Why Most Small Businesses Fail (And How to Avoid It) with Andy Weins

And again, it's freedom of money, not more money. Money is a vehicle. And so whatever the desire is, the challenge with business owners is they don't sit down and define what their top priority is. They don't define what success is. When you do that, you get to start to pave a path one brick at a time, getting closer to what that idea of success is. And yes, the success will change. Over time. At first you're like, I'll do whatever it takes to start a business. I'll work 90 hours a week. Done it. I did that for the first 4 years. And then eventually it's like, I want to sleep in one Saturday. Like, that would be great. And then it changes and it changes and it changes. So at least every year, say, what's the top priority this year? A 22-year-old unmarried has unlimited energy, right? And time and probably not a lot of money. A 35-year-old with a spouse and kids and infrastructure has different priorities. So the book calls out and asks those questions. What do you want? And then what are the questions necessary to get you there?

Andy, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. We are here to talk about your brand new book, Stop Avoiding. Avoiding Your Numbers. And you kick off the book reflecting on some of your early money experiences. Tell us about those Tuesday night yelling matches that you would observe.

Yeah, my parents have owned a business now for 35 years. And growing up, it was the same fight every single week between my parents, which was my dad spent too much. There wasn't enough money coming in. They're writing checks on a Tuesday or Wednesday that might get to the people that, you know, they're writing the check to by Friday or Saturday, which means they might have to clear by Monday or Tuesday. And how much money do we need to basically generate in the next 5 days so that those checks that we're writing today that are probably past due actually clear? And so watching my parents stumble through personal and professional finances was the catalyst behind me and the first, my first business, my first real business with my brother 10 years ago. was, okay, we're never gonna have those kinds of fights. And that was the catalyst behind it.

What you're highlighting is we all have a story that we tell ourselves about money. And I think that most people would admit that their earliest money memories are negative, or they're telling a negative story, a negative version of that reality. So you used that negative experience to say, hey, I'd like something different. But most people don't do that. Most people just say, I want to avoid my numbers. I don't wanna think about them because Money is bad. I know I need money to grow my business, but like, I don't want to spend my time thinking about it.

Yeah, money is scary. You know, when I, when I ask business owners, how are you? How are you doing? Oh, we're good. We're busier than we were last year. I'm like, well, what do the numbers tell you? And people don't know that story. And to your point, it's because numbers are scary and people avoid them. And because you hit the nail on the head, Ritter, too, most people have negative experiences with their numbers, right? They think of bills. They think of Budgets, they think of accounting, they think of taxes. And once you start shifting the language into, well, what about forecasting? What about planning? What about planning out your trips and your retirement and your life? And then what does it take to get there versus budgets and sterile ideas and profit and loss statements and balance sheets and things of that nature? So when you embrace your numbers, you can just start to take control of the story. That they're telling you by understanding the story and also then rewriting the story as you go instead of waiting until the end of the quarter or the end of the year to say, well, how'd we do?

That word budget still sends a shiver down my spine. I hate that word.

Does it come from corporate America days?

Uh, some of it does. And I just, yeah, you know what? It felt, it feels constricting, which is also the same way that I think about corporate America in general is it feels constricting. It feels like it's limiting my freedom, although You sort of have a, a little bit of a different take. It's like, you know, in the same way that Jocko says discipline creates freedom, like budgets also create freedom in a way, don't they?

Absolutely. You know, when we first start the book off, the first chapter is about why are you in business and what do you want from your business? And that's not a question people typically ask. When I work with my clients, I typically say, you know, what's your number one priority? They say, oh, I want to go on vacation this year. I'm like, cool. How many vacations and to where? Right. So how much time and money do we need to go on these vacations? And then we backwards plan from there. And all of a sudden it's like, well, wait, I can use my numbers and my money as a path to get what I want versus working and just seeing what happens. My wife and I live by 4 freedoms, and the freedoms are freedom of time, freedom of purpose, freedom of relationship, and freedom of money. And so it's not freedom from money. Money is a vehicle. It's freedom of money in that we have to go make a bunch of it. And when you have that structure, we use the word structure versus discipline. When you have that structure in your personal life and your professional life, then you have all the freedom in the world to make the right decisions because you've already saved the money in the right spots. You've already made those decisions. You already made your priorities list, and now you're merely executing versus waking up every day and guessing.

Yeah, those are the same 4 freedoms that I think about and that I operate. You know, I'm constantly thinking about those 4 all the time. And I think I originally got them from Dan Sullivan.

Yeah, 10x is easier than 2x. 100%, that's where we got them from. Yep.

Yeah. And you know what's interesting in this? My whole subject around, my whole thinking around money has started to change because Book Thinkers, as it grows and matures, we realized that we were trying to 10x on a 2x foundation and that's not realistic. And it was breaking a lot of things and there were Yeah, a lot of things were slipping through the cracks, and so we decided to implement EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And that forced us to take a step back and reevaluate what was happening in the business. And I realized I had an aversion, a real aversion, to looking at and understanding our numbers—not just the financial numbers, but like operational KPIs as well. And I was flying by the seat of my pants for a long time within the business, and I think that Stop Avoiding Your Numbers, your new book, is helping me realize that I just need to tell a different story. I really do. That's where it starts. It's that understanding these things and measuring them and looking for them doesn't limit my freedom as a business owner, which is like I'm trying to get away from that whole corporate America feel. But what it actually does is it helps me to enable a path forward that's healthier and that's better and more enabling for me, not more constricting for Well, and so I love EOS.

Huge. I, I got— I read Traction 10 years ago. We implemented EOS 3 years ago in our business. And one of the things with— one of the first, uh, aspects of your L10 every week is your scorecard. And people are like, okay, I have a scorecard, what do I measure? And it's like, well, at first everything, and, and then figure out what's actually moving the needle. What do you talk about anecdotally? So like, I was downstairs earlier with my guys, how are the phones today? Right. And it's an anecdotal question. It's like, oh, they're busy or they're ringing or nope, they're slow. It's like, well, what does that mean? So I know in our business, 65 phone calls, that's our goal this time of year, 65 phone calls a day. Okay. It's a metric. It's a number. It's not a number that's going to show up on my profit and loss statement. It's a number. It's a leading indicator on whether or not we're going to have work next week. How many, how many times the phone ring this week is a leading indicator for next week. And now that same number is also a lagging indicator as to our marketing efforts. Last week. So, so when, so you, you roll out a system like EOS and says, create a scorecard and you're like, cool. Like, where, again, where do you start? And because people in general in business don't get into business to be number crunchers, they're not excited about it. They feel forced. And when people feel forced and they're, they're undereducated, they start guessing and then they start making decisions on these assumptions, these guesses. And it's actually probably worse than if they when they just go back to their gut feelings or the oblivion, you know, that they were in before. You know, naivety is a beautiful thing until you wanna scale, right?

Right.

Naivety gets you in business. It will not keep you outta business. I had a younger entrepreneur ask me this couple weeks ago, we're at an event, and he said, hey, what one piece of advice do you have for a young entrepreneur? I said, don't run outta money. And he laughed and he goes, that's what happened in my first business. I literally ran outta money. And I go, what was the number one reason? He goes, I mix my personal money and my business money. I go, there you go. So that's why. So not because you didn't have sales, not because of profit margin, not because of customers. No, you ran out of money. And so how do you not run out of money? Like, that's a great question and it's not a rhetorical one. And yet as business owners, how do I not run out of money is like something that goes through my mind every day, even 10 years in the business. Multi-millions of dollars every, you know, every year top-line revenue. And I still am like, man, how do I not run out of money this year? Or how do I make this investment not run out of money? How do I buy this house I want and not run out of money? Right. Because that's, that's, that's when the game is over, when you run out of money.

Hmm. That could be an episode title, How to Not Run Out of Money for this show. That's a good one. Yeah, it's a good question. I've probably never told you this story, Andy, but Way in the early days of Book Thinkers, when it was still very much a side hustle, I had that ignorance, that naivete that I could do anything and rule the world and grow and scale this business really fast. And I had a mentor tell me, hey, Nick, I think you should slow down a little bit. And at the time, I had just read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, and we were talking about it. And he said, you know, the reason that so many small businesses fail is not because the founder burns out, but it's because they burn out of money. Most small businesses fail because they run out of money. And what happens when you start to run out of money is you start to compromise on your values. You start to discount services, you start to make bad decisions. And like you highlighted, Andy, you start to operate on assumptions as if they were fact. And so that puts you in a horrible place. And so my mentor at the time said, hey, Nick, slow and steady wins the race here. Like, continue to build until you have a little bit more certainty. Then make the jump. Don't jump too soon. Don't try to build the airplane on the way down because again, you're going to operate from a place of scarcity. So back to your question, which is just how do you not run out of money is, is the central question that all of us need to ask. And if you don't understand the basics of financial business literacy, then you're never going to be able to answer the question in the first place. So a great place to start is by reading a book like this because you break it down. Super simple terms. And when you walk out of this experience, you just— you at least understand the basics.

And that's what it is. I tell people there are no answers within the book because there's not this silver bullet of how to not run out of money. The book is there to inform you of things that you might not already know, and it's there to ask questions. There's over 150 questions in the book to ask your business, everything from what is my best product line or service from a profitability standpoint? To where am I losing money, right? Where's the bleeding occurring? How do we stop the bleed? We have a whole chapter on how to stop the bleeding because we go into it knowing that every business is bleeding some money somewhere. And so how do we stop that? And there's like the obvious, like, oh, it's subscriptions or it's penalties and it's fines. Well, it's also buying things retail when you can buy them in bulk. It's by paying your vendors in 10 days when you actually can pay them in 30 days. And it doesn't cost you anymore, right? Like, it's, it's out in the margins that can make macro huge differences because there's some things that, yeah, you have little to no control over. For example, you have no control over the price of oil right now. You do have control over where you're buying your fuel from for businesses that, you know, have fuel or gasoline or diesel. You have choice over what benefits the credit card does or does not offer. You do have choices over what perks there is from a financing standpoint, right? So there are perks where it's like, yeah, the cost of fuel goes up and how do you sustain your business during those, those times of change. And so that's what the business does. It asks, it puts you in a position to inform you of opportunities and then ask you questions to dig deeper. Because the reality is, in the last 5 years of consulting as a fractional CFO and the last 8 or 9 years consulting in general, business owners have the answers within them. What they don't typically have is the people asking them the questions to bring out those answers.

And that's what the book does, is it asks questions. Yeah, by the way, on that piece specifically, one that I've been thinking a lot about recently is discounting. It's like if you offer a service that has a 15% profit margin, you offer a 10% discount on the service, and then you wonder why you have razor-thin margins on the back end. You want to raise it. It's like, yeah, you got, you got additional top-line revenue, which Feeds your vanity, but you got rid of all of the profit, which like really removes the sanity in the deal.

And a lot of people don't think about discounting and, and, uh, yeah, when you need, when you need quick cash, when you need physical quick cash, discounting and getting paid right away can save your business. Like you said, that is building the plane like right before you're about to nosedive, right? I mean, you're already on the way down. Um, and so I hate discounting. Absolutely hate discounting. Gary Vee talks about discounting because what you do is you're basically telling people not to respect your price. Because when you're not willing to have price integrity, why would your customers? Um, actually, He-Man: Masters of the Universe, the new movie's coming out this summer, and I watched a documentary on it. And one of the reasons why they failed, Mattel failed, was they were bonusing their VPs on amount of product shipped, not sold. So they shipped all this product to all these stores that put it in all these warehouses And then people were going and buying the product. And then employees were telling them, hey, just wait 2 weeks and this will all be marked down 50% because we have more inventory on the shelves. Right. And so now they're discounting it. So they shipped all this product. They ended up losing all this money because they shipped it and they sold it. And yet they sold it at a discount. And so, for example, there's a great example in the book, right? Instead of discounting your services, right, how do you add more value? You can either explain the value of it. You can give away a non-monetary piece, or you can give away something else that's monetary in nature. The guy that does a restaurant— not a restaurant, but the guy that flips the taffer, the big guy. He talks about his restaurant, right? The first time you come in, they say, okay, you get free dessert the first time. And then the second time you come in, like, oh, hey, when you come back next time, ribs are on me. Third time, when you come in, chicken's on me. In total, between the cheesecake, the ribs, and the chicken, it costs him about $20 in total in food costs that get washed away. No big deal. So he's given away $20 in product with about $50 to $60 in value. And yet he never discounted anything else that he sold. So free is not the same as discount. Including other things into the deal is not a discount. And that's something I had to learn in junk removal. I, at first I'm like, oh, I'll give you a discount. And what it was, was me not having the confidence to stand by my pricing. So when you're willing to give everybody a 10% discount, well then reduce your prices by 10% and use that as your advertised price. And so simple lessons like that. And also to your point, when I've, when I've seen companies bleeding cash, they'll do one of two things. They'll say, oh, we gotta increase our prices. Well, when you increase your prices and you're not selling through your inventory, Then increasing your prices actually will decrease demand, or they discount it and it's like, well, hold on, you're already losing cash and now you're bringing less cash in. So making a price change when you're bleeding cash isn't the answer. And so we ask a few questions to get down to what is the right answer, because your first Band-Aid is not going to right the ship.

Yeah. And I, there's a line, there was a small line in the book that I highlighted and you'll see when I post the book on Instagram, now that we're having in this conversation. I thought it was great. You said ignorance is expensive. And there's a really big opportunity cost to not answering these questions in the book. Like you said, thinking about discounting just as an example, it's like the difference between me randomly throwing discounts out there all year long versus me not doing that is, I don't know, tens and tens of thousands of dollars. in profit that the business could hold on to that it's not. I mean, it's expensive not to think about these things. It really is.

Well, so here's a prime example of everything in life, right? I never go to movie theaters. I'm not a fan of movie theaters. Right. And so now you can buy movies that are in the theaters on Amazon, right? $20. Or I can wait 90 days and I can watch it for free on Amazon or like, you know, $2.49 or something. Or I can wait like a year and it'll be on Netflix for free. No questions asked. So I, I love movies, big fan, and yet I'm not going to pay $20 to watch a brand new movie because I know it's going to be away for free someday. 50 years ago, when there was no cable TV, there was no HBO, there was no streaming, like, I'm right, it was you saw it in the theater or you waited till it went to the big 3 networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, and then you watched it there and it was like a spectacle. A spectacle. So people went to the theaters. Well, now people know, I can wait, I can get the same thing in 6 months for free. So that is a prime example of when you discount or when you give people discounts. Here, here, I'm in Wisconsin, we have Kohl's Cash, right? So you have your Kohl's Cash you get every time you buy, and then some weekends are, you know, one weekend a month is double your Kohl's Cash. Well, what does everybody do? Everyone waits for that one weekend To double down their Kohl's Cash. So it's like, why not just discount it day one and just call it the price? And again, there's, there's psychology behind it, and, and really smart people know how to do this. The average business owner has no clue how to discount their products or services that will actually stimulate purchasing.

Andy, what do you say to somebody in the audience who goes, didn't he say he does millions of dollars a year in business? Why is he worrying about $20 and waiting a year to see a movie that he wants to watch. How do you, how do you think about frugality as it relates to the success that you've had in life?

I invest heavily in the things that matter. And I, in my own personal life, I've gotten rid of all the things that do not serve me. Right. So, you know, 15 years ago, I still smoked cigarettes, 20 years ago, whatever it was. Right. And then I drank alcohol. I don't drink alcohol. Why? Because it's not a good use of my money and my time and my energy. Why, why not spend $20 on a movie? Because I'd rather have a million-dollar house than a $20 movie. And like, is it a lot of $20 movies? Yeah, it's a lot of $20 movies and a lot of $100 dinners and a lot of $300 concerts that I choose not to go to because I choose to have a million-dollar house. Or again, going back to the 4 freedoms, uh, movies don't fall in the 4 freedoms. Not having a mortgage falls in the 4 freedoms. And so again, structure. Like even the things that I enjoy doing, right? Like I like going out to eat for the most part. I, we, my wife and I almost never go out to eat because we'll cook at home because our priorities are to retire sooner and not have to work. Now we will still work, but not having to work, not, you know, not having a mortgage is a priority to me right now. So it's every choice has an effect. You know, some people say all this work, you know, I'll just make more money. It's like, okay, go make more money. I would rather make less money. I can tell you writing a book costs a lot of money. So I would much rather spend tens of thousands of dollars to write a book than spend $20 on a new movie or $50 on a, you know, a forgettable dinner. $50 dinner is like nothing. That's like a Tuesday. Right. And so I, me personally, my goals are to change the world one word at a time. I've written 2 books. I want to influence the entire world. And so I've created the structure where I do that. And $20 movies don't fall into that. And for other people, maybe $20 movies are like the greatest thing ever. They love going Friday nights to every brand new movies that comes out. Awesome. Create your life that revolves around going to those $20 movies.

I'm the same way that you are. I think, you know, as far as like doubling down, like spending more money on the things that bring you a lot of energy and then eliminating all of your spending on the things that don't. My wife and I, we don't go out to eat in our home state of Massachusetts almost ever, but when we travel to a new city or a new country, we'll go out every night. Because going to the same restaurants here week after week after week after week doesn't bring us any energy. But a new restaurant experience in a new city or a new country that we've never been to brings us a lot of energy. And so that's where we draw the line. And so it's not that we don't like to eat out, it's just that we don't like to eat out at home because it's a waste of money. So yeah, every— I think it's good for everybody in the audience to think about that and then think about that through the lens of your business. And a lot of people spend money on fancy bells and whistles to look cool in their businesses, but they don't really think about if it's generating a return on investment when they spend money on so many miscellaneous things.

Well, you know, especially when entrepreneurs are first starting off, making that first hire is a huge critical moment. And then you get the, well, why would I hire somebody when I can do it myself? And fair. Well, I can tell you, 2 years ago I bought out another business locally, and I hired the owner of the business to run my business. He's now our integrator. Buying a business is not inexpensive, and yet the amount of freedom I bought with that purchase. So I worked really hard to buy somebody, to buy out a business so that he can run my business to get me the freedom of time that I really desire. And so you have other people that want to work and they want to maximize their profits today, so they're willing to work 70, 80 hours. I come into work typically around 11. I leave at 3. I come in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Tuesdays and Fridays, I work from home. That gives me freedom of time, purpose, and relationship way more than more money. Right? And again, it's freedom of money, not more money. Money is a vehicle. And so whatever the desire is, the challenge with business owners is they don't sit down and define what their top priority is.

Right.

They don't define what success is. When you do that, you get to start to pave a path one brick at a time, getting closer to what that idea of success is. And yes, the success will change over time. At first you're like, I'll do whatever it takes to start a business. I'll work 90 hours a week. Done it. I did that for the first 4 years. And then eventually it's like, I want to sleep in one Saturday. Like, that would be great. And then it changes. And it changes and it changes. So at least every year, say, what's the top priority this year? A 22-year-old unmarried has unlimited energy, right? And time and probably not a lot of money. A 35-year-old with a spouse and kids and infrastructure has different priorities. So the book calls out and asks those questions. What do you want? And then, what are the questions necessary to get you there?

There's another quote that you have, Andy, on page 51 that says, your numbers reflect your company's decisions and behaviors. And I love that objective truth, like looking at the reality of your situation. Again, all progress starts by telling the truth. And the truth is you are where you are. And that's the result of the decisions that you've been making for years. And so if you're a business owner listening to this, and I'm one of them, by the way, that's unhappy or dissatisfied with their profitability, you know, you're bringing all this money in and it's all going out and you don't know what's happening. Well, chances are there's a story within your numbers and you could dive in with curiosity, not fear, curiosity. And you can go figure it out and you could solve that problem. It's just math. What do you say, Andy, to people that say, I'm bad at math, I just don't like it?

I love it. Um, this book, you're 185 pages in before you see a financial statement. The questions I'm asking are not related to math. This is not a math exercise. The beautiful thing is almost all accounting It's going to be addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and that's it. And we have this fancy thing called ChatGPT or Manus or Copilot or whatever AI you use. You can literally type in like, what is my profit margin on this and this? You can just say those words and put the numbers in. It'll do the math for you. There's no need to worry about numerators and denominators. Let nerds like me get excited about that kind of stuff, right? And so it's not about the math. It's about the story. Everyone loves a good story. And your data, whether it's financial statements or hash marks on a sheet of paper, that data tells a story. And like you said in the book, it's a— the data is a direct reflection of the decisions and behaviors within your business. That's it, right? When you go to a basketball game, you're not like, Well, how did the team play? Oh, they played good. Well, you ask, well, who won? Which team scored more points than the other team? Like, that's, that's a leading in— or that's a lagging indicator as to how practice went this week. It's a leading indicator as to how their season is going. How many points did they score? So with you, well, how much profit did you have? You brought up a great point. I, um, there's a, a speaker that talks about this I've seen a few times recently, talks about profitless prosperity. It's people that are in business, they're bringing in money, and yet it looks prosperous. Oh yeah, we're making investments, we're building out, we're growing the company, we're hiring people. It's like, awesome. Where's your profit at? Oh yeah, we don't talk about that. So it's like, you know, so you can, you can have profitless prosperity. Absolutely. Especially when, when the economy's good, profitless prosperity is what growth looks like. Well, as soon as growth stops happening, All of a sudden, you have profitless and no prosperity.

Yeah, that is my story. I mean, BookThinkers has doubled year over year for the last 3 or 4 years in terms of top-line revenue, but profitability has gone down year over year. And the story is, well, I'm reinvesting and we're growing. And I think your point is, Well, what happens when that stops? Yeah. And so implementing EOS was my attempt at solving this and then getting an integrator who loves the numbers because I just— it hasn't been me, although I'm starting to. I think as you get more familiar with financial statements and you understand their importance a little bit better and the story they're telling, then you can start to find some more joy in it, which is slowly happening for me.

Do you have a CFO at your business?

I do.

Okay. Most businesses don't, which means that they're the CFO. And that's a scary thought. And as you know, when you look at companies, big companies, the CEO is the top boss, number one. And the second in line is the CFO. Not operations, not sales, not HR, not technology. Almost always it's the CFO because they understand the story of the business. So in your case, Your CFO's job is to understand the story of your business through the lens of the numbers. So where you thought were great decisions at the time, it's the job of the CFO to bring you back to reality. It's not, you know, as a fractional CFO, I never really talk about good or bad. It's, does this serve or not serve our greater purpose and our vision for the organization?

Yeah, I think, I mean, my fractional CFO has been with Book Thinkers for probably 5 years and has a really good understanding of the business. And I probably don't seek his advice as much as I should. You know, it's more looking at like after-action reports on numbers and not as much proactive thinking. But that's because of me, not him. I should probably change that relationship.

Well, you know, so for my first book, should is a shit word. Does not serve.

Yes, I will.

There you go.

Because I certainly can, that's for sure. Power falls on me.

Yeah. And again, the CFO is limited by the CEO because the CEO's job, the visionary's job from an EOS standpoint, is to cast the vision. And when your vision is, hey, just tell me what happened, well, that's what he'll give you versus, hey, I want to perform for the next 2 to 3 years so I can start looking at the implications of the decisions I'm making. Oh, those are 2 completely different conversations. And so the key there, as we start to wrap up here, accounting is about what happened in the past, right? It's done after. Financials, forecasting, is all about the future. Our job as the CFO is to look at what's happened up until this point and what can we anticipate moving forward. And when we pull one lever, hiring an employee, buying a vehicle, renting a space, right? How does it impact the numbers? Increasing prices, how does it impact the numbers? So that's our job. And really, I would challenge your CFO then to say, okay, I want to be more future-focused. So how do we grow the business? How do we grow top— how do we double our top-line revenue and maintain our EBITDA margin? Because then you'll double your EBITDA dollars. And that's a real question to solve. And for the average person that doesn't have a CFO, the answers and the path are all within the book.

As, as we wrap up here one more time, Andy, who is the target customer for this book? When you decided to write it with Lynn, who did you have in mind?

Business owners under $2 million in revenue. 99% of businesses never make it to $2 million. 98% of businesses never even make it to $1 million. And yet most financial books out there start with the assumption that you have an accountant and a bookkeeper and a CFO. You know your numbers, you have some financial literacy. This book knows, as I knew as a young business owner, that there is a huge gap in knowledge. The tagline to the book is The Guide to Financial Confidence for Small Business Owners. It's written for small business owners. The other thing interesting, my co-author Lynn and I both recognize When we look back, we first started writing this book 2 years ago. We looked at our target market. Both of us have been doing this for 5+ years. 80% of our clients were women. So that was also interesting. So we wrote it— our avatar, our character throughout the book is actually a woman.

Yeah.

Because we've seen that more women are more open. It's not that women are better or worse than men. They have been generally more open to hiring fractional CFOs. So that was also interesting. So we wrote it and we wrote it with 2 female ghostwriters. So we also wrote it with, um, who are not nerds like us, so they were able to, um, make it, uh, more digestible than what sometimes Lynn and I nerd out to.

Yeah, that's so funny because you, Andy, are, uh— I mean, I met you in person before. You, you are a manly man. You're a masculine man. Yep. You know, you're tall, you're tattooed, you know, you wear the camo pants and You've got a deep voice, you carry a lot of authority with you. So it's interesting that you attract more female clients than you do male clients.

And also the fact that it was 2 female business owners who both are ghostwriters that own their businesses. They're the ones that shaped it because there's certain things that are like, hey, this doesn't resonate, like explain it differently. Because we wanted to keep our audience in mind. That, I mean, that's, that's the key is it does us no good writing a book to show people how smart we are or not. It's about writing a book that is going to change lives. You know, you're wearing your hat. Books change lives. It's a, it's a book that with the right investment of time will change your business outlook, will change your life and your business. It will be that critical aha moment you have where you'll start to fall in love with the story that your numbers are telling you.

Well, I am a testament to that. It's happening to me in real time. So thank you for your time on the podcast today. Where can people go to get a copy of the book if they'd like one?

stopavoidingyournumbers.com, or it's available on Amazon, Stop Avoiding Your Numbers.

All right, final question for you, Andy. If this book was deleted but you could leave the world with just one simple message from the book, what would that be?

There's no hooks in your ass or trees in your way. So that's where I grew up on the farm. That was always the answer, right? And like, like you said a little bit, right, you avoided your numbers. You let somebody else handle them. You've let your CFO kind of give you what you've seen so far, right? The reality is there's no hooks in your ass or trees in your way. We all have limiting self-beliefs that have put an artificial ceiling on our— on ourselves. And the reality is, as soon as you remove that artificial ceiling, you, me, the listener, what a wonderful world it can be.

Yes, very true. And I love that. I love that. What a great way to wrap up. Thank you.

Thanks, Dick.