DEEP FREEZE: Always Know Your Numbers with Glenn Hopper

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm talking with Glenn Hopper and I'm very curious about his book Deep Finance. So. Hello, Glenn.

Hey Larry.

This is fun talking and you know, it's a numbers thing. You know, you and I were talking about the numbers earlier and you. I've always, it came to me as like when I was running the organization growing fast, it's easy to lose control. When you lose control, then the numbers, you lose sense of where you are. And then whenever that happens, you can be 100% sure bad things will happen. And I made it up. I was very resentful. If I ever got an inquiry from the company who did the processing or whatever and they sent me some kind of information about my organization that I didn't know. I just felt like there's nothing going on here that anybody can tell me that's not really the case. But as much as possible, because one thing is I run a big marketing organization and I never wanted anything good to happen where I didn't let people know. Way to go. That was a new record. That's a breakthrough, that's a promotion. That's this, that, the other. We appreciate what you're doing. And that was the main reason I wanted to keep up with the numbers. But you got to keep up with the numbers if you want to grow. And if you don't grow, you're going to die. And I don't care how much how facile you are at keeping up with the numbers off the top of your head, sooner or later a well run company will grow. And if you're a company, maybe you can keep up with it now and you got a really great humming thing, but pretty soon that thing's going to keep growing and you're not going to be able to keep up with it and you're going to need technology and you're either going to kind of stall out on your growth and you're going to start to flatline or you're going to wind up and, or you're going to wind up getting beat by competitors who are actually using this technology. And so it's really not an option if you want to grow and if you have it, especially if you have the Thing I'd like to double, triple, quadruple, you know, I'd like to, you know, hit our potential. Well, now there's just no way you can keep up with off the top of your head. So you got to have technology working for you. And I think that might be some of the stuff you get to in your book. Is that right?

You're spot on. So there's a name for the. And I don't remember who coined it, but when you're talking about the business getting away from you. So in those early days of a startup business, you're just doing whatever you can. You're trying to make every customer happy. You're doing. You're inventing things as you go. There are no paths already for how to do things. So you are maybe reinventing the wheel with every customer. And that's okay when you're trying to find the best source in the beginning. But there's something that happens in the growth of a company. You're in that startup phase, and if you manage to actually grow the company, you'll grow it to a point where the efficiencies of adding more people are not there because you don't have processes. So you could keep throwing resources and people at the problem, but the problem then is that you're lacking processes, procedures, and automation. So you get to this level of growth, and then the company starts to fall off because you just can't take on anymore. And there's this area that the metaphor I always use is my wife does not like going in the ocean at all. And so when she goes to the ocean, she takes a couple steps out, and right in that spot where the waves are breaking and all the shells are crumbled up there, it's the worst spot to stand. They're just breaking. On your feet, you're standing the shells. Well, the business equivalent of that is called the trough of disillusionment. And it's a very uncomfortable space to be in. And you're either going to figure out how to get out of those shells, get past where the waves are breaking, get out of that and move on, or you're going to stay there and get eventually knocked over. So where I have carved out this niche is I come in to businesses that are either now or en route to this trough of disillusionment, and I come in and say, okay, I see what you've been doing. Let's go through your A to Z processes. Let's figure out how to systemize this, how to automate it, and how to define it so that you can grow from this spot and be ready for that sort of the hockey stick growth that businesses all want. If you don't pause either when you're in this point or before it, you're never going to be the worst thing that could happen to you as you have a bunch of customers come in because you wouldn't be able to handle them and the business could collapse under the weight of it. So my book focuses on using the new technology that's out there to help it. But it's really, it's more than just technology. It's basic business principles and being able to systemize what you're doing. And then the added benefit of that is once you've identified and documented it, there are plenty of tools out there that will help you automate it now. And I go through those in the.

Book and let's, let's go through, let's emphasize that it's not just tools. So don't. Those of y' all that I start hyperventilating when you hear anything to do with computer or technology or anything like that. We haven't used the word social media yet at all. So don't necessarily shut down on this. We're talking about a big part of this is organizing yourself for growth and success using principles that everybody uses that grows. And without these things, everybody stops. And so you got a choice to make. Do you want to be one of those who keeps on growing, keeps on taking advantage of your potential? Because what kind of leader are you if your company stalls out? No more opportunity for your people to work there. But if it keeps growing and compounding all kind of new opportunities and promotions and divisions and things can come up where people can, they can stay inspired and excited about working for you. So it's like thousands of benefits that come from you growing. But you've got to get yourself organized because success is never accidental. It's never consistently accidental. You might luck up and get a hot new idea. If you want to keep that thing compounding and growing, you got to have a rhythm, rhyme and rhythm and reason for everything you do. So talk about some of those things that you cover in your book.

Sure. It occurs to me that as I'm talking about this, and I've written for a very niche audience, so if I were just writing the book, if I just wanted to sell as many copies as I could, I would have made it a much more broad book. But I believe the best way to success is to write what you know. And I really. The book the plan with the book isn't, oh, I'm going to make enough money to retire from this. It is a. It came from a compulsion. Of all the things that I've learned as I've spent my year in, or my career rather, in finance, taking all that, consolidating it, and maybe turning it into a roadmap that someone else can use. So I talk about deep finance, but there are principles that apply to the whole company. The reason that it is, it's deep finance is because there are a lot of systems that relate to finance. But I'm basically saying you as the finance person should be able to establish all these things across the company. So I talk about first, you, like we just said, you document your processes and you understand where there's roadblocks and where there are gatekeepers and where there are areas to get around. And then you find, is this something that I improve with the process or with automation? And when you find automation. And I talk about linking systems, whether it's the front end, and we could get really deep in the weeds here quickly, but I think the overview of it is front end. You know, you've got a customer relationship management tool where you're tracking your leads and your prospects and how many customers you win, and then they come into the system and you're tracking project management and inbound and outbound calls, and then, you know, that all eventually ties to the accounting system. What I'm preaching in the book, and really in my whole life, is once we have all these systems connected, we can start collecting data on every step of the process. When we have that data, that's what's going to drive this next era of finance, where we have increased automation and the role of finance becomes not to just be the report card and say, oh, we missed budget last quarter, last month, whatever, we did 10% better than we did last year. These markets are off, these markets are better. It's about more of the why. And these questions previously would have been answered with a hunch, with someone just business experience saying, well, Akron's down because of the society economic factors in Ohio or whatever, but it would just be anecdotal. So I call using this data going from hunch to hypothesis. So you, when you deliver the information, you're not just giving a set of numbers, you're providing detailed correlations and information behind them so that when, whether it's the CEO, the board of directors, the investors or the employees, you can go that one level deeper and say, this is how we're doing this is why we're doing that way. And in the book, I lay out a plan for collecting that data and how to use it.

Would you say if people get in and read the book, it's not something you have to implement every step or all the process all at once. With that, you could start to, you could start to move into this. And what I found I'm gonna get. And here's where, here's what tell people I said, you go in and when growth stalls, first of all, you got to know your numbers. And then when they start to slow down, what I tell, I said, you don't have to fix everything this month, but you troubleshoot for the bottlenecks. Usually the weakest part of the system. Either too many things around, too few people, or the pipeline just can't handle it. However you got it set up. And look at how you can fix the knot in the hose. There's a knot in the hose somewhere if the water's not going through it. And just untangle that one knot and get that untangled and then let it flow for a while and then the next place will show up. Do you agree with that?

Yeah. And the metaphor I use in the book is the old, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And the in the thinking of it is. And like, like you said, you find those problem areas, you address those first because that improves the whole process. And then they're also quick wins that help you. If you can solve those bottlenecks, untangle that hose, then you look like a hero to the rest of the company. And then that's how you start getting buy in. If you just go in and say, hey, I want to yank out all your systems and put new systems in and put these new processes in, people are going to be like, you're crazy. How are we going to get any work done if we're spending all of our time on this new process? So you have to look at it very incrementally and prioritize.

But that's where you get into. You really become. You can build basically a generational type company and have epic, legendary global type success with these kind of structures. Because of the word is iteration, improvements. You know, it's, it's the big word. But it's like the iPhone, are we on the 17th or some ridiculous number.

I lost track when they went to the iPhone.

And it's like what they did was went out there, put it and saw the numbers, saw the feedback and improved. And that's what they do. At every phase of their operation. That's what all successful companies do. This, this is how they have that type of growth. Because I have a guy who's actually had on the podcast Cosmo and he's a super successful. He makes half a million to a million in the hair care business. He's got one big location. And he said, people, most time these hair places make, they make nothing. They make really amazing nothing. So he gets asked all the time, how do you do it and everything. He said, what's your system? He says, here's my system. He said, if I walk through the door and I find myself bumping up on the left, next time I walk through the door, I'll walk a little bit more to the right so I don't bump into the left side of the door anymore. He said, that's my system. Every day I go through life and I bump into something, I make a change adjustment, so I don't bump into that anymore. But he said, you see these dumbbells, they go through their life, they never make adjustments. They make the same stupid mistake over and again. But really at its basic level, it's nothing more complicated than that, is it?

Yeah. And I'll go one level deeper with that. And this is, this goes to Harvard Business School, a big approach that Michael Tushman, one of the professors there, really preaches. But it's. You have to be able to simultaneously exploit, meaning doing the job that you're doing today and make those incremental gains. But while you're doing that, you have to also explore. So explore and exploit are what makes businesses profitable. Because think about Blockbuster. Back in the day, they were exploit. They were the per. They were the. The place to go to rent movies. And they just went. And they were very good at what they did. But then they weren't exploring the future at the time. So Netflix comes along and knocks them out and there's no Blockbusters left now. And you know, you look at Kodak is another one that they didn't move along. They didn't. They got very good at the film and they made those iterative changes and they were at the end, they were the best in the world and for a long time were best in the world at film photography. But they were not ready when the industry moved on. They were not exploring and getting ready for new things. They thought film would always be there. So you have to make those incremental changes or your business is going to get beat by your current customer. But you have to also look at the future. And plan for that as well. And I talk about that in the book as well.

And you have proven that we're not wasting people's time. Because that's what we had covered earlier when we said stay aware of what's going on around you.

Yes, exactly.

You know, it's an extension of the same principle. Like you new employee, do your job, focus on that. But then think of the big picture, what's happening. Well, the same thing with the company. It's not let's just move the product today. The short term, short term, short, keep your eye on the long term. And that's why one of the principles, it's short term and long term. Where are we headed? Where is this going to get us? We can do it, but you're evaluating a new idea or something. That would be great. But where is it going to take us? Is it going to take us where we want to be long term, or is it going to get us diverted from where we want to be? And that's another principle that you hear about, growing businesses. And growing businesses will always have a new beachhead. There's always gonna be another Britain ruling. They're always looking for someplace else to colonize. They wouldn't be Britain today. The UK would not be what it is today if they hadn't gone around and had all of these colonies all over the world. And the thing is, if you wanna be big, you like citigroup is in 120 countries. You know, those countries did not come to them. At some point they had to go to those countries, you know, and Walmart has zillions of locations. Well, they had to go get every single one of them, you know, and they had to have processes and procedures. And the exciting thing though, that I like about what your book can help them on and I'm sure you can be accessed through if they want to find you. How do they find you?

You know, glenhopper.com is my website. I'm very active on LinkedIn but honestly I'm Googling my name is probably the best way to get me because it comes up with all my contacts. But LinkedIn is the one. I'm the social media platform. I'm.

The exciting thing I want to leave people with here is that you do these things right and take advantage of these things and position yourself and move those things. Depending on what your idea of service is, you can get huge. I mean, you know, all the big companies are not built yet. And so these are not things to say, be afraid of. These are things that These are enablers, and these concepts that you're talking about in your book are enablers to get people where maybe they never thought they could do something like that before, but now they get in here and realize that light bulbs will go on. Wait a minute. You know, I can use these tools. We can install these things. Boom, boom, boom. And so thanks so much, Glenn. It's very exciting talking with you, and I'm going to give you a chance to leave a final word for everybody as we wrap this up.

Yeah, I really appreciate the time, and I guess my final word would be. The book is great. It's a niche book for finance people, but for anyone. I think that more of the strategy that you and I talked about is more important than what is specifically in the book. And I think regardless of the industry you're in, if you're trying to build something and grow it and to get to a place where you can scale and be the next big company, you need to think about these technologies that are out there. You need to think about your current processes and find a way, whether it's my system or whoever your favorite leadership style person is, a system that will help you get past where you are and be able to grow to this next level where we all want to be.

Well, thanks so much, Glenn. Next time I'm in Nashville, I'm going to try and look you up and come by and see your operation.

All right, Larry, I appreciate it.

Thanks so much, Glenn. Wish you the best with the book and with the company. If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works, you in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.