From Revenue To Real Profit

We unpack how clarity, not more dashboards, drives real profit and a saner life. Frank Mcshane shares how 80/20 thinking, customer contribution, and service tiers turned losses into cash and why subtraction is often the fastest path to productivity and peace.

• top line vs bottom line, and why cash rules
• profit turnarounds using contribution, not margin alone
• cost to serve and designing service tiers
• the 80/20 principle across inventory, p&l, customers
• focusing sales on high-contribution lookalikes
• the 16:1 attention gap and how to close it
• personal 80/20 for time, meetings, and habits
• sleep anxiety, mindfulness, and evening routines
• relationships, community ties, faith, and late marriage advice
• career guidance for 30-somethings to test and learn

Find Frank on: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@squarepegconsultants3021

Website: www.sqrpconsulting.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-mcshane/

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Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting

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Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-edwardsconsulting/30min

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Hey, what's going on, guys? I got a special guest here today. It's Frank Machane. He's the founder of SquarePeg Consulting. With over 30 years of experience, Frank has helped businesses see their data differently and actually uses it to drive meaningful growth. Over his career, he's helped companies unlock more than one billion dollars in cumulative benefits by focusing on profit optimization, strategic alignment, and operational efficiency. At the core of his work is a simple but powerful Rful, Rful, Rful. Most businesses don't have a data problem, they have a clarity problem. And today we're here to break it wide open. Frank, welcome to the hashtag clocked in podcast. After 30, yeah, you can go.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I'm excited to have you on. After 30 years of working with companies and seeing over one billion dollars in impact, what's the biggest mistake leaders make when they look at their data?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, typically they don't look deeply enough in it. They look at the top line, you know, and how's that doing? Is it growing? And they look at the bottom line and if there's something there close to what they expected. That's about as far as they go. But they don't understand the moving pieces in between those two lines to see what's the real impact, you know, and where does most of that positive or negative impact come from?

Top Line vs Bottom Line Clarified

SPEAKER_01 2:24

And what just for the audience, just to catch them up, what is a top line? What is a bottom line? What's the big difference? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So the top line is really the sales or revenue line. You know, that's what they're looking at, is that growing. And set the bottom line is in my case is what I look for is cash generated. So some some people call that earnings before income tax depreciation and amortization. But somewhere in that level, whatever they talk about in different accounting approaches, it's what cash is generated. Because that's what really makes the business grow and sustainable is generating more cash, right? So you can invest it back in the business or invest it in the people in the business, those types of things.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

So yeah, it can it can be very challenging too. There's a lot of people who make a lot, have very high revenue, but don't take home a lot of profit. I think there's some companies that have much lower revenue and have a lot more profit, which is the companies I'd imagine. And you start to see and break that down kind of how is that broken out? You know what I mean? How is the revenue? Is it one customer, is it 10 customers, is it a thousand customers? Makes a big difference.

Turning A $70M Loss Into $70M Profit

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah, there's the more is more kind of philosophy that work, and that's not necessarily the case. And I actually went through that in myself, got the privilege of being president of about a$700 million paper company in the Pacific Northwest, and we were not generating a lot of cash at the time. We got bought by a private equity firm, and of course, that's what they're interested in is cash return. And so that was my mission. And we looked at all the products and all the customers and found out which ones really were generating the cash and which ones were not. And and the previous philosophy had been to try be all things to all people and and keep you know, keep all the machines running. Well, that's not, you know, when we looked at the data, that wasn't really a profitable strategy. And so we really narrowed down the focus of the business to the things that really generated the cash. And we went from 700 million losing 70 million a year down to 500 million making 70 million a year.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

And then and then rebuilt the customer base from there, you know, using knowing what we were looking for a lot better. So much more targeted type of growth.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So it removed a lot of the waste.

Margin, Volume, And Cost To Serve

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yeah. A lot of you know, a lot of times the customers, you know, they were high margin products and high margin customers, but they're they didn't buy very often. And so you got a lot of money once or twice a year. And what we really needed was the low to medium margin that was getting ordered all the time. That's what really generated the cash. And uh, and the margin can be a distraction for for executives to look at, particularly sales executives, they like margin, but margin without volume doesn't get you much, right? That doesn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

That's quite interesting.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

And then lastly, they don't look beyond that, but the margin, they don't look to see what's the cost to serve different customers. And you know, some of them are big and easy to serve, those are good ones to have, and some of them are small and difficult to serve, and those are those just soak up a lot of time and effort.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, and and a majority of the time we don't even realize who how much our employees cost. That's we don't look at it as a per hour basis. Like I think there's one there's one thing I saw where it was this program where basically if you invited someone to a meeting, it would tell you their hourly rate, and you would sit there and you go, This person makes$200 an hour. Does this make sense for them to sit on this meeting? Maybe, maybe not. And it starts to make you think a little bit differently, opposed to where you were before. So where did you learn all this? Like, where did this all begin? Did you just Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Well, kind of by accident, probably, but I got into training and operations at at Coca-Cola Foods early in my career, and that got me very interested in you know, what was what makes this thing work and and you know, how do we make uh improvements and which ones to focus on because there was so always more to do than you could you had time to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

So many ingredients, there's so many different things to try. Where were you in Atlanta?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

I was I grew up in Atlanta, but I I worked for the foods division, which was headquartered in Houston.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Oh, amazing.

Career Origins And Westward Move

SPEAKER_00 7:04

So I went there, but I kept going out west to all the orange groves and the orange processing plants that we had Minute made as one of our products. And so I used to go out there and then I'd get on the plane, go back to Houston. I was like, why did I do that? You know, I really I like it out west, and so over time I decided to just pick up and move out west. And and then I got connected with a kind of a boutique. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, one sec. So for you, that big moment of picking up out west. Like, I love how we tell stories, and we could have four years be one minute or 30 seconds. But for you, like genuinely, what was that decision like? Because I know that there's so many people who listen to this podcast who are sitting there going, What made Frank do that? Why did he do that? Did he pray he's a pros and cons list? Did he just go, I like this? And I know it's simple looking back, it's like, yeah, it's what I did. But in the moment, it's terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

A little bit, yeah. I mean, the hard part was you know, leaving friends and family and and all this. And my girlfriend at the time was living in North Carolina, and so uh, but she was very supportive, which was really great. She's now my wife, so that we made it through that.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Oh, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah. And so I but I just loved it out there so much, and I felt like you know, I'm gonna regret it all my life if I don't come out here and see what I can do, you know, see what kind of life I can create for myself. And so I did. So I moved out west. And I was lucky, like I said, I landed a job with a small kind of boutique consulting firm that was really operations-oriented, you know, on the shop floor, sleeves rolled up. That's that's the kind of work we did. And I just fell in love with that kind of work, and seeing, you know, from the ground what really makes a difference, what doesn't, and questioning things like why are we working on this particular product or this customer? Because we're not making any money doing this. Why why are we doing this? You know, we're beating our head against the wall. And so that kind of set the stage. I had some great mentors in that in that company. They were they were older, typically older guys. I was good probably one of the youngest ones in the in the company. And they just had all kinds of knowledge and ways of looking at things that I didn't understand until I got there.

Discovering 80/20 On Inventory And P&L

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And what was what was kind of that big takeaway in regard to like we're working on a customer or we have this area, or even for someone listening right now, they might have an area of life where they're like, yeah, I'm just not I'm spinning my wheels. Like, I don't feel like I'm making pro like, yeah.

Focusing On Top Customers And Products

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Sure. Well, I think we've all heard of the Pareto principle, you know, in college or in, you know, in our education. But the first guy that showed it to me, he was working on inventory, and and he was able to show me that only 20% of the inventory accounted for 80% of what was in inventory, but also 80% of what got moved and used in inventory. And that was a key to how do you now balance inventory versus demand, you know, and smooth out your your uh production operation instead of playing you know catch-up and reactive all the time to orders coming in. And so so that was the first one. And then it dawned on me, you know, you could apply this approach to other things. And so we, you know, whenever I got a PL to look at, a profit and loss statement, I would immediately sort it in descending order and find out where 80% of the of the dollars were. And usually it's a small number of lines, right? It's like 20% of the lines account for 80% of the dollars. And then that's where you want to focus is what can we do to impact those because they have such a much bigger impact on the business than goofing around with the little stuff at the bottom of the list. They that doesn't get you very far. And then when I had the sh the move to uh an executive role, then I had that chance to redirect the company, and so that's when we decided let's apply this approach to the customers and the products so we can see what 20% of the customers and 20% of the products generate 80% of the business. And let's really you know focus in on those, get better, be as competitive as possible, you know, be the best in those, and let's get rid of some of this other stuff that was really kind of white noise in the business that was taking up time and effort and attention, which you could never get back to place on the more valuable customers, right? You're it's lost.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense because when you start thinking about the 8020 principle, you start sitting there and going, like, if this person who's in the 20% pays me the most, gets the most value, I get the most value from them, and I can provide them the most value, they probably have other high-value friends or referrals, as we would say. Because when you start looking at it, I was actually speaking to someone who does consulting, leadership consulting, and the guy was telling me, he goes, My top client referred to my second top client. Yeah. I'm like, obviously, they're friends. So if you start moving in with people like that, then you move the other people out, and then all votes will start to rise.

Service Tiers: Basic To First Class

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Right. Yeah, and and uh the first option isn't to get rid of a customer, but it's certainly to reduce the cost of those low-value customers, right? And and just say, here, you know, we're gonna give you this basic service that that's good service, but it's the basic stuff. Like the I I use the analogy of the airplane, you know, the basic economy customers, they get a seat and a seat belt, and they get there when everybody else does safely. That's it. Anything more you gotta pay for, right? And so you can charge them more, and sometimes they'll self-select out if you start charging them for things that they used to get for free, like inventory or expedite deliveries or what you know, small order quantities, those kinds of things that they were used to getting, and that that gets costs us money. Yeah. So if they have to pay for it, sometimes they'll leave on their own. And then you can apply the real service effort to the first class customers who are really the ones generating the cash for the business. And and like you said, you know, maybe even get more of them through those contacts. It's kind of a little network, the first class network, I guess you could call it.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

No, it's not, it's it's so true. And people, you you the I don't want the audience to realize you can apply this to all your things in your life. So if you can find better people, you can get better friendships, you can do this with the activities that you do, you can do this with almost everything in your life. Where the restaurants you enjoy, you can find the things that give you the most joy and do more of that.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

That's right. Yeah. And it's the you know, it's the lost time piece that that really and what really struck me when I was looking at the customers in the in the paper company. I I actually went to the top 80% of contribution, which was about 20% of the customers. Then we went to the next 15%, which was about 30% of the customers, and then we went to the very last 5% of the money of the cash generation, and that was 50% of the customers. Oh my god. And that's not unusual. I mean, I found that in my consulting work, I found that kind of same pattern over and over again, sometimes even more skewed than that. But what dawned on me is the ratio between the 5% contribution and the 80% is 16 to 1. You divide 80 by 5, you get 16. So that's the that's the rate, the profit ratio or the contribution ratio from that top group to the bottom group. And we don't pay 16 times more the attention to the top group than we do the bottom group. And we're overserving the basic economy customers essentially, and we're underserving the first class customers.

The 16:1 Attention Gap

SPEAKER_01 15:30

And that's that's when you're on a basic economy flight and they start handing you the waters. Yeah, we have extra snacks, just take the snack. That's what it is. Instead of just being like, I mean, as a first class customer, it's hey, here are the snacks. Hey, we got extras. Hey, when we land, there's actually a car that's gonna come pick you up. Like those are all those are all bells and whistles, and when you start to look at it on a very interesting level, there's the 8020, and then there's also the 96.4. Like if you go one more. So I bet you there were specific customers that you're like, we should you should have a direct rep. Like, like we should have many people servicing you guys.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Well, that and that's exactly what happened. You you can actually refocus your sales force, your sales effort, and your marketing effort to the more valuable customers or the ones like them, as opposed to spending effort on the less valuable ones. And and I I've seen clients who were able to reduce their sales force and increase their sales, you know, at the same time, by giving their best salespeople much more opportunity with that type group, because the effort to land one of those is almost the same as the effort to land one of the less custom less valuable customers, right? Yes. Why not put the effort in where it's going to pay off?

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Absolutely a hundred percent. You want to reap the rewards. I was actually speaking with one of my clients this week, and he was saying how he's like, dude, I have so many calls. Like the other people on the team left, so it's him just running it, and he's got so many meetings. And I'm like, Well, how do you prioritize? And he's like, They're all equal. And I go, No, are they like, how can everyone be equal? Yes, we're all human equal for sure, but there's a value basis on like this makes more money or this doesn't, or this is more profitable, or this is more helpful, or these people have a more timely need. And he starts in there and he's like, Oh I'm gonna move some of these meetings out of two months. I know, as you should, as you should. And if we move them, yeah. Well, it frees up your schedule and it starts to get you thinking a little bit differently. And and that's something that you bring up that I think is really interesting is this idea of like how do we get more productive in our own life and in the business life, but also that you you say like subtraction can be a win because most of us think I want the biggest plate ever, and until we're 80 years old, do we start going, I'm gonna start taking some stuff off the plate right now. Because throughout life, I've had so many calls where I just see people accumulating. You would think they're at a buffet and they have 27 plates on. Not gonna be able to eat all of them. You gotta pick one to eat.

unknown 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

So how do you think about those?

Personal 80/20 For Time And Life

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Same, same way, you know, you just gotta be careful with your time. That's the most valuable resource you have is your time. And where do you want to focus not only your own time, but your people's time in an organization? Where do you want to focus that so that you they and you get the best benefit out of it, right? And and yeah, not everybody's the same, all you know, all revenue is not created equal, all customers not created equal. And so we got to sort of help them see the differentiation, which is like I said, it's not a hard, not a hard thing to do. The hard part is now what? You know, after you've got that analysis done, what what are you gonna change about how you interact with your customers or how you go after new ones based on this new understanding of the value, the relative value of them?

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah, do you do you find that once you introduce this 80-20 principle, you start to realize, because it was interesting, you're like, I have to be very specific with how I spend my time, or my time is my most valuable asset. Sure. But then when I'm sitting here thinking about it, I go, there's so many people that are busy from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing. So how do they stand up and just see the whole picture and go, what am I doing? Like this is silly.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, well, I start out with just asking for data, right? And no, I no judgments, no preconceived notions whatsoever. I just get their own data and then I I put it into formats where they can see this relative difference going on. It usually is a pretty much of a you know a shock and an eye-opener. I had one client when we did the analysis based on contribution. So profit margin minus the cost to serve. That's how we ranked all the customers. And 11% of them were generating 80% of the contribution, but 71% were only generating five, right? And yeah, and they had never looked or thought about it in that, you know, they're all customers were kind of the same to them. And and they used to be a small, you know, small customer, small business, but they'd grown into a much more sophisticated business, dealing with more sophisticated customers. And but they were still trying to treat everybody the same. And when I when we took them through that, they were like, oh my God, you know, we can't we can't handle, you know, the time and effort it takes to service these 71% of the customers the way we have been. And and then, but and we got to pay more attention to this 11% because there's and more and find more like them because that's what's gonna help grow the business, is to do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Absolutely. So so then what did they do? Did they and so then they start limiting services to them?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah, what we did was we take we took the all the service options that they could deliver and made a list out of those. And then we picked out, okay, what's what's good basic service, and that's what we would offer to the lowest value group, right? And then we added a few things, just like you were talking about, you know, to the to the premium economy customers in the middle. And then we had the full list available to the top group, the first class customers, so to speak. And then and then that's what they started to do. But it was it was real concrete things like minimum order quantity is a big deal, right? So if you're if you're have a small customer who just keeps hitting you with little orders all the time. It's like, okay, stop.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

It can be a very distracting thing. So we find a lot of distractions in our life.

EY Years, Family Priorities, Paper CEO Role

SPEAKER_00 21:59

And costly, you know, it just you know, handling each order, going to inventory, filling the order, taking it out to deliver it, that's costly, right? So we just said look, we gotta put some fences of some rules around these guys so that they can order from us, but but it's gotta be good for us too to do that.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

How has this how is this 8020 idea worked in like your life? I know it works in regard to the businesses, but I'm saying in your the way you think about things, the way you do things, like do you see this come off everywhere?

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Like you know, I still fall into the trap probably of dealing with some you know smaller things more than I should, but definitely in my in my consulting practice, I'm lucky that I've gotten to the point where I can kind of pick and choose my clients a little bit more. You know, we have to have to have a good relationship, some good rapport going, and and opportunities. To build some trust and they got to be willing to make some changes. That's kind of the first thing I ask them is how much change are you up for? And if it's like, eh, you know, then it's like, okay, don't, you know, let's not waste our time here, right? So that's a part of it. And then, you know, personal life. I mean, my family, my wife, and and I have two grown kids, those are the most important things. Next comes the two dogs and a cat. You know, so I make making sure I'm paying attention to them. And then, you know, a smaller group of longer-term friends. I have I have a fraternity brothers from college, that was over 50 years ago, that we still we communicate every day on text and and we get together once a year in person back on campus just to maintain those relationships, you know, because no way. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

What campus is this?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Davidson College in North Carolina, which is uh so you will fly out there once a year. Once a year, yeah. And I'm kind of the organizer of the deal, and we we pick a swath of about 10 years uh alumni swath, you know, from 1969 to 1979. That's the group we picked. And uh, because I'm right in the middle of that. And when you're in a fraternity, you you have friends older than you, older, younger, yeah. That's what that's the idea is to sort of get that whole group together. And so we do that once a year.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

And uh and how beneficial do you think that's been for you?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

It's been terrific for me, you know, very rewarding because everybody really responded positively to the idea, and I think for most of them, and it's created you know, little little groups spun off that keep that maintain contact on a regular basis, do golf outings, you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

So and when did you what and you literally started that after college?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Or this has been no, I started, I tried to start it in 2020. But really, no COVID. We had to so we shifted to just do it on Zoom, and and that turned out to be pretty popular. But as COVID eased up, then that next year we decided we're gonna go for it, you know, in person. And uh so then we did it.

Mental Health, Anxiety, And Mindfulness

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Oh, so you just connected back years later.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

But yeah, this was like years later. I was like, and some of these guys I'd been in touch with a going basis, right? But but for a vast majority, I hadn't seen or talked to them in a while, and they hadn't seen her talk to each other in a while. And so I threw this out idea out there and and they jumped on it. And so so that's an I that's an example of A items, you know, of the 80% value to me personally is is I love that example because you start to realize it's the compounding of so many relationships, so many things, and it's just once a year, but there's so many touch-offs from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

It has been you get a major outsize return.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Right. I did, you know, I do every time, and and we have a blast when we get together, and and we've lost a couple of folks, you know, and so but everybody gets to gets to kind of support each other when that happens and and and their families and you know that kind of thing. So it pays off at that end of the spectrum as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Absolutely. I love that. That's an amazing one. And then for you, when you think about subtracting, how how do you do you think that is a good or bad thing? Because when I think about what I'm sorry, subtraction, like minus things from your life.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's hard to do things, you know, that you maybe you've done it like, but like I said, time is your only resource, really. And as you get less of it as you go along, right? It's getting shorter, you got to be more and more careful about what you what you spend your time doing. And the only way to do that is to stop doing things. And working with clients, that's one of the first things I I work with them on is what can we stop doing.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Really?

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Because all productivity will go up almost immediately if you stop doing some of the things that aren't really paying off much. And but it's just things they're just you know in a habit of doing, and that's how we do things around here. And we've always done it that way, you know, all those kind of things. So if we can stop some stuff, then that then that gives us some room and time to really focus on improving the things that matter afterwards, right?

Health, Work You Love, And Community

SPEAKER_01 27:26

I think that's so important that you sit there and just take inventory of what's in your life. And one of the things I don't know if you've heard about it, it's Jesse Itzler. He's got this thing called the big big ass calendar. It's like this calendar with the whole year. And I got it this year, and because it was sitting there, and like you go through the year and you're not really sure what's important, what's not important. And then me and my wife, we just kind of go through the activity and it gives you this, I can actually see what's going on. I'm not crazy. I know what's going on this time. I have available. Let's do something, and it becomes this fun activity. But the big thing I think a lot of us struggle with is just deciding what we should do and shouldn't do. You know what I mean? So when you were going through that journey of leaving Coca-Cola in Houston and going to the Pacific Northwest, what was the thought there? Because obviously it's like your girlfriend's on the other side of the country who becomes your wife. Like, yeah, like what was the thought? Because I know that's really challenging for a lot of us.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Yeah. Well, you know, the climate was a big factor and just the the nature, you know, the the topography here and the just the experience of living out west. Actually, I first moved to the Bay Area and loved San Francisco, lived there for about four years. I was lucky in that I got to travel a lot with a consulting company, and so I would meet my girlfriend at various places around the country because I was traveling all over North America doing that work. And and so I we got we were able to maintain you know regular contact. And then finally we decided, you know, hey, we really want to live together, and so she was willing to move out west, but but we had to pick a neutral site. Instead of me showing her around San Francisco, all we picked Seattle, and uh, because we both we'd been there, we knew people there and and liked it. And so that was kind of the the genesis for moving to up to here, up to north up the Pacific Northwest. It's awesome. And we you know, we loved it, and Seattle was it was a great time. It was the date, you know, the advent of grunge was happening right when we moved there. And what was that? You know, grunge music, like oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, so that was a big thing happening, and just the whole environment there was pretty vibrant, you know. Microsoft was really taking off, and of course, it was was growing by left leaps and bounds. So that was a lot of fun. And then I joined Ernst and Young there and in the consulting practice, which was the biggest consulting practice in the world at the time.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

What'd you think of that?

SPEAKER_00 30:07

It was great. I mean, what a what a learning. It was like going, you know, being paid to go to school every day. It was really amazing. And got to deal with much bigger issues and bigger clients, and that was a great experience. And then my last client was the paper company that I mentioned earlier. And then and at that time I was ready to get off the road because we I was traveling all the time.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Oh, as the EY consultant, you're going everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah, it's it's the best work and the worst lifestyle all combined together.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

And my kids were getting towards middle school, so I thought, well, it's probably time for me to be at home more.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

The 8020 principal kicked in.

Relationships, Late Marriage, And Faith

SPEAKER_00 30:44

It did. And yeah, being at home was more important. And so I talked to my client, you know, about being a reference, and he said, Well, you know what? Why don't we just see if we can create a role for you here at the paper company? And so then we did that and moved to Longview, Washington, which is where I am now. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. And so, yeah, spent been out here 20 years and uh we ain't going back.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

I love it. I love it. And so for you, the all of those moments were always 80-20 principles, where it's, I mean, a lot of us go like, hey, the word forces us there, but a lot of the time it's if we can force ourselves to take inventory, and I just say this so the audience can sit there as they're thinking about their life, and they're like, what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. I want this to be a token of possibility for them to realize like maybe some of the stuff they're doing is silly. Maybe some of the stuff they're doing doesn't make sense. And maybe joining like the knitting club would bring them so much joy that it makes a ton of sense. Like, whatever it may be, but it's figuring out who we want to be or how we spend our time and how we want to allocate it.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah. And what you want to get out of your time, right? You know, I mean, what's the what's the desired outcome that you're looking for? And yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah, for me, it was just a different lifestyle and different geography and a different, you know, environment to be in. And I was lucky I was able to hang on to my my uh girlfriend now, my wife, and uh, and she loves it out here too. And we're you know, we both came from the southeast. Whenever we go back, it's always too hot and too humid. So it's like, okay, we're we're visiting, but we're not moving back.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yeah, yeah. No, I feel that. I feel that. So there's five pillars of Edwards Consulting. It's mental health, physical health, community service, philanthropy, spirituality, and relationships. So on a zero to ten today, your mental health, what's it feel like on a zero to ten?

SPEAKER_00 32:38

I think it's probably an eight or so. You know, pretty good. Yeah, I think it's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Why do you feel it's an eight?

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Well, I had some issues about a year ago. I just got into a sleep anxiety situation. I was trying to recover from knee replacement and uh and I just had trouble sleeping because of that. And then after that, the anxiety kind of developed on its own, right? And so I went through a lot of help and and uh processes to to improve that, and now I'm back to pretty close to normal, I think.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

But uh what was the biggest benefit for you? Just because I getting to sleep that was the biggest thing. No, I know, but what was the biggest challenge? Like what was the biggest tip or what that the people came up with that worked for you?

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Just to understand anxiety and what how that can influence you if you let it, right? And and not letting it do that. And then just to help yourself, you know, it's called, I guess it's you know, sort of under the general term mindfulness, it's it's really helping you set up center yourself and and settle yourself down into the present. Because I was always living in the future, being like tonight. Am I gonna get to sleep tonight? Am I gonna get to sleep tonight? I would be thinking that at 8 a.m. in the morning. Am I gonna get to sleep tonight? So it's like, no, no, no, let's don't worry about that. You know, let's just focus on each hour and day at a time. And and so that that's helped a lot.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Wow. So it's it's moving to the presence that helped you.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Advice For 30-Somethings And Openness

SPEAKER_01 34:10

I just say that because I know a lot of people in the audience have anxiety or have these challenges. And if you have one tip and it's like, oh, dude, that's that's what we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah, I think the mindfulness piece and just and developing kind of a routine around sleeping that helps a lot. Yeah, so I read every night. I I could turn off the screens about nine o'clock and then uh read for an hour or so. That helps a lot.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

So oh I love that. It's the the downtime routine. Yeah, people don't think about it. We think about a morning routine, but not an evening routine.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

It makes a lot of sense. What about uh physical health?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Physical health is okay. I mean, I'm I'm getting older and you know, I have aches and pains. I played college football, so I have a lot of you know residue from that experience, probably some arthritis and stuff, but uh generally okay. I got great blood, you know, blood pressure is good, cholesterol's very like world-class low. I I work with my daughter and my wife. We we take turns walking the dogs and so getting some regular exercise that way.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

I love that. And what do you think helps you?

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Well, having the dogs is a big help. You know, you they they won't take no for an answer.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

They bore you out there.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

One that one in particular, our collie, she just has to have her walk every day and and uh so or she'll pester you to death. And so yeah, that's that's what triggered most of that. I love that. I just want to be able to do things and and I I like what I'm doing work-wise. And you know, everybody's people ask, well, are she gonna retire? Well, you know, I don't understand what retirement would really look like. And and I I'm only working as much as I want to, and I I'm working with people, clients that I really like, so you know, I keep going.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

I'm gonna tell you the secret. You're already retired.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

People people don't really know how to feel their time a lot of the time. And when it's in the constraint of like the old world where it was, hey, you have a job and you have to do this, but when you're in the world of like, yeah, I'm just gonna pick up some work and like see what works and see if I like this, then it's it's not really worth like you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Yeah, if you love what you do, it's not like work, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, yeah. So and plus it helps people live a lot longer.

unknown 36:36

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

It really it is a good thing. Absolutely. Yeah, and then community service philanthropy. Is there anything that you guys do or engage in anything, or have you thought about that at all?

Where To Find Frank And Closing

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Well, I was pretty active when I when I was in the executive role here locally. I was chairman of the we have an old theater here in town that interestingly enough, it was due, it was built like in the mid-20s. It's really a classic, you know, old 800-seat theater. Oh wow. And it was due to be dis to be torn down. And they actually had all the equipment there to start the next day. And that's when Mount St. Helens blew in May of 1980. And they had to pull all the equipment up to help out, you know, with the rescues and cleanup after the mount after the volcano blew. Oh wow. And so the city fathers at that point, they they decided, you know, this is a sign. We we can't take this thing down. And so we went through a big, you know, uh fundraising and a capital improvement program and have got it back to just a you know sparkling place, great sound, great entertainment. So I I was chairman of the board there for a while. I worked with the community college here, which we we had a lot of folks joining the paper company from the community college, so I helped with the the curriculum there and and worked on their foundation board. And then the Chamber of Commerce, I've been involved with that for many years and and was president of the of the board for that for a few years. And then, but I've sort of tailed off on some of that. I mean, I did it, you know, and so uh other people, younger people are now in place, and that's good. But I still stay pretty plugged in to the community.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

And what do you do you think that's beneficial for you? Or beneficial for people? Like, should they be part of a group?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Sure. I think it's it's been beneficial for me from a work point of view. That's how I when I went back to consulting, that we went through a sale of the paper company, and and after that I decided I'm gonna go back into consulting as long as I can stay reasonably local. And that was the first place I started was with my contacts through these networks, right? They'd be several of them became clients, and that's got me started, you know, in that in under my own business.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

So I love I love that constraint that you said. You go, I want to do the console thing, but only on my terms where it's I'm not traveling a whole bunch. Yeah, there's so many of us that don't realize you can create your own life however you want.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Yeah, but you you just some people assume you can only do it certain ways, and yeah, sometimes you just gotta challenge your own assumptions about things.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

So a hundred percent. I I actually did this with uh so I really wanted to travel more. So the last two years ago, we ended up going to Europe for seven weeks, me and my wife, and I was just we would work during the day and just work remote. That's what we would do. And it was just an easy way for us to do our life because people would be like, Oh, do you want to meet up? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna be back in town in like three months. Like there when I get there. But it allowed you to do it's not like anyone said no because things didn't happen, like yeah, it wasn't the case at all.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Yeah, yeah. So I'm on the other end of the schedule. I'm trying to travel less. I've already done that, and I've been to all 50 states and most of Canada.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

And what's your favorite one? What's your favorite place?

SPEAKER_00 40:18

I mean, obviously, besides where you live, but yeah, I think right here is probably our favorite spot, is uh Washington State.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Any city that you like thought was very cool, or any state that you thought was very cool?

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yeah, well, I I love Northern California, I like a lot. And central I got to work in Central California right on the coast for a couple years with a nuclear plant down there, and that's just a spectacular place down there. So that it's that whole West Coast thing is is my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

I like it. I like it. And then relationships on a zero to ten.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Oh good. You know, I don't know. Uh probably not perfect, but we're we're at the nine, eight, nine, ten somewhere in there. My wife with my wife, she's very tolerant of me and uh most of the time. She she can't have you been married? See, well, we'll be at 33 years here shortly.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

That's incredible. Well what do you think's the the thing that makes it work?

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Well, we were friends ahead of time. She we we went to both went to Davidson College, but I went four years before her. And so when I would go back to visit, that that's when we got to know each other, and we were friends. We double dated on occasions and you know, we just got to know each other really well and always liked each other. And then she went off, she got married, but then she's they they broke up, and then she went off to the island, to the Caribbean to work for a while, just kind of get away and refresh, re-reboot, and then came back and uh and then we ran into each other in Atlanta at some alumni get together and just hit it off from there again and pick right back up. And so I think that being good friends ahead of time was really good. Plus, we were, you know, older. I mean, I didn't get we didn't get married. I was 40 and she was 30 got married, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

So we were mature newlyweds.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

It's a different approach, yeah. You've already had a career, you have a lifestyle. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Yeah, I was kind of ready to settle down at that point in time.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

That's awesome. And then spirituality. What is it? What is spirituality? I mean, is it present, non-present? Everyone's got a different approach.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Well, you know, sort of technically, uh, I'm I was raised a Catholic and and still am. And I certainly believe in God. You know, I have as I get older, I start to wonder sometimes, you know, is there really anything, you know, after this or not? I don't know. But if I just you know, if you just look around and look at the world and you and even thing, you know, just looking at how the human body works, it's kind of like this cannot be by accident, right? Yeah, there's got to be a plan of some sort. Yeah. And so that's my choice is to believe that there's a higher power and believe there's you know, somewhere after this that we end up. Because if there's not, you know, I'll never know. It'll be out. But if there is, then that's great. So why not choose to believe in that? I guess is my my philosophy.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Yeah, I think it gives you a token of possibility. Again, it's how do you look at the thing? Is it half empty or half full? And it's do you have are you stressed out about nothing or are you stressed out about everything? And it's like, how do you decide what you want to be? Because like that's the hardest part for a lot of us is there's two people, and I actually just did a post about this yesterday where it's like you two people can hear the same exact conversation. One goes, Oh, that's great, and the other one goes, My life's over. And it's like Yeah. What do you mean? And it's just it's just how we interpret things. So it's really important for us to realize what is the most important thing to us and how do we want to see the world. So for you, Frank, you seem like a pretty positive guy. What what are some tips or tricks you do to to keep that headspace going?

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Well, like I said, I think you know, keeping your close friends and and relatives and family close is is really important. You know, you need that as much as they need you. And so that's probably the first thing. And then, you know, just look trying to look on look for what's going well as opposed to just what's going wrong all the time. That's one of the outputs of the 8020, is you get this group of customers or products that are doing really well, and we didn't realize that they're 16 times more doing 16 times better than the other ones. Well, why don't we focus? Focus more on those, right? That gives us and you can be even a little inefficient with those because the payoff is so much better, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:06

And the other crazy thing is that we don't realize how many companies do you think are sitting there that need that service that don't even realize what the most important thing is? I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying there's so many, but even in your own life, like how many meetings or how many things are you doing that is just not value add? Like which is not beneficial. Or what are you doing that you're like, I freaking love this? And how do I do more of this? So I think it's I think that's really the question that the audience needs to.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Who do we want to be? What do we enjoy? And what's the most impactful thing for us?

SPEAKER_00 45:47

And just be honest with be honest with yourself about it, I think is the main thing too, you know.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah, and don't don't give uh what what does Jordan want to do or what does Frank want to do? It's what do you actually want to do and what is your most important thing? So, Frank, you've obviously had a lot of experience. What advice would you give to someone who's kind of coming up on the journey? I'm 30 years old. Any advice you'd you'd offer?

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah. You know, try a lot of different things, I guess, would be one thing. You know, don't be afraid, like you have to pick some narrow path and stick to it. Try some different things because you may find out there's something else, you know, that you really like to do better. Very few of us know exactly what we want to do in life, you know, early on. I've I've known a few of those guys in my life. One of my best friends, he knew he wanted to be a heart surgeon probably from the time he was 10 years old and and all through school. I mean, that's everything he's done his whole career. There's not many like that, you know. So you you gotta kind of experiment a little bit to see what and be open to things, you know. Even something that doesn't look totally attractive from a work point of view, maybe it's something you can learn a lot from, right? And use it later.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

See what the value add is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Find out and just be open to it. And if it's not, make a change, you know, get out, do something.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. Frank, where can people learn more about you? Where can they learn more about SquarePeg Consulting?

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Well, I got the YouTube site, I've got a bunch of videos there, of you know, little short four like three or four-minute videos on different aspects of business, particularly around the 8020 rule and and the benefits of that. Website is www.sqrpconsulting.com, and pretty clear explanation about what we do and how we go about doing it there. LinkedIn, you know, always good on that too. Absolutely. I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah, those are the main ways to get me.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Okay, amazing. I'll put that in the show notes. Okay, I appreciate you, Frank.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

You too, George. Thank you. I've enjoyed meeting you and getting to know you a little bit, and uh, I think you got a great uh got a great podcast show going here. So awesome.