110 | The CEO Mistakes Costing You Profit, Time, and Sanity with Stacey Bullman

[00:00:00] What if the biggest opportunities in your business are hiding in plain sight? And the only thing standing between where you are and where you could be is the speed at which you can identify and act on them. Today’s episode is going to challenge the way you think about clarity, decision making, what’s actually possible inside of your company.
Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategist Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan. Today I am joined by Stacey Bullman, whose work has helped over a thousand companies navigate complexity and create results that most entrepreneurs don’t even know are achievable. She brings a decade of experience from, I’m not mad at you.com, where their team has helped businesses in everything from robotics.
In construction to marketing and pet care, move faster, think smarter, and build futures that truly last. Their approach is all about ruthless practicality, fast frameworks in tools like the wheel assessment that spotlight problems and opportunities at speed. We’re talking about real [00:01:00] outcomes, like 700% pipeline growth in a single year, 44% profit lift in a month, and 645% net income growth in 12 months.
In this conversation, you’re going to hear a level of candor and clarity that most business owners never get access to. If you want to future-proof your business, avoid costly mistakes, learn how to operate confidently in a world where the playbook seems to change every night. This is an episode. You’re going to wanna listen all the way through, and as you’re listening, if you’re ready to start building out your tax and wealth strategy with the same level of intention and practicality, head over to vital strategies.com/tax.
You’ll find tools and guidance designed to help you take control of your numbers and create a plan that actually supports your vision. I’ll mention it again later, but that’s vital strategies.com/tax. If you’ve been enjoying the show, it would mean a lot if you took a moment to leave a review. It helps get this information in front of more entrepreneurs who need it.
Let’s dive in. Stacey Bowman, I’m excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much [00:02:00] for, for joining us. I think this is gonna be a fantastic conversation about, uh, making sure our, our, the stories we’re telling, uh, really matter. So thanks for joining us here today. Thank you for having us. So I’m, I’m looking at, you know, the business landscape and it, it just seems like it’s shifting fast.
Markets, technology competition’s evolving, seems like weekly, especially with, with ai. Uh, entrepreneurs are overwhelmed with the complexity and noise and playbooks that, that seem to be outdated. Uh, the moment they’re written, they don’t know which fires to put out, which opportunities to chase or which hidden weaknesses they should, you know, are, are dragging them down.
So. Then I think about the internal problems that the, the decision make’s dealing with. And there’s the, the weight of just being the sole decision maker is, is hard. They’re tired, they’re overthinking, uh, they’re slow progress. And so, uh, they just can’t see the root issues clearly or, or quickly. Uh, they want simplicity and speed, but uh, all they’re getting is, is more information, which just makes it, uh, makes it hard.
[00:03:00] And then philosophically, I just think about the entrepreneur. They shouldn’t have to guess their way through, through growing their business. Uh, business should. Rewards, clarity and, uh, not, not be creating chaos. So, um, they should have a fast, honest way to uncover what’s working, fix what isn’t, and build a company that lasts.
So, uh, I’m looking forward to, to getting into all of these things today. If it’s okay, can you give us a little bit of your, your, your background so we can talk about how we’re gonna solve all those problems We just identified, I spent 25 years in corporate America learning some of the, you know, world’s finest systems and processes.
Around, you know, business development, sales, marketing, strategy, accounting, finance, and took that as we say, 80,000 hours of experience and almost 10 years ago, started the company with the desire to make people and companies better. And in a Bain, you know, my company’s name is, I’m not mad at you. And on some levels, I think I was mad at corporate America in [00:04:00] the mm-hmm.
Area where they were trying to improve. Oftentimes they did bring in consultants, they did have people come onto our campuses, shall you say, and try to, mm-hmm. Best understand the company or the organization and, and it almost always fell flat with the actual, you know, should you call it field agents, the ones that were doing the blocking and tackling out in the field.
It was usually for the C-suite executives. And oftentimes it didn’t ring true for those of us that were doing a lot of the, the workout in the field. So I probably in some levels had a lot of frustration through the years watching that occur and felt that I could do the same thing. Bring some of the systems and processes from corporate America to small and midsize businesses who do not have the luxury of learning.
As you just said, as an entrepreneur, you are juggling so many balls. Mm-hmm. You might have opened or started a construction company, but the balls you’re actually oftentimes juggling are around your books, your tax. [00:05:00] Mm-hmm. As, as we might say, you know, your year in taxes. How to improve their or employees or HR challenges or staffing issues?
Supply and chain challenges. Right. So supply chain challenges. So oftentimes the basic blocking and tackling of a business isn’t what you get to spend a lot of your time on as the ad entrepreneur. So you, you know, bring that to light and help them in the small to mid-size business use some of those processes and strategies that the big companies were using.
Get better. Yeah, I think that’s great. And as, as entrepreneurs, I think it can be an awfully lonely, uh, world out there. You know, you, you sometimes you look around at your friends, they don’t, you know, they, if they’re not owning and running a business, it’s like, man, this is, uh, this is, this is challenging.
And so having that, we’ll call it CCEO sounding board, you know, uh, and I know that’s something that, uh, uh, you do a lot of is, is critical, like having somebody that’s been there, done that. And, and I [00:06:00] just look at some of the results that, uh. You’ve produced, you know, you’ve seen tremendous growth with, with net income and some businesses sales, um, you know, just incredible from a productivity point of view, profit margin.
You know, it’s, it’s so interesting when you have somebody that can come look at the business with fresh eyes. Uh, ’cause oftentimes the entrepreneur’s so busy in the business that, uh, they can’t see the forest for the trees, right. And, um. It’s hard to go, oh, hey, if you just, if you just made this one little adjustment over here, man, it would be a, uh, tremendous for your business.
And so, um, yeah. Can you talk to us a little bit more about, uh, what that, that looks like, you know, this regular accountability and communication? Yep. Well, I mean, with our SOUNDBOARDING program, I think we hold a mirror up to the CEOs and as opposed to, like what you mentioned before, a lot of people as an entrepreneur can be lonely.
They’ve got a circle of friends or a circle of people that maybe they’re entrusting to have conversations with. That’s not your best strategy. [00:07:00] First, people will support you and they oftentimes believe in you, but do they really understand your profit and loss statements? Do they understand the inner workings of your business?
Can they get 30,000 feet above and have some objectivity? Oftentimes leaders, as you said, you know, they have blind spots. They’re busy blocking and tackling, they’re running the day-to-day business. They don’t have the ability to sometimes rise above the mud, the muck of the day-to-day business. And as you just said, they’re inside the business.
So one of the first blog articles we wrote was about leaders having blind spots and getting in the daily business, and that’s where you have to learn. We have a formula that we talk about for return on investment for CEOs, and we say, if your company is a million dollar company, divide that by two thou, 2080 hours, right?
Mm-hmm. That comes out to be like $450. I’m not certain you could check my math on that. Yeah. But it comes out to four $50 an hour. What I tell the leader of a company to do is do not touch any work or [00:08:00] activity that is not netting you $450 an hour. If you are. Doing something that you can pay somebody $25 to do.
You’re not really being responsible as the leader of this company, and you break these things out into numbers, critical numbers, for them to constantly have to be a soundboard for them to recognize and to make it easy, right? Like mm-hmm. You’re busy. As a soundboard, I’m not trying to make the life for my clients harder, and I’m not trying to have a system or process that’s harder.
I want systems and processes that integrate in the everyday business and that they find. To be simple and executable, because otherwise, if it isn’t, you’re wasting your time and spinning your wheels. Yeah, I, I love this. And one of the things that I, I found interesting about, uh, just, I’ll call it your.
Consulting and strategy in general is the, we’ll call it the wheel assessment. Yeah. Because I think it’s so good to figure out where we’re at on the map right before we start fixing things. So can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yep. It was a tool, I didn’t [00:09:00] invent it. It’s from Mind Tools, I think from the fifties, and it was part of a life coaching exercise and assessing how happy a human being was.
And when I learned about this tool, I liked it. I was like, this is very cool. On a personal level. I wanted to stretch that model and see if I couldn’t sort of tweak it to make it accessible for businesses and companies, services and products. So the wheel essentially uses eight attributes to assess anything.
A company, a manager, a leader, a product, a service, and the the company can dictate those eight attributes. It doesn’t, it’s not, nothing’s set in stone. We essentially take this wheel and we exercise it throughout the organization, with the leaders, with the people inside the organization. That might be the blocking and tackling the administrative people to really understand is leadership.
The problem for this company, and I can tell you in the 10 years, most of the time, leadership is the problem, which is an interesting thing that the leader has brought in. A consultant opened up the organization to be critically [00:10:00] obsessed, very critically obsessed. And then allowed for the assessment to come back and ultimately be pointing the finger right back at the leader.
Mm-hmm. Those are the leaders that we make the biggest difference with. Those are the, you know, leaders that are willing to open themselves up to that objectivity. The answers are almost always within the organization, but sometimes, as you just said, leader’s not gonna have all of them and mm-hmm. It’s sometimes hard to engage with your employees one-on-one as a leader to get that same information.
Right. I come in as an outsider. Yeah. I sit down with an individual for one hour. They generally will tell me everything. They’re never gonna tell their leader or their boss that, and as I tell employees and leaders, you’re not in the best interest to be. Completely and totally honest with each other.
Neither one of you are. Mm-hmm. You know, so I say oftentimes from an outside perspective, it’s much easier for us to get that information. And the other thing is we’re able to bow, tie it nicely for the leader, for it to make sense to the C-Suite [00:11:00] people. Whereas oftentimes your middle management or sometimes your administrative people have great ideas.
They don’t know how to articulate it in a way that gets heard. So we like to say that we’re the voice. Really the, um, the caretaker of the company. Not the employees. Not the employer, the company. We really service the company and that’s who we work ourselves. Account. Yeah. I love it. A question I have, ’cause I I think this can be hard as, as leaders, um, is how, how often are you finding people not receptive to the feedback?
Uh, because I, I don’t, oh. Even though I may need to hear it, I may need to hear the truth about where I’m at as a leader. Sometimes I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to, you know, it’s like that hurts, you know, because I am, I, I, I have deficiencies and I have areas to improve, and. I don’t like to think that I’m screwing things up.
So I would say, do you find that very often, often people pay me and don’t listen to me? And [00:12:00] as I say to people, like, listen, once you’ve paid, you can do whatever you want. You can throw it in the trash. You can use it. Yeah. I can tell you that we’ve never, we, you know, we’ve had several clients that we have let go because mm-hmm.
Notice they were not, they were not listening and therefore we weren’t seeing the results. And it’s not fun for us if they’re not gonna be a case study. So, of course, it’s nice to cash the check. But it really isn’t very satisfying if we’re not making the company or the people better. So we’ve had to let lots of clients go over the past 10 years because we knew they weren’t listening or they weren’t executing against the agreed upon steps that we knew would improve the company.
So it’s more often than you would think and, and, and, and it’s not so much that the leader doesn’t wanna change, it’s that the actual steps to change require work and, and steps mm-hmm. That are not always easy. Yeah, yeah. No, there’s, there’s something true about, uh, inertia. You know, uh, it’s, if, if I’m a body motion stays in [00:13:00] motion, right?
Like, and, and if I’m on a path, it’s easy to just stay on my current path. Yeah. And when I, uh, change requires me to, to get off of my path, to, to exert some force against me in, in a different direction and to move. And, and that can be hard, you know, it can be hard in lots of areas of our life, right? Like.
It can be hard in our, our diet and exercise. It can be hard in our relationships. It can be hard in, you know, our, our businesses. But I, I think the, uh, those that are, that are growth-minded, uh, you know, we’ve got a, uh, saying around here, do hard things. Like, yes, all of the good stuff comes from hard things.
It does. And so it’s like, let’s, let’s embrace that and, uh, and move forward. So I think that’s, that’s really good. And then the other thing I wanna highlight is just how you’re bringing, uh, the truth to the situation. You’re doing that in a. In a loving way, in a, in a package that the person can, can hear.
’cause it, it can be really hard, uh, a to tell your boss the truth. You know? Like, Hey, you suck at this thing. What the fuck? What? Um, and, and you say it in a way that’s [00:14:00] probably more polite than that, but hey, you’re, you’re not living up to the standard that we need for us to, to move forward. And it can also be hard for the, the, I’ll say the leader to be transparent with the business.
Like, Hey, we’re struggling. Yeah. You know, uh, because you, you start talking about those things. And now, uh, the. The employees are started looking for other jobs. You’re like, man, I don’t know if this thing’s gonna be around for a while. So, yeah, I don’t know if there’s anything to add to that, but I just see that as a value.
You bring in what you It’s true. It’s really true. I mean, like you said, you want the leader to convey confidence, and to be fair, it’s kind of the leader’s job to convey confidence, right? So you’re right. They’re not gonna walk around the building and say, Hey guys, I need help. Or people, we need help.
That’s fair. At the same time, you ideally as a leader, you surround yourself with people potentially outside the organization or a consultant like myself or, uh mm-hmm. Even if it’s a, an advisory board, whatever it is, with people that actually are looking at your profit and loss statement, who do understand the inner workings of your industry, of your business, who, like I said, sometimes people just sit around [00:15:00] with their friends and take advice like, oh, I’m having problems with my cash flow, and so goes well.
Mm-hmm. Blah, blah, blah. Like, how invested in your business is that person for you to take that advice? So. Surround yourself if you’re not gonna use outside help, right? Then, if you are going to ask for help from the outside or the external sources, make sure that people understand the business well enough to be giving you advice.
Yeah, yeah. This is great. So we’re, we’re talking about, you know, assessing the business and understanding where, where our deficiencies are. Can we talk about implementation like, okay, now, now I, I find the areas that I, I need to. Start working on, uh, what, what, what kind of frameworks do we install to, to make these things happen?
Uh, ’cause that, that could be, yeah. Uh, this goes back to our inertia thing, right? Like we’re, uh, we’ve gotta make some changes to, uh, start to see, uh, results. And, uh, we gotta, we gotta change some things. Yeah. You identify obviously the problem. Clearly that’s the first step, and then you take the steps to fix that problem, right?
There’s usually a. [00:16:00] Step one, step two, step three, and then usually that’s for us to A, identify the steps to fix the problem and then hold the people accountable and execute. I always say like, it’s not really that hard. We usually know the problem. Sometimes we don’t know what steps it would take to fix some get help, and then sometimes we might know the steps, but we don’t wanna do those tips.
They might be things in, let’s say they’re not in our wheelhouse, so we resist those things. Oftentimes I say in sales and business development. Someone who’s really strong in operations will almost always lean to operations, and they don’t lean to the sales and business development. So you sort of have to lay out steps like, look, step 1, 2, 3, and four.
I know you don’t like these tasks, but you need to do these tasks and do the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever it is, and then hold someone accountable to those steps. Because generally, if you’ve created the solution with those steps, then it is strictly execution. And if you need someone to hold you accountable.
We can do that or find somebody [00:17:00] else that will, or, you know, create a method, whatever it is, but do the work. Right. Do the, yeah. Yeah. I, I love that. And, and I’m curious if it’s okay if we can, because I, I think about, I’m actually do a poor job on the accountability side. I am, uh, I’ve gotten better at who’s responsible for what by when, right.
Uh, and then I get in my own little lane, and then I look over and I’m like, man, uh. Why isn’t this person gotten this thing done? Right? I, I thought it was clear. And, and I think there needs to be, um, you know, a, a process of like regular checkups and, you know, of course, making sure that we’re, we’re making progress.
It’s 2025. Come on. We have so many dashboards, uh, CRMs, project managers, sub stacks, slacks, you know what I mean? How many spots, I mean, really for, for, for, for 2000, soon to be 2026. There is an excuse in terms of a way to track our, our, um, where we’re at. It’s [00:18:00] whether or not the leader is implementing some of these systems and tools into their company and, and, and then using them, as I say, garbage data in garbage data out.
A lot of people have a CRM, but if you are not putting, let’s say what the potential dollars for that person is, or you’re not putting where the source for that, for that, you know, Lee came from. You’re never gonna get the good information on the backside, so mm-hmm. We have all the technology humanly available and beyond.
It’s whether or not we will use the technology and then use the technology and the, um, shall we call it the bells and whistles that provide mm-hmm. Mes and data for us to run the everyday operations and sales and other things, businesses. And I think you, you make an interesting point, uh, using the tool is the critical piece.
And it can be, it can be like a yellow pad, but if, you know, it doesn’t have to be super complex. We just need to, to execute and use the tool. Uh, ’cause I, I see [00:19:00] people regularly and to some level, I’m, I get excited about, oh, hey, here’s a cool new software. Let’s, let’s check that out and see how it works. Uh.
Before we know it, we’ve got 17 softwares and we’re not using any of them really effectively, so, correct, correct. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. No, that’s, I mean, that’s up to the leader to create those systems and processes in the company, and as you said, hold the people accountable. Right. If you’ve, if you as a leader have implemented a new software for, let’s say sales management, right?
A new CRM. Mm-hmm. And you go in there, and by the way, the CRM is gonna have the reports, so it’s not a matter of you not being able to go there. But if you’re not going in there and, and looking and getting the visibility that you need. You’re obviously probably not gonna be holding the people responsible.
Mm-hmm. You know, it’s six months of pass by seven months, and then how do we go backwards? Right. Then you’re like, let’s just come up with a new tool. Let’s start a new, you know, like no one wants to go backwards. Yeah. It’s not fun. But yeah. I mean, we have no excuses. We have so much technology to do the things we have.
We have so much available. Mm-hmm. I have fingertips nowadays. [00:20:00] Yep. Yep. And I, and I think you’re, you’re highlighting a, a really interesting point. We, we had a, a very successful client and they time track everything. They’re a IT company. And, um, I’m like, man, how do you get your people to do that? He was like, it’s really easy the first week.
If they don’t do it, they no longer work here. And I’m like, listen, I have that situation with a client as we speak. Uh, it’s an engineering client and they have engineers similar to what you’re saying. And so of course they’re working on some structural project. They’re not, you know. Working four hours over here and like, it’s not hard.
It’s not hard, you know, it’s an hour here, it’s an hour there. And as, as you said, you’ve gotta tie in the organizational goals and systems together, right? So exactly what you said, if you’re not filling out this, you not, you don’t have a place here. You, you simply don’t have a place. And then I looked at the owner when he said, yeah, we’re having a difficult time getting engineer.
I’m like, no. Have you looked at your engineers and told them, use it. Or lose it. Right. I said, [00:21:00] because Right. They have respect for you. I know this. They’ll have respect for you. It’s, as you just said, sometimes it’s not fun to be the leader. Mm-hmm. That has to be the naggy, you know? Yep. You’re not losing our tool, but at the same time, like it’s either you or the business.
Right. I always say like, it’s you or me, pal. It’s you or me, and I’m gonna always make sure that I’m gonna run my business the best way it is for I’m not mad at you, right? Not for me. Yeah. Not for somebody else. The best ways so that I’m not met you lives and has a legacy beyond, you know, an individual employer, an individual that isn’t looking out for the, you know, the accountability of that company.
Right. Yeah. No, that’s great. And, and I think there’s also something about, um, being mindful of the number of things we’re trying to implement at one time. Yeah. Right. And, and I’ve seen some really interesting data around, uh, if I’ve got one primary objective for the quarter. Likelihood of achieving that organizationally is very, very high.
I get to two or [00:22:00] three, I think the number comes down. I get to four or five, it’s even less. And if it’s above seven, it’s zero. It’s selling. You just have too much crap to focus on. Think the biggest companies I worked for for the 25, 30 years, the four 2000 companies, it was a number. It was one. Mm-hmm. We were all, all shooting for one number and that was the company number.
And each of us had our responsibility. You know, if you are a salesperson in the organization. You were responsible for 33 million of the 300 million and you delivered, and as he said, the bonuses were tied into that. The SIVs were tied into that. So it was very simplistic, you know, like I said, for these larger companies to create mm-hmm.
A number. We all went for that same number. And then when we were successful, we were all successful. So it really did create a, a, a comradery. It also. It exposed the people you know that were and were not successful. And sometimes there was things out of your control, for instance, I can give you. Mm-hmm. An anecdotal story with, for years I was in the consumer products industry and we were calling on retailers, Walmart, Kmart, [00:23:00] target.
And so every year, as you imagine, Kmart throughout the years has seen diminishing numbers if they’re still technically in business, I’m not sure. Mm-hmm. But they’ve seen diminishing numbers over the year and it wasn’t fair each year for that account manager to be like, oh, we need you to grow the business.
15% this year when they were gonna close 400 stores. Right. So, mm-hmm. There was always, I will say the big companies were mindful of industry trends of industry data. They did, as we say, bake that into those forecasts. They tried to do a pretty good job of baking in, uh, forecast in the environment, forecast in the, you know, United States forecast in supply chain.
So that when you did get those goals. They were typically within reach and then they had stretch goals and things like that. But then mm-hmm. From day one on January 1st, everybody was watching those numbers together. And like I said, you kind of Yeah. Caught on that bus and hoped we all got there at the end, and then if we did, we were rewarded if we were not.
I can tell you one company, there was 35 of us laid off on, [00:24:00] you know, November something because they were gonna get mm-hmm. We’re the end of the year and it was gonna, they were gonna make the number, whether or not the employees were there. Right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think this is, this is fascinating.
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One of the things that I I appreciate about your success is you’ve demonstrated it through a number of different businesses, uh, a number of different industries, uh, from, we’ll call it, you know, consulting to manufacturing. So can you walk us through what you see as the, the foundational truths to running a successful business and like.
These are the things that everybody needs to have, uh, because I, a few things that you’ve highlighted, you talked about the wheel from the 1950s. I’m like, so many of these principles are not new. There’s, there it is, just like there’s some basic blocking and tackling. And if you do it over and over again, you’re gonna have success, uh, no matter what your business is.
So can you walk us through some of those, those foundational pieces? Well, I mean, I do have a, a background that, that leans more towards sales. So I will certainly say it takes money to make money. Yeah, that means be tried and true. Business one oh one, shall we call it? You know, you, [00:26:00] you absolutely have to, and there are a lot of creative ways to be investing your money to try, you know, in, in the business development areas, it’s not always just, yeah, throw your money at an ad or throw your money at a networking group, or whatever it may be.
It is through return on investment, through careful consideration, through analysis of the dollars and cents that you are spending, and it’s constant, constantly measure. Constantly have goals, right? So I’m certainly a fan of data numbers, goals, um, track what you, you know, want to see success in. I think some of that stuff, like, that’s always going to ring true for any business.
Another one that I have been using a lot is you need more inputs. Then you have outputs, you know, basic accounting, which lots of people that start businesses have no clue about basic accounting, right? More. Then out. Right. And measure that. Look at it. Oftentimes the bookkeeper, the accountant, will send [00:27:00] over the monthly p and ls.
Right. And the cash statements. Mm-hmm. Balance sheets. Do you think the owner opened that up to look at it? Do you think that they got on the phone with their bookkeeper to kind of discuss what that looked like and where they could make mm-hmm. Improvements? And the other thing I say to people is like, look on the backside of your p and l, that can be just as profitable as maybe an extra sale.
You know, you, you have to be creative when you’re managing your business. You have to look and everywhere you can to be efficient, effective. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I love that. And, and I, I couldn’t agree more with you in regards to like, all business starts with sales. Yeah. If you don’t have some revenue coming in, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing.
It doesn’t matter how cool your product is, somebody’s gotta sell it. Somebody’s gotta market it. And, uh, so I, I think that’s a, a key point. And then I, I do love, I’ve got. I’ve got a couple of friends, they’re in the same business. Uh, they’re different businesses, but they, they’re the same industry and one knows his numbers upside down and inside out.
And he is like, Hey, this thing happened and we were down, [00:28:00] you know, 30% on top line. And so we made this change and it preserved our bottom line. And it was like, great. And then the other buddy is, um, just running his business blind. He just is like, we create a great product. And I’m like, yeah, but you’re losing money.
Right? You know, like you’re. You’re working for effectively free, you should stop this and just go get a real job. Uh, you’ll, you’ll end up with less stress and more money in your pocket. So, um, the accounting piece is such a critical component. Like you, you’ve gotta know what, uh, is actually happening in your business.
And it’s, um, it’s really the, uh, sort of the dashboard. It’s is our business. I say, I tell people a profit and loss statement is really the ghost whisper of a business, and that’s how I’ve been successful in other industries besides my own. The profit loss statement does not change by industry, right? So yeah, it doesn’t matter whether I am talking to someone in robotics or a pet care facility.
At the end of the day, if I see that their payroll is 70% of their sales, it doesn’t matter which industry they’re in. That’s too much. Mm-hmm. Okay. [00:29:00] What I know there are so many basic principles to accounting. Back to like that, that operational construction guy is like, Ooh, I don’t like that. But what has also not happened is that no one has taken the time to teach ’em some of these really basic, fundamental things.
Accountants didn’t take the time to do this. Generally speaking, bookkeepers, CPAs, they will even tell you, I have spoken to me. It’s not technically their job, and that’s a shame, but that isn’t really their job. To take that PL each month and talk to the business bank, we could. X, Y, Z. And to be frank, I’m not sure they do understand how to look at that p and l in the rhythm of the business, right, where you’re taking.
Mm-hmm. Both of those things to have a meaningful conversation. But it is a remarkable when you do, as you said, look at those numbers and let it guide your business. Because as you mentioned your first friend, I guarantee that person doesn’t really stay up too late at night to think about what should I do because that person’s using the numbers.
So therefore, the [00:30:00] next, what should I do is told to him or her. Yeah. When they’re reviewing those numbers, it tells you like, woo, 80% of our business comes from here. Guess what? We should probably spend some money on. Marketing is on that 80%. We need more. 80 twenties, we need to know so many things. We need to know our cost parameters, different things like that.
Can we be more efficient? We’re here business. Always assess your business always, however that is, bring in outside consultants. Have a trustee panel that you trust, whatever it is. But yeah, we always say this, the best athletes in the world, the best CEOs in the world, the leaders of the world, they all have coaches, they all have consultants.
They have a lot of people helping them be successful. The word size, yeah, small size business person is probably the one getting left out here. Who thinks, mm-hmm I can do this on my own. This is the American dream. They’re pushing hard, they’re sleeping less, you know, they’re put. Five minutes and help sometimes goes miles.[00:31:00]
Yeah. Yeah. And I, I love what you just said there. I, the most successful in the world have coaches, right? T uh. You know, LeBron James in the basketball court has a coach. He’s also got people, multiple coaches, so many multiple coaches, so many areas his life. That’s a strength coach. Yeah. A trainer for his toe, right?
I mean a food person and Right. They are. They are maybe over coach, shall we call it? It doesn’t matter. Mm-hmm. If you wanna be the best or if you wanna be good generally. Mm-hmm. Speaking, the people that are good or the best in their fields do seek out coaching, consulting, guidance, whatever words we want to use.
Right. And, and this leads back to the beginning of our conversation where we were talking about, you know, oftentimes the owner can’t see the blind spots. Yeah. They can’t see the areas. They need help. And that’s what a coach does. They go, Hey, when, when this thing happens, you’re doing this and, and here’s the video of you doing that.
Yeah. And, um, and, and we get the same thing with a, a business coach, right? Like, Hey, I’m looking at what’s going on [00:32:00] here and we’re missing a key opportunity, or I can see in your p and l that this thing is happening. I think that’s such a, a key point. I think about all the areas of my life that I have coaches.
It’s like, you know, I’ve got a business coach, I’ve got, you know, fitness coaches, I’ve paid people to help me with, you know, getting my, my diet dialed in, you know, golf coaches, you know, I go to therapy on a regular basis, make sure my headspace is in the right order. So it’s like, you know, all of these things are like, so important for us to, anything that I consider important.
Marriage counseling, all of these things that are, are critical. It’s like, let’s have somebody that can speak into it and help me get why not, right? Why not? Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s sort of my, I mean, I get it. Some people look at it as a, a co, an additional cost or an essential expense, but ideally you’re measuring, again, the return on investment if you’re, if you’re hiring the right people to help you, whether, like you said, whether it’s a nutritionist, whether it’s a trainer or it’s a business coach.
Mm-hmm. Measure them. Do you mean like make sure when delivering the results too, if they’re not. Move [00:33:00] on. But, but try even, like try instead of, like I said, you generally, it’s really hard to have all the answers yourself. It’s really hard. Totally. Yeah. No, I, I agree with that a hundred percent. And, uh, so valuable to have coaches.
So hole in one. Thinking about, what’s that? Do you have a hole in one? No, I don’t. I’d like one. I got one, but, uh, you got one? We’ll, got one. Good for you. You said Bob a chick. Yeah, I was golf. I was. The closest I’ve been to a hole in one was at the beginning of my golf career. I like, you know, rolled one right by.
And then as I’ve gotten better, uh, yeah, yeah, I’ve not gotten as close. So, uh, someday, um, this is great. So I, I’m, I’m thinking about, um, you know, in, in the vein of what we’re talking about, you know, coaches and that type of thing. I think one thing that often can, can be neglected is the strategic planning side of the equation.
Uh, spending a minute thinking about, you know, [00:34:00] vision, mission, um, I feel like starting up there matters. ’cause then it starts to, you know, we can keep working our way down. Can you talk to us how you work with people on the strategic planning side? ’cause it’s like, where I see this being so valuable is I’m, if I don’t, if it’s up to me to carve out the time to do my planning, I’m too busy for that.
Where if I pay somebody to show up and be like, okay, we’re gonna do your planning. I’m like, great. Of course calendar’s blocked off and we, we rock and roll. Can you walk us through a little bit of process? Maybe pass, they’re usually a little bit more accountable, usually. Mm-hmm. Listen, this the bread and butter of what we actually do.
I mean, you have to have a plan, like we just said, than there’s usually steps to execute against that plan. And then it’s a matter of execution and holding people accountable. But in the big companies, we did this. Every day, every month. And that was a revolver around forecasting. We spent so much time around forecasting and making projections and, and the magic eight [00:35:00] ball, what’s gonna happen?
And that’s really the fundamentals of creating a strategic plan for any company. You’re traditionally, if you’re doing it correctly, and usually September or October of the year before. You’re sitting there thinking about variables for the next year, areas for improvement strategies. Like this year I wanna do some ad spending.
I wanna do some PPC, I wanna do some SEO, whatever it may be. Right? So then you sit there and say like, well this year we didn’t do SEO in 2026, we are, okay, what do we reasonably think that that’s gonna deliver in an increase in sales? Right? So you gotta guess, you take your magic eight ball, I think ink, it’s gonna increase your sales 20%.
You put that in there as a line item and you go for it, and you put your money into the SEO and you commit yourself, and then you assess it, let’s say 30 days and you see no lift, okay? Mm-hmm. Let’s give this another 30 days. Let’s see. Nothing by 90 days if you’ve got nothing abort and go to something else.
And generally, in your strategic plan, you [00:36:00] had three to five to six things you were gonna do in that year to increase sales by some X percent because we were a million dollar company in 2025. We wanna be a $4 million company in 2026. You know what? That strategic plan’s gonna show you how you got from 1 million to 4 million.
And not in words in math, we are, we’re doing forecasting for all the clients that I have right now, we’re literally doing this. Boom, boom, boom. How are we gonna get there? Well, we’re gonna take step, step, step, and then you make the assumption that’s gonna work until it doesn’t. Mm-hmm. And then you have in plan B, plan C, and plan D.
Then it becomes really simple. If you really take the time at the, at the be, you know, before the year starts to create this plan. Then by January you go on autopilot and then you’re really just working and assessing. And if things are working, you’re great. Maybe you double down, things aren’t working, then you gotta kind of hunker back down, reassess, put in a new plan.
But that’s really how we always did the Fortune one hundreds. There was never, I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Or you always [00:37:00] had it in lineup. You always had it in the lineup. And that is a really critical variable of what strategic planning is. List the two or three things you’re gonna do.
Have two or three things as Option Bs and Cs, so that you’re constantly ready. And then it’s just a matter of hit the button instead of, most leaders when it’s failing, they don’t know where to go. And that’s the saddest part, is because at that moment they’re flailing and there isn’t a plane in place and you might march, right?
You’ve already, you’re a quarter in, you’re really, what we say is if you implement something, you got 90 days till you’re gonna see anything from that activity. So you’re really six. Mm-hmm. End of the year. From the time you realize it’s not working. Yeah. It is occurrence. Yeah. Every day you work it. Every day you assess it.
Every day you look at those numbers, you look at the, the, the inputs, the outputs, and mm-hmm. They’re working. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s so good. And it, it really is starting to tie together all these things we’ve been talking about. You think about, you know, the systems that we’re using and the data that it’s kicking [00:38:00] out, and us utilizing those things effectively.
’cause we, we’ve been having some. Internal conversations, like we’ve been running some reports, it’s like, Hey, some of this data’s missing and the data’s missing it, it’s garbage. Right? Right. And so we have to, we have to put it in correctly on the front end so we can get good outputs on the back end. And it, it may not be apparent when you’re putting it in, like, oh, that thing doesn’t matter.
But no, it, it really does. So why not? You have give law matters. But, but I’m a nerd and I, I want as much as I possibly can use because I find that it is helpful. And back to what I was saying. It makes me have to think less and follow the data more. And that’s usually the road to success. Absolutely. So, I, I wanna shift for just a second because another thing that you do that I think is so valuable and is so hard, but it doesn’t sound hard, and that’s getting your messaging dialed in.
I, I think telling a, a unique story, uh, simply, clearly is, is really hard when you ask somebody, Hey, what do you do? And. [00:39:00] They’re a business owner and they can’t, like, they can’t give you a message, right? Like, we create tax strategy for entrepreneurs. Simple. Right? I could say that. Lots of different ways.
Simple. So, yeah. Um, yeah. So I think the, the messaging, uh, and your process for developing that is, is really good. Can you, can you walk us through some of that? Yep. We have a tool called the message Map, and it is really simple. It’s the what, the how, the who. Where and the why of a company, which is essentially the story, right?
That’s essentially the story. People buy stories, they are engaged by the story. So we have a process that in about an hour and a half, we can essentially brand a company or a product or a service, whatever it is, and we go through these, what is it, right? But the most important variable is exactly what you started out with.
Like we said, I’m not mad. U makes people and companies better. In that, then I have to, when I create the story, I have to find a way to deliver my value proposition [00:40:00] and my point of differentiation. So it’s not just have a story in that story. You need to be able to tell how I’m not mad you makes people and companies better.
What systems, what tools, what processes are we going to use? We’re 83% faster than other consulting coaches. How are you? 83% faster. Well, we have a system. Yeah. That we can. Message map a brand and an hour and a half later have a story versus six months later or 90 days later, or sometimes never, right? So, mm-hmm We quantify what we do.
We generally quantify that time it takes us to do it versus our competitors. And back to any messaging that you’re going to put out there, you number one, you really do wanna have a clo, I’m not a big fan of the mission statement. I mission statements get put up on walls. They get read once a year, right?
Mm-hmm. But I am a fan of like what you just said, your tax strategist. I can’t, I can’t remember what you’re, we call it the center box, right? The, the center box, right? Mm-hmm. That is the center and the start and finish of [00:41:00] everything you’re ever gonna talk about the brand. Then that story gets created usually in the Y is the most compelling part of the story of the brand as to why do I care about making people and companies better?
Well. I have a lifetime of it. I have 80,000 hours in all these different areas. But more importantly, it’s because I came out this way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there was moment in my life that I did not believe and I had to learn how to believe again. And, and you know, people come to you and look for help and strength and you know you have it and then you know, one day you Right.
But it’s to make people, companies better, because I’m living that life every day of my life. And I believe, as I tell people mm-hmm. I believe strongly. Those things that you, it’s a story. So we are able to do that As I get off a tangent, ’cause I get very excited about this. Um, I love it creating that story.
And then, then more importantly, that everybody in the organization then also tells that same story. So if [00:42:00] ever there was a day that an I’m not mad employee did not start the sense with, we make people incomings better. Number one, it’s up to me to make sure they understand that. And they know that and they’ve taught, been taught that.
Mm-hmm. And number two, that’s the only thing that would ever be said about, I’m not married, nothing else. And so you have to be really committed to your story and the people in the organization. You have to be as committed to it. And that creates a culture that creates something that, again, is more legacy oriented and mm-hmm.
Ideally you create a story that’s compelling. Right. Whatever it may be. Yeah. And that’s really what people are buying. Yeah. That story. Absolutely. And, and so I’m, I’m, I’m marrying our strategic planning Yep. With our messaging. Yeah. And, and, and now I think this sort of leads us to sales, right? Like I, I’ve got some, some targets that we’ve created.
I’ve created a compelling message. Now I need my, my sales people to go out there and just, uh, just sell, sell some stuff that, that aligns with those goals. Uh, and so, uh, I think sales is [00:43:00] a. Uh, underutilized tool in most businesses. When we look at private equity firms that come into, uh, buy firms businesses, they’re generally investing in sales and marketing.
They’re pumping a ton of money into that ’cause it’s, uh, they understand the ROIs like off the charts. So let’s, let’s, let’s see what this, this operation can handle from a, uh, a new business point of view. So can you talk to us a little bit about sales and. Develop sales training and development and how to like, bring that along.
’cause I think that that can be, be challenging. Most of the time it’s the entrepreneur out there driving the sales piece and uh, uh, they, they either have a sales team or it’s, it’s, they’re frustrated by their sales team. And, uh, yeah, I think would be conversation. Listen, you simplify this like everything else, it’s a numbers game.
You know, we’re told in in sales we’re gonna be told 99.5% of the time. So that means, you know, when you are in the sales capacity, you don’t get to go shoot after two or three targets. You need to create as [00:44:00] big of a target list as you possibly can. And as I’ve said today on many of these podcasts, we don’t have any excuse for finding targets either because of the technology that we have in our hands.
Back 25 years ago, we used to have to get the yellow pages and drive around, you know, maybe our city centers to try to find leads. Mm-hmm. Right. If, if that was maybe in your industry or. Whatever it was you, you had to do a lot more manually. Today we have technology. If you wanna find the decision maker for X, Y, Z company, you probably can.
Then it’s up to grit and fortitude and consistency and numbers. Numbers. You have to bang enough. Bells and whistles to get a yes. Yeah. So I say to most salespeople, you have to have thick skin. You have to be completely okay with being told no 99% of your life. And that’s the thing that most people in the organization don’t necessarily understand about the sales and business development people is listen, if you’re in accounting, not being told no all day long, you’re no, you know, administration, you’re not being told all day long.
Generally, as a salesperson, you actually are being [00:45:00] told no. Like I said, probably 99% of your day is mm-hmm. Hearing a no, a negative, not interested. So it does require thick skin and it also requires sort of a numbers, right? Yeah. I don’t really care kind of what happened in the day. The next batter up, I’m gonna get on this.
Mm-hmm. Well kind of gotta wipe away that last taste in your mouth that wasn’t good. And yeah, it’s fortitude, it is grit. Mm-hmm. It is also, as I’ve said to people, it’s numbers. It, I think. Spending a career in sales, I get on a plane and you’d exchange what you do, right? What do you do? What? Mm-hmm. You do?
And I’d tell I’m in sales and like, oh, oh, I could never do that. And I’d always say to people like, you’d never be able to do that because you said what you just said to me right now because you just said you’d never be able to do that. But the minute you believe you’re a salesperson, you are a salesperson.
And because mm-hmm. That is just a matter of I’m going to. Actively, continually go out there and look for the yeses. And I’m also [00:46:00] gonna parse out my opportunities using data, using numbers, using technology, using the tools that we’re given and go after it. Yep. You can never stop, you can’t turn off the sales pipeline.
And then, you know, oftentimes you’ll see companies will do really, really well and they’re like, we’re doing to shut down the pipeline for a minute. Because it’s just too much. We can’t keep up like, no, no, that’s operational problem. Go fix your operational problem. Don’t shut me on the sales pipeline.
’cause Yeah, well if you’re ever gonna turn it back on, and you’d be surprised, and I bet you’ve experienced this, you’d be surprised at how many member companies actually do shut down their sales pipeline when they over their head operationally. Right. And. Revenue solves all sorts of problems. Like just keep showing revenue in there, hire some more people, figure out how to deliver the thing, solve all the operational problems.
I mean, that’s what I, if, if the sales team is choking you, then you go fix the operational team. Don’t mess with your [00:47:00] sales because again, you’re never, never know if you’ll get those back. Yeah. Yeah. Sales is hard and, and one thing you highlighted that I think is so important is. Harvard did a a, a study on, uh, the most successful sales organizations and it wasn’t full of amazing salespeople.
Now you have to have the right mindset, but what it was full of was a sales process. Yep. They took, uh, you know, a system and a structure and they installed it and they said, you run on this track, right? You go call, tell 12 people a day, and if you call 11, you’re fired. If you call 15, good job. But like. No less than 12 and, and here’s what you say every single time, and you just keep like nailing this process and you will have success and you just find the people that can work in that they know that they’ll crunch those numbers, right?
I mean, those organizations had crunch those numbers to know that this is a numbers game. And if we have 12 people making 12 calls per day times, five days a week, times, you know, [00:48:00] 365 days a year, they know that at the 0.5% of yeses. That equates to what they need to account for the 99.5% of the notes. It’s also the best visibility tracker for the organization to know that that salesperson is in fact meeting, like let, shall we call it the quotas, right?
Like. We do need to know that you are in fact making those 12 phone calls a day. The other thing that comes from that is if they will put in the good information. Let’s say there is a CRM or a sales tracking tool. Maybe throughout that day we were told no 12 times for the same reason. Maybe genuinely, there’s gonna be data in there that tells them the price is too darn high, and so it’s for the company to then aggregate the data and look at some of the things that the sales team might be also like, there might be data in there that tells you.
It isn’t the sales team, it’s your price, it’s your placement, it’s your promotion. Mm-hmm. It’s, you know, all sorts of other variables. Yeah. So it’s always data. It’s always data. And that’s the thing people think salespeople are the most usually [00:49:00] extroverted people, and they usually think that, you know, they just, I was never that, I mean, I’m right on the line between extrovert and introvert, right on the line.
I am 51% extroverted, which is usually shocking to people. But I, on that other side of it, it is numbers, numbers, numbers. And I really did use them to my advantage. And like you said, I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. And I put in those inputs to know that I’m gonna get the output, whether I believe it or not, in terms of what they’re saying, just play the game.
You will get the candy. Yeah. But you gotta, you gotta play it. Yep. Yeah. We, we, I, I love your, your focus on the, the numbers. ’cause one of the things that we, we like to take a look at is. Sort of three different metrics. Uh, there’s activity like, how much am I doing? Yep. How effective am I at, right. With that activity.
Right? Um, and, and then what market am I playing in, right? If I’m selling thousand dollar widgets, but I could sell $2,000 widgets if I went and talked to these people over here. Like, uh, so if I look at any one of those [00:50:00] things, I can, I can effectively decide how I’m going to double my sales, right? If I’m making 12 calls and I’m 25% effective, well if I increase that to 50% effective, like I just.
If I learn some sales skills, I, I am, I don’t have to do any more activity. I just get to take advantage of, you know, the activity I’m taking. Uh, if I wanna double my, um. Revenue based on activity. Cool. I can just go see twice as many people, double up the close. That’s great. Double cloud. Yep. Yep. Right. And then if I wanna double my revenue, I can just go talk to a more affluent buyer and go, cool.
They’re gonna buy twice as much as the other person up. You don’t always have to go get more. Sometimes you go get, you know, like you just said, if I’ve been selling at that price point of a thousand, I’m looking for the next client that’s at maybe 5,000. Right. I have to sell one fifth as much if I sell a client at 5,000.
Mm-hmm. So it isn’t always, like you said, it’s not always, um, quantity. Mm-hmm. It’s quality as well. And like you said, you might get 12 nos, but you might also learn that data or you know, like let’s say there was a pool of a hundred, you know, [00:51:00] set of information and you found out that plumbers disproportionately were people that were buying new product.
You know what you also learned? Go if it’s your blockers, right? So there’s, there’s subsets of data. It’s not just like what you said, the first layer of data. It’s okay. Who did say yes? Let’s look at who, who said yes. Is there any subsets of data in there? Is there any, I’m always breaking out subsets and subsets and subsets of data because it’s usually a little nugget for me to go chase if, if I’m paying attention.
Yeah, I love this. Stacey, we’ve talked about a lot of things. We’ve talked about strategy, we’ve talked about messaging, sales, running a successful business. I, I think this is, is so good. I I love your domain. I’m not mad@you.com. I think it’s, it’s, it’s wonderful. And you, you alluded to like, Hey, I’m running a successful business.
I’m not mad at you. This is just where we need to go to have success going. So, uh, I think that’s great. If people want to, they should go check it out. There’s so many resources on your website. It’s [00:52:00] fantastic. And if, uh, you’re ready to just like get rolling with Stacey, hit the contact form, fill out your information, and, uh, their team will be in touch with you.
So, uh, this has been great ’cause when I started thinking about what happens, right? If we, if we don’t take action, you know, we’ve got all of these, these hidden problems costing us time, money, problems, uh, profit, you know, uh, we’re slow decision makers. We, we’ve got vast opportunity. When we were talking about the, the two friends, you’re like, I bet the guy that looks at the p and l sleeps well at night.
You know, so I bet he I could be wrong. I bet he does. Right? Yep. So that’s what success looks like, right? Like I can make faster, clear decisions. I see immediate performance boosts across the team when we’ve got, uh, uh, clarity and I’m starting to bring these, these things into the mix. And now, now what is happening is I’m starting to reap the benefits of being a business owner.
I’ve got more profit. More pipeline growth, more, more money hitting the bottom line, and I’ve got peace around it. So, uh, I think all of those things are fantastic and I’m not [00:53:00] mad@you.com is a just a treasure trove of amazing stuff. And so, uh, Stacey, I appreciate, uh, all of your, your time and wisdom. Is there anything else we should be talking about before we wrap up?
I mean, just go for it, right? I mean, you know, I’m not mad at you. Like, I think that that’s the same mentality that people have to have with themselves mm-hmm. Is, you know, allow grace, go for your, you know, go for it. But have a plan. Right. You know? Mm-hmm. Whatever you’re gonna do, at least try to have a plan and, and go forward.
Yeah. And go forward. Absolutely. I love it. I, there, there really is no substitute for massive action. Like, just go do some things like have, have some direction, have a plan, but like, just go, go start. You if successful or you have lessons. That’s the way I figured, you know, like, you either are successful, you have lessons, there’s really no failure ever.
Yeah. I love it. Stacey, thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Alright, thanks. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I hope you found real value in this episode, something you can take back into your business and put into practice right away. If you did, I’d love for you to share it with someone [00:54:00] who could benefit from this conversation.
That’s how we keep expanding this community of entrepreneurs who are building smarter with intentional wealth. And don’t forget, if you’re ready to start building out your tax and wealth strategy with. Clarity and competence. Head over to vital strategies.com/tax. Everything we create is built to help you minimize taxes, protect your profits, and accelerate your path to financial freedom.
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I appreciate you and I look forward to having you back here next time on the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast, where we help [00:55:00] entrepreneurs minimize their taxes, master wealth, and optimize their lives.