Sales and Cigars | Colin Sanburg | Financial Levers for the CEO | Episode 158

[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Walter Crosby, the Helix Sales Development, your host of Sales and Cigars.

[00:00:04] Today's episode, my guest is CEO, visionary, owns multiple companies all in the financial space.

[00:00:11] We talk a little bit about Fin Elevate, this company, what they can do to help.

[00:00:15] That CEO, that business owner who, you know, income statement, but knows that there's just like a lot of numbers there,

[00:00:21] and there's some things that just don't feel right, and they're not really sureate you taking the little time to come on and have a conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me, Walter. We've had this one on the books and I had to punt once, so I appreciate you rescheduling

[00:01:40] for me.

[00:01:41] No worries.

[00:01:42] So let me, I like to start off, yuck. Yeah, those are those are two great books. I actually have those over on my shelf over there. I'm a fan of holiday stuff. He's a prolific writer, but that book kind of

[00:03:04] helps people understand that, you know, whatever you think is in your way, which is usually right up here in our between our ears.

[00:04:05] The very first thing I did was went for a long walk, pulled out the audiobook, and dove back in.

[00:04:06] So definitely what I would recommend.

[00:04:09] I think what I've realized, and this is what I always tell people, is looking backward,

[00:04:13] we always see that some of our biggest challenges became some of our greatest opportunities

[00:04:18] or biggest breakthroughs.

[00:04:20] But in the moment, it's really hard to see that.

[00:04:23] I remember being a young guy, that's a new little tidbit or that's even though we've read it, right? Do you pull something new out of it each time? Every single time. I mean, I love what you're talking about because that has blown me away. I don't understand. There's got to be some sort of a name for that, but yeah, absolutely.

[00:05:43] It's like, it just strikes in a different way based on where you're saying, right? I mean, that can happen within a single book that you've read three or four times. And it's like when we were kids, right? The parents told us something. And, you know, I used to get from my parents, like, how many times do I have to tell you? Yeah. And I learned that

[00:07:02] the smart ass answer of six off, but it's coming from all these so-called gurus. In my world, it's like cold calling is dead or emailing is dead or whatever.

[00:08:20] Somebody's like, it's dead.

[00:08:22] And it's like, nothing's dead.

[00:08:24] Nothing works.

[00:08:25] Everything works. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very similar concept of there's not a one magical decision that if you made it, it would fix your finances, just like it won't fix your sales. Yeah. Well, and there's people looking for the magic bullet. I mean, the pharmaceutical industry, the weight loss industry, they live on that.

[00:09:40] This is it.

[00:09:41] We figured it out.

[00:09:42] We broke the code.

[00:09:43] This is going to work.

[00:09:44] And some of them get closer or not, this guy's crazy. He wants us to do things we've never done before. He's asking us to be accountable for our actions. He's asking us to try different things and different messaging, right? He doesn't want us to talk about the product. He wants us to talk about the problems that we have, right?

[00:11:01] So when that happens, what are you gonna say?

[00:11:05] And then I like rehearse it with him.

[00:11:07] Because it's gonna happen.

[00:11:08] It always happens. be from time to time. And some things will work great and some things won't and we'll have to talk about it, iterate and keep moving forward. And that happens anywhere. Anytime you're trying to make change, there's always going to be some bumpiness. Absolutely.

[00:13:24] that haven't been paid or make one little tweak to your process and all of a sudden cashflow goes away, it's going to take several months for it to play out. And exactly like

[00:13:29] you're saying, I love what you said. I always call that moment the wobble. I kind of say,

[00:13:34] Hey, we're going to try something new. There's a bit of a balance to it. And we all have

[00:13:38] to acknowledge on the front end at some point, this thing is going to wobble. The question

[00:13:43] is not whether it'll wobble. The question is whether you're going to double down or always the ultimate results, the compounding results are really exciting. But in the short term, there's always like, is this really working or not? Yeah, guys like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have certain things they look for. There's certain levers they can, they know they can pull. They are able to look at a company and understand certain things and they know they can pull these three levers

[00:15:03] and it'll get them this point, right? All and then then double down on what's working All right, but keep you know, keep checking and testing And I think that's a you know, that's one of the one of the things that I I ask

[00:16:27] guests I asked CEOs when we're talking and the podcast have to work on them having good business, financial, business slash financial acumen?

[00:17:41] Do they know how to read an income statement?

[00:17:44] Do they read a P&L? and they get beyond just being able to say, I have a little bit of money in the bank, therefore I'm good. And they get into a more complex business where they've got to understand the profitability of their offers and how well their team is leveraged. They get beyond kind of the super basic solopreneur model. And now it's not just them, but it's they're not able to help their team

[00:19:02] understand those elements.

[00:19:04] And so that's a huge part of what we do

[00:19:06] is not only work with the right guardrails, they can keep them on the path that they need to be on. But I was curious because what I see a lot of is sales people

[00:21:23] The first thing is it priced properly. Your margin is there to cover the taxes and the sales costs and marketing costs, all that.

[00:21:31] Are you just leaving money on the table?

[00:21:33] Is there a manufacturing problem?

[00:21:34] I mean, there's just so many things that you could look at.

[00:21:38] Salespeople don't see it.

[00:21:40] I've seen some business owners who don't know how to do it either.

[00:21:44] They've been running a business for 15 years and they can't really differentiated yourself. So it's interesting to hear that some business owners still struggle with those components. And they're using baseline ideas. And you're able to work with them and their whole team to get them

[00:24:26] to understand cashflow or understand what their it in this zero to 100 score, the FEN score, that gives them a way they can communicate with their team. And even before their team learns what is good or bad, they can see like, hey, we're a three out of five on this area. I know that here's what it would take to get to a four. And so we kind of demystify it in a lot of data out of their accounting software, but we're also questioning the business owner and the team on some elements that are a little bit more subjective. But then our goal is everything that's subjective, we start going in and trying to validate with data, right?

[00:25:41] And so to your point, we want to give them as quickly as possible that score so they

[00:25:44] can see like, okay, your gut was right. You know, how do we correct that? And then you start to just systematically go through there and start to solve those problems. And there's probably a lot of interconnectedness. Fix

[00:27:01] one problem makes the other problem easier to fix. Yeah. You know, here's the goal. Let's try and get this to four. And then for us, we have our playbook of all the different things we could potentially do in a business. They're categorized by the Finscore so that when we see that a score that you need to be a four is only a two, there's a natural playbook that we go to.

[00:28:22] That becomes the roadmap. It becomes a, is that a big differentiator for you? Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, I always say not to not to knock CPAs there. I've run into some really smart CPAs. But to your point, the average CPA, you know, they're so focused on the tax code and how to how to help save you money. But most

[00:29:44] business owners I know are, are first do I go looking? I mean, I used to have it at adage. I had a small Signing graphics company and I would tell my ops manager. It's like you you're gonna see problems

[00:31:03] You're gonna identify problems and you're gonna bring them to me, but don't come to me empty-handed

[00:32:05] Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And we're a done with you service, right? We're not a, you know, here's a list of five things you should do. Again, we don't want to be even a one step

[00:32:09] better version of what the CPAs are doing. We really get in there and work through it

[00:32:14] with you. And, you know, to the extent we can, we do it for you. And to the extent we

[00:32:18] can't we help advise you, you know, look understand the significance of the finances but it's not their cup of tea, right? It's not their favorite part of business and it's not an area therefore that they're dedicating a lot of time to.

[00:33:42] But they also have recognized they can't get where they want to go without it, right?

[00:33:45] And so that's the biggest thing. your industry agnostic, vertical agnostic, but is there a particular size? You're not going to work with a startup. Is there a minimum there that revenue wise or where they need to get to that makes sense or just about anybody? Yeah, most of our clients are somewhere between, it's a pretty big range, but somewhere between

[00:35:03] half a million and 10 million in revenue. And I'm really working hard on LinkedIn these days, putting a little bit of content out there, but also just loving to connect with other entrepreneurs. Whether someone thinks that they're a perfect fit or they're interested in working with us, or they just want to connect. I love working with other business owners,

[00:36:21] other people in small business.

[00:36:23] And one of the things that we offer is,

[00:36:26] we'll hop on a call with someone for 45 minutes. more often than not at the beginning, it's just giving you some ideas and resources to go back and look at and see if there's a bigger problem or something you can solve. I like just being the resource. It sounds like you're putting stuff out on LinkedIn that's valuable, that's going to make

[00:37:40] people think, it's going to help educate. I think that's part of what being in that game. Yeah. What the hell does the sinus have to do with the cigar? Is it just a thing that he said, like bad, like don't do it. It's bad for you or. Yeah. So there's something funky about the way my sinuses, I used to get a lot of sinus infections, a lot of colds. And again, I don't know the science of it, but he basically just said, Hey, man, if you

[00:39:03] don't want to end up back in here, I had to go through a like a day surgery kind of deal.

[00:39:06] And he said, Hey, if you don't want to be back in here, here with the dog. I sit out in the back porch with a notebook Because it you know, my hands are occupied but it allows my brain to kind of like work. I love that So my it's my it's a rationalization. I know but my right. No. Hey Hey That's like what is Tony Robbins calls that priming right once you've done it and it's worked for you and you and you know

[00:40:22] You can manifest that that is

[00:40:24] Effective and you'll you'll start coming up with that you need to get fixed in the finance area. Give Colin a call, click on the links in the bottom in the show notes.

[00:41:41] Appreciate it, man, thank you.

[00:41:42] Yeah, thanks Walter, appreciate it.

[00:41:44] I love sharing secrets when I figure them out.