Episode 172: Start Streamlining with Adrienne Dorison

You guys are good. This is good teamwork.

Overtime. Snack.

No, you got the first. It's over training. It's over training. The last one's not Snack, but that was good. It's a syndrome. Syndrome. Yes. Nailed it. Good teamwork. Good teamwork.

What does that mean?

That clients. Yeah, they. You are good. You are real good. Yeah. Clients overwork and therefore their program starts failing. It's the men and women say, oh, it's one a little firmer buttocks. I need to do more of these exercises. And they actually start injuring themselves or get tired or the muscle actually starts to fatigue in a way that they get reverse results. Therefore, trying to work out more and they continue to get reverse results.

That's clearly my problem. Ots, no, my 30 minutes a day I'm pretty sure is within the normal.

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Yes, that's what they'll say.

That's what they'll say.

No, I have no idea who you're talking about.

All right, Kellis, I think you got the floor here. Why don't you kick us off?

Welcome everybody, to the Profit first podcast.

Yeah, you're listening to episode 172. There we go. Yeah, Christina's back. All right, Christina, back to welcome everyone.

To the Profit first podcast. I'm your co host, Christina Bolduc.

Yeah, and I'm Mike McCowitz, the author of Profit First. Oh, and I forgot to mention my new book. Remind me at some point.

Okay, okay.

And I've Written some other books. Surge. We did something special with Serge last episode. I hope you listened and did the action and. Oh, are we doing it today? No, it's one time. Yeah, one time. You're right. Whatever. And you, my friends, you are listening to the Profit Curse podcast, the show where we talk about every single element of profitability. You know, what if you start making some money? What if you're a high earner or not keeping money? We talked about that last week, and this week we're gonna talk about streamlining your business. You know, the best way to permanently, perpetually make profit is by having your business run on automatic. Our guest today, Adrian Dorsen, is gonna walk us through that. But first.

But first.

Well, where's the first?

Well, we have to tell you where you can listen to it.

Oh, first. No, I gotta say, Kelsey's here in the studio. It says right here. It says Kelsey's in the studio, in.

Case you were wondering.

Yeah, there she is.

Just me.

No, I don't want to, like, degrade the significance. I mean, you're extraordinarily significant.

Yeah, you're important.

Thanks, guys.

I think you have more fans on the show than Christine and I do combined.

That's not true.

You two have more fans than I do.

No, but your name is not true either.

I was trying to make you feel.

But very sweet of you to say.

I try to make you feel good. Yeah. Okay, back to you.

For Kelsey, it was very nice.

Right, right, right. For Christine, I was like, that's bullshit.

Anyway, you can find us on itunes. Tune in radio, Google Play, oh, and Stitcher, and any other podcast that you listen to. If there are podcasters that I don't know of, can you tell me? Because I'm kind of curious. And you can also go to Profit first, podcast dot com. Of course.

And you can go to Fat Daddy fatback. That's right. Fatdaddyfatback.com. i have the list. That is the big one. I have a list of all my biggest hits of all time. You, as you look at, you're like, oh, my God, Mike's really a singer. Look at these songs he sings. Ice, ice, Baby, which I told you is not. A lot of people say you ripped off Vanilla Ice. I didn't. I added a beat. Oh, yeah, it's a little different.

Totally legit.

And on one of the episodes, you're like, Mike, instead of going, d D, Right.

Ice, ice, ice moves.

Ice, ice, ice. So you can go on there and you can listen to my hits, which is really a Front for bringing you back to the Profit first podcast.

You know what I should do? From now on, when you go to speaking engagements, I will send them that email rather than your Mike McCallowicz email.

Send the fat daddy fat back.

That's funny.

That's funny. That'll confuse a hell of people. Do we hire a rapper? Okay, and one last thing I want to talk about before. Oh, I do want to do community shout outs. I do want to also thank our sponsors. In a second. But I do have an icebreaker for tonight.

Okay.

And I just clicked off the screen. What's what? As a kid growing up, what was your least favorite chore?

Do you want to shut the music off?

Yeah, yeah, Relax.

Easy. There was.

It wasn't. Yeah, but geez. My least favorite chore was listening to freaking music. I liked dead silence and misery and sitting in the corner. All right, what was your favorite, least favorite chore?

I don't. I don't know. I. When I. When my dad was married the second time around, he used to make me and my stepbrothers, like, wash the cars every weekend. And I like, why am I doing this? Like, there's always something else I wanted to be doing, but I guess that's.

That's legit.

Not bad. And, like, that's legit.

What was your least favorite chore?

Dusting. My mom is a collector of knickknacks.

Ah.

Shelves everywhere filled with these tiny knick knacks. So you have to take down every single piece, dust the shelf, dust the pieces off, and then put them back the way she likes it. And if you don't, then it's like, you're in trouble. Oh, my God. I have to do everything myself.

Yeah.

Oh, my God. Jeez. Stop getting the freaking knickknacks.

Yeah.

Seriously, Jimmy crack corn can get off the shelf now. So my least favorite thing was clean the dishes. Not that I have a problem clean dishes, but seeing my parents and my sister sitting there while I clean the dishes, that's what killed me as a kid. Any chore that you have to watch, everyone else is sit there like, oh, we're watching tv.

We had a chore chart, so it was always, that's smart. Designated.

That's smart. Now, ironically, my kids clean the dishes. Why sit and watch tv? So it has flipped, but I shouldn't say ironically, but it's just the way. But yeah, okay. So we make community shout outs for stuff like that.

Yes. This comes from Christine Rogers. She said, we got the girls jar. Oh, my God. I cannot Read the jar. Let me try this again. We got the girls jars updated and relabeled. The profit first way they are ready to go. Beginning habits today to lead their lifelong financial independence. So I'm assuming the jars are a metaphor for the bank account.

Yeah. Oh, wow, that was fast.

So shout out to you, Christine. That's awesome to teach your kids so young.

Yeah. And Christine, we have a picture here. Here in the studio. Obviously you guys can't see it, but Christina and Kelsey can see it. These are literal jars of different size stacked. Some are stacked up. The big dream jar is the big one in the center and it has all this cash stored away. We got another one of these kind of.

Sorry, did you just say storted?

Neither of us can talk right now.

That's a word. Why are you laughing at that? You never heard of storted? You are funny. I wish you. I wish you knew the English language as well as I did. Yes. These are stored it on top of each other and. Which is by the way, storing and sorting together is when you store something.

It's a new term.

It is pretty ridiculous. In, in Denmark they do the same thing. We got someone mailing us tin cans of the same thing. Do you want to join us, Mr. Scalise? You can hop on.

You just kind of creeped in here.

My Scalise is the most non inconspicuous person in the world. He's like, what? I just. I was just walking by with my talon feet. I just wanted to walk in.

Stop it. They're called provolone cutters.

All right, sit down for a second. Join us because we. We're about to get into the show. All right. You, you and your provolone cutters. I do want to thank our corporate sponsors, make the show a reality before we bring our guest on. So thank you to Fundbox, nextiva Receipt bank, of course. Right. Networks. We'll give you more details on those folks in a little bit. Oh, by the way, we do have a shout out hotline too. We want to hear about your profit first success. So if you've had a profit first implementation in your business and you're more profitable than ever, we want to hear about it. Plus, you get some nice exposure. So call 844-876-7221. That's 844-876-7231. And leave your message about how you become permanently profitable. And we'll definitely play it on air. Her name is Adrienne Dorrison and she is a consultant. She's a podcast Host with a much better show than this one. And the founder of Good Businesses Do Good, who helps, not surprise here, good businesses become more profitable so they can give back to the world in a bigger way. She helps entrepreneurs make impactful decisions, prioritize their big challenges, and get better results in way less time. Adrienne believes the answer to solving big business problems is about asking the right questions, which is why she's been able to deliver beyond belief results for clients. And she loves dogs, cookies, CrossFit, and long distance triathlons. Which, by the way, it's like, what are the things that don't go together?

Yeah, yeah, right.

I love CrossFit.

They balance each other.

I love dogs. I love triathlons and cookies.

One of these things is not like the other.

Yeah, I know. And lots and lots of cookies. Adrienne, welcome to the show.

Welcome, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

I like dogs, too.

Yeah, me too.

What kind of dog do you have?

I have a Bernese mountain dog. I know. Collective Aww. Because he is really cute. And then we also have a Terry. She's like a rescue terrier mix. She's. She's like the redheaded stepchild of my family. I play favorites around here, but.

Yeah, no, I don't.

She's always in the shout out.

We all do. Lamenting you in the distance. Go run your triathlons, you good for nothing owner. So tell us about streamlining a business. You know, you and I, we met up at a bar. And not by chance. It's true, right?

We did. We did meet at a bar. We had a conversation at a bar. We had a conversation.

I awkwardly pulled you aside, too. I'm like, I can't sit here with other people. It comes to this. I literally pulled you aside, like, can you stand with me over here in the corner? And I started drilling with questions or something.

I can't.

It was really hot. It was really hot. That's why, by the way. That's why I unbuttoned my shirt, six buttons down.

Oh, goodness.

That was the reason.

That's what that was about. I was wondering. Yeah, I couldn't remember.

Yeah, my accidental nip slip was because it was so hot.

Is that what happened on the college campuses, too?

Over and over. That's last week's episode. Nice throwback. Yes, it is. What happened? But, Adrian, I pulled you aside and I started drilling you with questions. I'm like, I got to know how to streamline a business. Tell me. And you started telling me this amazing story about the lumber yard. Do you mind sharing a little bit of experience of what you've done in lumberjack? You like this, what you've done in lumber yards to help streamline them.

Yeah. So we were talking about the wood with your open shirt. Right. This is a great conversation. Yes. I used to work in the paper products industry doing lean Six Sigma consulting. So basically streamlining and efficiency for one of the largest supply chains in the manufacturing space, which is taking a tree all the way from a landowner in the forest into turning it into your toilet paper. Right. Like the toilet paper entrepreneur. So. Oh, you see what I did there? That was good. A little plug for you.

I unbuttoned yet another button.

Yeah.

Thanks a lot.

I can't see him. So you have to deal with this.

You're disliked.

So inside side of the work that I was doing was really looking for inefficiencies in every step of that process and figuring out how we can create cost savings, how we can become more efficient. And it's a really complex system. And one of the biggest challenges like we were talking about is the people, because it's one thing to identify that, oh, there's an inefficiency inside this process of, for example, taking a load of wood off of a large truck and putting it into a wood yard so that it can then be chipped. And, you know, if you want to go research what that whole process is like inside of a paper mill. But it's one thing to identify that there's an inefficiency there, but then it's another to actually get someone to create that change or to get on board with, oh, yeah, I'm, you know, there's an opportunity for me to improve here and create a cost savings for a company. And so we did a lot of different things to improve those processes. And now my work is primarily with small businesses and entrepreneurs because inside the corporate world, it's much harder to create those changes and get people on board. So I'm happy to dive into any of that that feels interesting or relevant because there are.

We're gonna get to all of it. But I want to just highlight one thing that you shared in that story. These large corporations, as you said, the people kind of get in the way. And I remember one little vignette from that discussion was it was very clear to you that if that crane is moving wood, that then they're producing paper, and if it's not moving, that's. You're in trouble. And one of the things you noticed was the change of operators took a Long time. So your suggestion was instead of one operator walking down the crane, walking the half mile to this, the cabin where they kind of load and unload, and the next operator then walking back and having the Crane down for 30 minutes, many, many minutes. An hour. An hour, why not just have the guy sitting there waiting, ready to go? And it's so obvious. But what was the response you had over that?

They didn't really want to. So the response is that it's someone else's responsibility, right? Like, why should I have to wait in the crane for so and so to get up here when he's going to. When he's moving too slow or he's, you know, three minutes late, or, you know, I'm done at this time, so I'm getting out of here, versus cooperatively working together inside of that system to say, okay, your shift actually isn't done until the next person comes up here, or, hey, how about you move a little faster so that you can relieve Joe from his shift since he's up on the crane waiting for some relief. There was just no sense of urgency amongst anyone working inside that system. And I think that that was a big challenge for me because I really cared about the work that I was doing. And I felt that if I had any personal responsibility to get somewhere or to change my process, I wanted to be making those improvements. And that wasn't the same mindset that everyone had. And I think that was a challenge for me to understand. I was like, wait, why are we not working cooperatively? Why are we not taking personal responsibility to improve processes overall inside this company? And I think that most people will find that they've had that experience, whether it's in a large corporation or it's in a food service job that they've had, right? Like, you know, that one person or those multiple people, or just those types of people who don't want to make the change, or they're not willing to be a team player, or there's an opportunity for the entire team or the entire company to improve, but at the detriment of one person, it's not going to happen. And that's unfortunate. But that's a problem that plagues, I think, all levels of corporations and companies that we can improve much more quickly inside of small businesses because typically our business owners are excited about creating change and innovations and improvements, and they're much more agile to do it.

That became the epiphany for me that small business has a huge opportunity here because we care and we can act quickly. Large corporations are mired in politics. So, Adrian, let's get into what the small business owner can do. That's our listener. All of us are running businesses here. We all get frustrated in the inefficiencies, but we don't even know where to get started. So the question is, where do we get started?

Yeah. So the place that I typically have most people start is number one, like identifying where the bottlenecks are. And that's really hard to do if you're not really clear on what you're doing. So the first piece of getting really clear on where your bottlenecks are is making your processes visual. So the brain processes visual information about 60,000 times faster than text. So what I mean by visual is not necessarily that you need to be drawing pictures about every single thing that you're doing inside the business. I know for one, I'm not a very good artist, so that wouldn't go over well. And my team would be like, what is that stick figure that you're doing? But even just having the workflow of what your team or what you do on a daily basis, or what are all of the different projects or tasks that you're working on? Put those on a board. And what we call this board is a Kanban board. And this is just a way to get you all of the processes visual. And you can write them out on these little cards. And I also have done this on like a whiteboard in my office. So this doesn't need to be like anything super complicated. This can just be you taking some post it notes and putting them on the wall and saying, like, what are all the things that we do as a team on any given week? And in the beginning, it'll take you a little bit of time for your team to get clear. Because at the beginning of the week, they might think that they've got everything written down, but then at the end of the week, check back in and be like, what actually didn't make it to this board that you did this right. Because once we have those processes in a visual information space, we can identify, like, where things are taking longer than they need to, where things are not as transparent as they need to be, where there are bottlenecks, which we can get into some of that. But that first step of like understanding the visual workflow is huge. And so I like to think about this in terms of manufacturing because everyone is pretty familiar. I think even just even in your mind, maybe you've never been inside of a factory, but you probably know how a factory Runs like one thing moves to the next, and there's one person working on one task, and then it gets moved to the next stage, and so on and so forth. And so in a manufacturing factory, like a paper mill, there's certain processes that are happening. So if you could think of your own business like a factory and write everything down, like, what are the steps that we go through? What is happening? You're going to be so much more clear about where the inefficiencies are.

So what exactly are bottlenecks? Can you define that for us?

Yeah. So I usually define three bottlenecks that are typical in terms of keeping a business growth, keeping a business's growth stunted or not happening as quickly or as quality as possible. And actually, you on an elevator helped me identify that there was a fourth.

Is this getting weirder and creepier? Oh, my God.

That there's a fourth.

So I challenged you with the fourth thing. Do you. Have you contemplated that?

I have thought about it, and I think it's true. So I'll share the initial three. And I actually think the fourth is something that will be a bottleneck at every stage. So if I was gonna draw the three bottlenecks, what I would do, like, kind of like a squiggle line and say that the fourth one that you identified can impede any of these. Right. So it could be like a further suffocating bottleneck on any one of the individual bottlenecks that I'm gonna identify. So the first one would be leads. Right. So if you have a bottleneck in your lead system, you're probably not gonna be growing as quickly as you want because you're not getting enough leads into the system. Now, that can be. You're not getting enough customers walking into your door, you're not getting enough orders put into your website. You're not getting enough referrals brought into the business, whatever leads looks like for you inside your business. So leads is the first area where people are stunting their own growth is that they're maybe focusing on other things when they need to focus on leads first. If you don't have enough leads, it's really hard to turn into sales and turn into other operational inefficiencies. So the next bottleneck is sales. So maybe you have enough leads coming in, but you're actually not effectively turning those into sales. So if you have a ton of leads, but your revenue still isn't where you want it to be, but you have enough leads to create that revenue, then potentially there's a sales Bottleneck where you're unable to sell those people into the product or service. Now, there's obviously some intricacies there that we could get more specific, like, why aren't you selling them? But that's where we have to dive into each of those bottlenecks on a personal basis inside of a business and say, you know, is the offer, you know, not very clear, or is it not very compelling to your audience? Is it. Is the messaging wrong? Is the, you know, are we not marketing it as effectively? So each of those can be part of the bottleneck, but the first is leads. The second might be sales, and the third one would be scalability, which is going to relate to your operational efficiency, to, you know, create more growth with the amount of leads and sales that you have. So maybe you have enough leads, you're turning all of them into sales, or you're turning a large number of those into sales. But the problem is you don't have the time or the capacity to serve them. So that's a great problem to have. But that means we need to structurally change your operations or your offer to be able to scale more effectively. Now, the fourth one that you mentioned in the elevator was cash flow. And I think that this is one that actually can stunt a business's growth with any of these bottlenecks. Right. If you don't have enough cash flow, you're gonna be in a predicament as it relates to your leads or as it relates to your sales, or as it relates to your ability to fix the problem related to your scalability. So it's probably something that is definitely a bottleneck that further tightens the bottleneck that you have inside of the operations of the business. But I'd love to hear if you believe that's true or not.

Yeah, I totally believe it's true. And what I am hearing is if any one of these three or four elements dries up or stops functioning, the entire business starts to collapse or will collapse without each one moving along.

And the problem is, and why I kind of break them down into these sections, is that business owners, especially small business owners, they have a limited amount of resources, and I mean time, energy, focus, money. So when we are helping business owners create growth inside of that company, it's important for them to know where to focus their energy and their limited resources. And a lot of times they think that they need to be focused on leads, sales, and scalability all at the same time. And that's where they get really stuck, is that the problem is you're Trying to focus on all of those things ineffectively, whereas we need to know which is the one thing that if we focus on that, it's gonna open up the doors, right? That's not to say that you've solved all of your problems for all eternity just means that you probably have unblocked that bottleneck. And we might, you know, if you have a leads bottleneck and then we move into sales, you might never have a sales bottleneck. You might be really great at that. But then once you've made so many sales, you might need to change the way that your company operates. Right. Or serves your clients. So, yeah, you might have a scalability bottleneck after that, which is where we need to focus at that point. So identifying which one of these you're currently under the most stress around or what's gonna unlock the most growth for you is what we're trying to get at. Because when you're spread thin with resources, yet you're still trying to solve all the problems, you're solving at least two of the wrong problems. So that's where I think it's really important to know which one is plaguing you right now and focus on that.

So maybe you've already kind of alluded to it, but what are the indicators on which one's plaguing you? Which one needs to be fixed?

So this is going to be pretty visible in terms of your numbers or, like, what's going on inside that visual workflow inside of the business, though, the numbers inside of our business are trying to tell us a story. So whether that's related to our financial performance or our performance of the other metrics that we're monitoring inside the business. So maybe we're monitoring the number of leads that we're receiving, right? So thinking about the performance, the numbers inside your business, and what you're looking at, if you have a revenue goal that you're not hitting, we have to kind of look through those numbers and understand what's happening, right? Is it that we are getting the right number of leads, but we're not making the number of sales that we need to? So a lot of people will be solving the wrong problem, essentially because they're like, oh, I need to be making more sales. There's just something wrong with my sales. I'm really gonna laser in on that. I'm gonna master my sales process, which I encourage everyone to do. But if you have set a revenue goal, let's just say, of $100,000, and you aren't actually getting enough leads, no matter how many sales you made of those leads to create that hundred thousand dollars of revenue, there's no way for you to hit that goal. So you have to go back to, oh, my problem or my bottleneck isn't actually sales, it's leads. I need to get more leads in for me to be able to convert them into the right number of sales. So understanding your numbers is key for this. But most people aren't very good at that, which is the problem. And this is something that like most of my clients come to me with a ton of shame around. And maybe you've experienced the same thing with Profit first, where people are like, I don't even want to talk about it, or I don't want to look at it, or I don't know what the numbers mean. So I'm just going to ignore them and hope for the best and see what happens. And that's very scary place to be. Like, you have to understand your numbers to know where you need to make improvements. So that would be the first identification of where your bottleneck probably is.

Yeah, we definitely get that avoidance syndrome where people are like, I'm not looking at my bank accounts, I'm not gonna open those bills. Yeah. So I can see the same thing with numbers. Once they identify where their bottleneck is, is there still emotional resistance? If I open up my sales, maybe the rest of my business will exposed to how fractured it is and therefore I don't even want to open my sails. I mean, once you identify, is it a no brainer and people just work on it or how do I get in the mode of realizing that as the tide rises, so do all boats?

I think there's definitely still emotional resistance. Right. Especially if we have identified, hey, your problem is really leads. We need to really focus on that and make sure that all of our energy and our resources are helping to solve that problem. Because a lot of the resistance is gonna come from the idea that they've always done certain things inside the business. And this is where the process, the visual board of all the processes that are happening inside the business will be really helpful because they'll be able to clearly identify which of these are related to my bottleneck, to helping me solve my bottleneck. And when they have, let's say 20 tasks that they're doing on any given week and only two of those are related to solving the bottleneck inside the business, we have a problem. Right? So we have a problem. If we're unwilling to solve the problem that we've clearly identified in the business if we're still committed to doing the things that we feel we should do. And I'm using, like, you know, air quotes like, everyone feels like they should do all of these other things, but these other tasks inside your business that you're just continuing to do, even though they're not giving you a return or they're not solving the problem that we have right now are causing you to divert your attention away from the real problem. And so there's, of course, a ton of emotional resistance because it might be hard for them to focus on the thing that is actually the real problem. It's easier, probably, for them to do the things they've always done. That's true for all of us. Right? But that was, like, the one phrase when I was in corporate that, like, made my skin crawl, was like, when we would make a suggestion for, hey, here's an opportunity to improve, or here's something that we need to focus on. Can you do something this way instead? Or can we try this? And they would say, no, because this is the way we've always done things.

Oh, my God.

And I'm like, that drives me nuts. It's the most horrifying statement. Right? Because we're not creating any change that way. We're not creating any improvements if we're not creating any change. And so we have to sit with that and just ask ourselves the question, are we willing to take personal responsibility to say that just because this is the way we've always done things in the business doesn't mean it's right. And are we willing to at least experiment and try something out, try something new out for 60 to 90 days? Will you just focus on this? Will you try to not do these other things or try to not do things the way you've always done them? Because we know that that's not going to create the change that you're looking for. And if it doesn't work, go back to the way you've always done things for all I care. Right? Like, but I guarantee it will make an improvement. And so I think that there's definitely a lot of resistance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you're pointing to another advantage for small business. If we can get past our own little resistance. We don't have those corporate politics, again, in the way that you're experiencing. But what if, as a small business, I think I speak for a lot of us, we have really crappy record tracking. We have really bad numbers. Stuff is all over the place. If it's anywhere. I don't know if I can extract numbers because it's kind of that garbage in, garbage out experience. What do you do in that case?

So if we're in the situation where there, let's just say we can't look at previous numbers, right? Like, let's just say it's impossible for us to get access to previous numbers for some specific reason or you're just too afraid to go there. And I think that that's fairly common. I think that you can start from where you are and what I would do if it's too overwhelming to go back, then we can go forward. Right. But the problem is we can't make the best decisions with zero information. So you are going to be guessing in the beginning if you have no information or data to make those decisions from. Right. So I like to use our numbers not just as like something that we hand to our accountant, but as a decision making tool. So I like helping my clients get really comfortable with their numbers. Comfortable with like what are the key metrics we need to know and understand and why would we ever be afraid of the things that are actually going to be informing our decision making abilities as a CEO or as, you know, a team member inside the company? So if we're starting from zero, let's just make the assumption that the problem is leads. Right? Like let's just start at the beginning of the bottleneck system because it's going to go from leads to sales to scalability. If you're starting from zero, we could just make that guesstimation. If you have zero information, which I highly doubt that anyone is starting with zero information, then at least we could quickly move past that once we had enough information to say, you know what, now that we've started tracking, we know we have enough leads, let's move on to the next one. Right. So that we're continuing to keep those metrics. I would also recommend that you don't start by tracking 45 different metrics if you've never tracked one because you're not going to stick with it. Right. It's just like adding a health routine to your daily life. If you've never worked out, you're probably not at risk for overtraining syndrome. Right? Like we're not going to be nice throwback.

Well played sister.

We're not. Well, let me trying to do the triathlon tomorrow. Right? Like let's start with doing five push ups.

Yep, yep. So I want to know the micro business. Some of our listeners just starting up $50,000 in annual revenue, 100,000, maybe. I assume it's too early to streamline now. It's just, let's just go out and sell, baby, sell. Is there a certain size where you need to consider streamlining your business or is it something that starts from the get go?

I would start from the beginning. And I think that if you start from the beginning, like even if you are thinking on a micro business, I'm 50,000 to 100,000 or even less. Whatever your number is, you still have a business, right? So treat it like a business. There are operations that are happening inside of that business. Anytime there are operations happening, there's an opportunity to improve those. So the same way that a organization of 50 team members and $15 million a year is running and there are inefficiencies there, you have even less resources than that team. So you need to be even more of an advocate for them. I think at the micro level, I think that when I was in corporate, why I'm so passionate about working with small businesses is because, to be quite honest, it was very easy for my VPs and project leads to say, we're not gonna push through that project that has an opportunity of $3 million in savings. And that's a big deal to someone like you and me. But to them it wasn't right. So. So I think shame on them. Shame on them, right? But as a micro business owner, like, you need to understand where every dollar and where every ounce of time is going so that you're able to get the most bang for your buck. And that relates to your money and your time and your energy. Because I imagine that you want to continue to grow and improve not just your business, but like the quality of your life. So don't be fooled that this is just for larger businesses. Like there is an operational component to what you're doing, even if you're just a one man team.

All right, so let me ask you the big question. And as I look at the clock, we got to actually get going. So this is the final question. This show's all about profitability. And maybe it's blatantly obvious, but maybe it's not. How does this process of making a business run with like clockwork? I'll explain why I emphasize the word clockwork. Making a business run like clockwork. Why or what's the impact it has on profitability?

Yeah, so I was. It's a perfect question. And it has everything to do with profitability because every time we remove an operational inefficiency, we're bringing money back into the Business. So I just had a consulting call before this interview with one of my clients, and we were working on her visual process inside of her business. She has a small team. It's an agency where she builds websites, and she has about six people on her team. And we're getting all of her processes visually formatted so that she can see what's happening on a daily basis. And one of the things that we clearly identified was that there was a back and forth of relaying information, relaying tasks from one team member to the other where one person is telling Joe, hey, Joe, you have to do this today. And Joe is telling Michelle, hey, Michelle, I need this from you today so that I can do this. And all of that back and forth is money. Every single time that that person is spending an hour delegating a task or trying to figure out if someone else has done something already or what is the most important thing for them to do today to move the cycle of processes forward, that's money that they're leaving on the table. And for a small business, that's really important. So if I can identify where there are two hours a week where three different team members are spending it unnecessarily, that's $300 that that person gets back in their pocket. So it's everything to do with profitability as well as now. The team is operating more efficiently. They're able to get more done. They're able to work more projects through the system faster and with a higher level of quality, which is only going to bring back more referrals, bring in more money versus things being lost or, you know, how many times have people dropped the ball? And that doesn't feel good as a business, nor does it get you more business. So every single thing that I do with my clients is to help them get more profitable and keep more money in their business, not just bloat and grow the business wider. Right. Like, our goal is to really create lean growth for companies, which means improving their profitability.

Nice. You nailed that. You nailed it, Adrian. Where can people listening in find out more about you? Hire your company to streamline their business, all that good stuff.

Yes, they can go to adrian dorrison.com that is where you'll find me. My team, we are the lean growth group. So we're trying to help you grow your business in a more lean format. So if you have any questions or want to connect, you can go to Adrian Dorrison.com and we'll have that all in the show.

Notes and guys, I cannot Recommend Adrian any higher? I've interviewed dozens of people for my new book, which I'll talk about in a minute. Adrian is the leading authority on this for small business. There's no question about it. So hire Adrian. Adrian. Thanks again.

Thank you.

Thanks, Adrian.

Fat Daddy Fatback.

Yes, I'm here. Hi, Ruby. How are you? How you doing, Ruby?

Fat Daddy Fatback.

Oh, yes, it's me. It's me. She doesn't recognize my voice. She's very curious, like she's asking a question. Is that Daddy Fatback? She's asking me.

Is that you?

Is that you? Is that you, Fat Daddy Fatback? Yes, it is. Punch me, Christina. Oh, you're so fat.

Always happy to apply.

You're good at that punch. You ever punch anyone?

Yes.

Really? Out of violence?

Yeah.

Nice.

I got into a fight in high school. I was a senior. She was a freshman.

No way.

I'm not even kidding.

She was a freshman.

She approached me. She started it. One punch, broke her nose. She fell on the floor, and I.

Was like, no way.

Now, when. How long ago was this?

This is in high school.

So this is not too long ago. This is when. You would have got arrested for that. Like in the six. In the 60s. I wasn't born yet. Okay. In the 80s, if you hit someone in the face in high school, you wouldn't get in trouble. But nowadays, well, she started it.

I was just.

Did the principal come to you and say.

No, I think she was too scared to tell him who it was.

Nicely done. Good for you, Christina.

What was it about?

I don't know. I think we were in the bathroom, and I needed to wash my hands, and she wouldn't move. And then she was just like, I want to go. And I was like, don't fuck with the senior.

And you punched her out in the bathroom. Nice. Christine, you ever punch anyone?

No. I mean, besides my siblings.

But out of violence, though, or just like.

I normally pinched. That was like, my.

Oh, I hate that.

Because I always had, like, strong, long nails. So it was my only defense because she was.

You're a crab. Effectively.

My sister Delaney is, like, ruthless. We used to call her Violence Is Cool. Not that that's a cool name, but because she loves. Like, she will take any opportunity to hurt you.

Really? That's a little. No. Never punched anyone? No. On lacrosse field once I hit a guy in the helmet, like, you want a piece of this? And in my head, I'm like, let's not do this.

My jaw still clicks because that's where she hit me.

Oh, she hit you. Oh, she hit you too?

She started it. I was.

That's with a punch.

Yeah. So I punched her back. I was like, oh, that's totally.

I thought she's like, you want a piece of this? You're like, clock. Is that how you heard the story?

Yeah, I did, actually. I thought that, like, she verbally started it and you finished it.

Oh, she punished. Okay, that's. Now she deserves. All right, great. That's a perfect transition into. Into thanking our corporate partners. But what we're going to do is we're going to tell you what we learned today. We also have some listener mail. I have another clip for that.

And a member shout out.

And a member shout out. And first, I want to thank our corporate partners. Listen, they don't punch people in the face. No, they punch you with good service. Doesn't even make sense, does it?

Go with it.

Yeah, go with it. Could you imagine nextiva walking up and they're like, you want to get in a fight? And you're like, yeah. And they're like, well, sorry, here's the phone system for you. That's what nextiva does. They deliver. I'm trying to bridge this. They deliver amazing voice over ip, phone system receipt, bank comes up like, is there a fight going on here? Stop the fight and start scanning your receipts. That's what they do. They scan receipts. And then right networks walks in and says, this is not wrong. This is wrong. Let's not make this wrong. Let's make it right Networks and right networks where we talked about them at this get go. They take those old antiquated but great applications and put them on the web for you. And then Fundbox, well, the first three letters are fun because Fundbox is like, let's stop fighting. Let's just have fun. Let's just celebrate. Let's get this party going. And they do it by those invoices you've due to you. They get the cash for you in the spot. They give it to you. Not by doing collection calls. They fund it themselves. And then when the checks get paid by your clients, return those funds to fund box. Let's see what we got now. There's too much on this paper. It's my fault. I need to delete up in a second. We'll recap. Corporate partners. We did surge giveaway. We did that last week. Listener mail. One takeaway first. Let's do our listener mail. Yeah, you got mail pattern baldness. So cute. Last week was funny. Now it's a cute level. I need Something new. What's the listener mail we got today?

Okay. This is from Todd. Hey, Todd said, I had one question that I was hoping you could clear up for me. As the business is basically a retail store, a large percentage, currently 47 of the top line revenue is used to purchase either stock for the store or materials used to make her artworks. I write about the materials or pass through accounts you mentioned in chapter nine. But how do I allocate income into this account in a structured way? Should we tweak the instant assessment form to calculate a cap tap percentage of top line revenue to put into this materials account and then adjust the other tap cap values for profit or owner's comp accordingly? What's your suggestion?

So fertile. Good job reading because there's typos throughout this thing. I know I'm not. Todd, we're not picking on you, but really, there's a lot of typos here, pal. So Christina, good job navigating that. So Todd's question in essence is he has to buy materials for his business, clothing or whatever the products are. These stocks in a store, the artwork and so forth. You have to pay for that up front. How do you account for that? And then do you adjust the instant assessment? The thing is, no, what you do is you are going to set up a couple additional accounts. Todd, you're going to set up an income account, which we've talked about. You're also going to have a real revenue account. And here's how it works. When money comes into your income account, it piles up. We're going to take a Pre allocated amount, 46%, your historical percentage, and transfer that to another account I didn't mention called materials. The 46% goes in there. The remainder, which is 54% goes to real revenue. And then you do the process of allocating the money from real revenue to your other accounts, profit and so forth. So it's a couple extra steps, but we allocate that 50, I'm sorry, 46% to materials. Then we're going to lower that 46% to 45%. So money comes in the income account. We take now 45%, move that to materials, and then the remaining 55% goes to real revenue and then gets allocated out to the other accounts. This way you start putting some pressure on cutting those material costs. Material costs are hard to cut because you know you have to negotiate. Maybe you have to get other materials. It may compromise the quality of your product. So you can only go so far. But by cutting that 46 to 45, maybe to 44. It'll force you to look at those material costs in a new way and see how you can acquire them at a lower cost point. And now you see a big boost in everything else as it gets allocated out. That's how you dress it, Todd.

Nice.

Okay, Todd, thanks for that question.

So can I just. Because I didn't get a chance to do this earlier, but I would really like to shout out one of our members, Griggs. She's one of our coaches over in Australia.

I hung out with her, by the way.

Yeah. So she's amazing. She is trying to, you know, gain up the courage to talk about. Start speaking about profit first on the main stage, but to. She started on a smaller scale, and she recently had an amazing experience speaking to disadvantaged women who are moving forward from abusive relationships, mental health issues, or refugee status. And she was teaching them how to control their personal finances better into budget and profit first. So shout out to Lori. I think that's amazing.

I love that.

Yeah, Check her out in Australia. I mean, she's out there doing good. I actually saw that on Facebook. Yeah. And you see the. The women smiling, and they have some signs about empowerment and believing themselves. And when I was downstairs, she's telling me their stories. It's. I don't even want to repeat them because I will. I will have difficulty getting through it. But some of the stories, unbelievable what. What these women have gone through and then to recover their courage and take control over their finances. I can't even imagine it. So, Lori, we love you and everyone listening to show. Check out Lori Griggs. Just a wonderful person in Australia making big changes. She's near Brisbane, a little north of Brisbane. So if you're in Australia listening, check her out. Maybe you can use her services. All right, that was the end of the listener mail. So now.

So what'd you learn today?

I want to know what you learned. I'll go first. I know Kelsey doesn't like to go first, so I'll go first and we'll rotate.

Good looking out.

My big takeaway was make it visual. I could see as Adrian was going through this process of explaining how to visualize your process of putting sticky notes on the wall or something and then moving just cards around and seeing how the flow of the business is and how to change it. There was tons of other stuff. I don't take it off the table for you guys, but the visual component, hands down, really powerful. I love that tip.

Have, like, a vision board. I love that.

Yeah, Like A vision board.

I. I don't even know what the word. I'm trying to say. Emotional resistance. There's always gonna be an emotional resistance component to it. And the fact that she said, you need to start streamlining your business from day one.

Yeah.

It's gonna be hard, but do it.

Yeah. So even you know, you got a tiny little business, it's you.

Yeah.

Like, you gotta make it efficient. She's arguing.

Yeah. And that was my biggest takeaway when she said, anytime an operation is happening, there's an opportunity to improve. So no matter what, you have an operation, and there is opportunities to tweak and fix to make it better.

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if that may be a challenge. I'm going to talk with Ron about doing it here. You could do it in your own business. Just putting index cards on the wall, saying, you know, step one is, I get the order. Step two, put in the kiln. Step three, and then start moving the cards around all those processes and see if there's a way to make it flow faster, more effectively. We definitely can do the same here.

Here. Yeah.

I kind of wanted to say I want to hire you, Adrian, to come into the office and work with me.

I know, I know.

I think I'm going to, but I gotta. I gotta sneak it by Ron.

You're sneak in a good way.

I got Ron. I need Ron to do it, but there's so much distraction going on right now. I think.

I know he'd be resistant. Timing's not good.

Okay. All right. Plus, the whole shirt thing was a sham like that. It didn't really happen, but now I want it to happen. I want to. I want her to come here and have my shirt unbuttoned. It would. So she'd start vomiting in her own mouth. I just want to do that just for fun. All right.

Just corner her in an elevator. No problem.

Yeah. Isn't that. I sound like the creepiest human being on the planet. Like, I listen to some of these episodes. I'm like, that. I am disgusting. I corner at a bar, unbuttoned shirt in the elevator. I'm like, I have a question for you.

It's creepier now that there's two women on the show instead of one woman.

I know that's the dynamic, but the reality is, like, in the elevator was 100 people, and I'm yelling across the elevator, I have an idea I think you'll. You'll appreciate. And she's like, I don't know if it's so good. I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. Like that was it at the bar. I'm like, it's so loud here. I have to ask you about this lumberyard. I want to write in the book. So that's the reality, but the way I explain is way more salacious.

Are you going to tell us about your new book?

That's me crumpling paper and excitement. So listen, I'm with my publisher, and we came to a title, Prime Time after, like, iteration after iteration. And to be honest, didn't love it, but it was like, holy credit's getting a little frustrated. And I acquiesced and said, okay, Prime Time's makes sense. They call back about a week later, said, we can't do prime time a little bit Me. He's like, thank God. But then blew up. Me's like, oh, my God, Sheen. Title again. They said, we need a new title. So we ran a survey, if you will, of the profit first professionals, the general entrepreneurial community. Have over like 300 combined responses and ran a split test. The winner is Clockwork.

Nice.

So the new book title is Clockwork. You know, just link Clockwork. Clockwork. And the subtitle is Design a business that runs itself.

Love it.

That simple. It's all about business efficiency. Adrian will be in the book. That's why I was interviewing her.

Installing. Awesome.

Yeah. So Clockwork is the new book, and.

That'S why you were.

You are a true a hole. Oh, that's what I bought. Okay, you're right.

Never mind, though. She's a genius.

I know, I know. Anything else we gotta talk about?

No, but we want to hear what you think.

Yeah.

Go to itunes, Stitcher, tunein radio, Google Play, and of course, profitfirstpodcast.com and if you're feeling frisky, fatdaddyfatback.com Fat Daddy Fatback Ruby.

Ruby's a little slow to it. Yeah. And hey, why don't you go to profitfirstprofessionals.com? listen, your business needs to be streamlined. There's no question about it. But I think the trigger to it is profitability. Literally, if you take your profit first, your business will tell you how. Or what is the problem with your business? Meaning if you take your profit first and there's not enough money to pay your bills, you got an operational issue, or maybe you have a leads issue, but it will force the hard conversation up front, and that's when you have to streamline your business. Now, how do you take your profit first? Real simple. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com we have 100. Well, the chime went off today, right? So 180, 190. I don't know what it is. We got a lot of people specializing in different verticals, different businesses, different areas of the world. From Lori Griggs in Australia down under all the way to the northern parts of Canada and southern parts of South America and everywhere in between, we have profit first professionals ready to help you. Are you ready for the help? Well, if you are, go to, and you should be, go to proffersprofessionals.com click on the find button, fill out the little form. You thought it was step one, step two, didn't you? Fill out the find. Click on the find button, fill out the form, click on submit. We'll make an introduction to a proffers professional. Now, these are independent business owners. They've become certified in profit first. You're not forced to use one particular person, evaluate them, interview them. If they resonate, let's do this. If they don't come back to us, we'll make a second introduction. We'll find someone else. But we always make the best introduction based upon how you fill out that form. So fill it out accurately. Do it now. Profit first professionals. Dot com. Click on find. Fill it out now, and let's make your business more profitable than ever before. You guys cool?

Yeah, man.

All right, let's get out of here. Let's get some music playing. I love that guitar.

I was counting for a second. I was like, whoa, you sound like a cat.

I have the song. Memorize.

Guitar.

I should. Yeah, you gotta make some lyrics.

Okay, Remember when we were gonna do a jingle?

Bring the jingle back, can you? You can write it or you can write it. You can write it. You can sing it. Opposite music. All right, here we go.