In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Josh Thomas to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover what can happen when you simply focus on doing the work and moving the needle.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Josh Thomas to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover what can happen when you simply focus on doing the work and moving the needle.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is Josh Thomas. Josh, I'm excited to have you on the show. You can introduce yourself. Yeah. Hey, Tom. Great to be here. So I've been what you call a fancy pants business consultant for the last 15 years. And I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs, learned a lot of things. And I learned a lot of wrong things and learned a lot of right things, mostly the wrong things, but it only takes a couple of right things to make it work. so I've, been a constant student of that. Leveraging one opportunity and one lesson into the next the next level and the next level and the next level. And so it's been an interesting journey for me for for sure. Absolutely. Appreciate you sharing that and introducing yourself and kind of going off that. That's really what today's topic is going to be on is what what most small businesses do wrong and then how, they may be able to fix that. So I wanted to. Pass that over to you and let you dive into that a little more. Yeah. So there's, theme here that I love about your podcast. It's called small business, big moves. And in order to make big moves, we have to understand what are the things we can do that actually do move the needle. And a lot of times we focus on whatever is in front of us. That's shiny or motivational. You know, we, we go to conferences. We sign up for masterminds. We, we listen to people on stage. Oh my God, they just blew my mind by saying some basic thing you probably already knew. And or the next AI chat, GPT, Josh, GPT, Tom Bennett, GPT comes out and you're like, oh yeah, I love me. I Don't even, I wanna make a robot that's just like me. That seems cool. That seems like it'll help my business, right? but here's the thing. All of those are just distractions. From the one thing you really need to be doing, which is the work, the work. If we call the, I like to create what I call an action spectrum. And I went into the action spectrum. We have shiny objects, tactics, and on the other end of the action spectrum, we have motivation, mindset, strategy, and both of those things are great, they're very important, but tactics without implementation, total waste of time. Strategy without implementation, total waste of time. And so if we had this big spectrum here, implementations in the middle, that's where the work has to be done. And we got to bridge the gap by taking some action and we got to do some stuff. And specifically what we do really matters and what we focus on really matters. It definitely does. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I know that's I know everyone says that they're like you just covered on it, right? Everyone says they're doing the work, they're putting the work in the business, but there's a big difference between putting the work in or being being busy, or if they're actually being productive and. Taking their business to the next level. I'll say this. If, if you are busy and you're doing the work, but you are not producing the results that you want, you're doing the wrong work. And, and I, I don't mean to be so controversial here. I hope I don't ruffle. I hope, I hope I do ruffle some feathers with that because let's ruffle, let's, you know, let's ruffle them feathers, you know, like, because if you are so busy, I'm just so slammed right now, but are you where you want to be? And if you're not where you want to be, you're slamming yourself. Stop it. You know? Seriously. It's like, you know, stop. Stop hitting yourself. Exactly. No, it's important to a lot of people out there that yeah, it's definitely could be the link between getting their business to the next level. I know I know you said you've been in this space, you said for what, it was 15 years now you've been doing this? That's right. Awesome. And anything I'm sure there's been some up and downs throughout the road, right? I know we always hear about the the wins. We always see the wins and everything good on on social media, anything any hiccups or bumps in the road that you had to run into along the way? I sat down one time I've worked with more than, I counted it up, I've worked with more than 5, 000 entrepreneurs. And it's kind of like a hard number to believe. Somebody did the math on me once and they were like, Dude, that's like 300 a year. You know, and I'm like, Like, I can't believe you sat down there and did some math after some shit that I said, but okay. You know, and I'm like, cool. Now, some of these guys I worked with for an hour. And some of them I worked with for five years. And there's a whole lot of in between. But I sat down and I did this analysis one time of, because I, after you work with so many people, you start to see trends, and I sat down and I did this analysis, and there were some people that were just wildly successful, and then there were some people that were just a total disaster, and it didn't matter, like, it almost doesn't matter what I do sometimes like, some people are just going to be successful despite. And some people are just going to be a total disaster despite my job is to find as many people in the middle as possible and move them, right? Because the winners are going to win. Losers are going to lose, but there's this whole big group in the middle that like can be swayed. And that's where I want to make the most impact because that's where the most people can be helped. But I noticed some trends as I analyze this. And there were two things that really stood out. Successful people, wildly successful people, they all pretty much were doing the same things over and over and over again. Wildly unsuccessful people, they were pretty much doing the same things over and over and over again. That was the biggest revelation from my analysis of all these different clients. What you do matters more. then how well you do it. Consistency, what you do and how consistently you do it matters more than anything else. Quality? Irrelevant. Skill? Irrelevant. Motivation? Irrelevant. What are you doing? Is it moving the needle? And how consistently are you doing that? And it goes both ways, Tom, because if you're doing the wrong stuff, You're going to keep getting the wrong result. Like you can't just like, I'm just, I'm just going to keep hammering away at this until it turns into something else. It's like, it's not going to happen. It hasn't happened yet. It's not going to happen. And then I know kind of going off that too, is there been anything specific that's I know, we run in some of these networking groups together. We've been to the conferences. We've done all that. Anything specific that's helped you really move faster in your business over the over your time on this journey? So I'll tell you the, the one thing that most people are not focusing on that they should be. If you are, if you're an entrepreneur or you run a business that is under 2 million in revenue. And you're not focusing maniacally on sales and cash flow, you're making a big mistake. I have yet to encounter a single business that's under 2 million in revenue where cash and sales would not solve every single problem that they were facing. And because in 2 million, it's, it's a It's a gooey number, but it's the best one that I could come up with. It's kind of like a general threshold. Once you hit 2 million in revenue, depending on your industry, obviously, but you're getting to this point to where you're probably selling enough of your product or service to where you're going to need some, some management. You're going to need some help with delivery. Like it gets to the point to where you and a VA or a couple of employees, it's just like no longer workable. And so you kind of have to shift into this next level at that point where you're building systems, you're building an executive team, like a C suite and all those things, but forget about all that for now, because the majority of us are under 2 million. And we're trying to get ahead and we keep running into this wall, boom, boom, over and over again because we're hustling. And hustle got us pretty far, but hustle stops working right around that 2 million mark because hustle won't solve that problem, right? And so we're trying to solve that problem before we're ready. What we need to be solving is we need to be solving our cash problem because I guarantee you if you have An employee issue, like, ah, nobody wants to work anymore. Or if you have a customer service issue, like, well, you know, people don't, don't love our product. You know, it's these, these customers don't really appreciate us. You know, if you have a marketing issue, like, oh, I can't get enough leads in the door, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you have healthy sales and cash flow, you can just like point that cash at the problem and like pew, pew, pew, like it goes away. I'm going to reallocate all of this cash. These bags of money will solve any problem, right? And if you don't have bags of money to throw at a problem, solve that problem first. If you can solve that problem, everything else becomes Much easier or irrelevant. Absolutely. That's spot on, right? I mean, I think we both see it all the time and that definitely lines up, right? If you if you're that small business that's really just trying to get to that next level and like you said, you're Doing that, whether that be 500, 000, a million, 1. 5, 2 million a year. Like you said, you kind of get to that point where you're just still, we need more sales. We need more, revenue coming in. We got to improve our cashflow. So that's that, that helps a lot for a lot of people out there. I think you have to focus on that. It's, it is essential to your survival. And if you can, if you can stay there until it just doesn't make sense to be there anymore. You're set up to hit that next level and go into that next gear. And back to your, time in the industry, obviously growing yourself as a expert in the industry, 15 years, a lot of people aren't able to say they've been successful in doing something that consists and it goes back to, we've kind of talked about the whole time. You may be doing the same thing in one area and not getting the results or doing the other area and actually getting the results. So how do you continue to really learn and stay on top of things and something that's probably changing every day? That's a great question. And I'm going to answer it in A contrarian way. I am not trendy. I don't necessarily change with the times very well. And that's something that I actually am a little bit proud of because the fundamentals of growing a business have not changed since the beginning of time. Rather than focusing on whatever OpenAI decides is important next month, and rather than listening to the. the stage guru and saying, Oh, well, you guys need to do this and you need to read this book and you need to try this technique. I'm not worried about that. What I'm worried about are simple frameworks that are timeless, that are always going to work to bring cash and sales in the door and solve our number one problem. And as long as I'm using a simple framework, that framework can be adapted to any market condition any industry, any level of competitiveness. Any economic downturn, we can apply frameworks and adapt them slightly so that you can be successful no matter what else is going on around you. You have to keep that internally. I have a company that I started called factor one. You are factor one for your own success. And the way that we maintain that responsibility is we use simple, timeless frameworks that are never going to go out of style. They're never going to be. Antiquated or no longer functional, and we're going to install those frameworks in your business and we focus on deploying the steps needed to get the results that we want to get as long as we're focusing there. I don't need to be trendy. I love it. Yeah, that's great. That's powerful. I mean, it's like you said, everyone's looking into open AI and what's the, what's the next thing we can do in our business? How can we almost. Automate this business. But like at the end of the day, I think we, both know that you still need that that human experience and still, have to grow the business in a way that that's why you started it. And I think that's how you got to continue doing it for it to get to the next level. Yeah. People want to do business with people. They don't want to do business with robots, even your robot. And so It's a dangerous trend. I'm not trying to be grandpa here, you know, an anti technology. I love technology, but there's a, there's a point where you really do have to be invested in the messaging and the relationship that you're building with your potential customer. Because if you're not, it's, you're going to lose. And, and if a robot can do everything and you don't have to do anything, well, what do they need you for? And that's where it's like. I can get ChatGPT to pump out a bunch of emails for me and I can get them to be written in a certain copywriting style that's really effective from the world class best copywriter in the world or whatever, but it's not me. And that matters and people can still tell. They may not say, pinpoint it like, Did Tom write this email or did, a robot write this email? They may not be able to say that, but it's just like something's off, you know, like this doesn't, resonate with me. Like I can go and boil a chicken breast and put it on a plate but that doesn't mean it tastes good. It might nourish me but I would rather, you know, get some spices on there, maybe make a nice little sauce or glaze. Put some garnishes on top. Like, let's give it a little bit of flavor. And human beings are, you know, we're still good for flavor. You know? The robot's just gonna give you the boiled chicken breast. It works, but who cares? I love the analogy, that's spot on. And then, let's take it all the way back to the beginning of this journey for you, right? What what got you into this or what made you decide, hey, I got a lot of value that I can provide here and really make something out of this? Money. I was kidding. So I used to be a teacher. I got pretty burned out on that. And I decided to get my real estate license. And so I was a freshly minted. Real estate licensee in July of 2008. Oh, fun. Yeah. And for kids, kids, for those of you that don't remember, that was the worst economic times of, you know, the modern era. Nobody could get a loan and nobody could sell their house for what they paid for it. And so, and here I am with no skills no resources. Not even knowing that the economy is tanking because I wasn't paying attention. And so I royally sucked at that. It was so bad. So, so bad. And so didn't want to go back to teaching. And the only place that would hire me, believe it or not, was a, call center to, to sell stuff. And I didn't know anything about sales, but fortunately they were willing to teach me. And I leveraged that into a job at a consulting firm. And then I was able to learn how business worked kind of on their dime. And that's where I got, you know, I said, I work with 5, 000 clients. A lot of them were there. yoU know, that's where I, I was on the phone just working directly with businesses, learning my craft until I was able to leverage that into, okay, well, I want to do my own thing. And I was able to leverage that into the next thing and the next thing. So it's, it's a series of stepping stones, really you going back to, I love the name of your podcast, Small Business, Big Moves. Because. What we have to do is we have to prepare ourselves for that next big move. We never know when it's going to come. And it probably comes and passes us and we don't even realize it sometimes. And then it's like, oh shit, I should have, I should have done that like two years ago. Way, way, way past time for me to make this move. But the move will show up and it will tell you that it's there. It's like, hey man, it's time to move. And then you're like, nah, yeah, I know, but I'm comfortable. But, but I got a paycheck. But I got status. But I got this and this and this and all these reasons not to make the move, but that move doesn't get any easier. Two years later, when you're fed up with whatever that situation is, it doesn't get any easier. It really is. No, and I think that's that's the important thing, right? Because I think we all, do it right. A lot of us especially the small business owners and entrepreneurs, obviously they did take that chance or take that risk or. Take that opportunity, but like you said, oftentimes, maybe it wasn't when they initially should have jumped in and then there's a large amount of people out there that never, find that opportunity or never take that move because like you said, they're just stuck in the way with what they're doing or right now it's working. They're not happy, but it's hey, you know, it's this is what we're going to keep doing. So yeah, it's a It's important to take a step back and realize, Hey, that, that might be calling me to go do this or try something new. And then I know, I know we just do a lot at them. Was there anything anything I didn't ask you or anything important that you wanted to to leave the listeners with today? Yeah. Here's, here's the thing. I focus a lot on sales and cashflow and over the years I realized that the most successful clients that I've had. Going and doing the analysis, getting sales and cash in the door is not actually that hard. And even though I've worked with so many people, I've actually only done, when I, when I did the, the math, I've only implemented seven different templates of how to bring cash and sales in the door. There are only seven ways to do it. And so I compiled all of those together. And to what I call the PRECISE method and PRECISE is an acronym for the, for the seven different templates and so that's, what I'm really focusing on now is getting that out there it's free, I'm not charging any money for it or anything like that and so if I would say if anybody is interested in learning more about it then you can go to factor1. io, factor1. io if you're interested in learning about the PRECISE method, which is seven different templates that have proven to inject quick cash into your business, sometimes in as little as seven days. So if that's interesting to anyone, factorone. io. Also I have a Facebook group that I just launched called Move the Needle, and that's for entrepreneurs. There's a bunch of free training in there. I'm going to get Tom in there too, if he's not already in there. Tons of free training, videos we have this thing called the BYOB Lunch Club. We put all the recordings in there. So there's a lot of cool stuff, a lot of networking opportunities. You can join that group. If you can't find it you can just send me a DM at JT, literally, and I'll be happy to send you an invite and get you in there. Good stuff. Appreciate that. Appreciate having you on the show and sharing all of that with the listeners out there. That's going to be a wrap for today's episode of Small Business Big Moves. If you enjoyed today's episode, what would really help us is if you shared this podcast with someone you think could get value out of it. And you can also hit me up on all social media platforms at Thomas Bennett or on Instagram at Thomas M. Bennett