Dan Bradbury 0:00

Am I gonna go if these six areas of a business are robust, then you've got, you're gonna have a great business game. They are. So there's marketing, you've got a get leads, okay? There is sales, I got to convert those leads into paying customers. But then there are operations, how do you actually how do you actually fulfill those things? Then there's gonna go okay, but so you've got operations and systems, but then there's people, how do you actually, you know, build out a team and build a strong culture. Okay. And then you've got financial, I the numbers and the margins and all that needs to make sense. And then you've got weak on compliance, which is kind of the the redheaded, redheaded stepchild of the family that nobody wants to pay attention to. But that's the thing that will torpedo the whole company. If he if you don't get that right.

Jim Barnish 0:57

What is up everybody, welcome to another episode of The Dirt sponsored by orchid black. I'm your host, Jim barnish. And today, we are going to talk about yet another way to maximize the value of your seven or eight figure business. And that's via mastermind groups. Our guest today, mastermind X expert, Dan Bradbury, my favorite part of this episode is we go deep into his specialty around mastermind groups, and how to leverage them and how to build them and how to get value out of them to increase the value of your business. But before we dig in, if you find value in this episode, share it with someone else that needs to hear it spread the wisdom. All right, Dan, welcome to the dirt.

Dan Bradbury 1:43

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jim.

Jim Barnish 1:46

Yeah, absolutely. So just talk to us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and and why we should care.

Dan Bradbury 1:53

Yeah, good question. Well, I don't know if you should care. You be the judge of that. So I was a bit of a strange child. like probably many of the listeners, I was always very entrepreneurial, always have my hands in everything wanting to figure out how everything works. And when I was growing up, I always had big ambitions, big dreams. But the problem was, I had no money, base, I had to earn money, but everything seemed to take too damn long. So I said, Okay, how can i earn money more quickly? And a wise uncle said, Dan, everything you want to do? Many people have done before you say, Okay, well, how can I learn this stuff? And he said, Well, they've all written books. And I tend to get a little bit meta. So I really wanted to kind of get business biographies and found it very useful. But the problem was, it took so damn long to read the books. So I said, you know, I need to learn to read faster. Because I can't afford to go on all the courses. I'm only a kid, but I can read books. I can read great business biographies. But it takes too long. How can I consume all this information quicker? Right? Because if you know better, you can do better. And so I took a speed reading course I don't even remember the late night infomercials. How it Bergen mega speed reading, it was cool. And this infomercial was like, Oh, how to read three times quicker in four hours. And so I stole one of my parents credit cards and bought this $100 course and did the course and lo and behold, it did exactly what it promised it kind of doubled or tripled my reading speed. And so then I started reading more and more books. But I didn't know Jim, if you're anything like me, but I tend to be a bit obsessive compulsive. I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs have that trait, right? It's like, when I get into something, I'm like, I'm always in, like, I'll lose the day, you know, doesn't matter. I don't eat. And so I've got so into the speed reading, they'll say, Oh, hold on. How fast is fast? Right? It's like, from business perspective. How big is big? How much profit is too much? Oh, yeah. Okay, what does that mean? Relative number. And so I got really into the speed reading and did everything that I could to learn how to learn faster, and I ended up the next year entering the speed reading World Championships. It does exist. It's not quite as sexy and exciting as it might sound. And, and I came sick and pissed me off. So I went back the next year I came forward. So in my when I was about 1920 years old, I was the third documented to be the third fastest reader in the world. I don't think that's true. He just meant I came third because again, it's not a massive, we competitive competition for something wasn't any significant prize money. And I just became obsessive about working in the game of business and I then translated that into business. Still made plenty of screw ups and near near bankruptcies, etc along the way, but I like to think that I accelerated my journey and A couple of big exits razor acquisitions, all of a sudden now will go by, and I'm now an old man. So that's my that's my story in brief.

Jim Barnish 5:07

Yeah, old young man. I like it. I like it. So when you let's talk about selling those companies real quick. So what what were some unexpected challenges that you had as you're both building and exiting those companies?

Dan Bradbury 5:23

Yeah, I think when I first got started, I was hopeless, because I didn't know how to market and sell. Right. So my first business out, it was a big failure, I actually took the speed reading skills and memory skills that are learned and wanting to teach them just made such an impact on my life, and I got business partner and all this kind of stuff. And despite having some really good stuff, and amazing high results, I was unable to translate that into profits, right. So the business has struggled, and then it failed. And on reflection, I realized that the product by itself doesn't matter. In either I think there are six core areas of business, I think all six need to work need to be cohesive, you're only as strong as your weakest link, you know, it's a law of constraints type stuff. And I didn't know how to market and sell. So that was kind of my early stage business. So I then went off and learned how to market and sell got really, really good about that. But then the problem flips, I kind of myopically went, you know, all the way to succeed and make loads of money is, is to be able to market and sell better. And I became very, very skilled at marketing and selling, and I made more money. But that only reached a certain point, I can inflection point, a choke point that constraints around, okay, yeah, but that doesn't help if your products aren't good, or that doesn't help if you can't build out a team, a team. So like at that stage, my issue was around hiring and leveraging orders of scale. And that kind of jumping to the next live edge. And then I hit inflection point, which is, I was making a lot of money, but somehow, I wasn't able to hang on to any of it. But I wasn't financially literate, I can manage with a p&l. But all of a sudden, as I write you now high income, but you've got no net worth, right? Because I was still in my 20s. And I was young, and I was stupid. So you know, the Ferraris and Porsches and, you know, I owe this kind of stuff. But ultimately, I turned out, I didn't matter how much I can make, I could always spend more. Right? So there's been a few kind of different phases. But the way I see it's always in the six areas, and it's kind of like going up a mountain, like, you get the same view. But from a higher perspective, all problems come back to these six categories. But depending on the stage of size and growth of your business, it's a different quality problem.

Jim Barnish 7:52

So when when you look at some of these experiences that obviously shaped your current approach to business and in selling to businesses, and now helping other business owners, you know, what are what are some of the biggest things that you tell people in your programs or that you're meeting with to look out

Dan Bradbury 8:10

for? I think I think there's a lot of bullshit out there. And people get lost in the minutiae around selling companies and getting to cover little tricks and tactics. I think the secret if you want to have a valuable, a significant exit, is to build something that's really worth a lot. Right. Paraphrasing Chai monger, you know, it's if you want to get more deserve more, you know, the world's not a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people. Right. And so how do you build a business that's really, really, really robust? Yes, you can grow through acquisition, yes, you can, you know, all kinds of American say, strategies or tactics to help support that, but fundamentally, it's the game is how do you drive business value? Like, I mean, I wrote, I felt that there was not a lot of simple stuff that can be applied to business owners that are looking to scale. It was all NBA, overly complicated, intellectual bullshit. But I think that if you just take a common sense approach to what are the key drivers of what Warren Buffett would say, is intrinsic value, what really makes this company a robust cash producing machine? And you go from first principles, then you're lightyears ahead of the competition.

Jim Barnish 9:47

And when you say these, these first principles, like what are the pillars under there, I know you mentioned six things. What are those six things that you pay attention to?

Dan Bradbury 9:59

Yeah, so I think like this way, I like to have frameworks that everything, like, you know, our mental models, so a framework that so let's talk about the six areas, I gotta go, if these six areas of a business are robust, then you've got, you're gonna have a great business. Okay? They are. So there's marketing, you've got a get leads, okay? There is sales, I've got to convert those leads into paying customers. But then there are operations, how do you actually how do you actually fulfill those things? Then those are going to go okay, but so you've got operations and systems, but then there's people, how do you actually, you know, build out a team and build a strong culture, okay. And then you've got financial, I the numbers and the margins, and all that needs to make sense. And then you've got legal and compliance, which is kind of the the redheaded, redheaded stepchild of the family that nobody wants to pay attention to. But that's the thing that will torpedo the whole company, if you if you don't get that right, or I don't know, a single business gym, I cannot name a business that is a decent size, profitable and scalable, is prevalent is pervasive over time. That is not strong in all those six areas. But I can tell you, if you look at any big companies that have failed, they've had a shocking weakness in at least one of those six areas. Right? So it's not so much about how strong is your strongest thing? You're only as strong as the weakest link? So I'm constantly circling around these areas and doing kind of an analysis, right. So here's, here's a fun example. There's loads of ways you can do this. But I built a little quiz. So it's it's a slightly different methodology than the six that I just spoke about. But it's the same framework, how do you make a valuable company and I wrote about it in my book, turnover is vanity. Profit is sanity. And people can go into a scorecard, Dan Marino calm. You can do the business profit maximization scorecard which scores your business is a bit more micro. So it's not six areas that actually does 10 different areas. But it's, it's the same, just a slightly different lens, I've evolved my thinking over time to make it cleaner. And it'll score you in these 10 different areas. But the question is not are how do you make this area? Which is 10? out nine out of 10? How do you make it 10 out of 10, it's how you take the areas that are twos and threes out of 10 and strengthen those weakest links. Because at the end of the day, it's called the net profit for for a reason, Jim, it's your net of all your wins and your losses. Right? So like, how do I avoid screwing up? Because when you screw up, that's what cost you money.

So in this in this way of thinking, whether it's six, six divides or 10, when you look at a business, is this kind of, you know, how you see business owners looking at their own business? Or is there a lot of education that comes with getting them to kind of divide up their business into core qualities and attributes around? What's going to increase the value of the business? Meaning? Are they naturally thinking about this from what you've seen? Or is there a lot of education that comes with this?

It's nearly the exact opposite look. I think it was Earl Nightingale who said you know, in the absence of strategy, observe the masses and do the opposite. Right? So I don't know what the what the mathematics work out to be in the US, but I bet you they are not dissimilar than the UK. In the UK. There's about 6 million women's companies, privately held companies, they're incorporated and all that 6 million is when we get the number right and behead. 93 or 94% never reached seven figures in revenue one time. That means ever at any point in our history do they hit seven figures so already down to six or 7% of businesses that even reached seven figure revenue that's not profits. Now there's not probably data on the profit but is believed to be naught point three naught point 4% of companies every hit seven figure profits, right? So you're gonna go so logically, if you want to succeed, don't do what everybody else does. In fact, my job when I take people through the kind of the scorecard and the quizzes I say, Okay, I'm gonna ask you some questions if you don't know the answer. Think what would most small business owners choose and choose the opposite and you'll be right because they don't think that way. Most People Fail different analogy. Mon clock around you. Most people are fat, they're obese, they're unhealthy. So like if you want to get fitter, more healthy, observe what they eat, how they exercise and do the opposite. Right? Most people aren't exercising three processed sugars and shit. So you natural, natural whole foods or you exercise a bit whole Holy crap, you're gonna be completely dead and it's not dissimilar with business right? You know, so the most basic level the first question, Jim, is okay, simplistically, I think we've overcomplicated. There's 42 different ways. If you go to Harvard Business School, I think in their syllabus, there's a book they recommend on business valuation, and there's 42 different ways to value company. Okay, fine, we can talk about those, and they have different merit. But for most of us listening to this podcast with small businesses, that what just get to the root, the purpose of the business, is to get a return for the shareholders. Okay, so I need it to make a profit. So the most simplistic valuation method is going to be the profit times by some multiple, right? Like, that's what you paid for the goodwill of the business is like this business is gonna get me a return. And the higher the multiple is going to be dependent upon scalability, how quickly it's grown, and or risk, right? But so you got to go, okay, you've got the profit and the multiple the two key drivers of business valuation. Okay, profit and the multiple, then the two, they're the two metrics that make up the valuation. Right. Okay, way to most small business owners want to focus if I said it was mutually exclusive, Jim, we can either grow the profit, or we can grow the multiple, where we most small business owners want to focus their attention.

Of course, on valuation?

Well, I think small business owners think about growing the multiple, but most small business owners, so the typical small business owners, I want to grow the profit, because they don't even know what the multiple is. Right? I guess I'll be curious if you're experienced that is different in the UK, but my experience of business owners in the USA, my experience business owner in the UK is most of them don't even know what their profit is, Jim. Right, the majority, they don't understand their p&l, they just go about accounting stuff. I don't get that that's for the accountants to figure out. And so they've got no ideas, they can't focus on growing the multiple, because they don't know what that construct is. So there's a massive piece and you're gonna go okay, let me say it a different way. Okay. If the multiple strong twos think of it is your businesses robust, it's bulletproof. It's never going broke. Right? You can make a million pounds in profit next year. But if there's a 95% chance you're gonna go broke in the following 12 months, do you want that business? Because you know, what, I'd rather have a business that's only making half a million in profit per year, but there's a 99% chance it's going to be around in 10 years time, right? That's how we get. That's how we get rich and having to go build another company again. And so I was a very long winded answer to no, you gotta get educated. I don't believe Jim, anybody is born a business owner. I think people may have natural entrepreneurial tendencies. But can you read a balance sheet? Can you read a p&l? Do you know how to hire staff? They get marketing positioning, lead generation cost per employee? Well, of course, you don't to think the otherwise is a massive following, and that keeps you broke.

So I know, a big part of what you do is work with CEOs in these seven or eight figure business masterminds. Right is that is what first of all, what is a mastermind? Let's just start there. And then, you know, what are the masterminds that you're currently running in? With who?

Yeah, so I've got two different formats, and they are slightly different and serve different purposes. Okay. So the, the word mastermind comes from the Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich, where you get two or more minds together with a common singular common purpose. And it forms a third mind above them a master mind, right? So you get people, they've got the same intention. So in this context is people that are business or come to scale, they're looking to grow, they're looking to expand over time, and then you get that we can learn from each other. Right? And India words from their own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, okay? We're vicariously through those. You don't get paid more money by taking longer to solve the problem, right? You don't take a check when nobody takes checks anymore, but you don't take a check to the bank teller, and then you show him or her the check and they go, all right, I'm gonna pay you more money because you did this the longer harder way, right? It's that that's not how the game works. So we can stand on the shoulders of giants. So that's the purpose of the generic purpose of mastermind. For me, there's two formats. One is kind of a large group format, which is more like lecture theater style. And it's teaching learning. So I have been fortunate to have some very, very successful friends, you know, so people that have scaled them Raise 100 million paws off a woman who's actually a self made billionaire, actually, that came and spoke to my group. And it's like, okay, I want to come on and I want to learn, you tell me your lessons about hiring, about firing about in all these six different areas, right? So it's classroom style, can we learn from each other, not just the winds, but the mistakes. So I don't make that mistake. So that's kind of like the live group format, and which is mastermind. The next level that I do is board of advisors, which is, is boardroom type stuff, which is more so it's, it's groups of four, or groups of eight that meet either one day, a quarter or two days a quarter. And really their job, Jim is to come and have a board meeting where they present their business plan to the other members of their group, and the other members of their group rip their plan apart. Right. So if you think about what's the purpose of a boardroom, the purpose of a boardroom is to have people that understand the game of business, you know, if you're in the game of anenome, space rockets, the not all site is talking sciency stuff. That's the operational elements, right? It's about people understanding the game of business understanding, scaling, understanding, raising finance, or understanding, preparing for exit, understanding, whatever, right? Like some people don't just these kind of components, these six areas of business are consistent across any business. And therefore there's common lessons to learn how you structure it margins of safety, a whole whole host of things. And so how can you train yourself not to be a better operator, but a better owner, a better shareholder? Right? That, to me, that's the game, you can make a lot of money just by being a good operator by anybody that says you can't is a liar. I hate business coaches, or advisers that kind of they have one size fits all, I don't think the world is that simple, right? There's nothing wrong with being a really great operator, you can make millions. And you're probably an example of billions. I don't know Michael Jordan being an example. Right. Like, I know, he's made money, post his retirement from from investments. But what the vast bulk of the kickstart was the fact that he was a good operator in the game of being a basketball player, right? So so I kind of go, you need operating skills, but really, really all the leverage in any industry. And you're good operator, you can have a good job, a high paying job that can make you very rich, but it's still a job. Investors that there's infinite upside scalability there. But you need skill set, you need to develop skill set that doesn't nobody walks in being fully skilled. And the only way that I know is to learn, and the best way to learn vicariously through others. And that is where you go, okay. Books, yes. But that's why there's some inherent power from getting many smart individuals in the same room, especially Jim, if they disagree with you. You know, you've heard the cliche, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. But actually my favorite conversations of people that on podcasts like this is where they're super smart. But I know they've got fundamental differences of opinions to me on certain areas, great. Because then you've got to park your ego and go, Okay, let's figure out which one of us is right. Which one what's actually

true, or the context of why we're both right, or we're both wrong, right? I mean, that's the worst room to be in as everyone agrees, not just not just where you're the smartest person in the room, but even worse when everyone agrees in the room. So yeah, we're, we're very aligned in that way. Thank you. Yeah, I

was just gonna think democracy got the problem is he reversed the mean by a reverse the mean, so don't get me wrong. There's time and concept where it's important to get your known your management team on the same page are all running in the same direction, etc. So the time i We don't want to just always disagree. Clearly, I know that wasn't your point. But we need to have healthy, productive disagreement. And then, hopefully, from a management perspective, come to a conclusion. But unfortunately, a lot of business owners, and I've been guilty of this in the past, try and bring everybody along with us. And then it becomes democracy. But the problem with democracy is you you're reverting to the mean, you're earning for the average of what everybody thinks. So by definition, you can only get average results. If you look at the true outliers, the companies that have had exceptional performance over time, every single one of those without exception has been immensely unpopular at certain times on with certain decisions. I Yomi outperformed the market and obviously more like a shell stock market thing but its stock market is just large businesses right and It's when you bet against the market. And you're right. That is when you win. But fundamentally, you better develop some skills and ability to clarify what's going on and discern what the true what's true in the situation and make your own independent decision. That's, and that is something that's easy to say, but it's definitely not easy to do.

So can you can you share with us a story where one of your mastermind groups, or a member of the mastermind group got significant growth or significant shift or change in their business of their business mentality? Based on being in the room with other business owners?

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I can give you as many as you want. One that I'll just go come straight to my only say that is let me change his name or whatever, because then I can be more specific about, about the business time. So let's call him Mike. So Mike, Michael was in a engineering business. And, and he was say he was involved in the type engineering that they did was specific to construction. And Mike had grown his business and to, I don't know, 3 million a year, and it was making healthy profits. I'm making this number operatives, you know, maybe he was making 300 grand, maybe it was 500 grand, I don't remember I'd say 300 grand, just 10% to keep it simple. And he was going to Okay, yeah, great. But specifically, what he did was, he was a recruitment agency, he would basically paid contractors to do the engineering work on these building sites. And that's how he made his margin from the engineers. And he placed them and he made his money. But somewhere along the line, he decided that he wanted to have a revenue stream be right, he goes, You on placing all these people in the making all this money on these jobs, I can do those jobs. Anyway, so he then had this product line, everybody who's been the general contractor, it wasn't just paying the engineers, they were doing all the construction, as well. And this business scaled rapidly. So he turns up, when he joins the program, and he's like a 10 million, but he's at 10 million. And he's making like 200 grand a year, nothing, nothing. And he's in a world of stress. And so we basically really dug into his numbers to make sure we really understood it. And even just now I've described it to you, he wasn't that clear, it kind of evolved in this a bit this and but when we will come back, it's really this product, line a product line B, and product line A is about half the business, you know, the pacing the contractors, 5 million product line be the you know, general contractor was a half million, and when we apportion the expenses, right, again, to be clear, Jim, I'm not talking about accounting function that when we really analyze and said, okay, all the costs you're incurring, Mike, are costs of either acquiring the business, servicing the business or staying in business, right? Because of acquisition costs, cost of goods sold or overhead, right? So let's understand that let's put those in column A or column B. And when we went download this, and really forced him to do it, and didn't tolerate his bullshit answers at all, well, you know, that person does a bit of a and a bit BS, okay. What does that mean? 90% a 10%. B inverse 5050. When we went through it, well, behold, we found that product if he was doing 5 million revenue, and was making half a million in profit, 10% margin product, line B was 5 million in revenue on losing 300 grand a year. Right. And all of a sudden, it became very obvious, which is, he could do half the work. And he'd make a lot more money. Right? And so the lesson here, because perhaps I shouldn't have ever that story I've not told him to answer perhaps I didn't tell him well, but the point is, is I like to think about what principles or frameworks or lenses to which I can filter my business. And I'll give you three bids. One one is less is more entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, we're a breed of people that naturally seize opportunities. And that can be tremendously rewarding until it's not. And when it's not, is we've got a tendency as a breed to overcomplicate stuff. And we do more is better economies of scale. But actually, that's not what economies of scale means. Our goal is to do one thing really damn well, but entrepreneurs really screw with that and we get distracted and do some random 63 things. And it doesn't work. So with a lot of my acquisitions, Jim, the core premise has been that How do I make this business profitable by taking away the shit, that's a distraction, that's a constraint or that loses money. Let me give you an example. That's perhaps maybe more obvious. whoever's listening to this right now, you probably know your company. Let's say you've got a team of 10 employees. I would argue that there is at least one person on your team that if you fired them, if you let them go, productivity wouldn't go down. It would go up. Right? If the government brought in a war and said, You gotta fire temps into your workforce tomorrow, or we're going to close your business, right? Everyone would do it because it's the wall. And actually, if you listen to this, you probably had an experience in the past where you've let a team member go, and actually brother will be defeated is has the opposite effect ever really been jubilant? Everybody looking at humans? And what the bloody hell took you so long? Why the hell didn't you fire him sooner? And then when you think about it, you're gonna go Hold on that person. cost me money. I paid them and actually people are now more productive in their absence. Right? So it's like, Y'all got fired? So five, salesperson firewall? Oh, no, he was 20%. Your sales force? Yeah, but have you lost 20% Your sales? In most cases? That's not true. Those sales still get made just over the remaining four. So I kind of go okay, so less is more. So a lot of people come and go, How do we do more, do more, do more, do more. And rather than get disproportionate upside, they actually get diminishing returns? Different way of saying this, Jim, in a way that everybody listening has heard of this? The Pareto principle? Right? That which is also known as actually, I don't know, do you call it The Pareto principle in the US got what's known as the 8020 rule. Right. So I, but people don't regressively analyze their business. I love doing this number clients are getting the goal, right, okay. 8% of your profits along the hall has been made from 20% of the customers, or 20% of the product lines, or whatever, 20% of the locations. And often it's disproportionate. Again, it's fractal. So the top 20% of the top 20%, ie the top 4% is making 8% 8%. So in other words, 4% of the customers or the locations of the product lines are making 63 64% of the profits. Yeah, holy shit. Is there opportunities to just do more of that? And there's not always Jim, but in a lot of cases there is. Right? In fact, if it was that obvious, you would have done it already. But most people don't walk they just we get blinded by our own beliefs and just kind of go, yeah, no, this is a it's not an Actually the problem is not the business. The problem is your belief about the business. You believe that? Oh, we can't scale that section that whatever. No, no, so you're gonna go we've had to go to other markets or other product lines. And that belief is costing you a shitload of money.

Yep. Well, so on that note, we're gonna hop into our founder, five. So let's, let's, let's hop right in. So here we go down. Number one is

that COVID? Is that code word for I've been, I've been talking way too much.

Now that's code word that we've got a couple of minutes left to you have to get to your next meeting. So we've got to we've got to happen to the end here. So, all right, so five questions number one, key metric or KPI that you are relentlessly focused on.

Okay, for me, for most of my businesses, I love recurring revenue. So MRR is the holy grail. However, there's a close second and for most businesses, that is way under appreciated. cash, cash, cash, cash, turnover is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is king. And, look, if you're in recession, if you're in good times, I've yet to find myself in any position in life, Jim, were having more cash would have been a disadvantage. I can already hear some of you who are well no, no, because cash is not the point is not getting a return. Well, you know what? You could say fine, not cash 10 free cash flow, free cash flow, because that's the geezer that pays for everything pays for the acquisitions, etc. So MRR and cash or cash flow?

Well, so, all right, top tip for growth stage founders like yourself.

The number one tip is to get exceptionally financially literate. Nobody cares more about your money than you do. And I'm not saying that you need to be an accountant. I've never filed a tax return once in my entire life. But if you think that you can just find an accountant if you're not financially literate, you don't know if you've got a good accountant. And the number of business owners that I've seen be screwed be defraud made huge mistakes, because they, my God, if you don't, in depth, understand how to integrate levels of detail on your p&l your balance sheet in your statement of cash flow. You are making a fraction of the money that you deserve to make and then if you Your ambition is to scale and exits, you are going to be significantly hurt or undervalued by the lack of that knowledge.

Well, so All right, favorite book or podcast that has helped you to grow as a CEO?

Well, I've enjoyed this podcast, but it's my first time so I can't say that. Without it's helped me grow. Yeah, I suppose I'm biased as a favorite podcast that's made me grow. There's been my own so blatant plug. If you just look up the Danbury podcast, I've had some, some really heavy hitters on there, but to to make it not so self indulgent. And my favorite book, which is rarely more than arm's length away from me, just to prove the point is, the rule is stupid by Keith Cunningham, aka that I've got more and more copies of this book. And they're always dog eared as this one. So keep cutting him. He's he's getting older now. He's based in Austin, Texas. But he's, he's an absolute legend and the road less stupid by Keith.

What is a piece of advice that counters traditional wisdom.

A piece of advice that counters traditional wisdom is smaller is better. I think that most people go for scale scale scale, I spoke to business owner this morning. That was after I need to get to 5 million because that means I have 1 million of EBIT. And that means I'll get the multiple that I want for my exit valuation. But as soon as I hoped that a little bit, it's got holes all over the place, right? Because he wants a certain exit valuation because he's got a certain lifestyle ambition. And I demonstrated how he could achieve that goal much more radically without all the risk. So smaller is better. I'm not saying don't I'm in favor of more money, you're listening to this to be clear. But actually, if you're operating through a lens of how can I make more profit with less work and less effort, it can't always be done. But if you're not really looking for it, there's often so many low hanging fruit that you don't even see, because you're not looking around,

especially the difference between total revenue and total revenue per employee. Right? It's like, what do you actually want to build towards? Is it just growth? Or is it efficient? And

Correct? Correct. Right. And it's not even revenue per employee. Right? Isn't that what you said is true. But to go a step further, it's GP. So it's a business this where there's all my all this revenue, but the between the different types of things? It's like, what's the gross profit? What's the gross profit by job or by employee, and you kind of go holy crap, right, and I get the difference between margin and nominal value. Nobody wants 100% margin business that does $3,000 a year. But I think a lot of times we get lost in this bigger is better. And that is utter bullshit, I can name you people that have got companies teknicks, my size 20x my size, that don't make the profit that I make. And I'm not saying that to be self indulgent, I might have got a fraction of the stress, a fraction of the capital tied up, and I've got a mountain of cash. I'm in favor of exiting for a big valuation. But you know what, I'm more in favor of having machine that is relatively self sufficient. That just prints out money hand over fist year after year. So smaller is better.

All right, last one here, what is going to be the title of your autobiography?

Good question. The first thing that comes to mind is, Are you fucking kidding me? Which you, apparently too? Well? Well, not apparently is a well known phrase in my house. I think I think the more I've done in business, the more Nothing surprises me anymore. So in a healthy way, I'm always I'm getting increasingly obsessed about how do you de risk things? How do you make it more stable, more robust? Send a different way. I've read every single page of every single letter to shareholder letter to shareholders a Warren Buffett's ever written that. I mean, that's, that's, I mean months to do that task. And the more I read any man that's worth over 100 billion after giving away 80 billion is worth paying attention to. And that man's got his shit together. How do we have high quality? Earnings? earnings, power, sustainability of earnings? Give me the goddamn moat. So, yeah. But to answer your question, Are you fucking kidding me? It's normally when I've been surprised, because there's been some unforeseen risk. And that's my job is to figure out those risks in advance and they don't happen.

All right, awesome, dude. Well, you've given a ton to our listeners. Dan's a time for a little bit of self promotion. How can those listening help you out?

Thank you. Well, if you've resonated with what I've had to say, and if you're still here, hopefully you have probably the two things I would suggest you do. Three one, go to Denver every.com Do your business profit maximization scorecard is a fun test it will give you kind of a 2024 page document that feeds back how been on your answers how you should improve and strengthen your business valuation. Number two will be subscribed to the Denver read podcasts wherever podcasts are lots of interviews like this. I'm normally the interviewer so I mean, Jim's which phases. And then the third one is I've got a couple of different books on Amazon. bringing his ELLs fast growth strategies for your business and turnover is vanity. Profit is sanity. No naff steps for improving your profits and cash flow. So they go through glazes.

Awesome. Alright Dan, thanks for joining us, man. Thank you to our loyal listeners for dialing in. And huge thank you to orky Black for making this show possible. We'll see y'all later next time. See, if you love today's episode of the dirt, make sure you rate it on your favorite platform. And if you really liked this, go ahead and leave us an honest review. Thanks again for tuning in to the dirt