That's a long or a big journey.
But what do you think people are going to really need to hear today?
I like maybe the transition
between thinking that you're running everything at Shoestring,
you have to be everything yourself.
There's actually a team in place,
there's some structures there,
but you don't feel like you've lost
the heartbeat of the business or where you started with.
You don't have to give that up and you don't have to give
up full ownership in order to get to that second stage.
I like that. That transition,
you talked about Shoestring and you said something else after,
and I was writing and trying to catch it.
Sort of like a Shoestring budget or
like where you have to wear all the hats,
you have to do everything yourself,
you have to be 24-7 on call for your business.
That's not the only reality of the entrepreneur's own business.
No. Absolutely.
Recognizing that transition, being able to prepare for it and to hit it.
That's good. That's really good.
What else, man? Hit me hard on this.
We entrepreneurs need the crap beat out of us by CFOs oftentimes.
Let's see those makers.
The other part that's maybe a bit of a shift is,
if you begin by focusing on cash,
at some points you need to shift towards,
how do I focus on equity or building value into the business?
Some people get it backwards and if they're trying
to build value into the business from the beginning,
sometimes they have a hobby or not.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and
guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up and welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your host, Jackson Calame,
Founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have Ryan Holden on.
We're going to be talking about the $100 million journey.
We're going to be talking about business growth at super levels.
I highly recommend buckling up, jumping in.
We're going to talk about acronyms that you may have never heard of.
We're going to talk about mergers and acquisitions
and private equity firm,
venture capitalists and how to go about this journey,
perhaps even without their help or their solutions.
We're going to dive in and it's going to be
Ryan who really dictates which route we go with that
because this is about his vision.
But I know enough about that stuff to be
extremely dangerous and also be on point at times.
With that said, I want to talk about some of
the things that we're doing to grow
our business without venture capitalists.
That would be ColdClick.
ColdClick helps us with our LinkedIn automation.
It gets us in front of excellent people like Ryan,
and like all the other people that have been pre-intervening.
Any show you go to,
I would say 25-30 percent of the guests have come
about because of our LinkedIn automation.
That's allowing us to get in front of extremely high quality people
with a message that we have to
determine is appropriate for our audience.
If you're trying to get in front of people,
it's not enough to just get an automation system.
You also want to make sure that your message is inviting
and warm and gets people to want to take the next step with you.
Too many people are doing that in ways where they're trying to get
people to marry them from day one and they're like,
''Hey, check out these case studies.
We're amazing.'' It's just very off putting.
If you're doing that, you're probably not winning very well in business.
Now, on the flip side or the other side of that sponsor thingy,
I'm losing my words today. It's late.
Simply Fast websites.
That's one of our other sponsors that we've got up there.
Now, this is not a solution that I use.
This is a solution that I wish I had had access to when I was first
launching my brands because Shane Michaels built
this program to where he can help people build their websites at $179.
I spent a ton of money and a ton of time trying to strategically build on my website.
I knew a lot about websites.
I knew I could use Squarespace for free.
I knew I could use Wix for free, etc.
But Simply Fast websites is one of those things where when I was starting out,
I wish I had known about it,
I wish it had existed because to get another web designer to work with me,
on that type of a budget and help me understand what I could do to build my website out,
would have been very helpful.
I would have saved probably between 7,000 and $15,000 on my front-end launch.
It's just a resource that I want people to be aware of that are newer to the business realm.
Now, again, we're going to be jumping in today and talking about $100 million businesses.
If that's not your cup of tea,
maybe this show or this episode won't be for you.
The water project though, before we go into Ryan and talk to Ryan Holden,
I want to mention the water project because there's lots of people out there
who don't even have access to clean drinking water.
We have an opportunity to help them get just that.
What's really cool is you get to see the community that you actually affect.
You get to choose which community you want to support.
You get to learn about how they end up creating the filtered water systems as well.
At the same time, you get to see the outcome of the dollar that you put in.
If you know of a charity that you'd rather support, then do us a favor,
drop it in the comments because you just never know how many people will get access to the show,
who will end up deciding to contribute to that.
There's a lot of causes out there.
There's a lot of people with a lot of needs.
I always like to take a little bit of time on the show to make sure that we put life in perspective
and say, well, there's 8 billion people on this earth that we really need to help.
Most of them need serious help beyond what it is that we ourselves need.
What a great opportunity to step up and provide some help to those in need.
So without further ado, I'm going to bring Ryan on.
I'm actually going to have him help me on his introduction for his bio because we did a pre-show to talk about it.
But I don't want to miss the accolades.
I don't want to misrepresent him either.
And I want you as an audience to understand what his value is in the market.
So, Ryan, I really appreciate having you on the show.
And thanks for joining me on VisionPros Live.
Thanks for having me, Jackson.
Yeah, I'd love to start with an introduction.
I sort of built the beginnings of my career, 10 years plus, with one founder-led,
somewhat family business style company, and that had different departments within it that felt to me a little bit more
analogous to small business.
The overall corporate parent would be in the 100 million, potentially billion dollar range of what it's doing.
And so for there, I got to see sort of the back end of what some companies might call a roll up or a hold co.
Just sort of seeing different businesses come together, seeing that size.
And I got to contribute at that larger level, but also got to have more hands on work leading some of the smaller efforts.
So I got to see a little bit of a first taste of big and small together in that approach.
And more recently in my career, I've been able to shift more from that employee aspect, got my MBA, did my certified
management account and sort of build out the strategy tools, accounting tools, and now focus on serving companies that
begin even at the 3 million, 5 million dollar level that are starting to begin that shift towards heading in that 100
million dollar direction and have come to a point where they're hitting a ceiling and they're maxing out, they're not quite
sure what to do next.
And that can help them layer that in and start to build out their structure that way.
Love that. And we're going to skip defining these acronyms.
And if you're at the 3 million, 5 million dollar mark, then you know what those are or you need to immediately.
So you understand the ground that you're playing on as you're moving forward, not being babysat through the process of
understanding these terms from a you know, I want to nurture people and help everybody understand every term, but we only
have 45 minutes. So we're going to be diving in a lot deeper into the 100 million dollar conversation.
So who should be listening to this? You mentioned 3 million business owners that are making 3 to 5 million.
And there's probably some other aspects of of prequalification for the audience as well.
And why should they listen to you, Ryan?
Yeah, well, the usual open door for my clientele happened to be the 3 million to 5 million dollar business owner that wants to
keep on building. But my focus of this conversation is more a little bit more broad, like looking at what the value is
for bringing that. And sometimes it comes back to where they live and what you want to do.
Like not 100 percent of us will be living in a coastal urban city, just really enjoying that life and just loving that all of
our products come from a billion dollar company somewhere. But compared to sort of having that last mile delivery,
whether that's a plumber that's highly ethical and does exactly what he says and he shows up and he takes care of your
house and you don't feel like you got shocked or surprised through the process or whatever else it may be, as you sort of see
the different smaller towns or secondary tertiary markets in our communities doing their job well.
So I think there's that side from a consumer perspective for anybody that doesn't want to live in the hustle and bustle of
maybe urban cores across the U.S. And then alternatively from the other end of the picture, for those that value having
those type of people in their communities. You may know the person that always shows up for when
the county council is coming up for election or the key person in your church where you have a fundraising drive and all of a sudden
there's quite a bit raised because one person has seated those funds. Those are the kind of people in our communities and often
they're not somebody who's necessarily just an attorney or a banker or that sort of professional person, but they're often
somebody that's been in the community for 10, 20 years and has that kind of value to share with the community because of what they've built.
So for me, I find it valuable helping people get there and encouraging that path so that they can be there, they can stay there
and they don't feel like they have to opt out of that once they don't want to work as hard, don't want to be pulling the
serial entrepreneur or investment maker's hours in their business.
Okay, very good. And the people that have got this, your bio on here too, so people can really, if you're not watching and you're
listening in, you can turn on into YouTube and you can see the project experience and the industry experience that Ryan has as well.
We'll have these links, by the way, and the show notes that you can dive in there too.
Now let's take a look and see what's your vision for those that you serve. Let's dive deeper into that. What's the outcome or the
journey that you want to see them experience?
A lot of it just becomes helping put some structure and predictability into their business. I don't want them to live super risky or
feeling like they're all stressed in what they're doing, but they can feel like there's a way to be empowered in the business that
they're serving. Often the entrepreneur or the person who's truly running one of those $1-2 million businesses is very relational,
they're very sales motivated, and so they sort of accept some of this. But over time as they build that out, they realize that the team
is depending on them, potentially their spouse and their kids are wanting to need more of their time, they want a little more
predictability into that. So my first vision is just to give them a little bit more visibility into what's going on and then help them
clean up maybe some of the gaps that are in their organization. So if we can fix some of those gaps, fix potentially some of those
leaks and then the money flows to where it should flow, that allows them to reinvest in their team, that allows them to potentially take
more home depending on their vision for it. Maybe they're already happy with what they're taking home, but they just want to put the
business in a better footing and then realize, hey, the ceiling is broken open, we tried these things before, they haven't worked, but
with somebody experienced like myself on or whatever the team members they bring along, they then have the ability to start to build out
where they're going. So for me, I would do this as a very part-time basis for any single client. And so it's accessible for them to work
with me, other clients that are on the larger end of my spectrum, they've already sort of done most of the shift to from moving from
this owner operator founder type situation into more of a management team. And so that management team allows that diversity of
strengths to come in from different functional areas. Some things that you see in a little bit larger businesses will be not just
finance, like my specialty, but you know, human resources are getting a little bit stronger. Operations, sales, marketing getting a
little bit more divided up and a little bit more of a coordination effort required to coordinate across all of that. So with my
my goal for them being to realize they can take that next step, they're not just maxed out by the ceiling of who they are or what
they've come to know so far, they don't have to be the best person in every single thing in their business. And they don't they can
don't don't just have to rely on, you know, hiring a VA or having like a key sales partner surgeon or operating person, but then they
can have the right corporate structure that allows that business to keep on multiplying.
Okay, so these businesses that are at the 3 million to $5 million mark, what's the biggest leak from a cash flow standpoint that
you've seen? And how much how much was the leak? And you know, how fast were you able to turn around the cash flow problem on
that?
So I would say maybe the biggest missed piece there is sort of understanding the difference between the revenue stream and the
cost structure and realizing how those are different. And so the cost structure is more what you're committed to to keep the
business going. So say if you're really close with all your staff, you don't do seasonal layoffs, even if your staff is doing
direct labor type things, there's more of a fixed cost or capacity that you're committed to being in business, you're committing to
having a certain amount of labor hours happening, you serve on the hook for those costs, regardless of how much revenue you're
pulling through. So really understanding the appropriate amount of revenue to drive that. And then because of that, having that
insight to know where you can fine tune the costs, where you need to maybe use more variable costs, less fixed costs, etc, to
balance that out. So I sort of see that coming out. I don't know if I have a particular dollar amount or whatever in mind, but
just sort of seeing that difference, I often see that overlooked. And then for any given business, different strengths, others,
did my personality, for example, some some clients will find a certain aspect of their business model sort of running away from
them and realizing, or for then I can sort of come in and sort of help them realize, hey, you know, you only have so many dollars to
serve this customer, like say, if you're bringing in $100 from a customer, maybe you can spend $80 and trying to serve them across
your cross structure and front end to sort of give yourself that $20, you know, EBITDA margin in more of a service context. And
then with that, you have enough to, you know, pay your bankers, reinvest in the future, pay yourself, and so on and keeps it
healthy. If you do less than that, you feel like you have to cut corners. So the only way that you know, 80% can happen, you can't
have like a 50% cost structure because that 30% being devoted to the product itself is not going to be strong enough quality to drive
that $100 coming in sustainably. So you try to find the right mixes. Potentially a long and there's almost a bit of a glorious
history with this for the entrepreneurs is potentially overspending, spending, especially in the sales culture focus on like the
wining and dining of clients, trying to find the mix of where is that effective versus where is that just slightly hiding your
personal lifestyle spend through the business and not realizing that's holding the business back, you're not finding more effective
ways to have a better marketing channel or better sales way of bringing those leads in.
That's, that's well said. Thank you. You're training me, by the way. I'm appreciating this because I mean, I'm, I'm very frugal
with how I do things. Part of that is my upbringing. Part of that is just, I'm a pretty simple person. And so I don't have to deal
with that a lot, but I've definitely had clients where I can be more direct and helping them realize like, Whoa, you're spending way
too much on these, these processes. And, you know, you might, you might be better off simplifying, like you said, that, that runway
for how you attract your clients and bring them on board. So thank you for that. You also brought up something that, that
intrigued me a lot in terms of the entrepreneur who's at that shoestring budget, wearing many hats, you know, working 24 seven,
you know, or whatever the challenges that they're facing at those preliminary stages. Ryan, what, what, what good things are
they experiencing? What green flags and what red flags are they experiencing? Where at that, they're at that point where they need
to consider bringing you in as a, as a chief financial officer and as an advisor.
Well, the green flag is like they figured out product market fit. And that's like sort of the holy grail of the first startup
phase. So it's not as hard to find in more of the kind of clients that I work with. I don't necessarily work with, you know, the
cutting edge, new ideas, focus, though, that's a little bit more my, my peers in Miami were very excited about that. My focus is
often in, you know, just, it can be blue collar, but just more Main Street type businesses where the demand is very understood,
you know, if I list out the kind of products, you know, home renovations, car services, that sort of things like things that,
you know, 80% of our friends that they get in the moment are probably in the market for on a year to year basis. So in that case,
it's a little bit more of a small business approach as opposed to startups and startup, you're trying to design your way into
the market. Small business, you're more trying, you're saying, hey, there's a valid market here, we just need to do our job
right. And then there will be the right demand, we just need to, you know, get our piece of it by, you know, finding that right
angle or just sort of copying the competition enough that we can, you know, learn and grow up and mature a little bit. So probably
the green flags there, like if you have that, you know, one million, $2 million, $3 million of revenue coming through, it's
probably still a bit cyclical, there's still a bit of erratic behavior there, you don't maybe have a fully predictable. But if you have
that, it's like, that's, that's huge, you know, like you've already done so much to get there. And sometimes it takes 10 years plus to
get there, you know, you don't get to work by the stories of, you know, on YouTube or Instagram, or whatever, the person saying,
oh, I did this in 90 days, you know, and there's gonna be those stories all the time. And those are gonna go viral. But a lot of the
clients that I'll work with, like, this is what they do with their lives, too. Like, they've just sort of picked a space and they've
committed to it. And that's allowed them to, you know, they survived enough of the early issues in the dawn. So that's why I say, to me,
the green flags, like you've already come so far, you've already hit the most difficult things, you have the beginning, you have the
customer list, you have a couple key people on your team that are really good at what they do. Some of them maybe aren't fully
appreciated yet, because they still have to do something they're good at and something they're bad at, you know, you're not a big enough
company to let them just focus on what they're really, really good at, or give them the right tools potentially even for that. So
there's some of those are the green flags I'm seeing, you know, if you have five star reviews coming in, or you have that kind of
feedback from your customers, even if you're not systematizing how you collect and distribute those yet. That's a good sign, you
know, it's a good sign that you're onto something, it's a good sign that you know how to take care of those people that you're
trying to serve. And so with that sort of is a validation that you should be in business, that if you went out of business, your
competitors may not be able to serve your niche as well as you can. So you're serving community to like, then I'm just more than
happy to help you grow and find those other people you haven't been able to serve yet, and figure those pieces out. So some of the
things are, if you start to sort of think of it as like, oh, this is as far as I can go. So then you start to optimize for that. So
for example, you assume, okay, I'm here, and I'm making this money, so I can spend all myself like this, there's no negative there. But
you're not really necessarily building something that's gonna grow into the next step. I've talked to people where they're at one
level in their, they like some of the cash flow that they have. And they like the idea of moving to the next level. But I've been
like, I'm not quite sure if they have the commitment to put in the time or reinvest the capital or even just culturally change a
little bit from a I from like a I or me approach to like a we or like team approach, and how they lead the business, you know, so
that can be hard, it can be hard to like let go of some of those pieces. To sort of say, oh, I'm the owner of this business, and I
can accept the rules, but I will abide by the rules that I'm setting for the team. Because when I'm in the business, I'm gonna have
the same rights and responsibilities that my team member would be like if I'm, if I'm the GM, and the lead salesperson, I'm not
going to pretend to be the GM when I'm the salesperson, I'm going to follow our sales script, or I'm gonna, you know, I'm not
gonna unduly discount just to get the sale done, because I'm the GM and I can do it. I'm gonna, you know, stick to the plan, make
sure we don't use price erosion to, you know, devalue our brand in the marketplace, but to sort of follow that rule or follow the
sort of the structure that's being done. So that's potentially a red flag is if you feel like the business is your toy, and you get
to do with it what you want, it's like, that's fine. But like, the more you make something a hobby, the less it serves others, the
less it serves others, the less maybe value that you can build through it.
Well said, man. And then that creates a set of handcuffs for you to have to deal with. And it seems like you understand healthy
boundaries, healthy boundaries, and don't want that relationship. So smart wise, wise plan there. As business owners, we have
the opportunity to say, you know, what am I, am I doing this to the people I work with? You know, and how do I then shift my
mindset so that I'm not creating problems like that? And we just had Shiraz on today as well. And he's a manifestation coach, and
he talked about doing an exercise where you write down, why don't I want to dot dot dot, right, as a framework for uncovering
what our limitations are. So if I, why don't I want to allow Ryan Holden to audit my books? Right? That's an example. Why don't I
want to allow Ryan Holden or a CFO to go through my P&L statements or to take a look at our cash flow? There's a lot of things that
we can tell ourselves entrepreneurs to get ourselves to get out of our own way. So with that said, let's dive in real quick to
what's your personal vision, Ryan? What do you what do you see for yourself over the coming years?
So part of my vision is to sort of build alongside with my clients and to get to that point where I don't feel like I'm in that
stage two where I'm just trying to, you know, scram everything, figure everything out, do everything myself, and sort of feel like
I'm part of a team and to see the need even that I'm just like a year or so plus or minus depending on how you count the
beginning into this just already seeing myself being a part of a team of the some of the clients I work with and I'm gonna have
to have even just a few months with in the trenches, figure out some things getting some wins for them. We had to just be able to
go along with them and sort of have a part in that and take a yeah, take take a piece of that potentially as well too, depending
on the mix like a lot of my CEOs. And this maybe helps us transition to some broader topics potentially we might cover later in the
call but like a lot of CEOs, they're not the CEO you'll hear about in the paper or on the news. Like that CEO is often maybe even
maligned a little bit in the current business environment. But a lot of the CEOs are very more similar to you know, you and me
just like they're just trying to do something for the family, they're trying to take care of something, really, really hard
workers are really passionate and really knowledgeable about their field. And they're just trying to do the best that they can.
And it's like, and they handle a lot of risk, they take a lot of hits, when something goes wrong, they're the ones that pay for it.
Because the employee walks or, you know, they're trying to deal with all these issues, transitions, new rules coming through, it's
like, yeah, there's just so much that they're here for. And so they just love to be able to, you know, take one piece of that in one
slice and then sort of insulate them from issues coming from that, that aspect of it. Yeah, speaking of these CEOs, like they're
they're not the sort of like the, oh, I built all this, you know, I want to own all of it, I, you know, everybody else say away. But I
see a lot for those that have been in for a little bit, like they do understand the people that they're working with, they love
working with them to they sort of have their team minds are at least the ones that I've gravitated to have. And they're looking at
things even at, you know, considerable cost to the business of launching things like, you know, employee 401k plans that allow the
employee to buy into the business, you know, there's some tax code things out there that allow some benefits for that to happen
potentially is more of something that's maybe more closer to the 10 million, $20 million a year mark that starts to become a little
bit more feasible. But there's some methods where there where, you know, whether or not the employee wants it, it's like the owner
sort of embraces and sees this value of ownership of, you know, democratization, so to speak, of equity and sort of owning a piece of
the action. And they're wanting to share it, you know, it's like they're very liberal and open in that way, and that generosity. And so
it's just really neat to see that. And that's part of my vision, too. It's like, I love seeing that. I grew up more in, you
know, upper or lower middle class, depending on which towns I was in, began a little more in the upper middle class side, but
then I've seen enough worse, I'm more lower middle class, there's a bit of mix of that. But definitely, in the US, we don't have,
maybe it's emerging, because of the dynamics that are changing in the society around us. We don't necessarily have a very, very
large, or like landed gentry class, like you potentially read about in the past, where we only hear about those people because
those are the kind of people that had the higher rates of literacy or leisure time to, you know, self report on these things
compared to what we experience now, where, you know, potentially, 3%, 5% of the US is ultra wealthy, and then you have another 10%,
maybe 15% upper middle class, and then so on from there. So it's a little bit more rare, but potentially, it's changing with a
little bit more of the content creator mindset, as opposed to the 9 to 5 wage earner mindset. People realizing that
ownership is valuable. And even if they feel a little bit late to the table from a real estate ownership standpoint, or
industrial or manufacturing standpoint, there's still a lot of territory within the services, or, you know, someone putting up a
website, or somebody sticking claim in a particular social media site and niche and sort of getting to own a set of eyeballs.
And then that set of eyeballs or attention becomes very, very valuable, and can be resold or traded upon or invested in, and
gives this person an asset, you know, even if they didn't have, you know, 100k or 200k to buy into more of a legacy or older
version of asset. But anyways, all these different ways of saying is like, I love looking at life, not just through a I want to go to
a job clocking clock out and live for the weekends. But it's like the what what am I here to steward and take care of? How can I
sort of own that in a valuable way? And then with that, there's just so many options to finance it, distributed and take pieces of
it and give it to top employees, you know, give it to your kids. This is one reason why wealth is maybe sometimes more
important than income. When we talk about social concerns, you can't give your job to your kid, you could give your business to
your kids, you know. So there's a bit of a mix here. And I've always been attracted to a lot more of that mindset ever since like
reading, you know, Rich Dad, Poor Dad or other books that were asked back in my preteens.
Absolutely. I didn't read Rich Dad, Poor Dad in my preteens. That's pretty cool that you did, though. And I'm glad once I did, it
became a foundational mindset shift for me. So I'm glad you I'm glad you give some credit to the reference for those who are on
the path and journey. I'm going to break down a number of things that you talked about, Ryan, because it was just it was so
impressive. And there was so much that was there. One, when you first talked about slices, one of the things that caught my
attention was that you weren't referring to the slice of the pie of the equity, you were referring to taking the weight of the
pressure and the responsibilities off the shoulder of the entrepreneur. At least that's what I heard. You talk fast. So I was
just trying to keep it all together. But I was like, I was like, Oh, man, this is a finance guy who understand who feels an
empathy towards those he serves. That's that's really cool and helpful. It also reminded me I was like, huh, I was like,
that's the that's ultimately one of the greatest signs that somebody's moved their mindset towards being a chief, right, the
chief finance officer. A lot of people receive that title because they should write that's what you should do on your next
step in your career. But there's a difference between should and could and your ability to pursue ICU stepping that role as
like this is a I could do this. So therefore I will not because society is pressuring you to crime climb the ranks, but
you're looking at business very holistically. And that's, I admire that. Like I'm eating it up, man. It's cool.
I appreciate you calling that out. So it's like, I definitely gravitate to and I see things from the finance perspective. But
I was recently talking with a client, he's like, Oh, what are your top five things? And I thought about it. And I realized
two of them are finance, one of them is accounting, but the other two are ops and HR. So it's like, sort of that that piece
of, you know, I don't just come in and it's like, if I came into your business, and I just looked at the numbers and just
said number seven, finance stuff, it's like, I'd be bored. Like, I'd still be in corporate, I don't want to do that. No, it's
like, I love the CFO part. And it's a bit of a misnomer. It's like, you know, if you look at my experience, I'm more
equivalent to like a finance manager, or control or accounting manager in corporate, but it's like the CFO part is
because of that context, I see the full picture and how it relates across the different dimensions. It's like, when I'm
talking to you about finance, it's not just about like, Oh, let's do this, because this is financial engineering, or
this is how I can talk with your bankers or your accounts on your behalf, I can actually have that language with you. But
it's more like, if you're ops managers on the call, I can tell them what does this mean for margins? Does this mean that
this is a good client for us to take on or not? I can talk with your salesperson, marketing person, you know, what's our
cost of fire customer, what's our customer lifetime value? So our CAC, your CLTV. And then how does that relate? What
does that sort of tell us about where we're where we have gaps? Because what we don't want to do is have, you know,
three things that are going well, and one thing that's holding everything back, and then just keep on putting more
resources into three things are going well, and that's not really gonna change anything. You put the resources into the
gap that's holding you back, fix that and all of a sudden, you sort of have this highway where everything's smooth and
flowing forward. So yeah, I appreciate you mentioning that. I just love the connections within that. You know, that sort of
allow me to handle sort of own the accounting piece or sort of help whatever keeping team is in place own that
accounting piece, and then make it you know, play nice with the other groups so that sales and operations now have a
full team around them. They're not just feeling like they have to do the work by themselves.
It's gonna help me. I'm telling you right now, it's gonna help me in the future as I continue to evaluate
chief financial officers, because I think sometimes we give the chief technology officer and the chief
financial officer the like, well, they get the title because we need one, but we don't necessarily put the time and
attention on helping them develop the leadership skills they need. And you've been, I mean, it's kind of clear that you've
been rocking that part. So thank you for that. I'm also going to point out too, so sound finance, did you say
sound finance has existed for a year now? The personal LLC really, that sort of just a risk structure for behind it.
That's been a year and a half now. That's sort of my shift from W to work to a mix of like consulting work and this.
And then I recently rebranded into sound finance to just figure it out as a little bit more of the direction I wanted
to head. I happen to live in the Puget Sound, which is a beautiful area in northern Seattle, all the way up into
Canada, that whole area right there. So there's sort of a geographic link in there as well. So yeah, that's my company.
And I'm currently the group CFO. I like the term group CFO. It's sort of the reciprocal of the fractional CFO space that I am in.
For all of my clients, I'm fractional for them, but then I see them as a group together. And so for me, I can sort of
learn something from one of them, apply it to another one. Like I get to be in the space sometimes a couple times.
Other times I'm learning something from somebody that's really good at sales. And then I go to another company that's much better
at operations and sort of mix and match how they see things, how they learn. So it's like, I love that group aspect.
It gives me the variety and independence in my work that I appreciate. So anyways, yeah, for now, it's speed building.
It creates harmony. It creates harmony that's healthy and important for most businesses that oftentimes often try to stifle that
and eliminate that from happening. So I really like that. Smart marketing. Smart marketing is often
coercion, persuasion, or imitations that allows us to see things in a new light that we couldn't otherwise catch.
So I like it. Let me go to, so what I was going to say with that too, though, is that it's neat because yes, we're going to be
serving those who are at the three to five million and beyond head of the hundred million, but you're going through the
experience right now of understanding what it's like to start things from scratch. And so the empathy is building as you go,
even though you've got a pretty strong base of that already. That's fun, man. I'm excited for you. I'm excited to see where it
ends up over the next 10 years. So let's talk about, this can be your personal worst business experience ever or the worst
business experience you've kind of witnessed. Obviously, protect the brands in this equation. But so that the entrepreneur is in
that, again, that phase three to five, head of the hundred million. What's a breakdown that you've experienced that could have been
avoided? Well, there's a set of financials I once reviewed and I only had a short window of interacting with this particular
business. So there's not necessarily some longitudinal weight to it. But it was a company that basically needed to cut their
overhead in half and triple their volume to make sense. So it's like they were operating, they were operating a startup mode, but
they didn't realize it. And so for me, just seeing that, like, I just saw the writing on the wall, and I just don't know at what
point that, no, they're not going to be able to make payroll or one of their creditors is going to call them out on it, or one of
their big vendors is going to say, no, I'm not delivering you anything more. And they have to like shut down jobs, lose some
customer deposits, etc. But just sort of seeing that the business had made it that far was quite an education for me, because I
tend to be more, which hopefully you want in your CFO, a little bit more risk averse, a little bit more wanting to like play
defense and go from strength to strength. This person was just more like a firebrand, like, let's make it happen. And we'll figure
it out after we go along. And so for me, I hope that it's not one of those cases where this person was just putting all these
things together, causing a lot of, you know, moving the money between the shell, sort of the shell game, the purling shell game,
making it look like things are happening. And for all I know, like my most, based off of what I saw there, I feel like there's a
couple options. One is, you know, it burns and blows up. But a potential side thing of this would be the opposite of the kind of
CEOs I like to work with, where this person potentially is not the true steward of the business. They put the business
together, they run it off of their credit and other people's credit. And they pay themselves a salary along the way. And they
just understand that at some point it's going to break. Because they're running it that way into crashing. Like, like if you look at
like some of those months that this was a seasonal business, so they shouldn't be have stronger volume during like the late
spring, summer months, etc. Even in some of the months that should have been good, they were having negative gross profits, it's
like not even their jobs that they were doing. They weren't even breaking even on those. And so then couple out with like $100,000 a
month overhead, and you're not really going anywhere. If you're going deeper into the ground, and they didn't really have the
right awareness to turn it up. So the person I was talking with that is sort of already had some of that accounting
relationship with the company before me, they mentioned that they said some of these things, but eventually, but either not the
way to cause a turnaround, or the person just wasn't accepting it. So for me, it didn't affect me personally, because I was more
of a potential advisor ships passing the night had sort of a touch point into the business got to review their financials. But for me,
that's that's a sad story of the opposite of this, where, you know, say the mortgage crisis happens, all of a sudden, we're blaming
Wall Street, it's like we see walls, I've seen Wall Street level techniques, even in small businesses, you know, you play a Wall Street
trap. If you if you buy a house on a mortgage that you don't understand and can't afford, and the moment you lose your job, you want
somebody else to foot the bill, you play a Wall Street game, if you run a business like this, try to tell everybody else it's all
working, and then disappear with your slightly maybe overpaid salary, and let the sellers and customers and government try to
pick up the tab while you declare bankruptcy and then go start the game again next year. So I hope that's not the case. But that was
the most likely thing that I saw happening with that business. If somebody is just willing to take all the risk, try things, they'll
use their ownership leverage to pay themselves the salary that they want. And if things go bad, they use bankruptcy or something
else like that to just bounce and try again without maybe learning any of the lessons.
Oh, that's a tough one. You know, I would say that I don't I don't want to throw myself in that bucket too harshly. And with my past
businesses, but at Restaurant Connect, you know, we we did not have the finances coming in. You know, we learned that the hard way we
weren't looking at the numbers, the financial numbers until we were about a month in and realized we were just burning cash left and right.
And it was it was, you know, my business partner's wife who looked into it and started to see like, wow, you guys really aren't doing this
the right way. And it took us three years to get to where we were at thirty six thousand and recurring monthly revenues. And so I think
it's there's a fine line there. You know, there's there's J.K. Rowling who wrote a wrote a book on a napkin and became a billionaire.
I'm sure she got some financial advice along the way and figured out more beyond the napkin. But, you know, it's one you're right.
It's the CFO's job to sound the alarm, you know, to make sure we're aware of what's going on. And we would have we would have not made it.
I can't imagine what situation my family would have been put in had Jen in that case not looked at the finances restaurant connect. Then when
own local my company prior to that, we were down to five hundred thirty seven dollars in the bank account and still trying to put things together.
I closed a couple of deals for the organization. It was about 30, I don't know, thirty three thousand dollars in revenues.
But Paul Buckeye, Matt Cutts ended up investing 10 million dollars in our company two weeks later.
Who would have ever made it without that investment? You know, we were we were toast. They were already planning the exit and had told me not to come back to work to close those deals.
I bring that up because, yes, there's there's risk involved in building companies.
But if you can start learning the principles of wise stewardship, you use that you use that term earlier, being a steward in the process, then it doesn't it doesn't have to be as risky as we often make it out to be.
If we're willing to learn the lessons and the rules that people like you are capable of providing.
So let's talk about staying independent on the one hundred million dollar journey and how you go about doing that responsibly. We don't have time to crack every code for you, for those who are listening.
But in addition to the best experience of business, I'd rather shift gears and say for those businesses who want to stay independent and want to go on a hundred million dollar journey, you have five minutes, Ryan.
How do we do it? So I'll begin with a question that I heard in my more startup focused MBA.
Would you rather own one hundred percent of a five million dollar business or 20 percent of a hundred billion dollar business?
And I think that's part of the key question here. Like, it doesn't mean that you have to necessarily partner up with a VC or private equity.
But sort of the question of am I willing to to share? Am I willing to take a piece of the pie and realize that others have their claim?
Like, do you want to sit at a table with just your family and you guys are all eating and you own everything on the table or do you want to sit at a banquet hall with 25 of your closest friends and you're having a blast and there's more than enough food for everybody?
So sort of like you need to culturally know what you want. Maybe this changes over time, maybe this changes.
Maybe there's a business that's a pet project. You never want to take that past. You own the hundred percent.
Maybe another business is more like you see the potential for growth and you really want to bring partners on like you got to realize how can I make space at the table for those partners to get what they want?
Sometimes it's equity, sometimes it's upside, sometimes it's partnership deals that can be creatively structured.
They don't necessarily rely so much on the usual cash or equity, but sort of realizing that cultural shift of what is needed to get to that level.
Because you can't retain a full control, full access, full personal preference and then expect to grow beyond yourself.
Like you need to be able to commit to a code or sort of figure out what am I willing to give up?
What structure or what rules am I willing to follow in order to make this business work better than myself?
So I think that's probably the first thing is sort of have that self-awareness in there.
But then beyond that, it starts going to realize, OK, how do we take that first step? Jackson, I think you mentioned about what's stopping any particular person from wanting to have me take a look.
You know, maybe there's an implied sense of does this feel like a defeat? Does this feel like I'm giving up?
Does this feel like I might show that I'm stupid or whatever?
It's like, you know, that really matters because it's like I've seen plenty of financials, like it's messy, it's chaotic.
That's what life is. So it's like, I'm not going to blame you for wherever you are. The blame potentially is if you have the information to do something about it and you don't.
The blame isn't necessarily where you are right now, but it's whether or not you're letting that get in the way of where you want to be and where you want to push things forward.
So a lot of it comes down to, you know, personal fit, et cetera.
But it's tough, you know, because like a hundred million dollar business, they have to operate a lot better in certain ways than a five million dollar business.
A five million dollar business can operate based on this.
I think that's another statement. I'm just guessing.
I haven't been there at that level. So.
Yeah, and I mean, it's pretty different, isn't it?
Right, right. It's much more tiered and you sort of also have this shift of instead of being a group of generalists that are all like the ride or die.
Like, this is what we've got to do because we sort of started with this company.
You have a couple of generalists that have to transition into people like myself that can sort of accept the general part, but then start to give you out
in very specific, structured ways who's supporting this, you know.
So the beginning, you don't like titles. Do they really matter?
Like you all have relationships and you all understand the business and you also have your part over time.
And it makes a little bit more sense not because of title inflation or egos or anything,
but because you want somebody to be in each spot doing what they need to do so they can hand over the next person down the value chain and work together as a team.
You know, it's like if you're playing one on one basketball, you got to do a little bit of everything.
You're playing five on five and you're, you know, you're no good at shooting threes, but you're standing out of the three point line.
It's like you're not helping your teammate compared to knowing your role, knowing what you want to play.
So a lot of that is more on maybe the personal side and the team side.
But then you get a structure and like some things that maybe always don't exist.
They definitely know this as a separate role and you maybe see them once a year, a couple of times a year.
Things like human resources or finance, specifically strategic finance or some of those pieces that get beyond like the monthly bookkeeping or looking at a P&L.
A lot of those things you can, you know, you can drive by a napkin or you can fly by the seat of your pants at that size because you have enough awareness of what the business is doing.
But if you've already built out into multiple cities or you have multiple product lines, it's like average is no longer work.
Just looking at the cash amount in your bank, it's not really going to help you because that doesn't tell the full story.
You need to be able to track what is causing that, what's coming up, what's going out, why is that happening, what are the activities driving that and which ones are really making you strong?
Because like it can be hard to tease out.
Should my focus be on revenue or should it be on gross profit?
Should it be on operating profits?
Should it be on net profit?
Should it be on cash flow?
You know, there's going to be a mix and different seasons will have different reasons for looking at different of those.
And from a holistic standpoint, especially if you're running a 50 million, 100 million dollar business, you should be seeing those in a timely way.
Multiple of them at once.
You have all those perspectives in play as you make decisions.
So it's like it gets more and more structured that way.
And that's what you need.
You're just somebody with my toolkit to sort of help map that together.
Whereas if you're running a three million dollar business, you understand, you know, your top 20 clients by name, you can you have them on speed dial.
You know, everybody in your organization.
You don't necessarily need the kind of cohesion or plan that the cohesion or coordinating things together that a really solid plan and structure will get you.
But once you don't know everybody in your company on a first name basis, once you can't tie things together, once you have multiple managers doing the same things, butting heads, you know, running into each other, like you're no longer going to be operating at the same level.
You have to have a different playbook.
So for me, often it just sort of comes back to like the let's use the flow of money and the numbers to sort of tell the story of what is going on in the business.
But I've you know, I didn't I wasn't born in the county and begin this way.
I did blue collar jobs all the way through college.
My dad's more of a jack of all trades sort.
So it's like I come definitely from the other side of it.
A lot of my family members are teachers.
So I just sort of have that heart to teach built into me.
So it's like if I'm working with you as CEO, it's like I'm here to try to I'm not trying to hear no hold the cards closely to me.
You just try to give you the secrets that can get you to look good enough that you kind of want to keep on pinning me or anything.
It's like I want to teach you about it. I want to let you know what I see potentially if you want to learn.
But actually, you work with me for a few months and you're like, hey, I figured this out.
This is what we need for now. That was great.
But maybe we'll see in a couple of years.
You know, like my goals and necessarily lock people into working with me long time.
I love it. I love that sort of I don't have a natural aspect of it.
But, yeah, I'm also here to teach to sort of like you'll point the way I'm not.
I don't think what I know is like private or unique or anything like that.
But I have the holistic view there.
And I found that it helps unlock for my clients that shift of stepping into that next piece that they're less than they're with.
Like, they're definitely the industry experts.
They know the operation piece. But I can speak to that.
Like, I've seen enough that earlier this year, I was talking with a client.
So my first interview or maybe not my first interview, just the CEO.
But then I had to repeat one with more of a panel interview situation.
And within like 15 minutes into the call, they asked me if I'd been working in their industry for 10 years.
I was like, no, I've never worked in your industry.
But that's what happens when you have the right person in the room talking to you about what they're expert about.
And so maybe I can be that person for you. Maybe there's somebody you already know, a friend, a family member you need to reach out to,
that you trust, that you can sort of bring in and help sort of be that second pair of eyes.
You know, we're all going to have our blind spots.
And I think for me, part of that whole idea of group is we can get beyond just being individuals having to do it all and figure it all out.
Compared to maybe being a little bit more formality to bring others in so that as more of a team approach, we can develop and move on.
And then from what I've seen, you know, hitting that 10, 20, 50, 100 million dollar level, there just keeps on being more and more value that you can pull out.
There is the potential there.
In most cases, you're not running out of your market.
Unlike, you know, these million dollar startups that are putting so much funding behind something for them, it's important to understand how big their market is.
For a lot of mainstream businesses, you don't necessarily need to know because there's always more room.
Like, you know, there's so many mistakes going on in business that if you can make just a few mistakes less than the person next to you, there's a lot of opportunity for you.
So I love finding those people that figured out a recipe that's maybe just a few mistakes better than average.
And then we can just keep on developing that, building that out and, you know, ultimately giving better options to the customers that we're serving.
When I was 22 years old, I could tell what a rock star you were just by the amount of passion you throw down as you speak, Ryan.
Now that I'm 36 years old, I can I can hear it as well.
I do want to circle. I mean, we're out of time, but guys, if you're listening into this right now, I just I hope you see the the wisdom that exists
and what Ryan is sharing for growth at all levels.
Do you play an instrument, Ryan? Are you a musician?
I don't really think of myself as a musician, but yeah, what do you play percussion or what?
Piano classical piano. OK, I've never met somebody.
Everybody I've ever met is extremely intelligent, tends to play an instrument.
And so I had to ask, I'm sure I'm looking forward to the day I meet the person who's not a musician that has your level of intelligence because I'm sure they exist.
But I digress a little bit. You talked about this, would you rather you talked about the culture and the banquet halls.
I love that. I never thought about that before.
You talked about moving from the ride or die to the structure.
And it's funny because if you look at Bass and the Furious, which is one of the biggest coiners for the ride or die scenario,
they were in the same process of creating structure throughout a series of movies where it just takes off more and more to greater levels.
Even they went through it. So moving from ride or die to structure.
Now, you're what you're putting out there.
You said you're you're you have the ability to be private with what you do, but you're not.
You said you're not unique. I don't believe that for a second.
And I are you're not supposed to argue with your guests.
I'm argue with that. You are unique.
And those businesses are looking to hire you are going to be very lucky and fortunate to work with you because of that passion,
because of that real oneness, real oneness you have.
I don't in these shows by promoting my guests and saying, hey, man, like, you know, I hope everybody works with you.
But there's one of you that exists and there's thousands and thousands,
not millions of businesses at the level with which you're working at and know your ability to dive from dive into what's necessary at the hundred million dollar mark
compared to being able to focus in and isolate on the the difference in business at the three to five million.
It's unique. And I really appreciate you coming on, sharing that with the I got to run.
You know that I told you I go pick up my daughter. I'm excited.
I get to go spend some time with my little daughter, daddy, daughter date night.
But if I could talk to you for another hour, I would because this was magical.
Thanks, Jackson. Happy to be here. Yeah, absolutely.
Vision pros. You guys have a fantastic day.
Feel free to drop comments, questions in the comments, too.
I'm sure Ryan and I would be happy to put looms together for you.
Basically recorded videos to do that.
And I will be bringing Ryan on in the future if he will.
Bless us with more of his time. It would be super fun.
So you guys have a fantastic evening. Ryan, thanks for being here.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you.