Grow, Sell, or Cashflow Your Business from a Guy with a 9-Figure Exit | Dominic Rubino (#184)
Now it should never seem like I'm following a process. It needs to be personable. At least when you're doing a consultative type of sale, you wanna ask a lot of questions and listen really carefully.
Speaker 2:I'm Jim Huffman, and this is If I Was Starting Today, a collection of conversations about half baked start up ideas, growth tactics, and stories from founders, including my own journey as a business owner. All of the content is centered around one question. What would you do if you were starting today?
Speaker 3:Today on the podcast, I speak with Dominique Rubino. This is a very impressive founder and entrepreneur. He has bootstrapped 2 businesses to successful exits, and one of those exits was for over a $100,000,000. We talked about a lot of different things. 1st, how we should be able to do this by niching down.
Speaker 3:This guy focuses specifically on the cabinet and the share, any sort of crafts or trade that you're looking to make a scalable business. In addition to niching down, we talk about bootstrapping and why that's the path to go. It might not be right for everybody, but why that was right for him And something to think about if you're about to take money from a bank or for an investor, why you should maybe second guess that? Then we get into how to run a business with the idea of are you gonna grow it, sell it, or keep it for cash flow and how it actually has one thing in common on how you're approaching those three things. We get into time and time management for business owners, how to get the most out of what you're doing, and really how to monetize yourself to know what you're worth, so what you should focus on, and more importantly, what you should not focus on.
Speaker 3:We also get into some other topics around building a sales team, some best practices there, how to find the right people, and a a nice little hack to weed out the people that might not be the right fit for you. And we even get into comparing notes on being in other entrepreneurship groups and the importance of having peers and why that's been huge for his journey. This is a fun conversation. It's a winding road around being a bootstrap business owner. So if you're trying to figure out if you're gonna raise money or do it yourself or trying to navigate how to niche down and how to decide what's the right niche for you, I think this episode could be helpful to really learn what Dom has done and then a very successful way.
Speaker 3:So I really hope you enjoy today's podcast. Dom, super fired up to have you on here. Going through your background, I was telling you before. Selfishly, I like these interviews when I can just throw all my problems at you and have these programs. So that that's my agenda for today.
Speaker 3:What's a quick 32nd on on your background so people know before we dive in?
Speaker 1:Did you know what? I'm building a platform for contractor wealth, for true wealth. Wealth in family, fitness, and business. Like, you know, just everything you need to be a healthy person as a contractor because so many guys are overworked and just chasing. So I show people how to build a
Speaker 3:business that's got true wealth behind it. It's amazing. And one thing we're talking about before is you you've done some really impressive things. And as I was going through your your bio, what you built, the thing that struck out is you know your lane, you know your niche as far as focusing specifically on contractors in this category. Was that on purpose?
Speaker 3:Was that accidental? How intentional was it looking back as a Monday morning quarterback being a genius versus, oh, wow. I'm just gonna keep following this. Because as a business owner myself, it's the advice that's so easy for me to give, but it is hands down the hardest to take when you're a bootstrap business owner. You don't wanna say no to money, no to things, but would love your perspective on that.
Speaker 1:Finding my niche was hard. Like, you know, narrowing down by the way, my first podcast was called, catch this, cabinetmakerprofitsystem.com. Love it. That's pretty niche. And so imagine telling my buddies, you and I are EO members, so, you know, those are my buddies, telling a bunch of multimillionaire business owners who chew rocks for breakfast, like they're serious guys.
Speaker 1:They're like, you're doing what? You've got a podcast and you do coaching for cabinet makers? I'm like, yep. But I will tell you, I did the math. It was an underserved market that had a lot of technicians in it.
Speaker 1:And I've been a professional business coach since 2000. So 24 years, whatever the date is here, 24 years and that many months and days. This sounds horrible to say, but it doesn't matter what company. I can coach that company. But I have to coach the people I like.
Speaker 1:I grew up at a trades kitchen table. My uncles are trades guys. I'm used to that kind of language. I'm comfortable. I could dress like this.
Speaker 1:That's what I chose. But I did the math and the data supported me going after that market, and it allowed me to find a really neat niche.
Speaker 3:Can we go deeper on the math? Because you said that that got my attention because I there's this guy David c Baker who's, like, the consultant's consultant. Here's his math. If there are 2,000 potential customers, then you can have a a niche.
Speaker 1:That was exactly what I did. So Pat Flynn, I owe him a massive thank you. Get focused on what you're really good at and say no to everything else. And you know what was what is amazing is my cabinetry audience is incredible. And guess how many people are talking to them about the business of the cabinetry business?
Speaker 1:1 guy, and he's got no neck and one eyebrow. Yeah. Just and so it's really it's not easy to build rapport, but they're a genuine audience. I'm a genuine guy. They're technicians.
Speaker 1:I wanna show them how to be an entrepreneur using Gerber's language from the E Myth Revisited. It's just a perfect match. So that 2,000 number from from your reference, I got it from Pat Flynn many years ago, and I believe in it.
Speaker 3:What was it ever hard? Because I'm sure you get something called shiny object syndrome. How did you stay the course? When was it the hardest to hold strong, keep the blinders on, or was it hard even?
Speaker 1:So maybe I should back up because my first podcast and so I start a podcast to serve an audience. Big audience is small. I love speaking. So the one to many aspect for marketing for me was very natural. And so I didn't wanna travel anymore, which is the reason I sold my last company because I was traveling all the time and it was affecting my kids.
Speaker 1:So I sat down and on paper I reinvented myself. I didn't talk about what business I was gonna go in. I said, what do I need? I need a business where I can serve the right customers, make the right amount of money for me, be proud. Like, I need to be able to stand proud and do what I do, right, without any like, no shame at all.
Speaker 1:I'd be able to talk to a priest in an elevator and say, this is what I do. And then I I didn't wanna travel. So podcasting became the method. But the first podcast I started, and I think episodes are still out there, it was called the ZOOR Business Podcast because I used to be the global master franchisor for a business coaching brand. And the trigger there or when I got Shiny Object was the data wasn't supporting my decision.
Speaker 1:Nobody was downloading the podcast. Nobody was listening. And so the world is telling me, Hey, you're yelling down an empty hallway. Get out of there. But then when I went to and and you're like, wow.
Speaker 1:How the heck did you go to cabinetmakers? Because I love the trades. Yeah. My first two clients in cabinetry, this is back in the year 2000. My first two clients, and I can never remember which one was first or second, but one guy made coffins.
Speaker 1:So generally woodworking. And I've been showing guys how to turn around their wood shops for years.
Speaker 3:That that's amazing. So it's following the data. Right? Follow the data. Follow where you're passionate and then where you can, like, build a a realtor.
Speaker 3:Bit.
Speaker 1:And for me, where I'm proud. I have to be. If the Venn diagram came to me and said, hey, tobacco is your thing, I'd be like, yeah, we got to find another diagram. Not doing it. I don't believe in smoking, right?
Speaker 1:If you offered me today the crystal clear offer to buy a chain of McDonald's, I don't wanna do it, so I'm not going to.
Speaker 3:I think it's also you're hitting on something, being honest with yourself on the reality of a gig or not. It's like, hey, I'm a dad. I don't wanna travel. This is crucial time with my kids. I love working with other entrepreneurs in the wood crafting space, because I think so many times people can fall in love with the the idea of business from a spreadsheet.
Speaker 3:But when you get into the day to day, does this bring me joy and fulfillment and not to get too woo woo? But if you're playing the long game, that's a big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, do I care? I actually talked to quite a few guys who were like, you know, this is what you do when you get a girl pregnant. And that that's that's how they got into the business. I'm like, oh, buddy, like, we gotta get you out of that.
Speaker 1:They're like, no, I'm fine now. You know, I'm a drywaller and you get into drywalling by getting a girl pregnant in high school. I'm like, okay, good, good, good summary. And so, I mean, I coach cabinet makers, but I, in general, I coach the trades. So you might think that I'm really hyper focused and specific, but I coach people that that go on the tools to produce a product or service, I guess, in some cases, for a homeowner or a commercial account.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The thing that I liked about your category compared to mine is I have a growth marketing agency, and I move pickles around on web pages. AI is coming for me. I feel like we got a little bit of time before AI comes for the category that you're into as far as knowing people that have redone kitchens and whatnot, how high demand you guys are.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. I'm getting my knowledge from a guy who knows how to launch gyms. Right? Right? Because I'm willing to be open to and lots of people are.
Speaker 1:He's incredible. That goes to show you that the business concepts we're using, you know, if you listen to my podcast and you're a dentist, you could use AI and swap out every trade word I did and put the word dentist in there because it's the business of business. I'm in the business of business as a coach, right? So when we talk about Rumozie and replacing us with AI, it ain't gonna happen. It's not gonna happen because other people are so busy running their company.
Speaker 1:Their mind's around McDonald's. They're never gonna AI it. They're gonna need somebody to do it. So the people who know how to use the AI to fulfill the need, you know, we're still gonna have a sweet spot.
Speaker 3:Totally. I feel like it it's good for execution, not as much strategy. And and speaking of strategy, you and I were talking beforehand of you've sold 2 businesses and everything you've done, it's been bootstrap businesses. And I I am a big fan of that because I was working in start ups, so raised VC, and I got this thing called equity. Oh, boy.
Speaker 3:I better pick out my yacht now. You know? And fast forward, I still can't buy a cup of coffee with some of my shares. I'd love to hear from you the pros of bootstrapping and and just your approach to that because you've done that with multiple businesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So and I've done it you know? And the businesses I've done, one of them, the exit revenue number was a 120,000,000. The other one, the exit revenue number was 7, so I got multiples of that.
Speaker 1:And in both cases, the first one, the 120,000,000 started at 0. It was an Excel spreadsheet. 7,000,000 started at a loss. It was below 0.
Speaker 3:Were those you started from scratch, or did you come in at certain points?
Speaker 1:So the larger business, the $120,000,000 business, I started from scratch. I actually morphed it. I changed it internally until it started to produce what we needed to. You might say, well, how was the niche there? And there is a niche story, but it started for randomness.
Speaker 1:I was selling used junk on eBay. Amazing. But I was selling on eBay beef you know, eBay was tiny when I started selling on there. We were one of their first power sellers. This was a long time ago, but we sold used LED calculators and CalicoVision and Intellivision Games and Dungeons and Drag like, things other people wanted to buy, I would buy them at garage sales or close out sales, things like that.
Speaker 1:And then we realized it was a mess. Tim, it was such a mess. I was renting my uncle's 2 car garage, and it was packed to the rafters. The data was telling us our feedback rating on eBay was dropping because we couldn't find the stuff we'd listed for sale. It was just a mess in there.
Speaker 1:And so I got frustrated and I went to a coffee shop and I said, okay, we have to reinvent this business. And so I did a whole bunch of what would be business coaching exercises and I got it down to 3 different verticals, books, LP records, or magazines. Because they're repeatable, they're scalable, easy to ship, easy to store, and all that stuff, I decided on books. And at the time there was a website called half.com where you could take the ISBN number and post it and automatically you would be able to list it for half of that price. We started to go down that path and then the data told me something else.
Speaker 1:Hey, a lot of people are buying knickknacks and just things from us. One of the things we started to carry was skin whitening cream. Like you test products every once in a while. Well, the Korean market wants skin whitening cream a lot. So we started selling more skin whitening cream and then you start selling other stuff.
Speaker 1:And soon we sold a lot of over the counter medications. Then I hired a pharmacist, which where I live, the law is you have to have a pharmacist on the board in order to start a pharmacy and we became a pharmacy And so I became one of the largest mail order pharmacies, and I that's what I grew to a 120,000,000.
Speaker 3:Jeez. How are you funding the growth of getting new inventory?
Speaker 1:Cash flow.
Speaker 3:Cash. So you're just taking what you're making to reinvest into inventory or growth?
Speaker 1:The business has to support itself or the business shuts down. If department has to support itself, the division has to support itself. If it's not a self sustaining marketing strategy, you gotta shut it down. Like, it everything has to be able to sustain itself. Let's say I'm doing a direct mail campaign.
Speaker 1:I've gotta invest some money in it to see if it returns. But if it doesn't, either I change the strategy or we kill that strategy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because we're going through that. We did the 1st inventory buy. Awesome. When we sold out, that's great, but now it's crap.
Speaker 3:We're out of inventory. We're preselling. The initial order was $20. Now we did one for $50. I'm down to go slow growth, smart growth, but there's a world where we YOLO this, raise debt, do this, and I don't have the stomach for a lot of that.
Speaker 3:You clearly did that well going to a $100,000,000. Walk us through your mindset.
Speaker 1:We didn't know we were gonna get to over a 100,000,000. We're just running. But, you know, the the good thing in that business is we got margins. The margins were there to support it, and then you just have to keep feeding it and treat it like a real business. You know, at the time it was the dotcom bubble and there was money being thrown at us left and right.
Speaker 1:For me, independence is one of my strong values. I need independence. And I don't wanna have anybody telling me what to do, even if I fail. I have coaches, obviously. I'm a business coach, but I hire coaches and consultants and I need a CFO to look at the books to tell me, hey, you're out to lunch, do this different.
Speaker 1:But I I don't want a financial partner to come in and say, hey, listen. I know you and your family were just about to take off, but, yeah, it's not gonna work for us. The board wants you to be in Chicago on Tuesday, so we'll see you there. I've been an employee before. I didn't like it.
Speaker 1:I'm not answering to you or anybody else. This is my company, and we're to fail or succeed on my back. No.
Speaker 3:I totally agree. It's much more fun to do that and play the game of business than to have to, what I call, get a real job. Right? And that doesn't sound fun. I've seen you talk about growth and exit strategies, when to grow it, when to sell it, when to keep it in cash flow it.
Speaker 3:With these two businesses, you sold both of those. For founders and people listening, how should they approach that? Because with Growth Hit, candidly, I wanna keep it forever as a nice cash flowing business. I like having the skills of a growth team. But then with Meet, there's an exit play with that, we hope, we think.
Speaker 3:I mean, ask me in 2 years, maybe I just burnt a bunch of money. But I I'm interested because you've done this well. How should people navigate that that dance of what's the right path for these different businesses?
Speaker 1:You asked a very, very interesting question because making the decision to sell it, keep it for cash flow, or anything else actually comes down to the same thing. And that book over your right shoulder is the key. That traction, EOS, you actually build it the same way for everything. Whether you're gonna keep this business or sell it, you always build it as if it was going to be sold one day. Right?
Speaker 1:Now your finance person will do slightly different books for you, but that has little to do with your growth decisions. So you build it as if one day it's gonna be sold, but I wanna add something to that. You build it as if one day somebody wants to buy it really badly. So don't build your business to sell it. Make it buyable.
Speaker 1:What would that mean? Great systems, great people, great culture, great products, great services, great testimonials, great reviews. I'll just say rewarding outcomes for you. Well, of course somebody's gonna wanna buy that. So the real sneaky trick I'm playing with people when I talk about that is you actually do the same thing.
Speaker 1:No matter what you want your outcome to be, you build it as if you wanna sell it one day. I I have maybe it was traction somewhere, but or it made the book built
Speaker 3:to sell, but it it makes total sense. Whether you wanna sell it or not, that's how you should run it. That way, if someone's on the inside or the outside, they get a peek at it. Wow. This is well run.
Speaker 1:That's what a business should be. Yeah. So it's it sounds so easy to me, but, you know, I I do this day in and day out. You know, we coach companies all the time. So we have this conversation daily, and it always comes down to the same basic you know, what do you want?
Speaker 1:When do you want it? How are we gonna get there?
Speaker 3:I'm reading a book, Dan Sullivan, who not how. And it's when you wanna make a 10 x sleep or go to the level. It's not about how you do it, but who you get to do it. Right? And one of the things you talk about as team, winners brighter room by entering losers brighter room by leaving, which I just love that quote because it's so true.
Speaker 3:You have those people that leave or you have to let them go, and then the next day, the team is smiling. They're happy. Oh, we should have done that. A month ago, a lot of people listening work in small businesses. We're like, one person can make a culture, one person can ruin it.
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 1:I've never heard that one. I like it.
Speaker 3:You haven't done this alone, I'm assuming, these businesses you've built and sold. And it's hard for bootstrap business owners to get the best talent, to build the best teams if you're competing with, like, I'm in Seattle. Right? Yo. Should I go work at Amazon and get RSU's or work at Growth Hit?
Speaker 3:Right? Or somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, there's it's not you have no shortage of massive, cool, and sexy competition.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you've gotta create something different. But what advice for people that are making to make the investment in, like, rock star teams and people and how to approach that, how to get those those who's?
Speaker 1:You know, the who is important with everything. Who's our ideal client? Who's our ideal employee or team member or business partner? A lot of people have business partners. You have to build it on paper first.
Speaker 1:We just did this with a contractor the other day. They needed to hire a project manager to give the business owner more time to pull away from the business because project managing the installation of a kitchen takes a lot of hand holding and there's a 1,000,000 moving pieces. So he was eating up a lot of his time. So he's like, let's just put run an ad and get a new project manager. Let's build the perfect project manager on paper first, and then we write an ad that only that person would wanna reply to.
Speaker 1:And then we onboard that person so they go over to their kitchen table and say, honey, oh my god. I can't believe we finally got the job that our family needed to do x, y, and z. We support the person. And then we don't put up with any BS if BS comes up. Like we've got a set of rules for how we run this business.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've ever heard this, but if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. Right? Some of my rancher buddies taught me that. My point here is be intentional about who you bring on your team and then be very specific. If you're not on my team, if you're not gonna be part of this team, I love you.
Speaker 1:You're a great person, but you're gonna have to go find another team. Thank you, though. It's not gonna work here.
Speaker 3:It's almost like a warning label too on the job description to scare away anyone that would not be the right fit, but then that way the person is the right fit. As a marketing agency, we get put up like, need a digital marketer, and, oh my gosh, you're gonna be flooded with people that have different definitions of marketing. So we've had to really get creative in specific language we use to filter that. But I like what you're saying too on, like, the warning label because it's everything.
Speaker 1:Do you guys use behavioral profiles like Myers Briggs or DISC? Or
Speaker 3:We don't, but I'm fascinated when companies do, and maybe it's some we should adopt.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'll tell you. Can I talk about that general report? So for people who aren't familiar, I use the one called DISC. You know, it stands for driver influencers steadiness and conscientiousness.
Speaker 1:It's just 4 different behavioral styles that somebody would have. So it's important because if I know that I'm let's say that I I start coaching a company and they have an accounts receivable problem. I start to figure out from the owner who the different people are, maybe I meet people and I realize their accounts receivable clerk is an outgoing, really bubbly personality person. Well, of course they have an accounts receivable problem. That person is social and willing to build relationships.
Speaker 1:So when they get on the phone to say, Hey, Jim, you gotta pay your bill. Jim goes, You know what? Cindy or Stan. You're right. I do.
Speaker 1:But you know what? I'm going away this weekend. I got this thing. I'll get to it later. And Cindy says, no problem.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if I wanna build my team on purpose, I need an accounts payable and receivable clerk that's actually more logical, less emotional, very fact based, and wants to follow the system. And guess what happens to my accounts receivable? Suddenly, my days cash outstanding shrinks because you've got somebody now now Cindy is that person who calls Jim and says, Jim, you're late. And Jim goes, I'm a day late.
Speaker 1:She's like, yeah, but you're still late. We need to get this solved. You're you walk by Cindy's office, you're like, oh, we hired the right person. So having that intentionality upfront, I hire the right person. But then the other thing that's really important is let's say that Cindy one day is just getting itchy in her skin at our company.
Speaker 1:Like, something's going wrong. I gotta call her in for some sort of meeting. Let's call it a corrective meeting. I go back to the disc report. The DISC report has a keys for communicating section.
Speaker 1:It says, when you're talking to Cindy, talk like this but don't talk like that. And I go, Cindy's cues are based on this kind of language or this kind of outcome, not this kind of outcome. And so I have to, as a leader, be better at understanding my people's intentions. I don't change who I am. I just make sure that I explain things to them in a way that they understand it best.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I love that. I actually wanna have our clients go through that as well so we know how to talk to them sometimes. Because at the time, we're like, are they a spreadsheet person? How do they listen?
Speaker 3:Are they design brain or mouth brain?
Speaker 1:There's actually a couple of really quick tests that you can do with people. And I don't know them well enough off the top of my head, but it's basically, are they an asker or a teller? Do they ask stuff or do they tell? Are they introverted or are they extroverted? And if you use those four definitions against the DISC profile, you'll be able to sort of put them in their categories.
Speaker 1:Like listen to their patterns of speech, how they ask questions, how they respond, their pace, their tone, and that'll tell you a lot. It's matching and mirroring, which we would learn in many places. Right? Tony Robbins is an example. That gives me a good indication of their style.
Speaker 3:I need to go through this exercise. Feel like you've already labeled me. You're kind of saying something, but I was saying a lot of things here are also applicable to sales, which I'm interested to get your thoughts on because I had to reschedule this call. I was 5 minutes late because of sales. We do have an amazing salesperson who has really done a lot, but I'm still involved in in a decent amount of it.
Speaker 3:And it can be the hardest thing to let go of. If it's I think it's traction was letting go of the vine or if that was scaling up where, you know, setting people up for success. And I we don't even need to get to delegation of it. I'm more so interested on how do you become black belt at sales. You know, one thing you've talked about is how to be a business person who solves problems, which I'd love that framework because all businesses are are people that take problems of other companies or people and make them their own.
Speaker 3:Right? I think we kinda lose sight of that because let me show you my framework or my IP or my case studies. You're not listening to this person. I'd love to hear your advice for sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, I mean, I think you just nailed it. There's this first of all, sales is not checkers. It's chess. It's a strategic game.
Speaker 1:And quite often people think, just hire a salesperson. Anybody off the street will train them. Depending on the kind of sale you're doing, sales needs to be very strategic. We follow a plan. We follow a process.
Speaker 1:We bring systems to chaos or randomness. That's what a salesperson should do. Now in speaking to you, Jim, it should never seem like I'm following a process. It needs to be personable. At least when you're doing a consultative type of sale, you wanna ask a lot of questions and listen really carefully.
Speaker 1:Because if I do it right, you'll tell me what's important. You'll tell me. And then every single buyer has the same set of needs or the same set of curiosities, which are also their same set of fears, right? And their fears or curiosities always come down to 6 states. It's super simple.
Speaker 1:Budget, need, timing, trust. And then there's 2 magical technical things, you know, for your shirt company. Maybe the technical thing is what's in the fabric that makes it so you don't see sweat. You know, is that gonna affect me? Right?
Speaker 1:That might be a technical thing or a technical thing too might be, well, I don't like your color selections. Whatever. So you always have to figure out your technical things. That's fine. But it's everybody, you and me and everybody else, we worry about budget.
Speaker 1:Right? How much is it? Have you ever heard of the How much is it? Family? No matter what you say, their answer is, how much is it?
Speaker 1:How much is it? How much is it? So we call that the how much is it family. I got that from somebody else. So budget, you got need.
Speaker 1:Like, why do they need this? At some point, when I'm in a customer call, a new customer call, I'll ask them, like, why don't you do nothing? Like, why are you talking to me? And they'll say, well, we really need this. How long have you gone without it?
Speaker 1:Well, how does that make you feel, right? And they're like, it's not good. This is the impact. This is okay. Well, let's see if I can help you, right?
Speaker 1:It's just consultative sales, right? So budget, need, timing, why now? And trust, why us or why not us? So those things are important, but really it comes down to asking great questions and listening very carefully.
Speaker 3:Even the question you asked there on the follow-up, how long have you gone without it and how does that make you feel? Kind of and those are open ended questions, which I I was guilty of these closed ended questions, or it's yes, no. I like the technical side too. Founder's always the best at selling their thing because it's their baby, and then finding that person to, like, hand it off, especially to your point. If it's a strategic sell, a lot of times these founders, you know more near pinky finger than people will know in 6 months.
Speaker 3:Like, oh, yeah. We did something 4 years ago that was like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you know what? Something I learned years ago. I learned I I came through Sprint. Telecom is where I learned.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that Sprint did really well is, you know, they gave us the technical training, which is fine, but they also gave us sales. And now, you know, dial it forward. That's their sales training. That's not sales training. That's product training.
Speaker 1:But if you wanna have a great sales team, train them to sell. Right? Train them to sell. K? So I love hunting and fishing, so I'm gonna use a hunting analogy.
Speaker 1:But we're gonna go back in time. So we're huddled in a cave. You're the chief of the tribe. There's a bunch of little smoky fires all over the place, little family groups. It's raining outside, sort of drizzling.
Speaker 1:The rain is still raining down. One of the kids comes up and says, we're chief Jim. We're hungry. And you're like, well, I'll send the hunters out. And your wife goes, you haven't given them any arrows.
Speaker 1:You're like, Ah, they'll do fine. But they come back with nothing. And the kids still come up to you and they're like, Chief Jim, like we don't we're still really hungry. They're like, Okay, well, we got you some arrows. We're gonna send you out there.
Speaker 1:But you didn't train them on how to use the arrows. Your tribe is gonna starve. And how many of us as business owners are doing the same thing, right? You have to train them like sharpen your arrows. Here's how to aim.
Speaker 1:Here's how to retrieve it. Don't shoot your buddy in the back. Like all those things, right? But we are that chief of the tribe and all of those people in our company rely on us. We have to train our people.
Speaker 1:So they go out there, and they bring us back business. That's so true. Setting them up for success as opposed to,
Speaker 3:like, you're head of sales, go get them. Right? And come back in 90 days with the the pipeline. Going back to me, I'm gonna reschedule this. Time management, even whether it's good times or bad, like, growing pains happen and all of a sudden you're wearing different hats.
Speaker 3:Oh, man. I'm at a sales right now. I'm customer service right now. And then, oh, we wanna buy this company. Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:That came with all these other things I wasn't thinking through. And I I get really frustrated with myself when sometimes I'm working on big picture strategic stuff, then other times, like, back in the weeds. Busy founders are trying to manage their time, but more so managing their energy and impact. You have something around time management is like brushing your dog.
Speaker 1:You're done. You're go over. So and listen. Time management's a constant struggle. Think for a moment in my house, let's say I'm ready to go and my wife's still getting ready.
Speaker 1:Let's just say, we're going to live in that world of let's just say. And so the dog is there. Your dog's name is they'll say Fido, right? So Fido's there and you're like, You know what? I'm going to brush Fido.
Speaker 1:So you take out the brush, you start brushing Fido. He's loving his life. He's like, oh, yeah. Love you, dad. Right?
Speaker 1:And you take off enough hair and fur that you could literally build another dog. Right? We've all done that. Right? And so you're still waiting.
Speaker 1:It's been 9 minutes, so it's not 10 minutes yet. So you think, I'll go to the kitchen, I'll get a glass of water. So you go get a glass of water and Fido follows you and the kitchen rubs up against you, you're getting ready to go somewhere nice. You look down at your suit and you're like, Fido, serious, I just brushed you. There's still hair all over my leg.
Speaker 1:And it's that same concept of time management. It is like brushing your dog. Please, anybody listening, don't think that time management is a one and done. It's just not. It is a constant lifetime study.
Speaker 1:Now people aren't gonna like to hear that and yet I'm saying it. One of the things I have to know as a business owner, and this comes back to what you were saying, is something called my revenue responsibility per hour. Have you ever heard of that before? So in economics, it's called Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, but that's super boring. So I call it revenue response.
Speaker 1:But take your annual sales. So just say it's $1,000,000 a year, and then take the number of hours you work in a year. And I know this is wrong, but let's say it's 2,000 hours, hours, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. Well, that's $500 an hour. So now somebody listening is gonna go, hey Rubino, you crazy?
Speaker 1:I can't charge my clients $500 an hour. Well, you misunderstood the point of the exercise. My responsibility as the owner looking out over all operations, I have to be making decisions and making strategic moves at the $500 per hour level. So what that means is, let's say that you're shipping these Neat shirts. Right?
Speaker 1:NEAT is your company name, so you're selling these shirts. Let's say the box rep decides to stop by, you know, your packaging rep. She's super nice. She's in the neighborhood. She thinks she's gonna stop by, just sit in your office.
Speaker 1:So she walks in. Says, hey, Jim. I'm in the neighborhood. I thought I'd sit down. And you're like, I appreciate you coming by, but we only work on preset appointments.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Now is not a good time. And so you stand up and you escort her out because your responsibility is $500. She has to add value to you at $501 an hour or she doesn't get to sit in the chair. Can I keep going?
Speaker 3:Yeah, please. And I feel like saying no is a big part
Speaker 1:of this, right? Right. Other people are just like, get out. No. Because sometimes people say to me, but Dom, we have an open door policy.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say no to my guys if they come in and bug me. I'm like, fine, keep the open door policy, Tuesdays Thursdays from 10 till 2. Otherwise, we're running a company here. The other thing that goes with revenue responsibility per hour is you don't wanna be a $1,000,000 business anymore, you wanna be a $2,000,000 business or 1.2. Just choose your number and do the math.
Speaker 1:What that challenges us to do or what it should challenge us is now you've gotta level up what you're doing every hour. Be a more important person, make more important decisions. Or as they say on the West Coast, only the best surfers ride the biggest waves. So get out there and ride a bigger wave.
Speaker 3:No. That's so cool that you have, like, the I'm I'm obsessed with the idea of 10 x is easier than 2 x. What got you here will keep you here. It's like you've gotta raise your game, and it's having that awareness of, like, wait. Where am I putting my time?
Speaker 3:Why am I still doing that? And I think your point is it's something that you're always working on. It's not like you just fix it. It's like, oh, solve that problem on to the next one. It's you know, you you've gotta have that ritual of auditing and assessing.
Speaker 3:And we also hit on you and I were kind of both part have been a part of EO Entrepreneurship Organization. I probably talked about it too much on this podcast or maybe not. For people that don't know, basically, you're a business of a certain size to qualify, and you talk with other founders or business owners, and it's in a format of not saying, hey. You do this. I did that.
Speaker 3:It's more about vulnerability and experience shares because this stuff's hard. And you were in it for a while. And so would you speak to the importance of having peers or a a group like EO when going through your your founder journey or any kind of key takeaways from making that investment in it because it's not cheap and it it's a time commitment.
Speaker 1:So it it is all of those things. It's not cheap and it's a time commitment. I never get the saying. Right? But you know that, you know, you're the most like the people you hang out with, the 5 people you hang up.
Speaker 1:I remember once I was in a BNI group, and I'm not knocking BNI. For some people, that's a good group for them. But I did my pres my update presentation, and my update presentation was, hey. Sorry I wasn't here last week. I was in New Zealand speaking, and now I'm back.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be doing a speaking gig at the golf course next week, and then I got this radio thing I'm doing. And if anybody has any questions, ask me about this. Right? The woman across her, she sort of flumps down her head on the table, and she goes, why are you in her group? And I thought, uh-oh.
Speaker 1:She's right. What the heck am I doing here? It was just the wrong group for me. Yeah. So you you know, you have to think about who you're hanging out with.
Speaker 1:I can tell you an observation that I've made. You know, I've I've been fortunate to be a business coach for a really long time, and I love it. I started business coaching before those two words were even a thing. But what I've noticed is that my most successful clients were already part of an industry association. So mechanical contractors association or cabinet makers association or home builders association, They're already part of those things and they have enough ego to set their ego aside, right?
Speaker 1:Imagine what it takes to be George St. Pierre, like he's one of my favorite MMA fighters, to go to a new gym and say, I think I'm weak on a the left handed take down a double leg, and I think you're my teacher. Like, how much ego does he have to have to say that I have no problems except for that one and I think you're my solution? So for anybody who says coaching's not gonna work for me, I don't need consultants, I don't need a digital marketer, we can kinda do it ourselves, you're not gonna do it yourself. You have to go find the right people.
Speaker 1:So when we look at that, it it really becomes obvious. Go hang out with the right people, which is why you and I have an EO experience, Entrepreneurs' Organization, because you're just around other people. And you and I could have a conversation as entrepreneurs and say, I'm having trouble making payroll this week. And I guarantee you wouldn't look at me funny. You'd be like, oh, Dom, you know, this is what I did in that situation.
Speaker 1:These are my solutions. This is what I try to do to avoid it. It's just a normal conversation. Try to have that conversation with your father-in-law. Right?
Speaker 1:It's you're not you don't have the intent. The intent is pure. So it's just about who you hang out with and how you feed your mind.
Speaker 3:It's so true. And there there's a couple nuggets there that really resonated. It's, yeah, having that peer group to feed your mind, have that growth mindset, and, like, check the ego at the door. Because even now, I actually got it kind of like a marketing coach, and I have a growth marketing agency. I've read a book on it.
Speaker 3:I should be a quote, unquote expert, but, no, it's the second you call yourself an expert, you get into a danger zone. But my body is the same level of publicly traded company. I've never done it that scale. Can I pay you to just meet with me? And I think you're right.
Speaker 3:People that are have the ego to check their ego and have that growth mindset, that that's what I wanna be around because that that's energizing. Well, very cool. Well, I know we're running up on time. What is the nicest thing anyone's done for you in your professional career?
Speaker 1:The nicest thing anybody's done for me is an unsolicited testimonial. You would expect me as a business coach and an entrepreneur to say it's something about money, but I don't care. I'm gonna make money. You know? But when somebody actually makes a change, that's good.
Speaker 1:The other thing that's nice is when somebody's wife gets on the phone with me and says, hey. I just knew you're having a coaching meeting with Jerry today. I just wanna say thanks. I'm like, okay. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1:I actually don't know what to do. I'm like, yeah. It's just what we do. Like, it's been amazing. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay. That's you know, that kinda makes it all I'm just getting goosebumpy here. Yeah. Those are the cool things. I've never been asked that question before.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Especially business, it's more than just business. It impacts your head space and your personal life, your family life. So it's it's everything. Well, there there is a lot of cool stuff that you're doing from the content you're putting out to the coaching. And so where can people connect with you?
Speaker 3:Whether it's podcasts or stuff you're putting out there, where can we send them?
Speaker 1:I specialize in trades contractors. So if anybody's in the trade space, hopefully you already know who I am, maybe not. But I've got I've got 2 podcasts. 1 is called Profit Tool Belt and then the other one's called, we joked about it already, Cabinet Maker Profit System. And in both of those, we talk about the business of the contracting business.
Speaker 1:And then I do training webinars. There's, you know, we always keep a wait list going because I have another one coming up in a couple of weeks but I don't know when this episode will go live. But do you mind if I tell people how to get in touch with me? Just send me a text. Doesn't have to be complicated.
Speaker 1:So my cell is 315-903-7853. I just say wait list. And then I know because of that crazy keyword that you wanna be on the wait list. And then we'll just send you a note when we're having a training. And the training that I'll be doing next is actually on time, team, and money for contractors because those are consistently painful themes.
Speaker 1:Painful is the right way to say it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, like, if you can become black belt at running a bootstrap business, it gives you, like, the ultimate foundation of being good at business in general. So that that's key. Especially in that category, we have to manage people and labor and supplies. So very cool.
Speaker 3:Dom, this was a blast, man. I feel like I heard you for a while, but it's super fun to connect and look forward to following along with everything you're doing. Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'll give a few plugs. 1st, I send a weekly newsletter each Thursday featuring 5 articles or tools that have helped me. You can sign up for these weekly updates at jimwhuffman.com. 2nd, for anyone running a start up, if you need help growing your business, check out Growth Hit. Growth Hit serves as your external growth team.
Speaker 2:After working with over a 100 startups and generating a quarter 1,000,000,000 in sales for clients, Growth Hit has perfected a growth process that's hell bent on driving ROI through rapid experiments. Plus, you'll get to work with yours truly. So if you wanna work with a team that's worked with startups that have been funded by Andreessen Horowitz or featured on Shark Tank, then check out growthhit.com. And finally, I wrote a book called The Growth Marketer's Playbook that takes everything I've learned as a growth mentor for venture backed startups, and I've distilled it down to a 140 pages. So instead of hiring a growth team, save yourself some money, get the book, and you can just do it yourself.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'd love to hear feedback. I'm on Twitter at jimw Huffman.
Speaker 3:Hey, everyone. Jim here. And I wanna share something really neat with all of you. And yes, that pun was absolutely intended. I'm sorry.
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