Steve: I've got one client. You ready for this? He made over $500,000 of profit last year. Guess what his cash flow was? Negative a 150.
He had financed and bought equipment. He took an MCA loan, which they're the ones that say, I'll give you a 100,000. You know, all you have to pay is weekly 1,000 a week, and they're charging you 30% interest. Probably at Washington, they're illegal.
Peter: This is the Field Guide, Practical Marketing and Leadership Guidance for Business Owners. I'm your host, Peter Wilson of BizMarketing. Each episode focuses on what actually works in the real world. Let's get started. Today, my guest is Steve Pickcairn with Clear Vision Business Services.
He has been a business coach and consultant for the past twenty years. Steve and I have worked together for probably about ten years now. He works with clients across The US and we've actually worked together on clients that are part of a large franchise system. Steve, thank you for joining me today.
Steve: Thank you, Peter. It's a joy. We've known each other for so long. It's good to have this conversation.
Peter: Yeah, I apologize that it took so long to get around to it. So Steve, I really enjoy working with you and the amount of focus and clarity you bring for your coaching clients. A lot of times we're handling the marketing for a client and then you're handling more of the core business coaching. And what I really appreciate about your approach is the three that you preach. You wanna share that with me?
Steve: Broken recording. Hit me. Alright. Let's jump in. How about this?
Marketing is the fun part of the business, and my clients always wanna jump into that. And I always laugh. Before you can run, you better know what your stride is. You know? Don't go on a vacation without getting your car checked.
So a lot of times I work with the owners and and really enjoy it. Time, team, and money. I I feel like I'm a broken record after twenty years, but I laugh about it. Time. You can't be feeling you're winning in your business if you're working eighty hours a week.
I've had horror stories over the years where clients are working eighty hours, their spouses are furious with them, the kids are upset because they're not going to baseball or soccer games, And it's one of those things we got into business to enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying it, there's something wrong. And so a lot of times time is the first issue we jump in.
Peter: Yeah.
Steve: So what are some things I do with clients? First of all, we really look at what are they spending their time on. I laugh about it. A lot of surveys over the years have said owners do 50% of their time is spent on either things that are urgent and not important or not important and not urgent. And you sit there and go, well, why would we?
You and I didn't talk about it, but I know a lot of people are out there talking about last night's basketball game. You know? How did Michigan win it? You know, I laugh about it. That's not important, but not and not urgent.
But if you're a Michigan fan, that's part of the enjoyment of life. So when I work with business owners, I'm not telling them, don't talk about things that interest you, But instead, make sure you're limiting, hey. Tomorrow morning at staff meeting, I'm gonna spend ten minutes, and we're all gonna talk about the game instead of speaking for three hours during the day about it to everybody.
Peter: Right.
Steve: Along the same line, though, things that are urgent but not important, that could be something that somebody else can do. You know, with VAs nowadays, you're paying, you know, $1,500 a month for a VA that can knock out so much of the busy work. And it's you're the way I laugh about it is an owner gets home and they're like, I'm exhausted. And their spouse goes, what was so busy today? What drove you crazy?
I don't know. I was just busy. And they're getting mad. Yeah. Because they can't go back and say, hey.
I finished that major marketing proposal for that customer. So again-
Peter: I think, do you see any particular patterns? Because I'm guessing a lot of the business owners you work with are sort of self made, right? They started off- Absolutely. Solo preneur, they started off very small. And so by default, you have to do everything yourself.
Steve: And that is so correct. And I laugh about it. One of the best articles for business owners to read, it's called The Five Stages of Business Growth. It's from the Harvard Harvard Business Review. And, no, it's not a stick your nose in the air article.
It's really down It says when you're starting out, you do have to do everything. When you are in that second stage of survival, you're still going to be controlling everything, but you're not having to do things. When you get that first level of success, and and what they define as success is you're able to pay your bills and you got a little cash left over. You know? I still call that
Peter: noise above water.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And at that point, you've gotta make a decision. Am I really gonna grow or am I gonna maintain and be what I call chucking a truck? Think of about an HVAC company.
It's the owner and a helper, and he's making a a decent amount of money, but he's never really gonna have wealth. And, guys, I truly believe we got into business to become wealthy. We didn't come in to work our tails off just to have a a bare living experience.
Peter: To have a job. Yeah.
Steve: So the next level in the article, which I love, it's called takeoff stage. It's when you say, I'm no longer gonna be chucking a truck. I wanna grow a business that runs without me. And here's the problem. Too many people make that decision, and they put the marketing in place and everything else.
Peter, you do a great job with marketing. All of a sudden, you float flood them with leads and and sales. Sure. And they're sitting here going, I can't handle it because they didn't put the structure in place. They didn't hire those people that they need to help manage the business.
So they're trying to micromanage a business that's probably 3 to $5,000,000 and it can't happen. And that's typically the customers I talk to, somewhere between 1,000,000 and 5,000,000 that their business has grown and it's outgrown them as a leader. And so time management is the first area we work on because they've got to delegate time for specific tasks. They've got to pay their bills on time. They've got to train and orient new employees.
There's all these things that if they don't block out, hey, from four to five on Fridays, I'm gonna do my bill pay and make sure everything's deposited so I can rest over the weekend and not worry about it. So, again, that time factor is so critical when they're starting out and growing.
Peter: Yeah, I can attest to that probably about a year ago, we use a payroll system called Gusto or Gusto. And I was running payroll every two weeks. Well, that's a recipe for disaster because just I shouldn't be doing it. So I finally went to my bookkeeper who's really good at that sort of stuff and I said, I know you don't do our payroll for us, but could I have you be responsible for getting it filed every two weeks? She's like, Yeah, no problem.
Huge, huge relief. And the other one was similar. I delegated paying our monthly B and O taxes to her. And before I was always like a day late and then I would get a penalty and I was probably paying on average of $100 or $200 a month in penalties just because I wasn't paying attention to the calendar. Just transferring that over to our bookkeeper paid for itself because there's no more penalties.
Steve: I'll laugh about it a lot of times with a business owner, I'll say, How much is your time worth? And, they'll go, I I'm free. I I get paid the same no matter what. I said, no. You don't.
If you're not profitable, you're not getting paid.
Peter: Yeah.
Steve: And then I kinda say, okay. How much is your profit last year divided by the number of hours you worked? Your time's a lot more valuable than $20 an hour. And it's amazing. All of a sudden, you go a million divided by two thousand hours a year.
That's $500 an hour. Why are you doing something that you could pay somebody? And, again, if we get into VAs, it's ridiculous now. But old school, I'd rather pay an executive assistant $20 an hour and get this stuff done and not stress over it being late. Mhmm.
A lot of business owners, they're too tight with their money, but they're not using their skills to grow the business. And that kind of jumps into number two, team. It's when you start out your business, the first people you hire, you're going to pay as little as you can to get some help. And, unfortunately, those business owners at that stage, they don't expect much because, hey. I'm only paying them $15 an hour.
It's minimum wage. I'm gonna get minimum results.
Peter: Yeah.
Steve: Problem is when they start growing, they need to get out of that mindset and say, I need talent, not just a bot. Now and whether it's a receptionist. I had somebody who had a receptionist that was just horrible. He he got her, but he was so loyal to her. And I appreciate loyalty.
Don't get me wrong. But it was one of those things. She really wasn't getting anything done in between phone calls. And I I would kid him. I said, do you realize what a new receptionist could do for you?
And he was like, he finally added a second person, wouldn't replace this girl, And the second person freed his workload dramatically. And he was like, oh, this is ridiculous. You know, I will say this, our loyalty to our colleagues is a win, but it can also be a curse. The other thing with team management is it's making sure you're training and developing people. Just don't hire them and put them on the job.
What is your onboarding? What is your training program? Are you creating time to give them feedback? I'm always amazed. I'll go into new clients and ask somebody, when was the last time you got a review?
Oh, I've never got a review. Well, have you got a pay increase? Nope. I haven't got a pay increase since I started three years ago. And I'm sitting here going, how can we not give that feedback to that person?
How can we not motivate him? You know, we had a good year, Peter. We had a 20% increase last year. I'm gonna give you a raise because now 20% top line may not be a 20% increase in profits, but I'm going to give you a 5% raise. They'll be overjoyed.
Yeah. But That's the issue is go ahead.
Peter: That's good feedback. That's great feedback. One thing that we found, Steve, when I started the business, I came from the corporate world where it's very structured and it's kind of death by meeting. Right. Microsoft was one of them.
And so I kind of had this aversion to team meetings because I thought they were a complete waste of time. And they really were. We tried to have some team meetings, but they were a waste of time until one person on my team, Emily, was like, We really need to step up our game here and have an agenda for our team And really, and it's changed over the years, but every Wednesday at 11:00, I mean, the agenda has changed. It's changed over time, but the consistency is there. Every Wednesday at eleven we have a team meeting and we cover a couple of things.
One is high tide. So everybody just gets a chance. If you're that Michigan fan, you get to talk about And big win last so we do that and that's a kind of a way to share some personal stuff without going too deep. And then we have team shout outs where we just, because we're virtual, 100% virtual, and we don't really have an opportunity to acknowledge what's happening in the business with each other. A lot of times we're just head down working on something in particular.
So we do a quick team shout outs where, and it's popcorn style. It's not, you you don't have to go around the room and everybody say something. It's just more of if you feel inclined and extra grateful for something that somebody did on the team, shout it out. We write it down on a Google Doc, and we just put the date. And we have the weekly meetings.
We probably have close to ten years of items now Wow. In So that for us, that team piece, I mean, it's not perfect, and we're just a very small team, but it's really helped us. Again, because we're virtual, we've got somebody in Boston, we've got some people here in the West Coast, you know, we've got people all over the place. We rarely see each other in person. So that helps.
Steve: Trick Lenzconi wrote a great book, Death by Meeting, and it really takes it to a nutshell. I call them huddles, five minute huddles, not a ten minute, not a twenty minute. Hey. What does everybody need to know first thing in the morning? Mhmm.
Just you know? And it may mean nothing. It may be, hey. Did y'all see the game yesterday? Congratulations to any Michigan fans.
But it's five minutes. Everybody heads on. Now if somebody has a critical issue that day, they bring it up. Hey. I'm supposed to have four movers helping me today.
I only have two. Okay. How does HR help you? Or who else or can where do we move somebody? But it's truly five minutes.
Let's see what we need. The weekly meeting and I I laugh about this one because I I'm like you. I was corporate. It was an hour of me talking, and this is eighties. Eighties and nineties.
I mean, that's what you did. But what I usually tell my owners, I say, you need to have a cup of coffee, and you better have drank your coffee. And the other people have been talking because if you're not if you're drinking if you're talking too much, shame on you. This is got it. Tell me your celebrations.
Tell me your challenges. How do you need our team to help you? Not how do I help you? How does our team? Now you may be the problem solver, but most of the time, hey, Bob, can you help him with that client?
You had a client like that before. Yeah. And it works out that way. The meetings have got to be productive. And if you feel they're a waste, shame on you.
Peter: Well, other thing we did, and we've kind of gotten away from it, is each week we had a theme and then each week it was somebody else's. So we rotated on the team whose week it was to lead the meeting.
Steve: Perfect. I love that. Again, it's helping that owner get away from feeling they've gotta do everything, and that's critical. You know, now in addition to the team meeting, I'm a big believer on the alternating week, that owner needs to meet each of his key direct reports individually.
Peter: Yeah. One on ones. Yeah.
Steve: You committed to me last week you were gonna do this, this, and this. Okay? Did you get it done? If not, why not? What are your KPIs?
Did you win at your KPIs? If you did, let's celebrate. If you didn't, what do we have to do differently? And then at the end of the meeting, you're like, what do I need to do to help you succeed? And then let's finalize what is your action steps for the next two weeks.
And if you go into that on a regular basis, they will be so independent instead of dependent on you asking you questions all day long. Along the same line, one of my favorite things is if somebody asks you a question, Peter, like, hey, how do I do this? You need to say, Well, what do you think you have to do to get that done?
Peter: Yeah, the three words We joke in our family about the three words that say, I care about you more than anything. Not I love you, it's figure it out.
Steve: Yeah. And you know what? They feel empowered and that you trust them. Now if they tell you, oh, I would do this, and it's a horrendous idea. Yeah.
Say, you know, I don't know if that's the right way.
Peter: Yeah.
Steve: On the other hand, boy, that sounds like a great idea. And I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm a big believer. Let them fail once in a while because they learn from the failure and and come back and say, okay, Peter, you tried x y z. Did it work?
No, it didn't. Why do you think it didn't work? What should we do differently the next time? That gets them feeling more confidence also. So, again, having time available to develop your people is critical.
The last one that we always talk about is finances. Business owners either love their financials or hate their financials. Right before I do that. Before this call, I was dealing with one of my new owners, and I said, I need to see your year end financials. We need to do a budget.
And he's like, nah. No. I I I they're not ready yet. And I'm like, wait. It's April 7.
Peter: It's almost April 15. Yeah. They better be done.
Steve: He goes, I have all these transactions my bookkeeper sent me that she doesn't know where to put them. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't know where to put them? So I scheduled a call with them. I said, we have one hour to get those resolved. And and we started on the first one and it took five minutes.
And I said, I don't wanna say his name, we don't have that much time. Where should this go? And all of a sudden, we got through about it was probably about 65, 70 entries, and he got them done. He was so proud. He's gonna send them to his his, bookkeeper, and I said, she's still not gonna get it done by tax time, but hopefully by the April, you'll have your financials up to date, and we can work from there.
But, guys, if you don't pay a bill, it doesn't go away. And I laugh about it. You know? It's I'm a big believer you should have a budget, not because you need to beat yourself up, but you need to have an estimate of where you should be every month. And if you make it, celebrate.
If you don't make it, have the discussion. And be aware, I don't talk profit as much as I talk cash flow. 80% of businesses that close because they don't have enough cash. I've got one client. You ready for this?
He made over $500,000 of profit last year. Guess what his cash flow was? Of a 150. He had financed and bought and bought and bought equipment, and he took an MCA loan, which if you don't know what an MCA, if you ever heard hear that term run away, they're the ones that say, I'll give you a 100,000. You know, all you have to pay is weekly 1,000 a week, and they're charging you 30% interest.
Probably at Washington, they're illegal. The rest of us, it's they're illegal, and it's scary. Okay. I'm going to scare you one more. Peter, one of our clients, joint clients, not only had MCAs, but he had a consolidator who paid the MCAs, which just shaked my head going, I have never seen that.
Guys, we've got to run a cash positive business. And if you're struggling, start with a budget. And I don't mean the budget that you beat yourself up if you spend $21 instead of 20, but it's if I have to spend too much to repair a truck, where am I where can I cut back this month on something else so that the cash flows the way it needs to? In terms of people talking about refinancing debt, I just shake my head. You've got to figure out how to pay down the debt.
You cannot I'm not Dave Ramsey. I don't believe in no debt, but if you're a service company, you should have minimal debt. If you're a manufacturer or you're equipment based, that whatever debt you have better be making a return on investment. If it's an Aussie van, that van produces 15 to 20,000 a month. That is a good debt.
On the other hand, if you've got a loan on receivables, you better be collecting those receivables or else it's going to catch up with you.
Peter: Yeah, I think I always look at, you know, coming from the marketing side of things, of course, I'm always focused on top line revenue growth. And I think a lot of business owners fall into this trap of thinking that they can grow their way out of their problems.
Steve: It's essential sometimes, but if if that's why kinda where we were talking earlier, I like to make sure the car's running before we put jet fuel in it to have it take off. Mhmm. K? If they can't provide a quality service with the team they have today, they can Peter, you'll get their business jump started. I've seen your success too many times.
The issue is if they're not ready for it, shame on them. It's just helping them close down quicker.
Peter: Well, the one thing that I see that I realized when I started my own business, and I had done some startups, but wasn't dealing with the finances in the startups. But one of the things I realized when it was just me as the sole owner was this idea that your expenses kind of go up like this, but your revenue doesn't follow the same curve. You know? It's different steps.
Steve: Laugh about it. I'll never forget when I started coaching. And you've gotta remember, I've been doing this so long. People used to tell me they didn't have a sports team, they didn't need a coach. And I was like, okay, let me explain a little bit better what I do.
But it used to be the valley of death. A coach would be excited, they get a client or two, their revenue goes up, and they'd focus all their time on client satisfaction instead of marketing their business. Well, guess what? Their clients would go away, and then they'd be in this valley. I'm not advertising.
I need to spend advertising, but I have no money to do it. And it's funny. I did that for the first year. I was I was with a franchise, and I thought I got this world class training. And, boy, I was ready to hit the road running.
In that first three months, I learned very quickly, the key is not to get more clients, it's to retain your clients. And it was funny. After I'd been doing it five, six years, I was talking to some people who were in the same startup class that I was, and they were talking about average client retention. And they were like, god, I'm up to eight months, and I was at three years. And they'd be like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, you've got to show value. You've got to care about your clients. Yeah. You know? You really have to give them the time, the attention, and follow through that they expect.
And I think in this world, many people are wanting to check off what I have to do instead of what does this person really need. Whether they're a marketing client, they're somebody getting their dog groomed, whatever it is, does the client, do we care about our clients that we want them to be as successful as we are going to be?
Peter: Yeah, I think part of that is honesty as well. I mean, just being, mean, obviously we're always going to be honest, but sometimes you have to say the things that are hard to say. Sometimes I've had to tell clients they don't need my services.
Steve: It's fun to hear as I've gotten older. The last five years, I basically, at the end of the year, rank my clients as most enjoyable to least enjoyable to work with, and the lower 10% I've been parting ways with. Last year, I actually upped it to the lowest 20%. Not that I don't care about them, but if they're not getting value, they're not taking the ball and running with it, They're no fun. I'm sure the same with you.
If somebody one month, the budget is 5,000, and then they oh, I need it only a so this month, it's like either you're committed or you're not committed. And you know what? Your time's too valuable. And and no offense, when we're 30, 40, we do this to have a living. When you get to 50, it's more I wanna do it because I love it, and I wanna see that difference.
Peter: Yeah. Absolutely. So Steve, so let's go over who is maybe an ideal customer, ideal client for you. I know you work with some moving companies, obviously all kinds of companies, but first of all, what are some of the verticals that you work in? And then just what are some of the types of situations that you are most helpful in?
Steve: Peter, I'm going to put it first of all, there's no one industry. I don't teach grooming franchises how to groom or movers how to move. There's consultants that can tell you how to do those. Yeah. I'm looking for business owners who really feel they've got the right concept.
They've made success, but they're plateaued because of their skills. It was kind of like those people who are at that success stage, but they really want to grow, and every time they try to grow, they don't know what the groundwork they've got to put in place. How do you build the right team? How do they manage their team to be more strategic than doing? And then the last piece is they've got to have financial controls.
Too many businesses, when they start to grow fast, their wife or their husband wants to spend the money. Yeah. I laughed about it. I had a moving company this last year I was working with. We hit August, and August is the tenth the end of the peak season.
September's good. October drops off. November, December are dead. I said, so how much have you put aside for fourth quarter and first quarter? You know, you usually need 10 to 15% of your annual revenue in reserve so when you hit that point.
And in his case, he needed about 300,000. And he goes, I just bought a new car, and we put a new pool in. I've got about 30,000 in. And in my mind, I'm going, where did you miss about putting back money so the slow season? Our business is so good, we'll figure it out.
Peter: So let's talk about some of your notable successes. Maybe you've had just some small wins with a business or some really big wins. Obviously, you've been doing this long enough, and I know about some of those wins. So let's just talk about a couple wins that were memorable to you, maybe just one or two.
Steve: One is a security company in Memphis. I met them in an SBA course I was teaching. It was a strategic planning course that lasted nine months. And, the owner, she was very detail oriented. She was doing probably about 7 and $50,000 a year.
They had about 100 employees at that point in time, well I'm going say probably 75 to 100 employees. And they had just got a major contract at a company called Smith and Nephew. They do medical device, and they were providing security there. And that was taking them over $1,000,000, and they said, I need help. And so I met with her and his her husband, and thirteen years later, we're doing 38,000,000.
They have grown by leaps and bounds. And it's funny, every time we're ready to have that next growth, we're like, okay, what do we need to do differently? What is the team? What is the budget? What is the and having that strategy to break through that next plateau.
In terms of the Aussies, all I can say is I just laugh because we continue to have 2030% success every year. However, why I brag about Aussie, it's because we've changed our success. Do you remember it was ten years ago we talked about rebooking one appointment and we were trying to teach groomers how to schedule that one next appointment. Nowadays we talk about recurring schedules done by the office so that client has an appointment every six weeks. And guess what?
We average one additional groom per year by doing it and the customer loyalty. It's incredible. One of the franchises that I really celebrate, they already have 80% of December already booked. Now, years ago, they'd have 5% of it booked right now. Yeah.
Yeah. And talk about making a decision to buy an asset. You know, those vans are over 150,000 or to hire more groomers when you already have 80% of your goal already in. That's not a risk. But if you only have 20% of your goal in, boy, you're rolling the dice, especially when you don't know what that economy is going to look like.
Peter: Yeah. And especially for an industry with the amount of seasonality that it has. Well, Steve, this has been really fun chatting with you today. So I've got your email and your phone number if folks want to get in touch with you. I think you indicated before we met that you're willing to have a free consultation with anybody to learn more about their business and maybe see if you feel like they would be a good fit, see if you could actually help them.
And in some cases, I know, you're just going to say, Hey, maybe this sounds like you've got maybe this issue going on. Here's a couple of good books and leave it at that. But I've got your email here, steveclearvision dot us dot com. We'll put it in the show notes. And then you've got your urgent phone number as well, (731) 426-2952.
Put that in the show notes as well. I'm just waiting for you to come out with a book, Steve. You've got a lot of good info here.
Steve: Here, I'm gonna say my strengths are analytical, not literary. I need to get somebody like James Patterson to write it with me.
Peter: Got it, got it. Well, I will just say from my own experience working with you that you're definitely a pleasure to work with. We have similar clients. I know a lot of your clients and they have nothing but good things to say about the work you do. I'm just so happy to have you on the show today and can't wait to just continue working with you in the future.
Thank you, Steve.
Steve: You're welcome. And Peter, thank you. You've been such a great partner over the years, and I can just definitely give a reference to you and your services. They love you. They when it comes to marketing professionals, the reports you send at the beginning of the month and your willingness to sit down and explain it to them and make suggestions is huge.
And that's been, I think, one of the biggest reasons a lot of Aussies have been successful. And I know you do that with all your clients, and to me, that's incredible.
Peter: Appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to the Field Guide. If you have questions, topic ideas, or guest suggestions, we want to hear from you. Email us anytime, podcastbizmarketing dot com.
You can find this episode and all past episodes on our website at bizmarketing.com. Just head to free resources to catch up or revisit anything you missed. And if you need help marketing your service business, whether that's getting more leads, improving follow-up, or fixing what's not working, you can schedule a free consultation with our team. Just go to bizmarketing.com and click the Let's Talk button. I'm Peter Wilson of BizMarketing.
Thanks for spending your time with us, and we'll see you next time on The Field Guide.
