[00:00:00] Speaker A: SA welcome to another episode of Balancing Acts, your guide to grow, profit and scale. I'm Linda Hamilton, a CPA certified exit planning advisor and a systemologist. I've been looking under the hoods of businesses to understand what truly drives success for more than 30 years. And we know that the numbers really matter a lot in your business, and the story behind your numbers matters very much as well. So we try to tie the two together for you. Today, I want to focus on the financial side of growth. Everyone is chasing growth.
It's pretty much what you hear from business owners across the country. They're trying to grow. They want to grow their top line, their gross revenue. And we want to understand really why the financial side matters just as much. Why does it matter? And we have a great guest today, Kirk Jaffe, who is a trusted advisor in risk management, compliance, contract negotiation, mergers. Kirk has a tremendous amount of background and experience working with business owners and helping them understand both growth and stability. He's also very passionate about philanthropy and actively supports foster care initiatives and education and social justice. Welcome, Kirk. I'm so glad you're here today to help unpack this for us, because everybody's trying to grow.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: There are. Thanks, Linda. Excited to have this conversation with you.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's start with what are some of the common mistakes you see people make when they are trying to grow?
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the number one most common mistake is overreaching, getting too far out over our skis. As I say, from up here on top of the mountain in Lake Tahoe. I think a lot of business owners, they just misallocate what could happen or what they expect to happen, and that usually causes some trouble. So managing those expectations is important and helpful.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's really important. Expectations. And what about oftentimes they sell multiple services. It's very common for small business owners. You know, multiple products, multiple services.
And they actually don't know if those revenue streams from those products and services are profitable. How do you work with people on pinpointing that?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and I find it's actually a very emotional conversation. We're working with a restaurant right now that has. They're a small restaurant. They're transitioning from, you know, version A to version B to version C of themselves, which is exciting and fun. But on their menu, they have like, like 38 items, and their kitchen and their staff can only handle about eight. And so going through this conversation with them over the past four months to really explain to them, how do you know what your. Where your profit center is how much inventory are you holding, why are you holding it? And what's this all about? And the answer I got from the client was I need to offer something for everyone.
And so we started down this path of explain to them you actually don't want to offer everything to everyone. There's only a couple companies on the planet that are successful at doing that, like an Amazon as an example.
But in a restaurant, you really want to be able to have containment over your costs and your execution and make sure the experience is great so that people come back and refer others to come to you.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Oh, that's perfect. You said so much there. I want to follow up on. How about experience? You're right, you can't everyone. If everyone's your customer, you have no customers. Right.
So how do you get them to really get in touch with customer experience and why that matters?
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's what I call continuity and it's a concept I think all business owners really need to drill down on. Doesn't matter what your product does, what do you want your clients to experience from the very first moment that they interact with you all the way through execution and delivery? And then after the fact, how do you want your client to experience you after you've delivered what you promised so that they'll send other people and small businesses. Yeah, small businesses, I think, miss the mark a little bit.
They don't really know how to read their P and L. And I think that's where it really comes down to when you're talking about continuity. And then you look at the P and L and then you start to understand what's making money, what's not making money, and where do we really want to double down our efforts to profit?
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, I got excited over that comment, which is because it was like so perfect on. Yes. On helping them understand what they do and why they do it. Right. Because again, that customer experience is not just the referring others to you, but they keep coming back. Right. And. And they're not necessarily going to come back. But if you're losing money, it's not sustainable. Right. You can't, you won't stay around to serve them if you are losing money. And I think that is one of the biggest problems as a CPA that I see in business is that, you know, they're very excited about what they're selling, but they have no idea if they're making money. And oftentimes they're losing money.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: What would I think that that's for you and I really dovetail as a CP. I work very closely with CPAs.
From my perspective it's, it's a 360 degree view including the emotional. And I've had my own experience with it, which is probably why I understand it. I used to sell a product years ago and there were eight different versions of the product and it was very hard for me to get it down to three. But once I did, my profits went up, my deliverables came, got easier, my staffing expenses went down and the clients had a better experience. And so really being able to manage our own emotions is important because by the time you get to the CPA and you could probably speak to this Linda, they're not going to talk to you so much about where your mindset is. They're going to talk to you about the numbers on the paper.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: That is true of most CPAs. I'm a little different because I am also a business coach and you know, I think even CPAs could use advice that you just gave them because oftentimes you think of the technical skill, you know, the Michael Gerber books. I am a CPA and I provide accounting services but I also own a business and I too have struggled over my three plus decades in business with what do I sell? You know, how are the different things? How do you get that across? So if the mindset and the emotion and also describing what you do is very difficult. So that's my next question over mindset is how do they describe what they're selling so that customers want it?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it really. I've been drilling down on this idea of continuity quite a bit lately and continuity is really what is the total timeline of your experience? If you understand your whole experience as a business owner, it gets easier to describe what you do. And so going back, looking at, you know, SWOT analysis, gap analysis, SWADAs, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Gap is where are you, where do you want to go and what do you have to do to get there. These are old school business concepts that are taught, you know, in business schools all across the country, but really on the ground. I don't think small business owners have been exposed correctly. I write 90 day business plans with my clients to really drill down on what are your goals, what projects have to be in place and what habits do you have to have to make sure your projects get done. And all this goes to that mindset and clarity and being able to explain what it is you do. I think a lot of business owners also get confused between the idea of marketing, branding, sales and delivery, which are two Very. Which are four very distinct areas, but have very important explanations in describing what you do.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. There are a lot of pieces to running a business, aren't there?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Certainly.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: So how would you say that? If they really want financial freedom, where's the best place to start breaking down the revenue and profitability? Where's the best place for those who aren't doing that yet to begin?
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it comes down to some principles.
I don't run a marketing campaign if I can't see an opportunity to make a 15 to 1 return. And that seems excessive, but it keeps me out of trouble. If you go to a vendor and say, show me how you're gonna get to a 15 to 1 ROI return on investment, more times than not, the vendor is going to say to you, well, we shoot for a two to one. But actually if you get a two one, two to one return on any of your investments, as a business owner, you're barely keeping the lights on by the time you pay expenses and taxes and everything else that goes into running a program. So we shoot for 15 to 1. And if you get a 9 to 1, you're profitable. If you get 30 to 1, you're thrilled. If you get 15 to 1, you're thrilled. But that's going to keep you out of trouble and it's going to get you to ask the right questions of your vendors so that you know you're not getting into bad opportunities that just can't make money and then also reducing that offering or getting really tight around what your offering is and making sure you can execute on it and that we're not trying to offer something for everyone.
Every business is not for everyone. Every business that makes money is for the people that want to buy that product. So let's focus on those people. Give them a great experience.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: I want to ask a little bit about ROI without getting too complicated because I think it's a hard concept for small business owners in particular to understand. Could you just. Before we break, because we're going to talk more, I think, about your business plan process in the next segment. How about roi?
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Return on investment. You spend money, you need to make money. How much does it cost you to run your business? And how much do you need to make to make a profit? And profit, I think, for, for small business owners, they think about, you know, is the gross revenue growing, but they don't look at the bottom line that well. And they also don't consider what they need for their own personal lifestyle. So when we're building budgets. And we'll get into this business planning concept on the next segment.
When you're building out the profitability of your company, also consider what do you need for your own personal lifestyle? Because you know, business is great, but it's not so great if you're barely breaking even and you're living your life just to feed your business. Then you have a job, not really a profitable business. So we want to help people make that transition and cross that bridge.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Thank you. That's a perfect note to end on. And I hope my takeaway from that is really fixing your mindset, the continuity issue, and making sure that your revenue is also profitable for your business and your life. How can people find you? KIRK Online?
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah, you can always find me at kirkirkjaffe.com or kirkjaffe consults.com they go to the same place.
And also 818-469-2189 is my business cell phone call at any time of the day because in my business I don't answer the phone in the middle of the night. But I promise to get back to you right away.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Thank you. Stay with us. We're going to talk more with Kirk in our next segment about a business plan foreign welcome back to BALANCING acts. We're talking with Kirk Jaffe. We just finished the financial side of growth, but now I want to turn to something Kirk mentioned, which is a using a one page business plan. And what the business plan does is help people who need focus and clarity because you don't want 10 to 20 pages. You want something very simple that will help you really monitor the financial side and all your objectives. Kirk, let's talk about your process for working with clients and creating a business plan.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks, Linda. You know, my business plans are really designed for execution. You can build a long term business plan which is great for financing. And we go into that for different reasons for different clients. Right. But when I think about a business plan, I'm thinking about 90 days. So business planning really should happen four times a year from where I sit, quarterly. Right. So start your business plan in October to start executing in January and then you'll be on track. You'll always be about a month ahead of time, but before the quarter begins. And we split our business plans into three parts. I don't know how you yours, Linda. I'm sure there's a lot of commonality and thinking, but we go goals, projects and habits. Three goals, three or four projects and three or four habits. And everything has to drive towards the goal so the idea is if you set the right goals, which are, you know, score measurable, executable type concepts and we'll work walk you through that and help you get the right goals in place. Your projects are things that you put in place one, and once they're done, they will work forever to feed those goals and they can even be adjusted as your goals change. Now your habits are something that you have to go through every day and we all have to get up every day and do things that need to be done to make sure the business is moving the big rocks. I think we all get caught in the email, we get caught in answering phone calls, and sometimes we miss out on where are the really high payoff items that we can do on a regular basis to make sure we're finishing our projects and reaching our goals.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: That's great. It is a little bit different, although I think we probably so much goes into planning. Let's, let's say for maybe a sample, somebody who's just starting, you know, maybe they've been in business a year, a service business or consultant. What would be an example of that first business plan? What would it look like so people can visualize what you're talking about in those three parts of your plan?
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm working with a business mindset coaching platform right now that I've known for years. They're a terrific company, but they, they've, they're on the roller coaster. They're up, they're down, they're sideways, they can't seem to keep keep it on the tracks, you know. So I worked with them last week and we created a business plan. What do you need? Well, we need $250,000 in the next 90 days. And that's for a lot of variety of reasons for their business, but that's their goal, $250,000. Great. Well, what's your project? Well, we need to come up and re establish our program because right now we have 18 different programs that we're selling and none of them are making money. And we can't service all those programs because we don't have enough staff anymore to make that work. So we worked with them to really drill down on what are their programs. Took them from 18 programs down to two programs along with 15 bonuses. So that's the project. How do you reorganize that platform, that offering and that pricing model so that we can take it from 15 or 18 down to 2 that are going to be high, profitable and then what are the habits? Well, in this case, the Owner and his assistant have to start calling all their clients. They've got 3,000 clients and 600 that have paid. But those 600 paying clients haven't heard from the trusted partners. The owner and the assistant are the trusted partners in this business that everybody wants to hear from, but nobody's heard from personally in a long time. So we created a habit. You've got to call two, three people every day. If each of you make three phone calls, that's six a day. And after about five or six months, you'll get through the whole list together and you'll probably hit that $250,000 goal by having an offering that people can actually digest, consume and afford.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: That is an incredible 90 day business plan. So just going from 18, getting it down to 2, I understand. You know, they're adding some bonuses, so that helps.
There had to be a lot of pain around that, right? A lot of angst over what do we cut, how do we cut and what if. So how do, how do you help people deal with that?
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a process of planning. You know, it's, it's looking at the P and L, it's looking at past business plans, it's looking at ROI on past projects. You know, this particular company has spent 3,400,000 a year over the last five years on social media marketing campaigns. And when we really drilled down on that, what we found out was they didn't make any money. Which, by the way, is typical for all small businesses that are running social media marketing campaigns. That's a marketing and branding concept, not an income generating project. And people don't understand that. So taking them through the numbers and really explaining to them how their actions are impacting their bottom line and how their offerings are impacting their bottom line is really what makes a difference. And it takes some time. It, it does take, you know, hopefully several hours, sometimes several weeks to get people's mindset around. Let's try, let's try and simplify, consolidate and really produce an offering that's profitable not only for us, but also profitable for the client in terms of what they get out of their efforts.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: So you're obviously supporting them in the emotional part of, you know, letting go. Right? The business owners, by their very nature, including myself and probably you, we're all controlling, right? We run a business, we're very passionate about what we do. So how is it you help them get through these changes that they need to make? Some of them sounded easier, but I think they have to be able to see it. Right. So what is it in, in terms of trusting you to, to guide them that makes this work?
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the trust comes from experience. Right. And you and I, Linda, after, you know, 25 years, you mentioned over 30 years for you, I've, I've built over 35 companies myself for myself and for others. I've, you know, my mortgage and finance business. Over the years I've looked at 17,000 businesses and personal financial statements. So what happens when you spend 25 years looking at businesses and financial statements and doing all those things for lending? You start to see patterns, you start to see explanation, explanations of how things actually happen and how they play out over time. So it's really that experience that makes the difference and being able to show people. I'm taking you through a proven process. My process is designed to be five specific steps. We have about 12 different areas that we look at through five specific steps of reviewing a company, re establishing their goals, relaunching their product, and then following up and measuring how things happen inside that process and then finally reevaluate. Because the great thing about business is it's always changing. New technology is coming into place, geopolitical issues are coming into place. In this case, we're in the tax and, and a tariff issue right. Right now and, and all the transitions going through government. I never see any of those things as bad things. They are only opportunities to jump into that river and see where it takes you and make adjustments along the way and bring the right tools with you so you can capitalize and be profitable through any situation.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: That's really great advice. In fact, I've been talking with people lately. The question is coming up of how do you find revenue and opportunities in uncertain times. Whether you know, the economic challenges, tariffs, etc. And I think you're right that working with someone with as much experience as the two of us have and many others, other advisors we are able to guide because there's not a lot we haven't seen. So what would you recommend, let's say for someone who doesn't have an advisor with our experience, where's a good place for them to find some resources either on your website or in other places to help them get started on this?
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we're giving, we always do a one hour free consult with anybody because I have not failed with single business yet in 25 years. And part of that is because I really evaluate them up front to make sure that they're in alignment with what we're doing. And that they have resources and we have resources that are going to dovetail together and create success. So that free resources for you, just call Kirk Kirk KirkJaffee.com or 818-469-2189. We'll always get you that free resource. We have lots of other resources on the website as well. I've written multiple books. Those allow those are for download about how to build relationships, how do we evaluate your advisors, how to get financing, all these types of things are available and also some mindset tools are available on the website as well. Or if they just reach out to me, I'm happy to send them over, no problem. But I think at the end of the day, you really want to evaluate your advisors and make sure that they understand where you're trying to get to and that they can build you that bridge for success. And that comes from experience and it also comes from personality. There has to be alignment. I, after managing over 3,000 vendors in my career on a regular basis, I found that it's more about personality than it is about product. So we'll take you through that process as well to make sure that you're aligning with the people that are going to help you succeed.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: I think that's great advice and I'm glad to hear you have a lot of resources for people to get help and that often will be a good starting point until you are ready. So I hope you'll stay with us for our next segment because I want to unpack a little more, talk about some gaps, evaluating gaps in your business, whether it's in the finance side or as I say, the story behind your numbers. I personally plan to visit Kirk's website and look at those resources too because I'm always looking for ways to help business owners. I think it helps to have a community around you and that is what helps make you stronger. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to Balancing Acts. We're talking with Kirk Jaffe, an advisor and consultant to small businesses who focuses on the financial side of growth. And I'm your host, Linda Hamilton, a CPA and certified exit planning advisor. So Kirk, we just covered a lot in our first two segments.
Why it matters to look at your finances when you're growing. And we just talked about doing a 90 day business plan.
Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about cash flow, which you know, it can be an illusion. People often confuse cash flow and profit. They are not the same. Right. And I think that's one of the hardest struggles that I've seen in my career as a CPA to get them to understand. A common statement to me is, what do you mean? I have a profit and have to pay taxes. I don't have any cash because they don't really understand where the cash went.
So let's start there. In all the clients you work with, how do you get them to understand that difference between cash and profit?
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a tough question, right.
For those that haven't made the shift, if you will. So every time I put together client packages, monthly packages, there's always a balance sheet, a profit and loss, and a cash flow statement. And you have to learn how to read those three things together. To your point, Linda, good cash flow doesn't mean profit. If we're not focusing on the 15 to 1 ROI concept that we touched on earlier. So you could spend a lot of money and make a lot of money and not retain any of it. And that's important. The other piece is you can I have another client, that restaurant that we were talking about earlier that makes tons of profit, but they always have a cash flow problem because they have a budget problem, because they don't understand that their busy months, their restaurants. So they're going to have busy months where they need to retain some of those earnings to carry forward for positive, for negative cash flow situations that come on a cycle. And because they never learned how to read their financials, they never understood their cycles. And now we look at them and we say, oh, we know that you're going to be slow in April and September and again in December, and that's historical for the area that your restaurant is located in. So let's reserve a percentage each month so that you can cover those gaps.
And I think that's really important. So it's a 15 to 1 return on one side where you make a lot of cash flow, but you're overspending and not getting a return on investment, which is draining out your profit. On the other side, you have a lot of profit and terrible cash flow because we're not properly budgeting for those ups and downs that come outside of our control because of the nature of our business.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, we're talking about, the focus is really on financial statements and budgeting. Right. When you start to talk about taxes, you know what I have found and often these are generally not my clients, but clients who come to me. They're often wanting to generate a loss at the end of the year for tax purposes. You do a lot, right. You've Done a lot of mortgages, looked at a lot of financial statements for people applying for loans and they've run into troubles where they need a credit line, but they were importing a tax loss and they said, oh no, I don't really have a loss. You know, my, my financials indicate I really have a profit.
So how do you work with clients on that and getting them to really understand why that matters? Because you can't really grow without profit, right?
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a, it's a strategy. You know, if you know that you're going into a growth period and you're going to need capital to support that growth, let's start adjusting those losses and those tax returns over a two year period ahead of that growth, if possible. So that's the safest, easiest way to do it the other way inside your tax returns. And I always work with the CPAs on this, there's appreciation, there's depletion, there's depreciation, there's a few things inside the balance sheet that are reported on a tax return that can be added back in as income for lending purposes. And so it's really understanding where to capitalize on those opportunities so that your CPA can help you report things correctly. Also keep track of your, of your cash flows, meaning I look at, when I do business lines of credit for clients, we actually pull their 24 months of bank statements so that we can show the deposits and where money went so we can justify and explain why the tax return is justified, why the cash flows are justified, and why the future business plan is justified and how they all dovetail together. So there are lots of different types of lenders out there. I tell people actually in this book right here, approved, this is a book about how to get your loans approved. And there's really three areas that converge and that's your personal package of financials, the environment and interest rates. And so you, you know, environment is more about where is the bank and how are they underwriting, what products are available. Interest rates we can't control, they go up, they go down, but we can't control our package and how we present it. So it's understanding sometimes if you have a lot of losses, you may not get the cheapest interest rate. Sometimes if you can overcome that by providing better documentation, we can lower the interest rate and get you the financing that you need. But it's a little bit of a puzzle game.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah, you shared some great insights in that. About 1, you know, are there industry things and being able to explain it's very important to explain the story about why there's a loss on one side or a profit to make the underwriters right comfortable.
Oftentimes there's a question of people fear getting a credit line. But we were just talking about creating, you know, a business plan and sometimes you do need to borrow money to fund your debt or the timing difference like restaurants on cash flow.
Is it a good idea to have a credit line and when should you consider having applying for one?
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Yeah, if I'm a banker and underwriter. You want to consider applying for a credit line when you don't need any money whatsoever.
Those are the people they really love to make loans to. Right. With the best, the best interest rates and terms.
But if you see the future, if you see an opportunity, if you see we were talking earlier about getting in the river and following the path, there's always opportunities to make profit and to see new business places to focus our attention and new offerings for clients or enhancing an existing offering because the environment has changed. So if you see an environment is changing, right now we're in a big geopolitical situation. So if you're in a, a business like, I don't know, import export law, that's probably a high demand business right now, you may want to take out a credit line as a, as a business attorney and say let's start running a marketing campaign explaining our ability to navigate through these waters and these geopolitical issues. If you're an import export business that has that need, a lot of lawyers don't advertise. So that would be an appropriate reason to take out a line of credit to get the word out appropriately. 15 to 1 return, if your line of credit is going to push your cost basis, if you will, from a 2 to 1 operating cost to a 4 to 1 because of the cost of the program and you can make a 15 to 1 return on your, on your investment using that credit line. That's a great way to predictably and safely take on that risk. If you can't see the numbers, if you don't have a business plan that shows you where your potential profits are coming from, then I'm probably going to tell you to hold off or take a smaller credit line. There's no reason to, you know, swing for the fences every time. Sometimes a base hit is just as effective as a home run in business.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: You know, that's great advice as well. And I would say, you know, not only like funding a, a market opportunity marketing campaign, but sometimes you might want to hire to Take on the extra capacity to fill that opportunity that's facing you, which is another reason. And so credit lines are good. They don't have the interest until you use it. And as long as you're looking at the story of what's coming, I think they're a great vehicle to help you with growth. Let me ask you, in terms of that credit line, we talked about habits, the habits section of your business plan. Now, if you want to see opportunities coming that you're not prepared for, what about businesses? You know, they're stuck in the weeds. They're doing everything. They're wearing every hat. They have no capacity to get done what they're already working on, let alone the, you know, the free space in their mind to be able to look for opportunities. How do we help those business owners?
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah, some of those people, I really encourage them to join our mastermind you had asked me about earlier. If you go to my website, Kirkjaffeeconsults.com and just click on contact Us, there's a dropdown that says register for event. That just tells me you're interested, and we'll reach out to you and tell you all about it. But surrounding yourself with other people that have been where it is you want to go is really a big help to breaking through some of those barriers you're talking about.
I find a lot of business owners, including myself in my past, have that bottleneck issue that you kind of brought up there, Linda, where they want to do everything. They don't have the tools yet to outsource a single job to a new employee. So we're talking about using credit lines to hire. But if you're hiring new employees and you don't have a very good understanding of what you need that employee to do, what the timelines look like, what the measurement of success looks like, so you can explain it to them so the employees understand that they're winning, which means your business will win. That can become a problem, and it often blows back. It rolls back up the funnel to the owner to make decisions, and that's a problem.
So one way to get around that, I found, is limit the amount of time you're willing and able to work per day as an owner. If you're an owner and you say, I'm only working three hours a day, you have to get real strong on what decisions are being made and where you're focusing your time and what your big rocks look like. And that's one of the things we focus on in the Mastermind, how to really curtail ourselves so we're making wiser decisions. It doesn't mean you have to work three hours a day. You might want to work longer. But if you work three hours a day, you have that one high value issue each day that's going to be accomplished either by you or your team. It means that the information can't roll back uphill. And you mentioned the E myth earlier, Linda, a great tool for evaluating when as owners are we going to solve the problems for our employees and when are we going to give them the empowerment to go and make a mistake and learn along the way and actually build probably a better relationship with the client ultimately by being open and vulnerable rather than trying to run it up the flagpoint, have somebody else, the owner, figure out the problem.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: Thank you for that.
So much wisdom. I really want to talk more in our next segment about a little more on the bottlenecks and also systems. Right, systems for your employees, your culture, because it takes a lot to grow a successful business and to be sustainable. How can people find you online?
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah, always go to Kirkjaffeconsults.com best way to get me there is hit the contact us form, fill in your information, tell me what you're looking for. We have all kinds of options in there. And also 818-469-2189 is my direct business cell phone. Call me anytime. I only answer it when I'm working.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Thank you. We'll be right back. Stay with us because Kirk and I are going to unpack some more financial side for you and helping you build a successful business this foreign.
Welcome back to Balancing Acts, your guide to grow profit and scale. I'm Linda Hamilton, a CPA certified exit planning advisor and systemologist. And we're talking with Kirk Jaffe of Kirk Jaffe Consultants about business planning, financial side of growth, bottlenecks, profitability. So much went into the last three segments. I hope you'll listen to if you miss them and Kirk. Now we want to talk about mindset in the face of adversity. I hear across the country. I participate in many groups and women's business owners, the Pinnacle group, we bank. What I'm hearing is a lot of fear and uncertainty. They don't have time to find opportunities. They're worried about canceled contracts and they really do need support. Finding opportunities isn't that easy. So what can we do to help business owners who are going through that right now?
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a rough time and it's also a liberating time and it's a wonderful time.
Changing the mindset is really about having vision for your future and knowing that our expertise and everything that we've done up to this point has led us to where we're at and where we can go. And I think people, business owners in particular, get very nervous when things get rough.
And that's usually when I turn inside myself, I start to read. You see these books here behind me? There's all kinds of books on negotiation and timing and creative thought and marketing. And a great book is who Moved My Cheese? Which is one you may know, Linda, real briefly. You know, don't tie your shoes up and think that everything is all sunshine, all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes you got to put those shoes back on and scurry around and go find the next opportunity. But I think if we look inside ourselves, if we look inside our businesses during rough times and really do some gap analysis, do some SWOT analysis, do some of those basic business concept, business thinking, planning doesn't have to take a lot of time. You can do it in an hour. If you have a great consultant or you have a mastermind you're part of or a group like you described, these are places to have those conversations. But really be jotting down what are the, what are the tools inside your business that are really solid and how do we re execute those tools and redeploy them as new products so that you, you know, you mentioned to be on the break, one of your clients had, you know, went from 45 employees to zero employees just from January till today. That would be emotionally difficult, right? I've had to lay off employees, too, in my career. And it is always terrible. It feels terrible. But once you get part of that terrible feeling is also looking at what can we do to adjust so that when we grow the next time, we put some safeguards in place, some safety nets in place so that when the environment does change, we don't have to be quite so out of sorts.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Right. And, you know, there's constant change, right. We had the 2008 crisis, we had Covid. There were businesses that went out of business overnight, and there were businesses that made millions more, probably, I would think, just with masks. So that mindset of maybe this is a good time to look at your revenue streams. And we talked earlier about selling 18 different things. You know, maybe you dial that back if necessary. And I'm like you. I. I do read a lot of books and take a lot of classes as well, because I feel there's always more time to learn and the market is always changing. Right. There's so much change, which leads me to a little bit about AI, which is the biggest change combined with.
It's helpful. When you look at tariffs, you can find some really good brainstorming on these things, but it's also affecting every business. Is that something you are seeing in the clients you talk to?
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I think AI, like a lot of business opportunities, is misunderstood and people will spend much more than they need to to create or to utilize an AI concept. So I'm an entrepreneur. So when AI came around, I started studying it. I've been involved with Web 3.0 and blockchain, all these different concepts for a lot of years. Learning, Linda. Staying out of my comfort zone in terms of learning and also going into other masterminds and being around other people that know more than I do about these areas. What ended up happening was I opened a company. So I have an AI development company. And what we do is we develop custom solutions for our clients based on what their needs are. So we built a training platform for the restaurant, we've built a sales platform for people that are going through transition, businesses that have good lists of clients but don't have time, like you said, to find their next opportunity. So what we want to do is we want to create an AI system where those inbound phone calls are coming to you automatically so that you're on a high value opportunity call to sell a product that is in alignment with what you have available to sell. So that's what we're doing in the AI. I really, anytime there's a new product or service that's available in the marketplace, I go very deep on learning about it and how it was intended to be used versus how it may be used today. You have to be careful. There's a lot of companies in the AI space in particular that are selling unbelievable products. I've been quoted up to $25,000 a year for a product that after they quoted it to me six months later they called me back, they go, oh, we're not doing it for 25,000 anymore. Now it's $300 a month. Well, that's because they overreached in their ability, they overreached in their explanation and probably their product didn't really work. So when we build products, they're custom built for our clients so that we know they work and we know that they can be managed. And I think if you can't get a custom built solution at a reasonable price, don't do it. Find a way to go back to the old Standbys that have worked always for your business. Because sometimes new technology is a distraction, not an additive to growth.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Oh, so true. It's a tool, right?
And it is good to study it. I think that let's say for business owners who are facing some cutback in business and things, it's not a bad time to start exploring it because you do have to get fast. Your fear of AI, it's not going back in the bottle. This is something that is going to be with us. It's going to change and adapt. And I too am playing with it. I haven't built any of the platforms, although I did hear a story you might find that one of the universities, I think it was Stanford, was doing some testing with an AI therapy bot and that people, their depression decreased, their anxiety decreased, and they even bonded with the AI because it's available at 2am when no therapist is. So I would imagine anyone using that, that might make a difference in a therapy business perhaps that doesn't have, you know, the funds to upscale with hiring.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: One of our clients is a autism support platform and they use speech pathology and different things and they're using AI to solve the problem of clinicians. So people that are speech pathologists spend hours and hours and hours writing these reports, which means they spend less time focused on their client and the client needs.
So AI is a great tool for that. They found a way that these reports are written real time. So while you're interacting with your client as a speech pathologist, the report is being written for you and all the blanks are being filled in for your legal obligations. That way at the end of the, of the session, you can take five minutes, read the report, make a couple corrections or updates, and then it's done. Instead of having to have an hour session and then two hours to write the report, which means we're spending less time serving those people that need it in speech pathology world. So there are great ways to use AI. I will caution everybody that AI regurgitates whatever it finds. It doesn't think, it doesn't have the human capacity to interpret. So even though AI is great, you really want to use multiple AI systems together and weave them together so that you're getting three different opinions from the AI perspective and then use the human aspect, our own brain, to see if it makes sense. And that's part of what we're doing in our API, which is called My City AI. And you can find out more again, just reach out to me.
[email protected]. happy to show you how that works. Our first beta version of the sales platform is coming out next month, so we're real excited about that. We've got great results from it already.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: Oh, I'm excited to check at that. What we're talking about is really an example of something that is both a threat and an opportunity. Right. And just like the tariffs are, there's a threat and there's going to be opportunities. And to get past the mindset, as you talked about so much before, and even in your business, planning on habits, it's taking the time to step back and look what is available for you. Are there any pivots you want to make? Because being in business is about being resilient. Right. We cannot stop change. Politics changes, the economy changes, and it will keep going. So I hope that.
What would you leave people with? Let's say they're really struggling with adversity and they're a little frozen about what steps are. What are some small steps they can take to find new opportunities for their business so they don't have to be closed?
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I do a lot of mind mapping. When I get really stuck or I'm just totally overwhelmed, I'll just sit down and start throwing ideas out on the paper, out on the digital paper. I bought this wonderful thing, which is a notebook with a pen that converts. It's AI related and you write in the notebook and it converts everything real time into digital concepts so you can work with it digitally. So it's a great way to do mind mapping that turns into a digital concept immediately that you can go work with.
Write down everything that's that's there and write down who you are today, what's most important to you today, because we change and shift, our cellular structure is literally changing, you know, regularly. Right. I can't remember the exact amount of time, but basically every cell in our body is a new cell over a period of time. What I was born with is not in my body anymore. Today at 51, right. It's over.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: It's.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: It's transitioned many times. And with those transitions, who we are transitions as well. So go back to the basics. Write down who you are, what you believe in today. What's interesting to you, join a mastermind, like the momentum maker mastermind that we offer, because it's a great place to be around other people going through the same situation so that you realize you're not alone. Or join a group like you're in Linda and be around other people that are also experiencing similar problems.
But be careful. Don't join a group that's bringing you down. Join a group that's encouraging you to expand and grow and that's where you'll find your next opportunity.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Thank you. I have loved talking to you. I think I'm motivated, inspired to look at your mastermind group, your mind mapping. Really, really wonderful. I hope there's so many takeaways from even just from this segment, as well as the other three on if you're facing adversity, go back to the beginning, write things down and look for new opportunities. Thank you so much and I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Thanks, Linda. Love being here.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: This has been a NOW Media Network's feature presentation.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: All rights reserved.
