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Transcript

EP355 Your Business Is Profitable, But Is It Built to Last? · Profit With A Plan

• 1:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: For a lot of business owners, the answer may be uncomfortable. The numbers may look healthy, but the company is quietly being held together by overworked people, undocumented processes, and the knowledge trapped in somebody's head.
• 1:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: In this episode of Profit with a Plan, we'll help you spot the hidden operational debts, putting your business at risk, and what to fix before the growth, change, or future sale exposes the cracks. So join us on Profit with a Plan podcast.
• 1:46
  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 company that's worth more, whether you keep it or plan to sell it.
• 2:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'm Marcia Reiner, Business Growth Strategist and the Profit Booster behind Infinite Profit.
• 2:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Each week, I bring you practical strategies, expert insights, and real-world steps to help you grow revenue, increase margin, and build a stronger business.
• 2:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: By the way, today's episode is brought to you by Infinite Profit, where strategy turns into profitable growth.
• 2:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And before we jump in, as long as I can keep my mouth working today, I have something special for you.
• 2:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If your revenue has plateaued, or your marketing just is not producing the return it should, go check out the free Profit Booster Growth Map.
• 2:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: In just a couple of minutes, it'll help you identify where to bring in more qualified clients, and where your profit leaks may be costing you money. Go get yours after the show at ProfitBooster.biz. And by the way, there's no sales call required.
• 2:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, let's get into today's conversation. My guest today is Levi Lawrence, managing partner of Iron House Pro, where he helps founder-led companies build operational foundations they need before scaling, modernizing, or preparing for that future sale.
• 3:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Levi brings a perspective that is both practical and hard-earned. He has built a company, lost it, and used that experience to understand why businesses can look successful from the outside, while relying far too heavily on a few capable people behind the scenes.
• 3:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Today, he helps owners identify the hidden operational debt, undocumented knowledge, and fragile systems that can quietly limit growth or create risk when the pressure hits. So, Levi, thanks for joining me!
• 3:45
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Thank you very much for having me, this would be great.
• 3:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, I think so, too. It's one of those days where I get a little tongue-tied, and it almost cracks me up. It's like, what is going on? I've only been doing this for seven and a half years, but, you know, we do have those days, so…
• 3:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You mentioned in the, in the introduction that you had started a company and lost it. How in the world did you lose your company?
• 4:09
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Well, like many people, I use the term technician entrepreneur, so that's somebody who starts their first business because of something they're good at. So I was a chef by trade who opened a food company.
• 4:19
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: like, food distribution, food products, and I had a catering company, and it was all around foods created or made within 100 kilometers.
• 4:28
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And, you know, I had online delivery of groceries in 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12. It was early, before my time. But I was the food guy, and so I'd have business problems, and HR problems, and system problems, and marketing problems that, you know, when I hit problems, I just went back into the kitchen.
• 4:45
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And so, you know, and that's definitely, like, that's the connected dot, and that was… it was not that clear then. Hindsight's made it clearer, but now it's… it's really, like, I grew up fairly large, raised money, went multi-city, you know,
• 4:58
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: 3-ish million, that I got to from a garage business to storefronts and e-commerce, and then, you know, didn't raise enough money, grew too quick, had some challenges, and I didn't have any of the systems to support
• 5:11
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And, you know, I don't tell everybody this, not because I'm afraid, because not everybody gets it, but when the business closed, it's because I was in the hospital. You know, I was ill, and I just wasn't able to put out the fires that I now realize I was putting out every day. And so, the system was me. And without me there, it didn't take very long to fall apart.
• 5:30
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, you are not alone in that systems are you conversation, because many of us
• 5:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We all start our business because we knew something, right? We were good at our jam, and we decided to mistakenly wrap a business around it without the full knowledge of all the problems that could occur. The HR, as you said, the operations, you know, sometimes the financials.
• 5:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, the people, it's just, it's crazy.
• 5:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But we're good at what we do, so we just keep leading in that path. So, I'm sorry to hear that, you know, you getting ill, you know, caused you to recognize that. But yeah, I bet it was, you know, I'm glad to have you sitting across from.
• 6:13
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: on the call today, but man, I can imagine
• 6:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: The business didn't work after that, did it?
• 6:20
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: No, no, and we were in a fragile position, and we didn't understand, and… but, you know, at the same time, you accumulate experience and network and friends and people who have got there, so, like, I also think back, it's like the problems I had that I probably could have solved. I could have reached out to other people, I could have been more vulnerable, I could have had more… like, the problems weren't as… like, I look now, if I had those problems now, they're solvable.
• 6:42
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: I have enough experience, it's 15 years later.
• 6:44
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But at the time, it just, it just, you know, I was, facing…
• 6:48
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: the decision, and I knew every supplier by name. It was all handshakes that I could make with every supplier I bought from, 170 of them. And, when I started ordering something that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pay for.
• 7:01
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: I… I decided to pull the plug.
• 7:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It's smarter in hindsight now, but I'm sure.
• 7:09
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: It was…
• 7:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, a terribly emotional decision, and we all need that t-shirt, I shoulda, coulda, right? Because looking back, it's almost crystal clear. It's that… it's that now version, right, that always seems to get us
• 7:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Tangled up. So, now that you've had this great experience, and great I mean the, you know, learning experience that taught you really how to run a business smarter, how are you putting that into today's operations to make sure that you can develop that?
• 7:40
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So, after the business closed, like all good failed entrepreneurs, I started giving advice for sale, because it was a bounce back. So, I say that half the time.
• 7:51
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But one of the contracts I got was moderating business peer groups, and so for 6 years after that, not only did I have my own road rash, but I got under the hood of groups of 12 to 16 business owner founders going through growth, and I was their moderator facilitator. And so I got under the hood deeply with, over that period of time, 200 different businesses of every size and industry.
• 8:14
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And…
• 8:15
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: what I said is that all my road trash and my learnings, like, those pro- the problems are almost always the same.
• 8:20
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And so we started really, really understanding, like, they're all principle-based, they're all comparable, nobody's got unique challenges, and especially smaller businesses, or the independent ones, don't have the same resources to tackle them. You know, they're not paying for the high-end consulting, they can't throw technology at things.
• 8:39
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: I can't hire, necessarily, the right person for the right seat on the bus. And so, I personally believe, like, I understand and I like bigger business.
• 8:49
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But communities are made, typically, of some more smaller businesses, like, I need the profitable businesses, but I also don't travel somewhere because of the quality of their Walmart, although I go to Walmart.
• 9:00
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: I travel because I want the quality of that unique individual retailer, or restaurant, or caterer, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. And, like, those companies, like, I…
• 9:10
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So I started out a little bit of the Helping David against Goliath when I moved out on my own. I've now mostly priced myself out of the True Davids, and so I love being on podcasts, because then I give these… like, I try to give as much as possible, because I want to share the message, even though I can't necessarily bring my team in to do the hands-on for everybody.
• 9:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Right. But you know what, that's really great, because now you've had your own experience, you got to experience 200 other businesses, and realized, hey, it's the same problem. So what were some of the top problems that you saw, and maybe, you know, some ideas on how you were able to help them through that?
• 9:50
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Well, you mentioned right in the intro, like, we talk about foundations. Foundation's a very key word for us these days, because we started out, like, you know, in my head, it's like, it's easier to sell growth, and scale, and marketing, and leads, and so we were, like, our core was helping companies adopt
• 10:08
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: technology and change process. That's really at the core of what we were doing, and it was, like, for scale, for growth, for 10X, and modernizing. Digital transformation was the key word of the world, like, 2, 3, 4 years ago.
• 10:20
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But in all those projects, once we got there, once we started having real human conversations, it came back to basics, which we now call foundations.
• 10:28
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Do you have your information in a place that everybody can find it? Do you all communicate in the same way?
• 10:34
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Do you actually understand what the processes are? Do you actually understand what you're trying to achieve? Because growth for growth's sake does not necessarily, very often.
• 10:43
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: succeed. You kind of have to have a goal and a target. Do you know your cut? Like, there's basic questions that underpin all organizations. And since then, I say organizations, because we're now, like, 50% private business and 50% institutions, nonprofits, and First Nations organizations.
• 11:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Interesting. Interesting that, that, you know, and I find a similar pattern in my, in my work when I'm working with clients. Oftentimes, they want the, they want the shiny object, they want to chase the squirrel.
• 11:16
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Excuse me.
• 11:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the great thing. You know, people often confuse growth with scale, and that always is one of those pinpoints for me.
• 11:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But when you get in, you find out that they're not even ready for it, because the foundations are so off. How do you get the owner to go.
• 11:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: okay, I'm not gonna chase this shiny thing, let's work on these foundational items, because they're usually like, come on, I want the… I want to go now, I want to go really fast, and I want to get there yesterday.
• 11:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How do you deal.
• 11:48
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So right now… right now, we're spending a lot of time on trying to educate. We're speaking, we're writing, we're, but most of the people who come to us, or people refer people to us, some things happen to make it extra painful.
• 12:00
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Most of our clients are what we call traditional businesses. They've been around for a long time, a lot of brick and mortar. We're not really working with startups, because there's lots of companies that have been around for decades.
• 12:10
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And they gotta catch up. Or, I mentioned pain point. A lot of them are coming up on a transition. They either wanted to, like, decouple, the owner wants to decouple from the business, because they want to do less or be somewhere else.
• 12:23
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Or they want to sell, or they want to pass it on, whatever that transition looks like.
• 12:28
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: that's when they're like, oh, oh, that's not actually a sellable business, or that's not actually as valuable as it could be, or… and a lot of people aren't even necessarily looking to sell, they're like, I'd love to be able to, like, have it run with me not being on it every day.
• 12:43
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Or their spouse is like, you could probably take a day off, we have lots of money, and then they find out they can't do that. So it's time freedom, or money richness, whatever you want to call it. And so when that comes, because then we're not solving a… we're not saying, look, we're going to make you 10% more efficient. We're going to help you grow by 10%. It's like, we're going to change the quality of your life.
• 13:01
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And we're gonna change your retirement. And so those make a different conversation, so we spend a lot of time in that space.
• 13:07
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But we're trying, like, I'd love to talk to people earlier and find a way to… for them to understand little tiny efforts more frequently along the way would save a much larger, more expensive… expensive in dollars or time, later on, when you're trying to change the habits of a whole organization.
• 13:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, that is so spot on, because, yes, I'm a… I'm a same fan that, you know, working in… working earlier, which is… which is why, you know, my, when I first came into business, I was financial planning and talking to exit… talking about exits, and… and, you know, where are we going? But they weren't ever ready for it, and I… and my advice… my advisor told me at the time, let's go back and talk about
• 13:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: building a business that you can actually sell later on, so it gives you that double-edged sword. A win now and a win later.
• 13:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So same philosophy of starting earlier. It's never too late to get started so that you can create that, opportunity for yourself later on. What are… what are the, what are the biggest…
• 14:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: foundation errors that they have in there. I mean, you've… you've… you've sprinkled on a little bit of them, but which are the primary ones that really hit you hard?
• 14:21
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: the boring one that everybody has a problem with, and nobody does right now, is, like, just some better, clean cybersecurity. Like, the world, everybody's adopting some really fancy tools to do some really crazy stuff, and you're open to liability. Like, I don't even want to talk about it further, like, it just should be table stakes, but, like, that solid foundation of, like, if you're going to start playing with AI, or tools, or scale, or automations, and you don't have any
• 14:43
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: clean information and security, like, it's a whole mess. So, that's a very clear one.
• 14:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Huge risk.
• 14:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Huge risk.
• 14:51
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: The other one is, it surprises me, because I live in this space, it surprises me every day how little actually just gets put on paper. Whether you use the system or not, but, like.
• 15:00
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: when I hire somebody, and like, I can't give them instructions, I don't have the checklist, I don't have the process, I don't have the onboarding, and I'm… I'm not working necessarily… I mean, I'm not working for really large companies, typically.
• 15:12
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But lots of them have 60, 100, 200 employees, and they're still master to apprentice, or learn through osmosis, or, you know, experts or long-timers who have been here a long time are the ones who carry the decisions, and I was like.
• 15:27
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Like, that's… I mean, maybe it was extra work a few years ago, but right now, that's as easy as just… just sit down and listen to yourself talk and record it on a computer. Or have an intern listen to what you're saying and follow along, like, get things written down so you can share them.
• 15:40
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Download… we've had Download Dad in at least 6 project scopes. Get their brains into something.
• 15:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, that, that is, that is great, because yes, a lot of experts, again, it's all stuck up in their head, that they're busy working, and they know everything, but then when they want to bring somebody on, it becomes this arduous task of, ugh.
• 16:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: now I have to write operations, or I have to write a procedure for it, or they have to come and ask me.
• 16:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Somebody I spoke to, probably a couple of years ago, had mentioned that you and can… a great way of doing that, and correct me if I'm wrong, is to engage the person that's already doing it.
• 16:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: to take a few minutes and write down their process, and reward them for it. someone had mentioned, like, every… every Friday afternoon, I'm gonna give you an hour to write down your… what you did this week, or that process, and try and improve it for me.
• 16:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And then if you do that, and we can get it, and we can free up some time, maybe at the end of the month, you get an extra, you know, Friday afternoon off, or something like that, you know? And it really, it really helps, because then, granted, that person's doing the work because they're hands-on and involved in that.
• 17:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How do we… I mean, because I… it… people think that it's, like, this monstrous task, I've got to write every operating procedure in my company, but you can start with one, right?
• 17:12
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And the reality is, and I'm stealing stats I can't attribute, but it's almost all businesses run on 5 to 7 core workflows.
• 17:20
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: 5 to 7 actual workflows to provide or create the value in your company, and for every company, it's a little bit different. But, like, just even an exercise of a whiteboard and a couple people is, like, what are the ones that carry the most weight?
• 17:32
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And that, that, like, just start there. And, and you mentioned reward, and I think that's great, but, like, start with acknowledgement. Stop with, like, buy-in from the top, like, just…
• 17:43
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Have the entire leadership understands priority and acknowledge how important it is, and then, like, everybody wants to do important things.
• 17:50
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But it's… so it's not administrative burden. It's, like, one of the most important things that anybody in the company can do. Change the mindset.
• 17:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: valuable, right? If you're selling your company, the buyer who doesn't have to buy, they want to buy, will come in and go, oh.
• 18:08
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: everything's documented, I can see exactly how things are done, and if something, you know, I can fix it, I can work with that, that, to me, adds so many numbers to the… to the sale price as well.
• 18:22
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Yeah, and you mentioned the sale price, because the documenting process, getting your stuff on paper is really big. The next one is, are you… does your company sell its product or service, or do you? The number of times… because that's not really documentable often. It's… it's like, if the owner stopped talking to people today, a month from now, are you still getting new business?
• 18:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And the trickle-down of all the things that need figured out.
• 18:47
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Under that hood is the next most…
• 18:49
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And that's not really something you can delegate. That's a deep, personal exploration.
• 18:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I think that's kind of a rainmaker syndrome, right? Where the rainmaker is the owner, oftentimes, and because of their connection, their notoriety, their name on the door… big mistake… their name on the door that people want and need that person there.
• 19:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: that becomes really challenging. Like, even, like you said, in the early part, if you want to take a day off, or God forbid, you want to take
• 19:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: A real vacation that was a couple of weeks.
• 19:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, where without the emails and cell phones, I mean, you can't do that if you're the company.
• 19:29
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And some companies have it harder than others, but if you… if you are needed there for work to get done or work to get sold, even if you love it, it's such a huge
• 19:39
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: It's just such a, like… yeah, that's where my head is, like, let's fix that.
• 19:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: it's a burden, right? And I think that… so… so when we have that situation, and, you know, granted, when you're starting your company, or you're in the young phase of your company as you're building, yeah, you gotta do it all, right? You're the owner-operator, but as you start to grow and you reach those plateaus.
• 20:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: and you start bringing people on, that's where you… I'm a fan of…
• 20:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Imparting the knowledge to the team.
• 20:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And empowering them to be able to make certain decisions, certain levels or values of decisions where they don't have to come to you for the answer. They can solve that problem and work through it themselves, which is that freeing break, or, you know, from the owner that really allows them to breathe and become the leader of the company instead of the doer of the company.
• 20:34
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: One of the conversations we have with a lot of people, especially founders, is, like, eyes wide open, go into and make choice, like.
• 20:42
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: You can be the hustle, and you can do the work, and you can make really great money and life at that.
• 20:49
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But if you start to get to a certain size, like, you can't manage the work, you have to manage the systems.
• 20:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: as people.
• 20:55
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: manage the systems, and just understand, it's a little bit different for different industries, but it's, like, you can map it out. Like, I can map it out in a conversation. It's like, and for a lot of people, like, one and a half, two million for a lot of companies is like, you can manage that, and you can get a really great margin, you can have a really great life.
• 21:11
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And at $5 million, you're gonna need… you're not gonna be doing the same job, you don't need to be the same person, you don't need the same strengths, it's a completely different role.
• 21:19
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But if you talk about that earlier, I wish this… I wish this was Business Class 101. Make some choice about where you want to land.
• 21:27
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: who are you, and where do you want to be? Because you could run 3 businesses at this size, with these strengths, and you don't have to do that next round. But a lot of people, they just react to growth, or growth is the, like, the YouTube push is everybody should grow. It's like, well, grow with intention. Make choice.
• 21:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And growth doesn't have to be, you know, Amazon domination. It can be little incremental changes that improve year over year over year, and that, to me, is growth. If you get a 5% increase each year, wow, that's fantastic, right? You don't have to have, you know, double and triple each year going in.
• 22:04
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: We're buying multiple businesses, so that's, like, we call our first business this one that we really like. Like, it's not something we want to scale. It's very nimble and powerful. We call it Engine 1, but that allows us to improve and run multiple businesses.
• 22:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly.
• 22:19
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And that's just a different kind of growth, but we thought about it, and, you know, having a strategy, having an intention, make choice. Because when things are forced upon you, that's where resentment lies. Like, the number of founders I know start to resent their customer, or resent having to go to work, because they're no longer doing what they enjoy for the reason, or they don't have the freedom they thought they'd have.
• 22:37
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: You make choice, I get to.
• 22:39
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Changes the whole game.
• 22:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I think that's the control we always wanted when we started the company, right? Is to make those decisions to leave the man, right? And go out on our own and do the things we want, but somehow it evolves into this ugly beast that we no longer like anymore.
• 22:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So I love the idea of making choices, right? And understanding your intention and the direction that you want the company.
• 23:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Even if it's to stay small, that's fine. You still have to, you know, outperform inflation, but if you're… if you're still… if you have that intention and you can make those choices, then it still becomes the baby that you wanted when you started. And I love that angle on it.
• 23:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How do we… how do we… how do we stay in that?
• 23:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Right? I mean, because I think, like, the external pressures, or… or, you know, just like I mentioned, inflation, or, you know, things that get in the way that make us… pull us in different directions. How do we stay in that choice optimization?
• 23:43
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So, yeah, it's a wild, changing time, too. Like, half the stuff I just said might be completely out of date in a couple years.
• 23:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly, by the time we release.
• 23:50
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Yeah, exactly. But for me, it's, it's, and what we do, and we do it for clients, but we definitely do it in-house, is we, even though we kind of try to put a peg in the wall, or a dart in the dartboard in the future, where we're trying to go, what is growth, have plans, budgets, like, those…
• 24:05
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: aren't just boring details. Those are really important. But we revisit. We have that off-site or that on-site day, and we do it quarterly, and at the end of 3 months, we need it. We need it. It's like, what's changing? What's the opportunities we're going to take advantage of? Where do we need to make change?
• 24:21
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And we kind of, renew our vows a little bit as well. There's 3 partners in our company, and it's a little bit of, like, alright, things have changed, or we're still going, is this still our goal? Did we change it? Are we going hard enough?
• 24:32
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: I… differently than a lot of people, I don't… I ran a company of my own, I don't want to run a company again. I want that accountability, I want that push, I want that drive.
• 24:42
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But we need to get on the business at least every couple months. Like, out of operations completely, and really be looking forward, or I don't think we would be able… it's the same way, like, you can't drive a bike by looking right in front of the wheel. You just can't. You'll fall over.
• 25:00
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, and that's fantastic, and I appreciate the fact that you're saying every 3 months you've got to revisit, and you've got to take a temperature check. Are we on point? Did we veer off? What's new? What's the opportunity? What changed, right?
• 25:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And as a planner, I'm a planner at heart, profit with a plan, right? And so to hear somebody who's experienced everything.
• 25:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Who are helping others do it to reiterate the fact that you gotta take that temperature check every quarter. And I think that's so important to be able to get the goals, because if you're not checking
• 25:35
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: frequently enough.
• 25:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How do you know if you're still on track to be able to reach the goal that you set? Even if it's a hairy, audacious one.
• 25:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you gotta be able to say, are we closer to it, or did we veer off the track? So I think that that's important. So, Levi, this is really great. We can go on and on and on, and I mean, we have some really good things. But before we wrap.
• 25:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What… you mentioned earlier that you wish this could be Business 101, and that you could really impart some wisdom on younger businesses, or businesses maybe that are struggling, that need to get right back on track. If you had one or two best practices beyond what you've already shared with us.
• 26:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What would those be that you'd really want to leave the audience with?
• 26:24
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Well, especially if it's somebody who's newer on this journey, start talking to people who have been there, and start talking to them often. Ideas are trash.
• 26:32
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Like, it's not about your idea, there's nothing sacred about any kind of cow, it's about execution, and talk to other people who get it and who've been down that road. Like, join a peer group, go to groups, find a mentor, talk to people who've been there and are doing it, and start being…
• 26:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Don't do it in a silo.
• 26:47
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Yeah, and be open, be vulnerable, be transparent. Like, you'll be surprised at how much they go, oh yeah, I did that 10 years ago, let's talk about that happening for me. And the other one is, especially now, is yourself, but also your organization.
• 27:02
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: the best thing you can do, regardless of any other tactic, is start creating a culture of, or rewarding, continuous improvement or learning. Like, reward continuously reading, or podcasts, or reading, like.
• 27:15
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: like, we use, communication channels, whether you're Slack, or Teams, or Qlik, or whatever you're using. Create a learning channel for people to share new things they learn. Bring in… we do lunch and learns every two weeks, where somebody comes in and just gets 30 minutes of something cool.
• 27:28
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And they're not all tech, they're just like, like, we did mental health first aid, like, create a culture around
• 27:35
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: people wanting to learn and be more okay with change, because change is coming, and anything you want to do to improve a company is going to introduce change, and so the best thing is, like, start making it so that it's more tolerated. Because adoption's going to be the bigger problem. Not making the decision, buying the tool, or fixing the process, it's going to be your team following it.
• 27:53
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And so start with the culture piece.
• 27:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love that. That's so rewarding to hear that, because it is really good to be open to new ideas, new processes, new things, new learning things, and when you create that culture in the company to welcome that, like you said, that adoption's gonna be a whole lot easier when change comes, because it happens…
• 28:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And even today, with even, like, experiencing AI, I mean, it's so… it's hyper-fast, that you've got to be in the right spot, so that's really good. All right, Levi, where can listeners find out more about you and your company so that they can
• 28:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Become a better business.
• 28:36
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So, the two easy… my love language is LinkedIn. Please find me there, I'd love to have a conversation. My time and coffee time is free, absolutely. I have a personal website where I talk about thought leadership, what I'm writing and reading, leviLawrence.ca. Our company is ironhouseproduct.com.
• 28:52
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: But the big thing that I really wanted to share is, and I mentioned earlier, we want to educate people, we want to start talking, and I don't want to charge for all that. So, we've built our first actual software app.
• 29:04
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Which allows you to do a self-assessment around where your foundations are.
• 29:08
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So it's foundations.ironhousePro.com. It's just come out this week, it's been 2 years of us kind of working on it, and it's… it's, you can do the quick, I don't have any time, 10-question version, or you can do, I really want to look under the hood, 50 questions, and it's supposed to tell you
• 29:25
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Because one of the things I found it freeing, whether you want to grow, whether you want to sell, or whether you want to automate or adopt AI, all the exact same foundations matter.
• 29:35
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So, regardless of your goals, almost all of them are compassed in the same things that you should work on, and this gives you a really, like, it covers strategy and finance and operations, and communications, it covers all of it.
• 29:47
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: And I'm really excited to continue to grow that, and it doesn't cost anything. So the more businesses that do it and tell me whether it's crap.
• 29:55
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: I really want to help people be able to self-assess earlier, where they're at and what they need to work on.
• 30:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. And where can they find that again?
• 30:03
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: foundations.ironhousePro.com, and again, if you find me on LinkedIn, I'm all over the place with this.
• 30:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Love it. Wow, this is… this is so good. And… and really, this'll also help you recognize what needs to be in that conversation every 3 months, or what needs to start to think your processes through, and… and ways to… to find those gaps, because…
• 30:26
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: The valuable conversation we're having right now is we're getting people to have their whole team do it.
• 30:31
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: So you do it as the owner, but, like, if you do it, and your manager does it, and they're completely different, then that causes…
• 30:36
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: valuable conversation.
• 30:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's actually really good to have the manager do it, because then you can see where the gaps are, where you think it is, and where it actually is. So, that's cool. Well, good. Well, thank you for doing that and offering that to the audience. I think it's a tremendous,
• 30:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: way to go through things, and you have to assess, and to have the good tools to make the assessment easy to do, easy to get the output in, that's… that's definitely the faster way of doing it.
• 31:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: All right, listeners, thanks for tuning in today. I hope you're walking away with some practical ideas that you can put to work in your business to make it more profitable and more valuable.
• 31:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And before we go, if you want that clearer path to more revenue and a stronger profit, then go grab my free Profit Booster Growth Map. It'll quickly show you the top strategies to grow revenue and stop those profit leaks. Very different from what Levi has, but another type of assessment that would help you out.
• 31:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You can go get yours after the show at ProfitBooster.biz. And if this episode gave you value, be sure to subscribe and share it with other businesses who may need to hear it.
• 31:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And exactly what Levi and I have been talking about on here, we want to help, right? And so, this is a fantastic tool to start getting those wheels turning in your mind.
• 31:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, I'll see you on next week's show with more strategies to help you grow smarter and profit stronger. Until then, make your plans and profit with them. Thank you so much, Levi.
• 32:10
  Levi Lawrence - Iron House Pro: Enjoy.