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EP348 Is Your Business an Asset or Just a Stressful Job? · Profit With A Plan

• 0:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Your business may be growing, but it's actually… is it actually becoming more valuable?
• 0:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: With every decision, client issue, or team question still runs through you, you may not be building a scalable company. You may be building a stressful J-O-B.
• 0:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: On today's episode of Profit with a Plan, we're going to be talking about how owner-led businesses move from chaos to scalable growth. You'll learn why owners, while
• 0:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You'll learn why the owner is often the bottleneck, why lowering exit, or… holy cow, let me just… my mouth is not working, so let me just start again.
• 0:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Your business may be growing, but is it actually becoming more valuable?
• 0:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If every decision, client issue, and team question still runs through you, you may not be building a scalable company. You may be building a stressful J-O-B.
• 1:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: On today's episode of Profit with a Plan, we're talking about how owner-led businesses move from chaos to scalable growth.
• 1:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You'll learn why owners are… the owner is often the bottleneck, and what lowers exit value, and the four fundamentals every business needs.
• 1:20
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Clear priorities, a weekly execution rhythm, a simple scorecard, and real accountability. And if you want more freedom, stronger enterprise value, and a business that can actually scale, then this is the episode you want to catch.
• 1:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hey entrepreneurs, are you working too hard for too little profit? Well, welcome to Profit with a Plan Podcast, where we help businesses… business owners grow smarter, increase profitability, and build a business that's worth more, whether you keep it or plan to sell it.
• 1:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'm Marcia Reiner, Business Growth Strategist, and the Profit Booster behind Infinite Profit.
• 2:00
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Each week, I bring practical strategies, expert insights, and real-world steps to help you grow revenue, improve margin, and build a stronger business.
• 2:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: This episode is brought to you by Infinite Profit, where we turn strategy into profitable growth.
• 2:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But before we jump in, I have something special for you. If revenue has plateaued, or your marketing is just not producing the return you should.
• 2:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Go get your free Profit Booster Growth Map. My mouth is just not working today, so we're gonna pound through this.
• 2:36
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• 2:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: My guest, Thomas Recton, is known as the Fixer, and the title surely fits. He has spent more than 25 years stepping into complex businesses, finding real bottlenecks, and helping leadership turn chaos into structure.
• 3:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Thomas has led companies across the U.S. and Europe, including serving as a CEO for a $150 million company, where he helped triple the revenue and significantly improve EBITDA.
• 3:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Today, as the founder and CEO of Recton Consult, he helps small to mid-sized businesses, especially in the trades and manufacturing, to create clarity, accountability, and execution systems they need to grow beyond the owner.
• 3:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What I really appreciate about what Thomas is bringing is that it's not just theory, it is conversation. And he sat in the CEO's seat, made those tough calls, and knows exactly what it takes to build a business that can scale. Thomas, welcome to Profit with the Plan Podcast.
• 4:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I hope my mouth can keep working through the rest of the show.
• 4:04
  Thomas Rechtien: We'll figure it out.
• 4:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly, exactly. So, you know, looking at your story, right, and my notes and prepping for this, I notice you have kind of a family history that you started in business. Tell me a little bit about that.
• 4:20
  Thomas Rechtien: So, yeah, my family history in business is actually that my grandpa was a carpenter in Germany.
• 4:25
  Thomas Rechtien: And I… the first project I ever built, I was 4 years old, and I got to sand a piece of wood that became the seat of my little go-kart that's still at my parents' garage to this day, so the seat held over 40… let's say 40-plus years, let's stay with that.
• 4:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Nice!
• 4:44
  Thomas Rechtien: And I've spent a lot of time as a little boy, under, on, next to workbenches, and then helping my grandpa out in this business until I graduated high school and started my own career.
• 4:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Nice, so what got you into consulting, though? I mean, obviously, you know, you've got this business experience. Why didn't you just stay in business?
• 5:06
  Thomas Rechtien: Good question, fair question. For me, it was that…
• 5:12
  Thomas Rechtien: You know, somebody asked me this question the other day, and the question was.
• 5:16
  Thomas Rechtien: Who were you before the world told you what to be good at?
• 5:20
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Oh, that's a great question.
• 5:22
  Thomas Rechtien: That sat real deep with me, and…
• 5:25
  Thomas Rechtien: that kind of thinking about this, that's where everything made click. I went from carpentry to a banking business, did my apprenticeship in a bank, got my business degree in Germany, then I went into the steel business, I got a degree in… a bachelor's degree in German law, and I kept educating myself, and I kept working, and I kept climbing up the ladder.
• 5:44
  Thomas Rechtien: But, yeah, it wasn't totally fulfilling at the end.
• 5:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hmm…
• 5:50
  Thomas Rechtien: Maybe that's the midlife, too? I don't know, I can't tell you. Maybe in a couple years I can. But what did it for me is all these things I learned by really doing them and applying them, and kind of building my own toolbox without knowing that I was doing that.
• 6:05
  Thomas Rechtien: Helping different businesses. At some point tying me back to my grandpa, who ran this business his whole life. He just worked and worked, and when he died 2 years into retirement, left my grandma barely enough to survive.
• 6:20
  Thomas Rechtien: Because he never learned how to run a business. He was just a great carpenter. He had… his scales were plainly handy. He was not anyone who, you know, had any meetings, looked into scaling, thought about getting a bigger shop.
• 6:33
  Thomas Rechtien: Different machines expanding into modern things.
• 6:39
  Thomas Rechtien: Yeah, I remember him getting his first battery drill. That was a… that was a real big deal.
• 6:45
  Thomas Rechtien: And that's how it was, and I think that's how many owners are, not because they are running around with blinders or something, it's just they're good at something, and they stick with what they're good at. And as the world around you develops, and that was the same with my grandpa, that's just not going to be good enough anymore.
• 7:02
  Thomas Rechtien: So, my tribe became the…
• 7:04
  Thomas Rechtien: take what I had learned, and apply that to people exactly like my grandpa, and help them get to where they want to be. Help them not to, you know, have their nap on the workbench in the shop because it's another Sunday where they work 12 hours to prep for Monday morning, but be able to spend the weekends with their families, go on vacation.
• 7:23
  Thomas Rechtien: Just knowing that their business is running without them.
• 7:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, that's such a common story, and I'm sorry that your grandfather didn't get to enjoy the benefits of not working, right? But, you know, that's…
• 7:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, coming out of my space, you know, I was in the financial space for years and years, and planning, you know, we were always planning for the retirement, and a lot of business owners would come in and say, yeah, I'm gonna sell my company, and I'm like, okay, well, what are we gonna sell it for? And they'd give me some crazy number, and I'm like, okay, what are we gonna do to ensure that that value will be there when it's time to let go?
• 8:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: These are smart people thinking they're gonna sell, but so many people don't even think about selling until it's too late.
• 8:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And they can't, right? Because the business is so intertwined in the owner that they can't… they can't let go, or worse, nobody wants it because it's messy and…
• 8:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And, you know, there's not a lot of systems, and it's just… it's really that cog of the business owner stuck in it. So, I can clearly see how a conversation like this can hopefully open the eyes of the audience to go, oh.
• 8:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: maybe I should think about, now.
• 8:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: what I can do today, so later on, whenever that is, hopefully it's longer down the road, they'll be able to sell their company and get something out of it.
• 8:52
  Thomas Rechtien: Exactly. And taking that one step back, Marcia, what I see oftentimes when I talk to owners, and again, my family wasn't any different.
• 8:59
  Thomas Rechtien: The first thought is you build something, you do it.
• 9:02
  Thomas Rechtien: well, you get married at some point, you have kids, and one of the kids will take over, right? Like, they maybe even do an apprenticeship in the business, but then all of a sudden, they decide that's not for them, like, they want their own life.
• 9:13
  Thomas Rechtien: Well, now you're at the point where you're thinking you want to sell, and in a crunch, you're probably 62 years old, you want to retire at age 65, that was always the plan. You figure out 3 years to go, and your business is not worth anything.
• 9:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So…
• 9:27
  Thomas Rechtien: I can see how many owners are desperate with that. So the, you know, I wish they would all start thinking about it at age 50, 5, come to find out, and then do what's necessary to get to where they need to be, to get them to where they want to be.
• 9:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's a fantastic reason why, because Junior often does not want the business, right? You know, the generational,
• 9:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: continuation of companies, rarely happens anymore, and I think that that's a perfect example. But my belief is that, you know, the day you start your company, you should be thinking about how you're gonna get out, even from the way that you name your company, and I think that that's really important. But,
• 10:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Let's go… let's dig into this a little bit. You know, you've got… obviously, you've wrapped your business around the idea of, how can I make sure that, you know, something… you can get something out of it when it's time to let go. What are the core values, and you're looking at when you look at a company to help make sure that they can
• 10:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Sell that company eventually.
• 10:30
  Thomas Rechtien: The only thing… well, it's not the only thing, the one major thing is really you gotta get rid of this owner dependency.
• 10:37
  Thomas Rechtien: The owner is usually the one, you know, especially in manufacturing trades, smaller business, family-owned businesses, they started the business because they were great at something, and they still are. They're good electricians, plumbers, they're great fabricators, they're great with metal, they're a great engineer, whatever it may be, and they build a business on that skill. Oftentimes.
• 10:57
  Thomas Rechtien: The spouse does the invoices at first, a close friend helps in the shop, then the son comes in, whatever it is. And as long as they stay at 3 to 4 people and that makes them happy, that's cool. But all of a sudden, when they're good at what they do, they get more clients.
• 11:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Mmm, okay.
• 11:12
  Thomas Rechtien: And all the problems start. But…
• 11:15
  Thomas Rechtien: they're the ones who want to take all the decision, right? They've built it, it's like their baby, or when you get, like, a little puppy.
• 11:23
  Thomas Rechtien: You're in charge, and that's the same here. They want to feed the puppy every day. They don't let that to anyone else.
• 11:29
  Thomas Rechtien: And you have all these bids to review on your desk, and, you know, well, you want to make it to the dance recital of your daughter, probably. It's 4.30pm, but you still got 10 bids to review, you got offers to send out, you need to make 2 calls back to clients who are upset because you're delivering late.
• 11:45
  Thomas Rechtien: And they take that on.
• 11:48
  Thomas Rechtien: And other people, I don't want to say they gladly take it, but that's the system that has been established without even saying a word about it, right? It's not that he says, I want this, it's just how it happens and how it develops, and the big task here is to break…
• 12:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How they get stuck in it, right?
• 12:04
  Thomas Rechtien: Yup.
• 12:05
  Thomas Rechtien: So you need to break that cycle. You need to get out of it. And you were saying something that I really liked earlier, Monsieur, which is, same thing I always say, from day one, you should make sure that your business is sellable. If you ever want to sell it or not, that doesn't matter. You don't have to. It's your business. You do whatever you please.
• 12:23
  Thomas Rechtien: And I'm not gonna come in and tell anyone how to run their business.
• 12:26
  Thomas Rechtien: But I can certainly share a lot of ideas, and whatever they take on is gonna help them, and ideally, it's what we call the owner's box, right? The owner sits in the owner's box, there's a second in command who runs the day-to-day, and the business just runs without the owner.
• 12:42
  Thomas Rechtien: And that's how you can make it to where you can sell it and probably get good money for it.
• 12:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. You know, it's so common that they have developed this
• 12:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: practice, because they started out, it was just me doing the thing, right? And then I hired somebody, and then I hired a couple more people because I got busy, but I kept doing the thing, right? Instead of…
• 13:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: evolving and, and, creating new and getting systems and people in place, right? Because, you know.
• 13:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I, I think, I think the biggest aha is when we started our company, we didn't think we were gonna…
• 13:23
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, be working 16 hours a day, you know, 6 days a week, and stressing out over everything. We thought we wanted this, like, the owner lifestyle, right? Where I could go see the recital. And I… I did… I wasn't working at 4.30 with, you know, 2 more hours to go.
• 13:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Or three, you know, when you look at your to-do list. So how do they get out of that, right?
• 13:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: They don't just wish for it to go away, it's gotta happen over time, but what's the first thing that they should consider?
• 13:57
  Thomas Rechtien: The first thing is really what you had mentioned in the intro, it's clarity, and there's a lot that bunches into this word, but you have to get real clear about
• 14:07
  Thomas Rechtien: Where are you?
• 14:08
  Thomas Rechtien: Where do you want to go?
• 14:10
  Thomas Rechtien: And how are you gonna get there? So the where are you is simple. You look at how big's your business, you look at the numbers, right? Revenue, profit, how many people do you have, how much work can you handle? How many work hours can you put out?
• 14:22
  Thomas Rechtien: Where do you want it to go? The day you want to sell it? The day you want to retire? Like, what do you want it to be? What does that revenue look like? You know, and you don't have to go that far. You could go, like, 10 years out or something bigger picture.
• 14:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You could go the end of the year.
• 14:36
  Thomas Rechtien: Start breaking it down to 5 years, 3 years, and 1 year. And the 1-year number, that's the one based off of your big, hairy, audacious goal that you're gonna work with. And you're gonna…
• 14:46
  Thomas Rechtien: Well, take from that, essentially, what you have to do
• 14:51
  Thomas Rechtien: tomorrow morning, the day after, and every other day you come to the office this year, so you get to that number. And not only for the owner themselves, but for the team. So, once you have the clarity about the situation, the next piece of clarity is gonna be.
• 15:05
  Thomas Rechtien: Who belongs? And why?
• 15:07
  Thomas Rechtien: What people do you have in your business? Are they a good fit for your business? Are they the right people in the right seats? Or is somebody underutilized?
• 15:17
  Thomas Rechtien: Or is somebody probably over their skis with what they have to do and is expected from them? Which then, that piece of them that's over the skis is certainly gonna land on the owner's desk.
• 15:26
  Thomas Rechtien: So you gotta get real clear, you gotta develop a system to score your employees, and to find out, and have honest conversations with them. Either get them in the right place.
• 15:35
  Thomas Rechtien: Or make adjustments you have to make.
• 15:37
  Thomas Rechtien: So they're good for the business.
• 15:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: that sounds really doable, and it sounds like a lot of times when I have guests come on, or other consultants, or people out there that talk about clarity, you know, it tends to be,
• 15:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: fluffy, right? Oh, what's your vision? What's your values? What's your direction? How… well, you know, if we were to line it, you know, and it's very fluffy. I like the way you said, no, this is actually action. What do you want? Where are you going? What's… what are the pieces in here? So you're… you're digging into something that the business owner will
• 16:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: actively participate in, rather than something of, you know, fluff, is I guess what I call it. And I know that when you're dealing, and I'm sure you have too, when you're dealing with a business owner, they want results yesterday.
• 16:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And if you're coming in with this soft, you know, visionary stuff, they tend to put up the Heisman and go, nope, we're not going to talk about that today. I'd rather go after how many more sales can I get, right? So, so this is good. This is really good, because it's…
• 16:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: They should already know.
• 16:46
  Thomas Rechtien: they should. Oftentimes, they don't. They know the world.
• 16:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Should, I said should.
• 16:51
  Thomas Rechtien: Right, they know the wire piece, usually, but where do you want to go, especially in the longer term? That's because, I mean, they're knee-deep, or elbow-deep, however you want it, in the day-to-day, fixing stuff, they don't have time to even…
• 17:04
  Thomas Rechtien: From the outside, look at the business.
• 17:06
  Thomas Rechtien: And think about the business. I always… well, being German, I compare it to soccer, right? The game looks very different when you're on the pitch, actually, as a player, or you stand on the sideline as a coach. And business owners need to take that sideline coach view every so often, and look at the business from the outside, and have a piece of paper and a pen, and take some notes about what they see.
• 17:26
  Thomas Rechtien: And that'll give them a lot of insight on what they have to do once they get back on the inside, because they don't see it there anymore. So they have to…
• 17:35
  Thomas Rechtien: Well, many then act on instinct, and that's the wrong thing to act on. When you see it from the outside, and you take your note, and you are vigilant.
• 17:43
  Thomas Rechtien: You'll act from experience, you'll act from deep thought, from things you have seen that need to change in the business, and not from, oh, like, this is what it looks like being here on the pitch, let's do this.
• 17:54
  Thomas Rechtien: The other thing I want to touch on again is the numbers. I think this is so super important, because I like to express everything in numbers I can, and be very specific about the numbers, because there's no discussion room, like, there's no fluff.
• 18:07
  Thomas Rechtien: That if you want 3 million in revenue, and you add $1 million, or you had 3 million, you want the 10 million.
• 18:12
  Thomas Rechtien: That's crystal clear. There is nothing to add to it, to subtract, to think about. The question is just, okay, how am I gonna get there?
• 18:20
  Thomas Rechtien: That gets the thought machine going.
• 18:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it, I love it. So, when you're… when you're looking on the side of the field, right, and you're looking onto the team that's actually playing, and you're acting as the coach, what are some of the things that you encourage your clients to look at when they're looking there?
• 18:42
  Thomas Rechtien: It's… Well, when we start, for example.
• 18:46
  Thomas Rechtien: with the weekly meeting agenda, right? That's one of the first things I'll… I'll implement with clients and have them do. So the meeting takes…
• 18:55
  Thomas Rechtien: Some businesses, it's an hour, and others, other businesses, it's an hour and a half, depending on
• 18:59
  Thomas Rechtien: how big they are, what they're discussing, but there's a clear agenda to it, which I'll share here in the end.
• 19:06
  Thomas Rechtien: And it's all about…
• 19:10
  Thomas Rechtien: talking about what's most important for the business. So what oftentimes happens, people get in the meeting, they sit together for an hour, the phones ring, like, there's important stuff going on, right, that needs to be taken care of right now, because a customer is upset, something personal is going on, whatever. So there's no phones, no electronics, this meeting is dedicated to working on the business.
• 19:29
  Thomas Rechtien: And then what happens in the meeting is, well, an issue is being discussed.
• 19:33
  Thomas Rechtien: And it's being discussed.
• 19:35
  Thomas Rechtien: and discussed.
• 19:36
  Thomas Rechtien: and discussed.
• 19:38
  Thomas Rechtien: So they talk about the same thing for an hour, go on a million tangents, and nothing ever gets figured out, nothing gets decided, everybody leaves the room frustrated, it's not an hour or 90 minutes, it's two and a half hours.
• 19:51
  Thomas Rechtien: granting session with no outcome whatsoever. So it's really, how do you get to the root cause of your issues? You always talk about the most important issue first.
• 20:00
  Thomas Rechtien: How do you solve it for good? And out of that comes a decision and some assignments. So, clear who is gonna do what by when.
• 20:09
  Thomas Rechtien: And then you follow up with these guys, and you hold them accountable. And that's the biggest piece, too.
• 20:13
  Thomas Rechtien: for the owners, I mean, a business owner who has done this before, and… who is…
• 20:19
  Thomas Rechtien: not afraid of doing it, can certainly hold their employees accountable. No… No problem whatsoever.
• 20:24
  Thomas Rechtien: But they can't hold themselves accountable.
• 20:28
  Thomas Rechtien: It's like…
• 20:29
  Thomas Rechtien: well, I guess what, being carpentry grown, I guess, I don't have all the baseboards in my house. It's just the last thing I'll ever get to, and I bet there is an electrician who has raw wires coming out of the wall in some of the spaces in this house, right? Like, you…
• 20:44
  Thomas Rechtien: your trade, your craft, you take care of yourself last, because there are so many other things and so many other people you need to take care of. First and foremost, the clients and customers that pay you for what you do.
• 20:55
  Thomas Rechtien: And it's the same with the accountability piece. You can't hold yourself accountable, and that's where you need someone, whoever that is, that has these tough discussions with you as the business owner, and helps you stay the course.
• 21:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love that, because I think what I'm hearing from it is not only are you getting to a solution and not having just this random meeting where you're, you know, pointing fingers and having trouble, but you're working through an issue, and you're coming up with a solution, and you're giving
• 21:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: accountability details to everybody, or jobs to everybody. Okay, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, and so it's very clear in this meeting that you're actually gonna get things done. My question back to you would be, in this meeting, are we,
• 21:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, I mean, it sounds… it sounds like, are we doing one problem? Are we doing two problems? Are we… are we… how are… what are… what are we focusing on, and why are we doing this meeting if there's… I mean, do we have a list of problems we're gonna work through?
• 22:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yep.
• 22:02
  Thomas Rechtien: So, what you do throughout the week, you just…
• 22:05
  Thomas Rechtien: Collect and write down the problems that the business has that need to be discussed in the leadership team meeting or in your team meeting.
• 22:11
  Thomas Rechtien: And you bring them to the meeting, and then the team decides which is the most important for the business overall, and that's what you work on first.
• 22:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: gives you focus.
• 22:20
  Thomas Rechtien: It gives you that focus. Sometimes.
• 22:23
  Thomas Rechtien: Let me start with, like, the worst cases, and it's not even the worst case.
• 22:27
  Thomas Rechtien: You have one huge problem, and you get it solved in that meeting.
• 22:31
  Thomas Rechtien: Then you have done right by the business, because you solved the most important problem the business has.
• 22:36
  Thomas Rechtien: But some meetings, they're all somewhat smaller, so you probably can solve 3, 4, 5, 6, In one meeting.
• 22:43
  Thomas Rechtien: And that's… both… both ways are okay. It's just important that you work on the most important things for the business. The other thing you'll find once you get into this, and you're really diligent with having the meetings.
• 22:55
  Thomas Rechtien: All of a sudden, problems drop off the list.
• 23:00
  Thomas Rechtien: And at first, that's hard to understand, but then, again, back to sports, like, take football.
• 23:05
  Thomas Rechtien: what I know about football, which is not much, people tell me, it's about blocking and tackling. So you always go back to the basics, and you practice and practice and practice the basics, so you can really apply them in a game situation when it counts.
• 23:19
  Thomas Rechtien: And you do the same in these weekly meetings, right? You work on solving issues. So all of a sudden, some issues aren't an issue anymore, because people will use the same technique and apply them to the problem they run into, and they solve it before it even ever hits a meeting. The other thing is that once you solve the big problems, one after the other.
• 23:38
  Thomas Rechtien: you keep working on the base of the business, and you keep fixing the base. So once the base is fixed and certain things are in place, and the actions taken could be a new process, a rewritten process, a process that's always been there and finally being adhered to.
• 23:54
  Thomas Rechtien: And with that, you solve other issues, because all of a sudden, that same solution gets applied to various things, and with that, the issues go away.
• 24:03
  Thomas Rechtien: So you'll see that that list could be humongous in the beginning, and then from month to month to month.
• 24:08
  Thomas Rechtien: It really shrinks.
• 24:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So let me ask you something. If we've had a problem in the company, so I have a company, and I put together this meeting, do I need an outside person to come help me
• 24:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: figure these things out all the time, or should I just innately know that here's a problem, the team's gonna come with a solution for their mind, and we think it's gonna work, but we just keep trying different things, right? I mean, it sounds like
• 24:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It sounds like to me that if I have had this problem in the past, I don't know that a meeting is going to solve the problem. Maybe I need some sort of external help, because we keep having the same problem, right?
• 24:50
  Thomas Rechtien: Yep. To say this, Carefully.
• 24:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: No, no carefulnesses, no, no, no, no guardrails on the conversation.
• 25:02
  Thomas Rechtien: It totally depends on you as the business owner, right? Many owners I talk to, I ask, okay, like, what is the problem? And they give me something, we don't sell enough, whatever, which is not the problem, it's just a symptom. Okay. What if you try to fix it? And then they say a million things? Among others, they have talked to people, they have had a coach, and they have read a bunch of books.
• 25:19
  Thomas Rechtien: And none of it helped.
• 25:20
  Thomas Rechtien: So for a run, they don't believe that an outside person can help, which I do believe they can. The thing is, you tend to…
• 25:28
  Thomas Rechtien: like, when I talked about the carpenter and the electrician, right, you tend to stay in your lane. You take whatever experience you have, which is mixed in with your gut feeling, because that has worked in so many times. You've done great things, and you've made a lot of money for yourself and your business.
• 25:44
  Thomas Rechtien: And you've executed well for your customers. So you apply the same principles to what you do, and all of a sudden.
• 25:51
  Thomas Rechtien: In certain areas of the business, in certain business situations, that doesn't cut it anymore.
• 25:57
  Thomas Rechtien: There's new skills you need that you don't have, and you won't get them from reading a book or talking to someone. You really need.
• 26:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We're having a meeting.
• 26:05
  Thomas Rechtien: You know, to, to put…
• 26:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: poke the bear on that, to having the meeting. So that's where I'm thinking, we're having the structure for it, but we're not… I don't know that we're actually finding the right solution.
• 26:16
  Thomas Rechtien: Yep. And that's where an outside coach comes in, because for one.
• 26:20
  Thomas Rechtien: they can run the meeting, like, I could run the meeting once, two, three times, show them how it goes. I can sit in, listen, give feedback, and then kind of… then that's what I do, right, in the weekly or bi-weekly calls I have with my clients. So in the beginning, it's all very structured and tight.
• 26:35
  Thomas Rechtien: And then I just give more rope, and as they learn, and practice things, and make mistakes, and learn from the mistakes, and get better at it.
• 26:41
  Thomas Rechtien: All of a sudden, they're getting into the flow themselves, and I can pull back further and further and further, which is the goal. My goal is always to work myself out of a job within, you know, 18 to 24 months, so the clients know everything they need to know, they've learned everything they need to learn, they still have access and can ask questions, but they don't need me anymore.
• 27:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Nice. Okay, good, because, you know, I mean, you hear about this all the time, meeting fatigue, right? And it's not just the… what's going on in the meeting, it's how many meetings we're having to have meetings to just have meetings.
• 27:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Right? I wanted to say, how are we learning to… to really solve that problem? You know, I would assume that there is homework, or there is…
• 27:25
  Thomas Rechtien: I mean, there's a teaching…
• 27:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: both.
• 27:27
  Thomas Rechtien: Yeah, there's a teaching, there's tasks, there's homework, there is checks and balances when you come back with the homework that's sometimes not being done, so you get the same homework again, and the pressure is going to be higher, and then you do it, and then you learn from it, and then you start applying it, and then…
• 27:42
  Thomas Rechtien: it evolves. And in the beginning, it's gonna be bumpy. Like, it's a weekly meeting, same day, same time.
• 27:48
  Thomas Rechtien: And unless somebody dies, or you yourself get married.
• 27:51
  Thomas Rechtien: You ought to be at the meeting.
• 27:53
  Thomas Rechtien: And that doesn't always work, so it takes some time to grind things in.
• 27:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So then… so then say we have a problem, and we're in the early phase of these meeting cycles, and I don't know how to solve that problem. Is it okay not to solve a problem, but to maybe get to the next step, and so we bring it back the next week, and… and solve that problem on that second week?
• 28:16
  Thomas Rechtien: Absolutely, so it's, you know, it's…
• 28:18
  Thomas Rechtien: how to eat an elephant one bite at a time? Same thing here. Sometimes the problem is too big, so you have to take it into different, smaller pieces, and just make the first step. Sometimes you don't know how to solve it at all, but what you can do is say, okay, within the next 7 weeks, until the next meeting, everybody will think about, and we will come up with.
• 28:38
  Thomas Rechtien: an approach… On how to actually tackle this, so we can find a solution.
• 28:43
  Thomas Rechtien: So even if you don't have the solution right away, you can at least kind of come up with a process to get to a solution, and guess what? That process you can apply to other problems that you have problems solving, because now you're really working on the bigger system already without knowing it in the first place.
• 29:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Got it. Okay, so question. This is a fantastic exercise to run a business smoother.
• 29:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How, how would you say that this might be able to add more value or create stronger enterprise value for that company by having these regular meetings?
• 29:24
  Thomas Rechtien: So, for one, you will find that having these specific meetings where you work on the business.
• 29:31
  Thomas Rechtien: cuts the number of meetings and the length of meetings where you work in the business. So eventually, you'll meet way less, and everybody likes that, but you also have outcomes, and everybody likes that.
• 29:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hmm.
• 29:42
  Thomas Rechtien: The other thing is when you start about talking about selling your business, right? Somebody comes in and does their due diligence, they'll want to see the numbers, they want to see that everything is in order, but they'll also talk to people and ask questions.
• 29:53
  Thomas Rechtien: And if there is a rhythm, and a clear meeting rhythm, and a way, like an NCR process, a nonconformity report, right? How do you solve your problems, and that's repeatable, and it leads to good results each and every time.
• 30:06
  Thomas Rechtien: That would incline me to buy a business. If there's nothing there, and everything is just owner's gut feeling, and he works 80 hours a week.
• 30:13
  Thomas Rechtien: I don't know, that's not for me.
• 30:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It's not for me, yes, exactly. I heard this, last year or the year before, but from one of my guests that,
• 30:23
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Buyers want to buy your business. They don't need to buy your business. And sellers need to sell their businesses for one reason or another. So, putting it… the shift on making it more desirable
• 30:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: For the buyer to want that business, because you've got these systems and these rhythms and these, you know, accountability pieces that are guaranteeing that the business is going to get more done and have a smoother outflow, rather than just having, you know, that gut feeling of the business owner in it.
• 30:59
  Thomas Rechtien: And also, I like that. And also for the seller.
• 31:01
  Thomas Rechtien: for them to want to sell their business, but not have to sell their business. And that works when your business is owner-independent. So, you don't have to talk to every buyer just because you want out in a year. Your business is running without you at this point.
• 31:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Step out, right?
• 31:16
  Thomas Rechtien: You can still step out and get the profit and live well off of it, and if the white buyer comes along, you have a nice talk, and you get into negotiations, but if they don't.
• 31:25
  Thomas Rechtien: You're not in a time crunch now, because your business is running and it's making money.
• 31:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Making good money. Awesome. Thomas, this is really interesting. It's not the… it is the direction of a part of it, but I didn't realize that having that
• 31:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Weekly, meeting would do so much for a company in getting everybody on the same direction, on the same path, able to solve the problems.
• 31:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: able to work through issues that are holding the company back by just simply having a structured meeting that goes every week. So I didn't realize that. That was really, really enlightening for me.
• 32:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, with that in mind, and again, we can keep going on about ways to improve your business, which is the whole theme of this podcast, but, where can listeners find out more about you and your consulting firm, and how to run these meetings?
• 32:22
  Thomas Rechtien: They can find out more about me on rectanconsult.com, that's my webpage, or look me up on LinkedIn and get in touch.
• 32:30
  Thomas Rechtien: The meeting agenda will be in the podcast notes.
• 32:34
  Thomas Rechtien: for this episode, so they can… it's a long link, I know, so they can click on the link and download the agenda, and they don't only get the agenda, I made it a 6 or 7-page document with coaching notes as well, so I explain exactly what to do, when in the meeting, what questions to ask, how to run it, and if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer those.
• 32:53
  Thomas Rechtien: But there's a whole lot in there, so if… if…
• 32:57
  Thomas Rechtien: Yeah, if you want to run the meeting, and you want to take a crack at it.
• 33:01
  Thomas Rechtien: Print the agenda, take it to the meeting, and run it that way, and see what it does for you.
• 33:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Oh, I think it's gonna produce some significant results, because I'm a firm believer in having
• 33:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Having actionable strategies that you can put in your business that actually do something and make the top line grow, make the bottom line grow, so you keep more in your pocket. You know, to be able to… to have a business that runs
• 33:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: better.
• 33:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And when it runs better now, it's more attractive later on to whoever wants to buy it, and then when you've put your blood, sweat, and tears, nights, weekends, savings, and everything into it, you now have an opportunity
• 33:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: to recapture some of that if you do the work today. And so that's why I'm always talking about that double win. If you make a business great today, you're gonna enjoy it more, it's gonna be more profitable, you're gonna have more money, more freedom, but then it also creates this desirable asset towards the end.
• 34:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That creates legacy for Junior, as we talked about in the beginning, or your employees, or the community?
• 34:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Or, you know, just having your business
• 34:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: your entity, your idea, your baby that you birthed, right? That grew up and is now a teenager or college going off to college, right? You now have proud, hey, that's my company, I built that, right? And it's still going, and I think that's good.
• 34:35
  Thomas Rechtien: I also think that if you're the person that kind of wants that feeling, but still wants to work 80 hours, just have 3 or 4 businesses. I mean, you can make it an enterprise at this point, but don't change the strategy of what you do in every individual business.
• 34:50
  Thomas Rechtien: Because it's a pain in the neck to run those, it brings you sleepless nights, so rather have 4 great businesses than one that sucks to fill your 80 hours a week you want to work.
• 34:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I don't know who really wants to work 80 hours a week.
• 35:02
  Thomas Rechtien: I don't know either.
• 35:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: to that.
• 35:04
  Thomas Rechtien: They're open.
• 35:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, well, you know, I think those are the entrepreneurs that like to build things and then sell them and move on to the next thing, but yeah, I don't know that someone raises their hand and goes, yeah, I want to work my butt off every day, all day, all weekends, you know?
• 35:17
  Thomas Rechtien: Yep.
• 35:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But if you're thinking like this, though, you can really put an impact on your company by just doing things a little bit more systemized, and a little bit more operational, so that you get the whole team pushing that boulder up the hill.
• 35:35
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Smart stuff.
• 35:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, this was really good!
• 35:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, I don't know about you guys, but I got a really good insight on how to run these business… how to run meetings to really help this, and I hope you did, too. I hope you got some practical ideas that you can put into your business today
• 35:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That will help you be more profitable and create that valuable business.
• 36:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And, you know, maybe cut the 80 hours down to 75 this week, you know, and work a little bit more smarter in your business, and not quite harder.
• 36:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, before you go, if you want to have a clearer path to more revenue and stronger profit, go grab your free Profit Booster Growth Map after the show. It will quickly show you the top 3 strategies and opportunities
• 36:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: To grow revenue and stop those profit leaks that may be holding you back.
• 36:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You can go get it anytime again after the show at ProfitBooster.biz.
• 36:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And if this episode gave you value, be sure to subscribe and share it with another business owner who may need to hear it.
• 36:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And we'll see you on next week's show with more strategies to help you grow smarter and profit stronger. So until then, make your plans and profit with them. Thanks so much, Thomas, I appreciate you.
• 36:59
  Thomas Rechtien: Thank you for having me.