Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / From Control to Collaboration: Growing Smarter Teams with Lany Sullivan

Transcript

From Control to Collaboration: Growing Smarter Teams with Lany Sullivan · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the growth class.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Phil Massiello, your host.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're profitable, demand is steady, but yet growth feels weirdly heavy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're pushing a boulder uphill and one good tire and three flats.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then so if that's you, then this episode is for you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So today's guest is Lainey Sullivan, and she's not here to sell you motivational quotes and a vision board.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: She helps establishes businesses in the$1 to$10 million range, find that quiet constraints, that cap growth where time leaks, margin leaks, leadership capacity leaks, then she builds the execution system that fixes it.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: She's worked with service businesses, trades, professional firms, especially the owner and independent ones.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And she's got a very simple, very dangerous question.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: If your business double tomorrow, would it collapse or compound?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's an important question.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked that a lot of times in coaching.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So uh anyway, Laney, welcome to the show.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate you taking the time to come on.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so why don't you give us a little bit of a background in who you are and what you've done and then where you're heading.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Phil.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me on.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the nicest best introduction I think I've ever had to a podcast.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my pleasure.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, the in simple terms, I I tear businesses apart and I put them back together, right?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So looking for those money leaks and those gaps and those holes that, you know, as business owners, we are typically um unfortunately blind to because we're just running in our businesses, right?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're just go, go, go, go, go.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't take the time to stop and pause and evaluate and assess and see where we can approve and where our business is leaking cash and efficiency.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And usually if you're leaking efficiency, you're leaking cash.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, I've worked with businesses anywhere from as low as a you know, quarter million in revenue up to 50 million in revenue, a variety of employee structures and and team structures from contractors to employees.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I came from the corporate world.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was in corporate for a long time, and then I've had multiple businesses throughout the years.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've been self-employed and been a business owner myself, and but I grew up learning how to run a business from being in a very structured business environment.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I know what works and what doesn't work and your your team, your culture, your efficiencies, your systems, your processes, your workflows, your technology, your tech stack, you know, all of those things impact where your revenue goes and flows.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no question about it.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I've uh I I tell people on on my podcast and my TV show and when I speak, and I I always tell them that I built my first business when I was 27 years old, and it was an utter disaster.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't a disaster because the concept wasn't sound or the location wasn't sound.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a retail store.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was a disaster because I did not build systems, I did not build processes, and I was a terrible, terrible leader.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it took me, I did it for four years, and then I wound up selling the business and I moved on.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it took me about two years of self-reflection to realize that I was the problem.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because in my head after I left, I felt like, yeah, I was the landlord or the rent, it was people.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't train anybody.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I wasn't I just wasn't good at it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I wound up uh taking the money and uh I I went to graduate school, but not because I needed more education, I needed to think differently, and frankly, that's where I realized my flaws.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I I invested in another company that was doing something that's similar in Washington, D.C.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I started working with them to scale, and that's where I really got an understanding of where my flaws were and why I wasn't good, which those two things I think if I didn't have that first failure, um I don't think I would have been successful at the other ones that came after that.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's um typically most business owners are the problem, right?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: They are they are the number one block in their business and they don't realize it uh because they don't it's it's a it's a lack of knowing, right?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lack of knowledge, lack of experience.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Most business owners, I you know, I kind of laugh at right now because I I've I'm actually cons I'm actually starting my own podcast called The Accidental Employee, because most businesses are started by somebody who is an employee who said, I can do this better and I'm gonna do my own thing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so they step in and they create a business, and all they did was give themselves a self-employed job for more work and less money until they decide they either, you know, are gonna walk away from it or they're gonna really put the effort into grow it and build a team and you know, have those realizations of like, oh, I actually need to do something bigger, I need to have a team, I need to trust people, I need to teach people, I need to build processes and step into being a real business owner.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So they got they, you know, they're basically technicians, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you guys know Emith, Michael Gerber, I mean, you know, you're tactical, you're a technician when you first start as a business owner.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't step out of that technician space and that headset, that mindset in the headspace, you're always gonna be a technician and you're always gonna be in that tactical space.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the truth.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I um we I so I have the agency, which we uh primary business is advertising across multiple channels and especially connected TV and expanding brands and helping them grow, and we do a lot on um social with short form, long form video, but I also coach.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you that they sort of go hand in hand sometimes because brands will come to us, and I'll give you an example.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Brand came to us about three, I think it was three years ago and founder started the business, and he went from zero to twenty million in about five years.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he he was it was in the food space and he had wholesale as well as a brand.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he was trying to scale the business.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Business got stuck.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were stuck at about that twenty million for about three years.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he came to us and the first thing he said was, you know, I've been through three other agencies and nobody can solve this problem.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have a definitely have a marketing problem.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as somebody says that to me, I know that there's a bigger problem because I've been doing this a long time.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has that much of a marketing problem.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I said So I listened to them for, you know, tell me the whole story and tell me what the brand was all about and what how they were going to market and all that.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I had in my head an idea of what the problem was.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Would you be would you be willing to do a two-day off site?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yeah.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, before we sign a deal with the agency, let's let's do a two-day offsite, I might be able to help you in a different way.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the reason that it sparked my interest was because he hired a guy to handle the wholesale.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy was an A plus plus player.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I knew of him.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know him personally, but I knew of him from the industry.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, this guy is great.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: How could he not be making progress after a year?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we did the offside.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I went to their headquarters and we, you know, he got his major team together.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And two hours in, I asked this guy, David, I said, why do you think you can't make headway?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, it's easy.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I said, he, the owner, the CEO, the founder, he wants to be on every single sales call.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not managing to the prospect's calendar.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm managing to his calendar.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, why would you want to be on every single sales call?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, nobody knows the the brand as much as I do, nobody knows the product as well as I do.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, that's not true.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you've got David here who he knows more about the product than you do because he's written books on the subject.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's been doing this for years.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, you're you're the obstacle.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're stopping your own growth.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're complaining.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're calling you think it's a marketing problem or a messaging problem, and you're complaining, but it's you who's the problem.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it literally took us the rest of that day and the whole next day to get him to understand it and get off of it.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: When he got off of it finally, which he was hesitant to do, he uh he backed off, and uh it was 26 months later, they had doubled their sales, doubled, gone from 20 to 40 in 26 months.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it was all David just started boom.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, you could be on for the closing, you could be on to say, hey, I'm the CEO, welcome, thank you, you know, and all that stuff.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, to be on every single sales call was totally ridiculous.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I mean, it's it, I mean, uh every time a business owner steps into a crucial function in the business and in and interrupts the process and interrupts the flow, they break it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and and it shows the customer, it shows your team and it shows the potential lead or customer that also like you don't trust your team, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's showing your team that you don't trust them, which is terrible for your culture.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's showing your client, like, well, wait, does is this sales guy not telling me the truth?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Are they not what's going on?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: It it leads to questions and it doesn't lead to confidence in any way.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the minute we started talking about it, everybody else in the room popped up because you had finance there, he had his his marketing people there, he had his store, his operations people, he had his uh warehouse people, and they all said the same thing.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he I can't do anything until he approves it and he okay's it.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, you you're trying to scale a business.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You went from zero to twenty.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get it, man.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I I know that in the beginning, when you're trying to get the business going, you've got to do everything.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: The entrepreneur has to do everything.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but then you start to build and you start you have to hire people that have an expertise that you don't have, and you have to give them enough rope where you're managing them, but you have to let them do what they're good at.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: If if they fail at it because of you, that's that's a you problem.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: If they fail because of themselves, you didn't do a good enough job hiring.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter, it's always you.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, so then once he heard from everybody that they were all stifled, I said, you're you're the CEO.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have to start acting like a CEO.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have to start putting processes and systems in place.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: KPIs, your job is then to manage the KPIs.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if people aren't hitting those keep KPIs, you have to start asking yourself, why?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Have you not done a good enough job with the process?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, it always comes down to you.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: You either didn't do a good enough job hiring the right people, you didn't do a good enough job pro uh uh putting putting the right processes and systems in place, controls, whatever it is, comes back to you.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So once we got them off of that, um, yeah, like I said, big, big progress.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, uh, I mean, it's a definite problem that is we see over and over again, especially with entrepreneurs, because most of them tend to be um control freaks.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and I and I totally get it.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I oh and I always acknowledge it with clients because I'm like, this is your baby, like you built it, like you know, it's your little kid that you birthed, and you know, giving it, you know, it's like mom and dad leaving home for the first time, and you know, it's a it's a big scary thing.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's the same exact concept of like this is your baby, you're actually gonna turn it over to somebody, you're gonna turn an element over that they have they're gonna run.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that when if you aren't higher, if you're hiring the wrong people, that's a big problem.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if you hire the right people and then you give them some autonomy and you do give them that rope, they're gonna be innovative, they're gonna be creative.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you give them the opportunity, they're actually gonna be better than you and they're gonna think of different things, they're gonna come up with different ideas, they're gonna come up with, you know, a better process.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like just because I and I taught with my team, I'm like, here, look, here's my baseline, here's how, here's the end goal of what I want to see happening, and here's the result that I'm looking for.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how I've gotten there.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if you've got a better way, I'm open to it because you're you as the team member are going to do the work.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna do the work anymore.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm turning it over to you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you can find a better way that's more efficient and and gets us to the same result or better, I'm game.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be my way.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that, like you said, business owners are control freaks.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got to just release that control and give them some space, give them some space to be creative because they'll probably grow your business way faster than you ever even imagined if you gave them that that that rope.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: In uh in one of the businesses we had, um we used to give people before we hired them uh one of the tests.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember if it was the Wonderlick test or one of them, and it spit out a graph and basically told you what you're good at and what you're not good at.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so this way you know what kind of people you're hiring.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I I still have mine, which I use, and uh whenever I hire somebody, I say, look, this is what you can expect from me.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm good at.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not good at what you do.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So my what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna manage the metric, you're gonna do the job.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: If if the metric goes off, you know, that's on you because you're saying to me that you this is what you're good at.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, if you come to me for this problem, I can't solve that, but I can solve these other problems.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's sort of how we get along.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, in the agency side, I I sort of have stepped back and let because I have people that have been with me for 14 years, and I sort of let them manage because I uh I like to do more coaching and I do more other things.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I write, I do the podcasts and stuff like that.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I get in for the for the clothes and I do some other things.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I do a lot of lead gen.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, they sort of manage things, and I just manage to the metrics.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I look at it every day.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have a nice dashboard and I talk to my folks every day, but I know what I'm not good at, and I am not good.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you expect me to to do the detail, uh it's it's never gonna happen.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not what I'm good at.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good at strategy, I'm good at overview, I'm good at managing, but can't do the detail.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and a lot of business owners are the same way.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: They so they need to step away from if you're not good at it, stop trying to be micromanage it.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And actually just stop trying to micromanage in the first place because that's just crushing your team.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, I learned that the hard way.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that the hard way.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not good.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not good.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember early on, like, and even in s in school, for I in grad in my undergrad and then grad school, they always say, oh, you you want to always hire people that are smarter than you.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I never understood that and I don't believe in it to this day.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you hire people that are smarter than you, then you wind up with a bunch of smart people that can't get anything done because they're smart.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if you hire people with the shared values and the shared commitment and the shared understanding of where you want to get to, then you've you're building a team.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: But just hiring for intelligence, then you have a bunch of smart people that are going in different directions.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, I totally agree.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think you you you uh hire for shared values and you hire for different level types of smart.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like you hire for the types of smart that you are not, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you find those skill sets of people, you if you know your skill set, and if you don't know your skill skill set as a business owner, like figure that out real quick because then it helps you identify like most a lot of vision, a lot of business owners are visionaries and creatives, right?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I know quite a few of my clients they're and I get that because I get where they're at because I'm very similar in in certain ways, but they're constantly creating, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're constantly like new idea, new idea, new idea, and their team can't keep up with it.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: So so you gotta like kind of slow down, but figure out what your skill set is, figure out what your what your mastery is and stay in that lane and that zone and stop creating all the time.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Give your team space to catch up, hire the people that have the skill sets that you don't have.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So when you do get into a room, they're not necessarily smarter than you, but you've got a brilliant team.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's me.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm always coming up with new ideas for what we should be doing.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we figured out long ago, yeah, we figured out about 10 years ago how to how I can do that effectively.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I use a lot of uh VAs and other things to test stuff to see before I even bother pushing it on my folks.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: They can see it because we're in the tools, we're all in the same tools, so they can see what I'm doing, but they just roll their eyes and let me do what I'm doing because I don't bother them with it until I flushed it out, and then I'll say, hey, I flushed this out and it seems to be working.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what we're gonna do, you know.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect example.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Flush it out, get it, you know, figure out what's happening, and then drop it on the team.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: But so many people don't have just the forethought to do that.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're just coming with the idea and they're just like dropping it on the team, and the team's like, well, we're already busy, we already can't keep up, and now you're gonna drop a new idea.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have a client that does this on a pretty regular basis to his team, and she's like, Laney, there's 20 million, literally 20 irons in the fire, and I don't know which one's the priority anymore.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know which one I'm supposed to be focusing on.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, that's a problem.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: We need to, we need to fix that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's funny.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: When I when we had built a um a successful beauty brand uh in the early 2000s, and we were in business for quite some time, but you know, we were growing, we were on the shopping channels in the US and internationally, we were in Ulta Beauty, Sephora, you know, all the big beauty retailers, boots in UK and blah uh everywhere.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're one of the first brands on Amazon, outside of book CDs, music, et cetera.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we had a board because we had investors.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this one investor, and I he was a brilliant, brilliant guy.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he used to say to me uh when we had planning and quarterly planning, he would say, you know, what are you what are you gonna turn down?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like what are you not gonna do this year or with this quarter?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd say, What do you mean, what are we not gonna do?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, you know, and he said, I I've seen founders that fall in love with the next bright, shiny thing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to think about, you know, where your focus is, what you're trying to accomplish, and what are you not gonna do?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it started because um we were in the beauty business, and I woke up one day and I thought, I want to be in the women's shaving business.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened was we had a formulator, and the formulator made this um beautiful shave cream for women.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, we can get a razor and we could we could move into the shaving business and we could go, you know, similar to what Billy had done in a few years later with no pink tax, because everybody knew at the time that women were getting charged more for the same razor.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, we could no pink tax, we'll we'll, you know.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, well, you know, you're in the beauty business.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's personal care.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the beauty business.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you think it's congruent, but it's not.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different business.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so what are you not gonna do?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Are you you you have a choice, right?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can come up with a new beautiful eye cream that's gonna take away a women's fine lines and wrinkles, which she's gonna love, which is congruent to the business, or you could go into a totally different business.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna cost money, you're gonna have to buy more inventory, you're gonna have to do all these things.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he was right.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So so I I when I coach people, I always tell them, you know, y I don't believe in doing annual plans.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in doing quarterly plans because when you're growing, you can't you can't look that far out.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to you have to think about what's changing in the environment, you have to think about your cash flow, you always have to be So I always tell them, put on there the things you're not going to focus on.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And because this way when you see the bright, shiny things, you sort of walk away.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: After we sold that business, I did get into the shaving business, but you're like, I'm doing it in one way or the other.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you make some you know great points.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like we because there's it's easy to have 20 irons in the fire, right?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's really easy to be, you know, split your focus.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And with the with the minute you split your focus into, you know, three or five or twenty different things, you you start losing revenue because you're not focusing on generating that revenue and that income, you know, where your money is supposed to be coming from.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I love the quarterly planning versus the yearly planning.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: People ask me, like, what's your five-year plan?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I don't have a five-year plan.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, things change too fast these days.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And even when I work with clients, when we're putting in new technology as software, I'm looking at two to three years that maybe they'll have that software.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully that hopefully it's maintained and the developers are still, you know, maintaining it, upgrading it, and keeping it, you know, well, you know, well serviced.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it's technology and everything's moving so fast, it's too hard to plan more than three years out.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh, even three years out's a lot.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I look from a technology perspective, I'm like, hopefully we'll we'll you're gonna be able to still use this for the next three years.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I, you know, we don't, I can't guarantee it because we, you know, I don't build technology, but but it's you can't plan.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Long-term these days.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can have some big long-term goals and some big long-term visions, but the tactical side of it, you can't plan long-term.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, not when you're growing.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even if you're big.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: My second business was also in retail and it also had a website component to it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we got acquired by a supermarket chain, a big one, multi-billion dollar supermarket chain.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to go and work for them for two years, like doing an earnout.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they used to have these annual business planning meetings where they plan out one year, two year, five year.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And every I mean, it was books.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You'd walk out of there with like a book, and then you'd get back to the office.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: People would just throw it in their desk.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, this is the dumbest thing in the world because nobody ever looks at it again, right?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they never reference it again.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: They just go on this golf trip once a year and and do these uh planning meetings.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I met this guy, Vern Harnish, who wrote the Rockefeller Habits and um Scaling Up, and he was an advocate of the one-page business plan, which I still use today, and I think it's a fantastic tool, but it's based on quarters.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, you know, his whole point was look, when you're scaling, when you're growing, there are things you have to pay attention to.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them is cash, and you got to know what that cash number is every single day.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a one-page business plan, you can put that up on your wall, you can put it up, you can have it on your computer, you could do anything with it, you could have it on your desk, but at least you can look at it every single day and know what you're supposed to be doing and what you're supposed to be focused on.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's keeping it simple, right?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Kiss, keep it simple.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Stupid, silly, funny.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: But really, it's just keep it simple and quit complicating it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one thing that, you know, executives and business owners and uh because and you learn it.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: You eventually do learn it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're like you complicate it for a while, and then you go, you start to strip it down once you realize like I'm making my giving myself too much work, I'm working 80 hours, I'm doing all the things, I'm I'm inserting myself where I shouldn't be inserting myself.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, once you figure out all those things, then you go, oh, strip it back down to why did you get into this business?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: What are you really trying to create?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: What's the impact that you want to do?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what all and keep it keep it simple.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, 100% uh 100% accurate.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we uh we definitely overcomplicate things sometimes.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Yeah.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well we uh we're coming down to the to the end of it.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um any last minute focus points that you want to get across before we go, how do people get in touch with you if they want to get in touch with you?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Any of that?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would I would say, you know, the the number one thing that I would say is fix your systems because your money is leaking from your your operations.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're looking for money leaks, it's typically coming from your operations.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Something is broken because and you know, the the question at the beginning was if your business doubled, you know, would you would you you know would it be great or would you just would you like would you would you stumble and fall, right?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can your business handle doubling and growth?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and if your business can't handle it, then it means your operations um have massive gaps in it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you can find me at laineysullivan.com.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a lainey unleashed on TikTok and Instagram.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: TikTok is more fun.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I do all my plants and animal things over there.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, just Laney Sullivan on LinkedIn and Facebook and my website.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's been great chatting with you.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been great and I think a lot of good information.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh definitely one of the most overlooked areas.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I think people don't pay enough attention to the bottlenecks in their business, and and that in and of itself creates a little bit more chaos chaos.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So um and and uh great, I agree with you.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: If your business doubled tomorrow, would it collapse or would it compound?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because um if if you know that answer, then uh you know, or you're avoiding that question, then uh you know it's time to get serious about really system structure and execution discipline.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So again, everybody, thanks for tuning in.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've got value from this, share it with an owner who's scaling on grit and and caffeine, and and we'll see you in the next episode.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to get in touch with Laney, laneysuloman.com or what was it?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: What was the uh Laney Unleashed.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Laney Unleashed.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: So all right, thank you for being on.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you taking the time.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Phil.