center when your mom leaves? Like it doesn't sound like you do at all. Would you be
doing it just for the money? You know? I think a true succession plan would point out maybe you have ownership, but that you're able to hire a new director to come in and you know, play the role that your mom is playing now and start to pass that off and you can still have ownership and you can still be a part of it and contribute, but you don't have to be there, you know, twenty four seven running the show, especially if it's not what you want to
do and it's not what you want for your family. Okay, Now, I'm not saying it's going to be a fun conversation to have, and lord knows, the holidays you're coming up, and it's hard enough talking about this stuff with your family.
But I think that this is one of those things where you want to have the conversation sooner than later so that she can get it into her head that she can't rely on you the way that she thought you did to succeed her and to make her retirement plan work out smoothly, because even though it makes her life easier, it's going to make your life more challenging. And I think at the end of the day, as parents, we want our kids to pursue their own paths and not feel, you know, not to like pick up where
we left off out of a sense of obligation. I'm just saying what I feel as a mom. Your mom may be different. I know it can be dicey, but for your own sake, have the tough conversations now so that you can start planning your new path forward, and so can she. All right, stock Bones and Harmony, Thank you for your question. Let me take a quick break, get some water. I'll be right back with y'all with more baqa ib a fam. I'm back. I've got to do something. Don't tell Tiffany. I'm going to take a
business question. Yes, I don't tell Tiffany. I'm doing without her, but I want to. I want to take this business question because I honestly have been thinking about this for my own business as well, and I think it's a common problem and it's a good problem to have. And I'm excited. So if you don't tell Tiffany, I won't tell this. Okay, Okay, let's do it. This question comes from listener who wants to be called just Elle. I like to keep it simple, Elle says, Hey, Mandy and Tiffany.
I am a private music teacher who teaches one on one sessions, and I'm running into the problem of having an overflowing client wait list. I'm not sure if I'm ready to expand my business yet, like hiring another teacher or offering more class formats. I do offer camps and workshops in the winter and summer, but I don't teach any group sessions during the regular school year. I'm satisfied
with my financial situation for now. There might be potential to grow the business in the future, but I'm not mentally or emotionally ready to take on that kind of responsibility for now. So my current problem is that I'm overwhelmed and it feels unethical to keep protect clients on a waitlist for a long time. I really want to serve them too, but I simply don't have the time. So my options are oh so, my questions are one, how long is too long to keep potential clients on
a weight list. Of course, it varies in different industries, but in your opinions and in your own business practices, how do you determine an unethical How do you determine an ethical waiting period for your potential clients? Number two? If I keep shutting my door on potential clients and refer them to other people, how can I be sure I'm not cutting out business growth for myself when I do decide to expand in the future. Thank you for your consideration. Whoof Okay, this is good, So let me
go to number one. How long is too long to keep potential clients on a wait list? Well, I know you can't see me unless you're watching on YouTube, but listen the hair on my head when I tell you how long I've had to wait to get my hair done sometimes because I go to a specific hair personal release I used to in the city pre COVID, and I would have to not just wait for a weight list, but I would have to market on my calendar for when she actually opened up seats, actually opened up appointments
because she was so in demand that she'd only open them up a month at a time, so to book in December, like maybe the waitlist or maybe the booking calendar would open for like twenty four hours today in the middle of November when I'm recording the show, and then I had to scramble to hope I got an appointment. It was stressful, af but I was willing to do that because I knew she was the best right or
at least the best at the time. So there's really no like short and quick way to come up with what's an ethical And this idea of it either being ethical or unethical, I think is almost like a false question, because it's not unethical to only have a number limited number of hours in the day and to not be
able to see everyone who needs your services. I also, you didn't mention this, but I'm wondering, like, have you increased your prices lately, because if the demand is there, then you have a limited supply of time, and it makes sense, like simple economics to raise your rates, and I think that may help with your wait list, Like I think it'll turn away some people who want to go for a different priced option, and it will preserve for you the only the people who want to invest
the most in your services and want to invest more in them. And I say this all the time when I talk about my Maydee Moneymaker's community and why I charge what I charge because I really believe having a price point that reflects the value of your services and
the value of your time is good for everyone. Because when you ask people to make a real investment in your services, you're weeding out people who maybe would have done things a little bit more casually, and you are really going to be met with people who are going to value what they pay for and pay what they value, pay for what they value. You see what I'm saying. So I'll say that. So I don't think there's any hard and fast rule on how long is too long.
Just be transparent, like say, I'm happy to put you on the wait list. If you're willing to wait, it's going to be a few months before I can squeeze you in. In the meantime, and this is a dot dot dot that I need you to fill. When you tell them they're on the waitlist, what else can you tell them to do that? What is that dot dot dot? But in the meantime, what can you offer them? Can
you offer them some online tutoring? Like do you have some pre recorded you know, teachings that you can offer them some videos, like an on demand you know version of your private lessons that you could create. Do you have a list of referrals, like other instructors who can refer them to for private one on one lessons If that's the case, and if you want to refer them out,
then you could create like an affiliate arrangement. So for every person you refer to one of your partners, so these are other private instructors for everyone of the clients that they get because you refer them, then they can give you, you know, some sort of monetary benefit like ten dollars or twenty whatever, one hundred dollar or maybe people who you refer get a special discount on their services.
That can be a way to like build trust with your client tele because you're taking care of them and making sure they get a great you know, opportunity for services. And it's also a good way to maybe still like make money from clients that you wouldn't be able to see, you know, one on one, but still have a little bit of income because of that affiliate agreement you know,
with your partners. And that's a very common model a business model in you know, in in coaches like in like private coaches like myself or even like Tiffany with our budgeties to business, affiliate models are pretty common. It may not be as common in the private teaching, private music sort of space, but who knows. Like, if you can find other people doing it, it's just going to
prove that it exists. It's possible, Okay. And then your second question, if I keep shutting the door on potential clients and I refer them to other people, how how can I be sure I'm not cutting out business growth for myself if and when I do decide to expand
in the future. So I answered part of that. I don't think you'd be cutting off business growth, especially if you still keep those people on your email list and you lead them with the good impression because you're like, I'm so sorry, I'm really in demand right now, I don't have time, but I have this for you. I've got these online lessons, or I've got this referral network. You can choose one of these great people, tell them I sent you, and you'll get ten dollars off or
whatever you know. And then if and when you decide to expand in the future, if you keep their email, you know, you keep them on your list, then they're going to be front and center in first in line when you do announce any future offerings. And I like to make my email list feel special as a business owner, because I believe that important relationship of email subscribers is
really key to business growth. It's a more intimate relationship than I think Instagram or TikTok or like social followers, because they're letting you in their email inbox, Like come on, don't know how crazy email inboxes right and how often you're hitting that unsubscribed button. So if you're still subscribing to me, I want to bring you value and I want to make you feel valued by by being an email subscriber, so you can tell them you're on my list.
Now I only open up newslots to people on my list. You're going to be the first to know and start to build that trust with them. And then even though you say that you don't have a lot of like group coaching activities throughout the year, you could potentially offer like a free IG live or a free YouTube video or something so that you can tell your email list, hey, I know that the wait list is still pretty long to get in to see me, But why don't you
join me. I'm going to be doing a group like a live group coaching session, or I'm going to have one of my favorite students, you know, join me to talk about what they've learned and how they've grown, so that you can still add value and still build trust and credibility with your audience. And again like give them a lot of stuff for free, like tip is always saying,
give a lot of stuff away for free. And then when you're finally ready to sell or charge something people won't feed like you're constantly selling to them, it's going to be special and at that point they're going to be excited to take out their wallets and invest, you know, in your services. I'm going back to the part of your question where you said there might be potential to grow the business, but I'm not mentally or emotionally ready to take on that kind of responsibility for now. What
do you think will happen? Like what what do you think you need that you don't have now mentally and emotionally to even take on, you know, which is an
obvious solution to me and even to yourself. You pointed it out to take on an assistant instructor, Like, what do you think it'll take, Because honestly, I think it'll be so rewarding for you when you see you can ask for help, you can bring on someone part time and test them out, and you can see that you're still able to meet the needs of your clientele without needing to duplicate yourself because it's impossible to do right.
You can actually gain a lot by asking other people to come on board and support the business that you put together. Maybe it seems like a like a bunch of responsibility, but I'm just wondering, like, what do you think it is? And this is where I also remind
y'all fight fear with facts. So can you talk to other instructors about how they've gone about hiring sub instructors or subcontractors or whatever you want to call them, and what they learned and how they did it so that you can come up with your own process of doing that. You know, you could easily hire someone on a part time basis and like they send you an invoice and you just pay it for your business account. It's not
a big deal at all. I have an assistant, I have a couple of virtual assistants to help me at Mandy Money and even for the podcast, and it's really not that extra responsibility as long as they're well trained and you know, you go through like that trial phase where you're making sure they're trained up, but they understand
how things work, they know how you want to do things. Yeah, so I would I would push yourself there because if your if your end goal is really to grow the business and to serve more people, that's definitely a way to do it. So that's where I'll leave it, and that's what I'll say. I hope that this was helpful to you, and thanks again Elle for your question. Good luck with your business. I hope that you continue to
grow it sounds amazing. You should be super proud of yourself, but don't let a little bit of doubt and fear stop you from taking it to the next level. Doubt and fear that doesn't have any facts behind it can really hold you back. So that's why I'm always encouraging y'all to connect with other peers in your space who
are doing what you want to be doing. Maybe they're ten years ahead of you, five years ahead of you, a year ahead of you, and can look back and help you learn from how they navigated their business and maybe help you feel a little bit less afraid about what you think is so challenging about that kind of growth. All right, Elle, thank you so much for your question, and thank y'all be a Q and A listeners for
listening to our show and always supporting. And if y'all want to get featured on the show, hit us up at Brownimbission Podcast on ig with your questions, or you can go to our email it's Brownambission Podcast at gmail dot com. Until next time, I'm Mandy Money. This is Brown ambishon B a Q and A. Bye y'all, Hey ba fam. We could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown Ambission Podcast is produced by Cumulus Podcast Network.
It's edited by the wonderful Imani Crosby and produced by Tanya Bustos. Dennis Stimplinsky is our in house tech guru, and I am Bandy Woodard Santos, your co host, and I will see y'all next week.