Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to Wealth Intelligence. I'm Dominick d'. Andrea. On this show, we look beyond headlines and ask more practical questions. How do decisions we make today create greater security, flexibility, quality of life tomorrow? For business owners, that conversation has to include the business itself. Because for many entrepreneurs, the company is not just a source of income. It may also be one of their most important long term assets.
Today I'm joined by Ryan Herpin, a business strategist and high performance consultant with more than a decade of experience helping organizations grow, improve operations, strengthen leadership and identify new opportunities.
Ryan works with entrepreneurs and executives to turn complex business challenges into practical plans for sustainable growth. Stronger performance.
A business can provide revenue and still leave its owner financially vulnerable. And growth depends on constant founder involvement, inconsistent execution and or, or fragile systems. The company may be creating income without creating the kind of durable value that supports long term wealth.
Ryan how ownership should think differently about performance when their business is also part of their financial future.
Welcome Ryan. It's great to have you on the show today.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: I'm so glad to be here. This is such a, such a pleasure. So what do you want to dive into first here?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: That's great. That's exactly what I'm going to ask you now. Great, great. Prelude to it. When you look at a business that appears successful from the outside, what tells you whether it is actually becoming stronger underneath the revenue number?
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Well, I'll try to keep it nice and simple with this one because it's easy for people to overcomplicate this. But you know, revenue is important. But revenue is only evidence someone is willing to buy what you're selling. It doesn't tell me whether you've built a healthy business.
When I evaluate a company, I start looking underneath that number. Are margins improving? Is cash flow healthy? Are customers staying? Are processes repeatable? Do employees know what they're expected to do? You know, is leadership developing? And can the company absorb a problem without everything falling apart completely? I've seen businesses with impressive revenue numbers that are incredibly fragile underneath. One of the things I tell business owners is don't confuse a bigger business with a better business.
A strong business should become more predictable, more profitable, more repeatable and ultimately less dependent on extraordinary effort to produce ordinary results. So to kind of sum it up in a nice little bumper sticker here is revenue tells me how big the business is. It doesn't necessarily tell me how healthy the business is.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: I love that. That sounds fantastic. So basically what I'm hearing is you could have a ton of sales, but if you're not Bringing in revenue.
Like, I watch Shark Tank all the time and I see these people promoting on Shark Tank. Oh, yeah, I've been business for two years, and I sold $2 million in product, but they lost $300,000 in cash. So they really sold 2 million, but they lost 3 million. So, yeah, they made 2 million sale. But is the business good?
So basically you're saying, no, it's not exactly. Got to make sure that, yes, you want to generate revenue. So that was, that was very valuable.
Thank you. So for the next question, what are some signs that an owner has built a good job for themselves or rather than a business that can create durable value beyond their daily effort?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Okay, well, we'll look at it this way. The easiest test is to ask what happens if the owner disappears for 30 days? Right. Do decisions stop? Do sales stop? Do customers stop? Well, actually, no. Do customers start calling their phones personally when they're away? Does the team wait for permission and does quality decline? Right. So if so, then the owner may have created a very successful job, but they haven't necessarily created an independent enterprise. Right. You know, it's different between having a job and owning a business. And there's nothing inherently wrong with an owner being heavily involved.
The problem is when the owner has to be involved. That's an important distinction. The goal isn't to make the owner irrelevant. The goal is to make their involvement increasingly strategic instead of operationally necessary. Owner dependence in a business is one of the leading causes for a business to stay stagnant or eventually fail when that owner is no longer able to be as involved. So there's, there's a big difference between a business that benefits from its owner and a business that can't survive without their own.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: I truly know that. I understand that because I travel a few times a year, and I make sure my business partner knows when I'm away.
We put messages out so the clients know, okay, call Staphon, not me, because I'm away. So, yes, I understand completely. It's definitely how we manage it, not just how it manages us. So that was. I love that answer. And a great value add for our audience.
Next question. Ryan.
How should leaders distinguish between growth that strengthens the company and growth that simply adds complexity, cost, or risk?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: This, this actually kind of ties into a little bit of what we were talking about before in the sense of, you know, I, I, I think you have to ask what the growth leaves behind.
If we add a million dollars in revenue but need 1.1 million worth of complexity to support it. That's not necessarily good growth.
Right. Good growth should eventually improve some combination of profitability, capability, market position, cash flow, customer diversity, talent, or really even the enterprise value overall. You know, this is where entrepreneurs sometimes get into trouble because we're naturally attracted to opportunity.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: I work with owners to ask a different question.
Not simply can we do this? But should we do this? And does this, you know, does it make the organization stronger? Because opportunity without discipline can become distraction or a better way to put it. Now, another kind of way to break that down is not all revenue is necessarily good revenue and not all growth creates value, as we kind of were talking about before. You know, if, if we add, you know, business can make $10 million of revenue, but if it cost them 10.1 to actually operate, that's a failing business.
Revenue is not the goal. Profitability, sustainability, and time freedom, those are really the type of goals that we should be looking at.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Yeah. The one thing I always talk about to allude with who you're saying is know your numbers, know. Always know your numbers, know where your numbers are. You know, my goal in our practice and talking to our leaders and is to keep, like I said, keep growing the revenue so the cost, the fixed costs become a smaller percentage of what we're bringing in.
So we always pay attention to those numbers. And you're giving great value to our audience with your answers on how you handle and help your clients out. Thank you for that.
So, Ryan, where do you most often see operational weakness quietly eroding the value of an owner believes they are building? I love this question.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Now, this question tends to hit some people in the soft spots. It's an open nerve occasionally, because the reality is it's usually in the places that have become normal to the organization. So we'll start off at the top of this list of the typical problems I see that people are missing. Poor communication, undefined responsibilities, no meaningful KPIs, inconsistent processes, rework, tribal knowledge, customer concentration, weak accountability decisions constantly being escalated to the owner. I mean, goodness, the list goes on and on. But those are typically the, the open nerves that people are missing. And when we get to the bottom of, hey, here's the root cause of XYZ problem.
People tend to get pretty upset. But, you know, because the company has learned how to survive those things, leadership stops seeing them as a problem. And that's dangerous. Now, that's one reason an outside perspective can be valuable when it comes to, you know, when, when I came into an organization, I.
Looking for the things everybody inside the company has learned to work around.
Now, tribal knowledge is one of those really common things, especially manufacturing.
It doesn't matter what manufacturing you're in. People have tribal knowledge where they don't really have it documented, how to do it the best way or the problems they dealt with before. So I look for those types of problems because eventually those workarounds become extremely expensive. But one of the most expensive phrases in business is that's just how we've always done it.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: And that's not the right answer in life. I agree with that 100%.
You know, I like to liken myself and I love this saying, I'm the old dog. You can teach new tricks too, because we need to keep growing, we need to keep moving forward. And just because you did it like this yesterday, if there's a better mousetrap that somebody can show you, take advantage of it because you're going to grow by doing things like that. If you just let me keep doing this way, I did it 20 years ago.
I started the business 32 years ago and I was using a yellow notepad to keep everything. Now I got CRMs, I've got financial planning software. I got so many things that make my life so much better than they were 30 years ago that I'm giving a better experience to clients. So you're 100% right. So I love that. You know, I hate that we're going on the last question of this segment, but we got three more segments to go, so know we're get some valuable information for all of you watching this. But so Ryan, to finish this segment, if a business owner wants the company to support future financial freedom, what should they begin with measuring besides top line revenue? And I know we already addressed some of this before.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: I'm glad you're asking this question though, because it allows me to go in a little bit more depth. Because right at the surface level, right off the top, I would start with profitability and cash flow. But I would definitely go much deeper. Gross margin, net margin, customer concentration, employee productivity, reoccurring revenue, accounts receivable, capacity, retention.
I would say leadership depth and the big one, owner dependency.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: And then I would measure something that's harder to put on a financial statement, and that's how much of the business still lives inside the owner's head. Because if the knowledge, relationships, decisions and processes necessary to operate the company leave when the owner leaves, that's a very significant risk. Ultimately, I want an owner to understand whether the business is becoming more valuable or independent or not just simply larger.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: I love that. I agree with that completely and that's why I before I brought my business partner and we completely built a relationship. I completely let him learn how I operate my business. So now I have a succession plan. So what you're saying is completely right and that's the best way that I can see running a business and hopefully some other business owners learn from this and can grow from our ideas.
Thank you again for this segment. After the break, Ryan and I are going deeper into one of the biggest risks inside many privately held businesses. What happens when too much of the company still depends on the founder. Thank you very much. See you soon.
How was that?
[00:12:24] Speaker B: It was good.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: You're more than welcome back to Wealth Intelligence. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv.
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Welcome back.
I'm Dominic d' Andrea with Ryan Herpin, business strategist and high performance consultant. We're looking at connection between stronger operations and stronger long term financial outcomes for business owners.
Founder dependence can feel like commitment. The owner knows every client, approves every decision, solves every problem, and keeps the machine moving. But that same behavior that helped build the company can eventually become a constraint.
This segment explores how leadership systems, delegation and team capabilities affect resilience and why a business that cannot function without its owner may offer less freedom than its revenue suggests. Welcome back, Ryan.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Glad to be here. I'm having a lot of fun so far, so let's keep this ball rolling.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: I am too. So let's start off this segment with the new question.
At what point does a founder's involvement stop being a strength and start becoming an operational bottleneck?
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Now that is a million dollar question, my friend. I would say again to keep it nice and simple. When their involvement starts preventing other people from developing right early in a company's life, the founder often has to be everything salesperson, problem solver, quality control, visionary, and manager. That works until the organization grows beyond the founder's individual capacity.
Then something interesting happens. The very behaviors that built the company can become the behaviors that ultimately limit it. And you know, if every meaningful decision has to travel through one person, eventually the entire organization can only move as fast as that person's bandwidth. Right? So the founder can become the ceiling of the company they created. And ultimately, if they're the one, if their entire team has to wait for them to make a decision, it's doomed.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: I can't agree more. And like I said earlier in the segment, you know, with my business partner, we have our design roles. Like, I can step in and do his role, he can step in and do my role. But if we're both available, I don't, you know, I'll call him and say, okay, you need to handle this and I need to handle that.
But we're both trained, so if we're. One of us is out sick or traveling, we can do that. So I can't agree more with what you're talking about. And it's very important that other business owners understand that you need to have a key team approach, not just the key, I'm the only person that can handle it approach.
So going along with that, what does a leadership team need in order to make good decisions without constantly waiting for the owner to step in?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: You know, I think of it. It's kind of funny. I think of it a lot of the time as like, I've got a toddler at home.
I say toddler, he's 4 now, my son's 4. And then I've got a young daughter who's. Who's on her way to two. But it's really similar to what they need when they want to do something independently. But for a team, it's. It's first and foremost, clarity. People need to understand what they're responsible for and what authority they actually have. They also need to know what outcomes they're accountable for and where the boundaries are.
You know, it's just like children. If your child is asking for an opportunity to do XYZ on their own, you've got to make it really clear, here's the responsibility, here's what you can do, here's what you have to make happen, and here's where those hard lines are. You cannot go across this highway, this main road. Right? It's the same kind of thing. But, you know, a lot of owners say, my people won't make decisions.
Well, then I ask, have you actually given them permission to?
I mean, sometimes we unintentionally train employees to bring every decision back to us, because every time they make one, you know, really make one decision that's different than we would, we overwrite them. And that's a big problem right now. You have to give people authority, you know, proportional to their responsibility, but then you give them good information, clear expectations.
Measurable outcomes and coaching. That's how you build leaders instead of followers.
Leadership implies the ability not only to act and think for yourself, but to help others then be able to act and think for themselves. So if you don't give them freedom and give them clear boundaries that you cannot expect anything to improve.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: I couldn't agree with that more. I love your parenting analogy.
And that really is where we teach future leaders. Like, I'm a little further in the game than you. My children are 19 and 15, but my 19 year old is on his second flight by himself heading home. He came down with me this weekend to enjoy a game and now he's heading back.
I didn't have to worry about anything. He got the app for the phone, he ordered Uber, he got himself to the airport, he got himself through security and he's on the plane heading back.
A lot of parents are afraid to teach that. So life is everything. You know, you have to learn to cut the cord as a business owner, as a parent, and let your family or let your, your employees learn from responsibility because it's the only way that you can succeed. Because if you do everything for anybody, like, like, my mother taught me how to do laundry when I was a teenager.
I still do my own laundry now. She taught me how to do it. I taught, I'm teaching my kids how to do it. Because again, you need to know how to do things to live in life. Same thing with business. Yep. And that's a valuable life lesson.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: We also have to be able to make a mistake. You know, you've got to be able to trust your people enough that you understand they're going to make a mistake. One of the things I teach in my businesses as well as the businesses I consult for, it's real simple. If you make a mistake, that's okay, but bring it to my attention or bring it to the leader's attention immediately. If you hide it or hang onto it and it bites in the butt later, then we got a problem. Mistakes happen. We've got to trust that when our people make a mistake, they can recover. Bring us in. We can solve the problem together and they won't make the same mistake again.
Failure is a part of learning.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: That's the key thing is learn from the mistake and fix it and don't do it again. 100% and again. Same thing with kids in business. Once they know that it's okay to make a mistake and move on, life is so much better. And that's a great advice for business owners. Keep going on with that topic, when you help an organization improve performance, how do you decide what should be standardized in a process and what still requires human judgment? I love this one.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Now, this is a really, really good question.
Over the 36 to 38 businesses that I've served in the last two years in 20 plus different industries, I think about this kind of differently because there's some different areas. But if I could break it down, I'd say I standardize what's repeatable and develop people for what's variable. Right? So if we perform something repeatedly and there's a known best practice, we should capture that process.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Right?
[00:20:25] Speaker B: But if I don't want SOPs replacing critical thinking, a great system should reduce unnecessary decision making so people have more capacity for the decisions that actually require judgment. So standardize the predictable, develop people for the unpredictable. That's kind of the, the way I really like to think about it.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: And I absolutely love that because that's so true. Because we can use tech for the right things, but don't use tech for everything because again, some stuff does need the human touch, which some of us, you know, can't get away from. Like I. You know what I hate more than anything in the world? I hate texting.
You know, I hate texting because it's an interpretation of an answer and I'd rather have a conversation.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: It's easy to miscommunicate, right?
[00:21:11] Speaker A: So unless it's a yes or no, I would rather take two minutes and have a conversation with you and get it done with.
Yeah. So I love that answer.
Moving along. Brian, how can owners build accountability without creating a culture where people are afraid to make decisions or take intelligent risks? So continue what we were talking about already.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: That's, you know, if there's one thing I found, accountability should create clarity, not fear, right? If accountability only happens when something goes wrong, people learn to hide their mistakes instead. Accountability should mean we agree on an outcome, right? We agreed on who owns it, and we're going to communicate honestly about the results.
And when someone makes a reasonable decision with the information they had and it doesn't work, that can become development instead of punishment, right? There's a difference between, you know, a mistake made while taking intelligent initiative. And really then it's different from neglect, right? We're not, we're not looking at negligence in business, right? So healthy organizations understand the distinction between that, you know, intelligent initiative versus that negligence. Right? But just as we kind of talked about before, it is trusting that mistakes are going to happen, but trusting our people enough that they bring it to our attention before it becomes a bigger problem. Mistakes are inevitable. It's part of the development process. It's part of the growth.
But if we don't allow people to make those mistakes and we micromanage everything and we punish every time someone falls short, they'll never learn. I don't know if you've ever heard about the the analogy of a flea in a jar. You take a flea that can jump five feet in the air, you put it in a jar, it's going to keep hitting its head after some time. It'll only jump till right before that lid. Now, if that flea has kids, those kids know they can only jump to right before that lid. So now their limitation is solely based on what they believe through the repetition of those before them and the influence they have. Same thing in business and life and leadership. If you put a limit on somebody through punishment, they're never going to exceed.
So mentor, guide and develop. Don't punish everything.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: God, I love that going into the last question where I think ties everything in perfectly.
What would you tell an owner who says my business can't run without me, but also wants more time, flexibility and eventually the option to step away?
[00:23:47] Speaker B: This one's a really easy one and I'll be nice and quick with it because I'd say, I'd probably smile and say, then we've identified the problem because those two things cannot coexist indefinitely. Right. And I wouldn't tell them to suddenly disappear from their company. But eventually the owner transitions from being the person holding the business together to the person leading the business forward.
But we have to make that transition.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Great way to end the segment. I love it.
Thank you, Ryan. Coming up, we're talking about enterprise value, why a larger company is not automatically a more valuable company, and how disciplined growth can create more options for the owner over time. Thank you very much. See you next segment.
Hi, I'm Dominic DeAndre and my guest is Ryan Hook. We talked about founder dependence and operational resilience. Now we're turning to the quality of growth itself and what makes growing business more durable, transferable and strategically valuable.
The most important thing is entrepreneurs are often rewarded for chasing more more customers, more locations, more people, more revenue. But growth can expose weak margins, unclear roles, poor systems, or a culture that has not kept pace.
The next session, Ryan and I are going to explore the difference between expansion and value creation and why clarity and performance discipline matters when an owner is trying to build an asset rather than simply a bigger operation. And that's really important as we're going along is to understand that, yes, you want to make money, yes, we want to show high revenue. But again, as we talked earlier, if it comes at the cost of you're not making any money, in reality, your profit margins are negligible or negative, then you're not doing a good job. And that's really what we're going to go into next. So welcome back, Ryan. Love the first segments. I can't wait to see how this one goes.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: This has been fun. I'm excited to keep moving.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: So, Ryan, what separates growth that increases enterprise strength from growth that simply makes the organization larger and harder to manage? And I love this question.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: This is a good question. And, and I'll throw a little bit of a, I'll put a little imagery to this first before we really, before I give you kind of the business savvy answer here. But think of like a gas tank, right? If you're used to running on a quarter tank, you just want it to be full. Well, what happens if you just leave? That gas tank filling up eventually overflows. You don't have the structure to hold the excess fuel and you're losing money because it's just spilling over, Right. So to put it practically, growth without structure creates pressure, growth with structure creates momentum. If sales increase, let's say 30%, but operations can't deliver, employees are burning out, quality is falling, cash is disappearing, and the owner is working another 20 hours a week, like easily that can happen. And I'm sure we've improved the business, right? You can see all that improving and growing. But if everything down the line can't hold it, it's, it's pointless. So we may have to just really magnify the weakness.
That, that's, that's one of the ways I so manufacturing. And I'm sorry, I've got a lot of stories in my head about this because I've run into this so many times. In manufacturing, you can fix a problem upstream.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Can I say what stories are the best thing?
Because canned answers be like, oh, that's the same thing I've ever heard. When you have a story and you're telling your story of something you experienced. Now somebody like, wait a minute, that sounds like what I did. So I love stories. So keep the stories coming, please.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. Because, like, I think of it like a river, right? If you have a dam in a river and you remove that dam, now everything downstream is dealing with a lot more water and it might not be ready for it. So sometimes when you fix a problem or, yeah, sales is improving. You're just highlighting the weaknesses somewhere else, and you might be causing a bigger problem. And that's something I see frequently as a consultant. Growth doesn't necessarily fix problems. Growth often actually exposes them. But it gives you another area to dive into to get more results from.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: I love it. Perfect.
So continuing with the leadership question, because this is really important for business owners to realize where they're coming from.
How do leadership quality, team depth, repeatable systems, and customer concentration affect the resiliency of a business? And I love the customer concentration part of it, because to me, that to me, might be the most dangerous part of this whole. Part of this whole question.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I would agree. I would say they're enormous because resilience is ultimately about how many ways can this business take a punch and keep moving.
What happens if your largest customer leaves? What happens if your best employee leaves? What happens if the owner gets sick? What happens if demand suddenly doubles? What happens if the market changes? You see, a resilient business has options because it isn't dependent on one customer, one employee, one process, or just one person in general. Right. So resilience is really the elimination of single points of failure. That's, that's, that's a kind of the best way. I think about it.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: I agree with that. Like, I look at advisors that have big practices and they have 20 clients because they want to keep it down, but if they lose 10 of them, no, they shouldn't. Their business has just blown up. So I agree 100% is you want to build a diverse portfolio of clients, a diverse portfolio of customers.
Know that you can afford to lose a couple and still be successful if that's what works out in your life. Obviously, nobody ever wants to lose, but we want to make sure we're resilient. That can build up for that. You know that old saying, saving for a rainy day? Well, customers are your rainy day. If you run out of customers, we're not going to have a business. We're not going to exist anymore. And sometimes if your mindset's bad, like I think I said this in our call when me and you had a call, you know, Toys R Us, you know, my kids got to grow up a little bit with it. Your kids don't even know what Toys R Us is as a toy store. And it's a shame because they had a model that blew up in their faces. There's no reason.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Store shouldn't exist because that was the biggest joy when I was a kid going to. Is my mom and dad are taking me to Toys R Us. I'm gonna get a nice, I'm a new toy.
So that's a perfect example to me of a business model that blew up because management didn't do the right job. Looking going forward, hopefully that exactly with some other companies and continue going with companies.
Right. When a company is scaling quickly with which operational indicators deserve as much attention as sales and revenue,
[00:31:14] Speaker B: I would say margins, cash flow, capacity utilization, labor productivity, quality rework, customer retention, employee turnover, accounts receivable and really delivery performance. Right. But the exact KPI depends on the business. You know, one mistake companies make is measuring everything because they believe more data means better management. And I can tell you from firsthand making those mistakes that is not the case. I want to identify the handful of numbers that tell us whether the organization is actually performing.
Right. So a simple way to kind of remember it is as a KPI should help you make a decision. Otherwise it's just numbers on a dashboard. If you can't use it, lose it.
It's easy to over complicate and bury yourself in useless data and spend a lot of time doing it. I ran a very large manufacturing company for some time. Every department was responsible for providing me a one page of really just KPIs goals, results and things of that nature. If it couldn't fit on one page is too much. Because really there's only a select few bits of information that truly matter to your decision making capability.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: I agree with that completely. And I think of sometimes when clients or prospective clients come to me with something that I know they generated on AI thinking they get all the right answers and the question they asked wasn't the right question.
And I'll tell them that nicely. Look, ask me the question, let me give you an answer and then research that and make sure it's what's right for you. Because when you're putting it into that source, it's giving you a generic answer that may be right for you, but probably isn't. And more times than not it hasn't been.
So I love trying to get clients perspective clients to understand that human value, human touch and learning about the person is really how you're going to get more value than just putting in a question in a chatgpt and hoping you get the right answer. So I agree with that 100% with how you're building relationships, how you're growing and making sure you're using the right sources for that.
Continuing along this path, which I'm loving these answers.
How can an Owner pursue new opportunities without allowing every opportunity to become a distraction for the core business.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Now, this is, this is something I see a lot of business owners run into.
Really what I help them do is I help them put in strategic filters. Does this fit our core competency? Does it serve our ideal customer? Does it strengthen our existing business? Do we have the capacity? What's the opportunity cost? Most importantly, what are we saying no to by saying yes to this?
If you can answer those questions and you like how that looks, then you've got an opportunity worth pursuing. You see, entrepreneurs tend to see possibilities everywhere. That's a strength. But maturity in leadership isn't just learning how to recognize opportunities, is learning which opportunities to ignore.
So simple way to put it, opportunity is abundant. Capacity certainly is not.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: No. We only have so much time in a day and so much time we can work. None of us are built to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
So understanding that, I agree 100%, knowing what to delegate, like, early on in my career, I would go see clients for every form that needed to be filled out.
I don't have the capacity to help a client. You know, I wouldn't help them. Obviously, we're here to help our clients 100%. But if it's a simple form, I'm going to email to them and over the phone say, okay, you do this, this and this and you're good to go.
I don't need to spend a half hour driving each way for something like that. And they understand. I'm like, look, I'm going to send it to you. You can do it on your own time.
You don't have to come to me, I don't have to come to you.
And most people appreciate that because they know that I'm still caring about them.
But look, if they need to see me, I'm going to obviously go out there.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Plus, if your customers and clients aren't growing, are you really doing what you do to the best of your ability?
[00:35:40] Speaker A: No, absolutely not.
So in closing with this segment, which, again, I'm loving all this stuff, it's pure, valuable information.
What changes in an owner's decision making when they begin asking, will this make the company more valuable and less fragile instead of only will this increase revenue, which I love this, and it really covers what we've been talking about throughout this whole segment.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: I'll keep this one short and sweet because this one could drag on forever. But almost everything, because now you're thinking like an investor in your own company rather than simply an operator. Right. You start thinking differently about customers, leadership systems, revenue, recurring revenue margins, risk, capital allocation and your own role. You're no longer simply asking, how much can this business produce this year. You're asking, what am I actually building? That's a much more powerful question.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: God, I love that. So Ryan, after the break, we'll connect the business back to the owner's life, how a stronger company can create options, and why business success and personal financial planning should not live separate conversations.
Thank you very much. See you in the next segment.
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Welcome back. Ryan, a business strategist and high performing consultant focused on helping organizations unlock growth, optimize performance and build greater resilience.
The purpose of a stronger business is not simply to make the business bigger. For many owners, the deeper goal is optionality, the ability to invest, step back, transition leadership, sell, create a legacy, or design the next chapter on their own terms. The final segment brings the operational and wealth planning together by exploring how owners can make the company serve a broader financial and life strategy. Ryan, I've had so much fun in these first three segments. I'm sad, sad that this is our last one, but I think we're still going to give some great, valuable information to the audience. Welcome back.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm, I'm excited to be here. This is a lot of fun. This is the type of conversation where I'm going to end up having to bring up how you and I in our industries actually coexist quite well.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: Perfect. And yes, I can definitely see how that can work. And I'm definitely going to look you up if I've got somebody in Texas that needs help.
How early should a business owner begin building the company for options they may not use for many years, such as succession, a sale or stepping into a less operational role? And I love this question.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Today is today too soon? Yesterday? A hundred years ago? I mean, the sooner the better really. Because preparing a business for succession or sale is remarkably similar to building a great business, right? Even if you never sell, wouldn't you want strong margins, clean financials, documented processes, capable leadership, diversified customers, predictable revenue and a Company that isn't entirely dependent on you.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: Building a scalable business doesn't mean you intend to sell it. It means you're building something somebody other than you would actually want to own.
So you don't prepare a business to sell when you're ready to sell. You build a business worth buying long before you have a buyer lined out.
So it's best to start as soon as possible because a business that can sell is the same thing as a successful business.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: And you know what? I agree with that more than anything in the world. I look at my life, you know, I brought on my business partner officially four years ago as a team, and it's been the greatest thing ever. Because the older clients look at me as the seasoned veteran, my age experience.
The younger clients look to him as, okay, I got somebody to grow with and build with. But even my clients that are in between our age, they're like, well, if Dominic retires, what am I going to do? Now they know if Dominic retires, I've got a business plan. So it only helps grow our business because we work on the two different ages. We're 20 years apart, and both clients on both sides, the younger clients, oh, we've got somebody that has been experienced this.
The younger clients, we can grow with the younger person. So it's definitely important to have there. And it's only going to make your business more valuable to the clients as they see you have a plan.
So I definitely can relate to that and love it.
To continue that, Ryan, what conversations should business strategists, financial professionals, an owner, be having with one another? So the business plan and the owner's personal financial goals are not working at cross purposes, which I believe we just talked about a little bit. But I'd love to hear further insights on that.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: I would say this is where collaboration is incredibly important. My expertise is in business. A financial advisor's expertise is in the owner's broader financial picture. Those conversations should connect.
What does the owner actually want their life to look like in 5, 10, 15 years?
Does the business need to provide income, become transferable, fund retirement, support, family, be sold, become a legacy business? Right. Once we understand the destination, we can build a business strategy around it. So, you know, a business strategy without a life strategy can make you very successful at building something you eventually don't want.
And for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, it's, it's. I'll just say this simple.
If you're in business, talk to experts in each area of business and life financial advisors, business strategists, you know, merger acquisition specialist. Get the full picture before you take another step forward without knowing what your destination looks like. Because until you know what that picture looks like, you're just kind of aiming off in the. Into the dark.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: And I would even agree with making friends in the industry you're in business in, because most people are willing to share. Like, I go to conferences, six, seven conferences a year. I'm always picking brains of other advisors. What are you doing? How do you handle this? Because, you know, you don't want to reinvent the wheel, but some other person could be doing something just slightly different.
That tweak can enhance your business way more than you ever thought it would. So don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to talk to other people. I have no problem sharing ideas with other financial advisors because odds of me competing with them are not that high. But if I can make their life better, maybe they'll tell me something in my life better. And if they don't, I help somebody out. And that's really how the world works. So don't be afraid. My goal is don't be afraid to ask somebody else in your field, what are they doing, because you might walk away with gold.
So to continue doing that and continue this conversation, how can an owner avoid allowing confidence in the business to become over concentration, where too much of their future depends on one company continuing to perform?
[00:43:47] Speaker B: You know, I really think this is where I love having financial professionals involved in the conversation, because ultimately my responsibility is helping strengthen the business, not pretending to be the owner's financial advisor. From a business strategy perspective, though, I think owners need to recognize that confidence and concentration aren't the same thing. Confidence, concentration are two different things. You know, you can believe deeply in your company while recognizing that businesses face risk outside of your control. That's just the reality. And this is exactly why the, you know, business strategist and the CPA attorney and financial professional shouldn't always operate in. In complete separation and in separate conversations. You know, this answer makes you kind of put the pieces together, right? When you've got somebody that is able to specialize in one piece of the puzzle, they typically can see how the next piece needs to fit with them.
Right? So understanding where you fit in and encouraging your clients and customers to really find that other piece is extremely important. Because honestly, a lot of my clients, I end up referring them to a financial professional because it only builds off of the success we create in business. And it protects them for their future.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. And in any field, you have to learn what your capabilities are and what your knowledge is. And sometimes being able to work with a professional, a, your customers are going to value that because they're like, okay, this person is not professing or anything. Like, I meet a new client. Like, well, do you have a cpa or do you know, I'm like, I can refer you to CPAs that I work with, I'm comfortable with, I can send. But if you have one you love and you want me to come on a meeting with you so I can explain what we're doing, going to do that, because you have to know what your knowledge base is, what your strengths are, and let the professionals that know better know better. If I need heart surgery, I'm not going to go to a gastroenterologist. I'm going to go to a cardiologist, you know, so go to who you need to work with and go to the people you need to help if that's out of your wheelhouse. And that's going to make your business even more successful. And it's also going to make your customers trust you more that you're not professing to know everything, that you can bring somebody else in that can give their insights and opinions.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: You're absolutely right.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: And we're going to continue that. And almost in the same thing, for leaders who are always reinvesting in the next stage of growth, how do you think about the tension between investing back into the company and creating flexibility outside of it?
[00:46:32] Speaker B: I would say there's a bit of a dichotomy here because reinvestment should be intentional, not automatic. Business owners often say, I'm investing in growth.
My question typically is, what return are you expecting from that investment?
Right. If we're buying equipment, hiring somebody, opening another location, or launching another service, what does success look like?
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Reinvestment without measurement can simply become spending. I mean, for being straight about it. And again, I would want the owner's financial advisor involved in deciding the how much capital should return or remain inside versus outside the company. Right. My job is making sure the capital we're putting into the company is being stewarded intelligently.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: You couldn't even not understand how great that answer was for somebody like myself. You know, as I said, I go to numerous conferences. Do you know how many tech companies say, oh, you should buy our tech. Ours does this, ours does that.
First of all, like, the best, you have to decide, is the new investment worth your Time and energy, Is it better than what you're using already?
If it's worth the time and training and it's better than what you have already, then I say move forward with it. I've changed tech companies two different times in the last two years. I changed a note taking software I was using because I found some more value with the new one. And I changed the financial planning as I found more value for my clients.
But I had to find value before I invested new money and new time for training on it. And that to me is the biggest thing, is make sure that you're not just saying, oh, let me tell my customers I just got this new company I'm using. If it's not going to help you from A to B, you know, A to B or C to D and it's just you showing or bragging that you can buy more tech or if you're going to overlap like I've had company, oh, we're a little different than them. You can work with them.
I'd rather a company that does everything I need than to do something that it doesn't need.
And I think that that's been a great value for us.
And right now I think that's a great place to close on what we're doing. I'm just gonna give you one last thing to answer on is if an owner wants to build a company that creates both performance today and choices tomorrow, what is the first strategic question you would ask them in closing?
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Oh, that is a really, really good question. And I'd ask, what do you actually want this business to do for your life? Because I think owners can become so consumed with building the business that they forget why they're building it. And I'll keep it as simple as that because I could go on for days about people's motives and the fact that they're losing sight of it.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: I love that. So, Ryan, before we close, how and where can our audience learn more about your work, connect with you, or explore the ways you help organizations strengthen growth, operations, leadership and performance?
[00:49:31] Speaker B: The easiest way is to connect with me personally or through impact strategies consulting my business. You know, I've now had the privilege of working with, you know, really across the board, roughly 38 businesses in 20 different industries. And what I've learned is that while industries change, business problems are surprisingly unoriginal.
I work with owners and leaders, you know, teams to figure out what actually is holding the organization back. So you can find me through my website, impactstrategiesc.com through my LinkedIn page, Ryan Herpin or any of my social media platforms. And also the fact that I actually am a host right here in NOW Media Television.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: I love that. Thank you very much, Ryan. In closing, a strong business can be an extraordinary wealth building asset. But revenue alone does not create security. The deeper work is building something resilient enough to perform, valuable enough to create options, and intentional enough to support the life you ultimately are working towards. Ryan, thank you for joining me. I'm Dominic d' Andrea and this is where wealth, intelligence.
