Ep 24 - AI for Business Owners: How to Scale Faster, Fix Operations, and Increase Profit

Scaling a business sounds exciting, until growth starts creating chaos. In this episode of the EnRich Your Life Podcast, Rich Leimgruber sits down with Brian O’Connor, founder of Aevisor Solutions, to break down how business owners can scale with AI without losing control.

Brian explains how operational discipline, clean data, and practical AI tools help founders improve cash flow, fix hidden inefficiencies, and build businesses that are scalable and sellable.

Key Highlights:
•Common operational mistakes growing companies make
•How AI improves forecasting, pricing, and inventory decisions
•Why dashboards fail, and where AI should live instead
•Early signs your business isn’t ready for an exit

Disclaimer: While AI can be helpful, it can also make mistakes, reflect biases, or produce incomplete information. Any AI-generated content should be considered informational only and not a substitute for professional advice. Always verify important details independently

Filmed and recorded at Studio on the Avenue/LMC Media
Mamaroneck, NY
https://lmcmedia.org/
Produced and Edited by Vekterly
https://www.vekterly.com/

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice, a recommendation for any specific investment, strategy, or financial decision, or legal advice. By engaging with this material, you acknowledge and agree with its intended purpose. Any examples provided are hypothetical and for illustration purposes only. Neither Rich Leimgruber, the EnRich Your Life Podcast, nor its representatives are advising or suggesting any specific action or decision. Before making any financial, legal, or tax decisions, individuals should consult their own financial advisor, accountant, legal professional, or other qualified professional before making financial decisions. All opinions expressed are those of the host and guests and do not reflect the views of any affiliated financial institutions. The views shared may not be suitable for every individual or situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and all investments carry risk. Please note that any strategies discussed may not be suitable for all investors, and the appropriateness of any specific investment or strategy will depend on individual circumstances.

Transcript

EnRich Your Life - Episode 24

[00:00:00] INTRO: This is Enrich Your Life, a podcast about financial health, all things investing, life planning, and smart decisions with Richard Leimgruber.

[00:00:11] Rich L: Hello and welcome to EnRich Life. I'm your host, Rich Leimgruber. EnRich Life is all about exploring financial strategies, but not only for personal, but also for business owners. And we wanna do that with prosperity and purpose.

[00:00:27] We're starting a new Prosperity for Business Series soon, and this is gonna be one of our first podcasts that we are introducing, for business owners. I'm your host, Rich Leimgruber with over 26 years of experience, not only helping my clients, but also helping business owners by helping them plan and implement financial strategies to enRich your lives. 

[00:00:49] Today we're diving into one of the biggest. Challenges business owners face how to scale your business without losing control. My guest today is Brian O'Connor [00:01:00] and he's the founder of Aevisor Solutions. His firm produces on demand part-time Chief operating Officer services with strategic guidance for direct to consumer and founder led companies, building smarter systems, improving margins, and even helping prepare for exit strategies.

[00:01:19] And in this episode we'll explore how AI and operational discipline can help you scale faster, make better decisions, and create lasting enterprise value all without killing your vision. So let's get started. Welcome, Brian. 

[00:01:36] Brian: Excellent. Thank you, Rich. It's a huge honor to be on the podcast. I'm a big fan, so thank you for having me.

[00:01:42] Rich L: Yes, absolutely. And, you inspire me. Okay. So what I will say is that. I used to be a pizzeria owner. Many, many years ago before I got into the financial planning business. And we were very successful very early. And you know what I think you [00:02:00] do for businesses is exactly what we could have probably used 26 years ago.

[00:02:04] before we get started on the operational side, I always find it fascinating to learn what drives people like you and in the world as a financial advisor. I've, always met entrepreneurs who started with a spark.

[00:02:15] Maybe it was a problem they wanted to solve or maybe it was trying to do something better than somebody else. Like, I have a better idea, right? But their why is what keeps them going and what makes them wanna, stay in the business when things get tough. Right. So what's your story and, and how did you get started in being COO?

[00:02:34] Brian: Yeah, so, lemme see. So initially outta college, went to Bell Labs that later became losing technologies. Did a lot of really fun M&A work and, and got to meet some amazingly smart people. 

[00:02:45] Rich L: Yeah. 

[00:02:45] Brian: then went into consulting. Did consulting for seven, eight years, then ran. and then went to Pitney Bowes, had a number of roles there, classic sort of big company stuff, procurement, supply chain logistics.

[00:02:57] Then ended up going to corporate strategy. All of [00:03:00] that leading towards what was a very purposefully a career for general management, realized, you know, look, it's a great, great business, great environment. If, I wanted to have the career I wanted, I was gonna need to sort of go, to smaller, mid-size companies.

[00:03:12] Right, which is what, I ended up doing. and I've always been attracted to operations. There's something about the sort of physical nature of it and actually being able to see things, touch things, it makes it more real than, other aspects of, business. So got the opportunity to run, you know, divisions and, parts of two high growth.

[00:03:33] Businesses that, that was amazing. I mean, go taking an, e-commerce business through COVID and you know, figuring out how, do you do a warehouse on the off fly and the supply chain and the logistics and everything. So, so fascinating. I was fortunate to do that for seven years and worked for investor back to businesses.

[00:03:51] Yeah. had a little bit of a career break in, you know, second half of 2024, trying to figure out what I want to do next. started doing some side consulting [00:04:00] and realized, well, you, you can actually do it. And what's always kind of motivated me is really, really hard challenges. And so when I'm going through and prospecting and working for clients, it's, I'm really incredibly fortunate that I get to pick the types of challenges and things that I can add a tremendous amount of value to.

[00:04:17] And one of the things I had noticed over the last 10 years is. Most small, medium-size e-commerce businesses, you know, you can get to like a million in product revenue pretty quickly. but then they kind of tap out there because what got them to say a million or 2 million isn't what's gonna get them to, you know, 5 million right?

[00:04:35] Or, you know, 30 million. And, you know, the, there's, there's just needed to be like a really good sort of quality operator to help that small business. 

[00:04:44] Rich L: And that's where you come in with Aevisors. Right. And 

[00:04:46] Brian: that's where I come 

[00:04:46] in. 

[00:04:47] Rich L: So for for listeners who might not know, can you break down what a COO or a Chief operating Officer does and what's your role when you come in to help a business?

[00:04:56] Brian: Yeah, sure. So generally, a Chief Operating Officer [00:05:00] is the right hand person of the CEO. So the, role is gonna be doing a lot of the blocking and tackling that may not be the C CEO's core strengths. So, and that, usually around the, actual operations of the business. So that's the procurement.

[00:05:16] What are you buying, what are you paying for it? Where, are you warehousing it, storing it? How are you getting to the, customer? What's the, really the, cost side of the business? And then how much inventory do you have and how quickly are you, turning it? 

[00:05:32] 

[00:05:32] Rich L: So 

[00:05:32] somebody taking an eye on the actual functioning of the business.

[00:05:36] The wheels are moving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're making sure that things are done smoothly. You're not running out of product that you're renewing and, bringing in more inventory and stuff. Right. And you 

[00:05:45] Brian: gain the whole, all of the teams aligned. to answer your question, like, what do I typically come in and do?

[00:05:51] Uh, usually I find a lot of small businesses don't actually know what they make for, on each and every SKU that they, that they sell. Okay. They [00:06:00] might know at the gross margin level, but they don't know at the EBIT or EBITDA level. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that's one of those things that I end up doing very, very early on is getting SKU level profitability.

[00:06:12] And then you can, you know, sort of map that up with. You know the level of inventory you have and you can sort of say, well, you know, we have a lot of like really profitable SKUs, we need just to turn faster, or we have. A lot of unprofitable SKUs that we should probably stop buying and you have to have a conversation about that.

[00:06:28] Rich L: and usually it's the ones that aren't as profitable, the ones that are flying off the shelf. Yeah. And that's maybe why they are flying off the shelf, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So one of the things that I've learned working with small business over owners is that.

[00:06:39] Success doesn't always feel successful. Right. And I've seen clients hit record revenue. I've seen, you know, clients behind the scenes, they're exhausted. Yeah. They're chasing orders. They're juggling cash flow, putting out fires every single day. And it's one thing to grow, but it's another thing to grow.

[00:06:56] Well, 

[00:06:57] Brian: yeah. 

[00:06:57] Rich L: Right. So that's why I'm excited to have you today [00:07:00] about to talk about today's conversation, which is operational excellence. And we're gonna add something to this. Why ai, artificial intelligence. Can help business owners regain control. And that's exciting. I mean, you know, we talk about AI now, like it's the next wonderful thing that's out there.

[00:07:17] Yeah. And, but there's a way to use ai and that's what this conversation's gonna be about. Right? So when I meet with small business owners, one of the common things that, I hear is Rich, you know, the business is growing, but I feel like I'm losing control once I start scaling up. It's a moment where, you know, passion meets process.

[00:07:32] And at times, you know, they're using tools that might have worked for them when they were small, humble couple of employees, but they have all of a sudden outgrown that. And I'm sure that you've seen what that can do to a company. Right? Yeah, for sure. So what are some of the biggest pain points that you see when you start working with companies that are starting to scale and how can AI give founders a competitive edge early on?

[00:07:55] Brian: Yeah, so, uh, real example, worked, with a company earlier this year. [00:08:00] Great founder started the business, managed inventory on a Excel spreadsheet, which was awesome, at a hundred thousand, you know, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue. And then as they grew, um, they went from the, you know, kitchen table to their own warehouse space.

[00:08:16] Hired a operations manager who was supposed to update that every week. The first operations manager probably did, and then they left. And then the second operations manager came in. And next thing you know, the spreadsheet of inventory. It wasn't updated for five months. And so it was actually like a really interesting sales call for me.

[00:08:33] 'cause I wanted to go buy something off of their website, you know, and, and I was gonna proudly have it on the, uh, zoom call and three orders. The first three orders all got rejected. Oh. So, you know, um, because they, which is not what a new customer wants to say, which is not what a new customer wants to see.

[00:08:47] You know, especially in e-commerce, you're spending 20 to $25 probably to acquire a new customer. So. Definitely not good for a new customer. So worked with them to get the right system and process in place and, you know, [00:09:00] fix the inventory ordering issue and align that with all of their, uh, sales channel, which was, which, you know, you take them from Excel spreadsheet to kinda like this OMS, which is a order management system.

[00:09:10] Yep. And then you sort of start to layer in some AI on top of that so that they get better, uh, ordering decisions faster. 

[00:09:18] Rich L: Okay. And we're gonna get into some of those Okay. Types of things, right. So, and I, I say I work with small business owners. they're always busy. I don't think I've ever met a unbusy business owner, even if they're not really that busy, right?

[00:09:30] Strong sales, happy customers. But when they dig into their financials, cash flow's, tight. Expenses are outpacing growth. Yeah. And they're trying new marketing campaigns, they're just trying to throw darts at the wall. Like, can I try new marketing? Right. Can I hire new people? Right. 

[00:09:43] So how can AI tools from forecasting to process automation help uncover the hidden inefficiencies before they actually become serious and you know, possibly ending the business? 

[00:09:57] Brian: Yeah, so I mean, I think there's a couple of [00:10:00] easy answers to that. First off, You know, if you have a bookkeeper, take your financials once a month, upload 'em, and ask AI to tell you.

[00:10:08] What does this mean? Compare it against the forecast. Do do the classic fp and a or financial planning and analysis work? So I think so. AI will do that for you. AI will totally do that for you. It'll give, give you a relatively good answer and, and. The free AI will do perfectly fine. 

[00:10:26] Rich L: So you would go to your software program that you, you, you gather all of your, uh, expenses in Yeah.

[00:10:32] And forecasts. And you would basically just input that in and put that into AI and, and ask it to run it. Yeah. And you could just 

[00:10:38] Brian: upload it as a Excel spreadsheet or CSV file, however you want. 

[00:10:41] Rich L: So do you have any examples where AI or technology revealed something a business owner completely missed? 

[00:10:47] Brian: Yeah, uh, for sure. So, um, what I've seen AI do, especially on the marketing and customer service side, is really dive in and. Be able to, to pinpoint better what [00:11:00] the underlying issue is.

[00:11:01] Okay? Right. So, um, really, really simple example, um, it, in e-commerce you have what's called the PDP or the product, uh, description page, right? It's the, the page that has the, uh, has the, uh, buy button. Um, probably 10 to 15% of those pages don't work, right. If you deploy AI tools, you can check that every night.

[00:11:22] Oh. And rather than waiting for, you know, a report at the end of the month or at the, at the end of the quarter that says, we sold no, none of these particular widgets. And then you're kind of reactive. Right? So, so, so that's one aspect of what AI can uncover a really quick risk. 

[00:11:40] Rich L: And on the flip side, is there any risk of relying too much on some of the data, losing that hands-on instinct founders often have? 

[00:11:49] Brian: Yeah, for sure.

[00:11:50] And that's something that when, when talking to founders, uh, you know, they are very, very concerned about of, you know, I'm. You know, their, in, their intuition is so, [00:12:00] is so incredibly important to them. But at some point as to go back to your very busy founder. Yeah. Um, if they're gonna get less busy, they have to scale and bring on, you know, a team, whether that's a fractional or a full-time person.

[00:12:14] Um, so like the. Tool can augment their ability to, to, to look at stuff. It can also make it easier for a team, for a new team member to, to get up, to get up to speed. 

[00:12:27] Rich L: So you talked about building a self-funding growth engine or using systems that generate cash instead of draining it.

[00:12:33] Brian: Yep. 

[00:12:34] Rich L: What role can AI play in optimizing working capital pricing or inventory to make growth fund itself? 

[00:12:40] Brian: Yeah, so it can play across all, all, all of those spectrums, right? So AI is, it's not magical, it's stats and math at a very, very high level, quick level. So to the extent you can feed it really good quality data, you know, you can pick up on signals that you wouldn't see otherwise in the [00:13:00] business.

[00:13:00] They around demand planning, right? You know, so, hey. This item is slowing, just is slowing down some, or this item now needs a little bit more love for marketing and it can sort of see that in real time and start to make those micro adjustments. Okay. Um, so that frees up inventory that which is cash, which is profits.

[00:13:21] It, it also washes it so much closer than what a what any, you know, team of people could, could actually achieve. 

[00:13:28] Rich L: So I'm gonna bring this something up that, uh, you know, from other past interviews, one of the things that I hear all the time is, you know, clients are always asking, is AI gonna take my job away?

[00:13:39] And somebody gave me a great answer for it and they said, no. However, somebody who knows how to use AI very well could, 

[00:13:47] Brian: yeah. 

[00:13:47] Rich L: Right. So the idea is you have to learn an AI if you wanna stay relevant in your, in what you're doing for a certain company. Right? Right. So, uh, you, you also wr wrote a recent paper that, uh, is titled The Real Competitive Edge [00:14:00] of AI isn't the model, it's the operator.

[00:14:02] Yeah. Right. So I think you, you've done. A phenomenal job in this paper. Thank you for giving me, uh, the opportunity to review it. Sure. And I think you're ahead of the curve here. So one of the things that you, you explain is AI is less about which systems you choose and more about how you change the business to use it.

[00:14:21] Mm-hmm. So can you give us an example of somebody maybe just bringing AI in for the first time? Like what, what does that mean? 

[00:14:29] Brian: Yeah, so I, I mean, at a super high level. Um, what I see business owners doing is they obsess over the tool selection, right? Whether it's chat, GPT or Gemini as more kind of consumer apps.

[00:14:43] And, and, and then there's, there's various different business apps, but the fact of the matter is the models are so close that you're, you know, picking the right model is not necessarily gonna drive. Any sort of better difference because, you know, you're, you're looking at like a less than a 1% [00:15:00] difference.

[00:15:00] Okay. You know, um, uh, example, I was talking with somebody earlier this morning at my daughter's, uh, football game was, um, you know, ChatGPT allows roughly 90,000 words into the context window, right? So, like, it's gonna take you a long time to type 90,000 words into G Chat, GPT, that's like a Harry Potter book.

[00:15:18] Uh, and then there's other tools that allow you to type a million words in, but reality was like. You don't need either, right? So why worry about that limit? Um, you know, and instead, it's really not so much whether you get to type 90,000 words or a million words. It's the quality of the operator and the quality of decisions that people end up making with it.

[00:15:41] Rich L: And then you also mentioned in the paper there's a four step program for implementing ai. And the way that reliability creates business value, right? Mm-hmm. So the first one you use is, uh, data discipline. I found this very interesting. So can you just a little explain a little bit about data discipline?

[00:15:57] Yeah, sure. When it comes to ai, 

[00:15:58] Brian: so the, the first [00:16:00] most important thing with AI is you have to have quality data supporting it. Yeah. The data has to have context around it, and, and it needs, and, and, and it needs to be complete because, again, AI is amazing, but it's just doing math. Um, and so classic garbage in, garbage out, right?

[00:16:16] Mm-hmm. If the data's not great, you're, you're not gonna get, uh, good, good results. And what the, the data discipline really means is somebody in the organization needs to own the data quality and making sure that you're feeding AI the right data and that it's complete and, and is of high quality. 

[00:16:35] Rich L: but how does somebody know they have high quality data? Is it, is it from like their own business profit loss statements and, and you know, the systems that they're using. So I guess what I'm saying is if you bring in AI and you don't have your foundation of data. Clear and, and correct.

[00:16:53] You're just adding ai, which is gonna spit out what Yeah. What you're giving it. Right. And, 

[00:16:58] Brian: and, and that's super [00:17:00] dangerous because you're gonna rely on it and think it's good data, but it's really not, you know? And the financial world, an example of what good quality data looks like is, let's say somebody uploads their, uh, P&L.

[00:17:09] Mm-hmm. But you need to sort of understand were there a bunch of, of, of accruals made, um, uh, or undone in that? Period. Mm-hmm. Right. Because now all of a sudden the, you know, expense numbers might look unusually low and AI's not gonna know. Well, okay. It's, it's really un low. It's really low, but we were undoing a bunch of, a bunch of accruals.

[00:17:31] Gotcha. Uh, or, um, maybe on the inventory side and, and I keep going back to that one. Um, AI may, may not know that you were out of stock of, of a bestseller. And so it's gonna under forecast what you could have actually sold. 

[00:17:44] Rich L: So don't jump into it.

[00:17:46] Make sure you have the good foundation first. Right. Second one is, uh, uh, decision design. Embedding AI where it actually happens, right? 

[00:17:54] Brian: Yeah. And 

[00:17:55] Rich L: where work actually happens, it says, I'm sorry. Yeah. 

[00:17:56] Brian: Yeah. And so this one's a pet peeve of mine. [00:18:00] Um, I see a lot of people start AI with, let's get a really great executive dashboard.

[00:18:05] So every morning the executives can. Log in and look and, and see what's going on, which is fine, except that in larger organizations, maybe not ne the, the P the p, the pizza shop example, the executives aren't doing any work, right? Like, you know, or they're doing work, but it's not stuff that's, that's immediately changing it, right?

[00:18:26] So I've seen dashboards where, you know, they say, how many website visitors did I get yesterday? Like, that's great, but if you're the CEO or the president, you aren't, you know, you, you have to then go follow up with, you know, the social media manager or the marketing manager and say, Hey, why was this number up or down 10%?

[00:18:46] Gotcha. Versus giving the, those people the tools so they can drive the actual results.. 

[00:18:52] Rich L: so you said it reinforces a core truth work, workflow integration matters more than the model horsepower. 

[00:18:59] Brian: Yeah. So [00:19:00] again, the models are all relatively close in capability. So getting, so picking the, the actual model is not all, all is not as important as, as people think, but getting it close to the work, so, so that the people who are doing the work in this case, you know, going back to the.

[00:19:15] Previous example, the social media manager or the, the marketing manager giving them the tools that they need to affect their job and, and embedding that in their workflow, right? So if you're a marketing manager, you're deciding every day, how much money do you wanna spend on Google AdWords? Well, let's give you better tools so you, so you can do, do your job better.

[00:19:37] Rich L: Team habits is number three. Uh, winners are becoming learning organizations and acting on insight faster. What is that all about? 

[00:19:45] Brian: Yeah, so one of the big things about AI is, is it gets through analysis and data.

[00:19:51] Much, much faster. You can come to a decision quicker, right? And the faster you can go, go through the analysis and you can come [00:20:00] to that decision, you can I implement a decision and then you can look back and say, Hey, what did I learn? And then you can feed that back in and make a continuous improvement loop of decision or analysis decision.

[00:20:14] Implementation. You learn something about it, then you keep iterating and the faster you go through that loop, that's what's really gonna drive, at least for the next, I don't know, five plus years. Okay. Massive amount of improvement, right? So like, let's say you and I run competing businesses, everything else is perfectly the, the, uh, same.

[00:20:32] But if I'm learning a hundred percent more every year than you. At the end of two years, I'm 200%, I'm making 200% smarter decisions at the end of three years. 300% smarter decisions. That's a massive competitive advantage. 

[00:20:46] Rich L: Right. And I, I, I mean, I've seen that with my chat, you know, bot that I use where it's, it automatically knows like it, I don't have to say I'm a financial advisor or I'm a podcast host.

[00:20:57] It knows it already, right? Like, it's, it's pretty [00:21:00] incredible. Yeah. So I see how it learns off of 

[00:21:02] Brian: right 

[00:21:03] Rich L: prior things and it just continues to expand and, and helps you dig in a little bit deeper.

[00:21:09] So that's wonderful. 

[00:21:10] Last one, number four is the transformation tax. Why most AI projects stall. So that's a really interesting thing for me.

[00:21:19] Brian: Yeah, so AI is so new. Now it's very difficult at the start of a project to say, this is how long it's gonna take.

[00:21:27] This is what it's gonna cost, and this is what you're gonna get at the end of it, right? Mm-hmm. If you were to, uh, say, wanna rip out your bookkeeping software and go from one platform to the other platform that's been done enough that you can get a really good sort of solid project plan, there's a begin date and a, uh, end date on with ai since you're really looking at how, how does work get done and who makes decisions.

[00:21:52] Changing that is really hard. Mm-hmm. Because as you push decision making rights down to the people who are more on, on [00:22:00] the, uh, front lines, um, middle managers kind of get a little, uh, put at risk, right? Because the decisions they used to make a subordinate making executives get put a little bit at risk too, because the decisions that they used to make are now middle managers are now making, and it's gonna take a little bit of learning and getting used to, um, the way I kind of think about it is.

[00:22:21] When electric motors were first invented. 

[00:22:24] Rich L: Yep. 

[00:22:25] Brian: Um, we had up until then been using steam engines for manufacturing and the layout of, uh, manufacturing plant at the time was everything was in this circular location with all of the biggest steam motor, or the biggest piece of equipment that needed the most amount of steam closest to the steam engine.

[00:22:44] And all we initially did was take electric engines and bolt them onto the individual machines, which is kind of what we're doing. And it wasn't until Henry Ford came along and said, oh, you know what? Let's just get everything in this like nice straight line. And it took like two [00:23:00] generations of manufacturing managers to make that change.

[00:23:03] Cool. I don't think it's gonna take two generations of managers for ai, for the AI changes to make, but I think ultimately, like that's kind of what, what what we're looking at is how do you. Change decision making. Um, one of the examples that's in the paper 

[00:23:17] is in e-commerce and retail, there's always the sort of classic Monday meeting. You review what you did last week and then you make. Tweaks and adjustments for what you're gonna do this week. Right? And so the people at the, the table there are like the inventory demand planners, marketing for pricing, finance, who's looking at the books and then operations who's saying, yeah, I can ship this many orders, or I can receive this much.

[00:23:42] I, uh, you know, here's the amount of work that, that the, or that the organization needs to sort of do. 

[00:23:47] Rich L: Gotcha. 

[00:23:48] Brian: With ai, you can do that meeting, you can do the analysis, which usually takes three or four days. You can do that analysis. You know, twice every day if you wanted to. Yeah. But the organization's [00:24:00] not set up to make a change that quick.

[00:24:02] Right, right. So now it's, so it's gonna take a little bit for people to sort of say, let's get rid of that Monday morning meeting and let's maybe make that, do, do that meeting five times every week. 

[00:24:12] Rich L: and that's gonna be the speed at which AI is helping increase. Right. And you know, if you know inventory wise that you're running outta something that much sooner, you can quickly order it and not have that embarrassment Yeah.

[00:24:24] Of where, you know, we're outta stock. Yeah. Right. Outta stock. The, it's the worst thing you could do for, yeah. Oh yeah. I'm gonna get back into, uh, the COO Uh, part of all this is, you know, we, we also talk about a sale of or a succession. Mm-hmm. You know, and, um, when I work with business owners, uh, preparing for sale or a succession, they often are surprised that valuation isn't just about revenue.

[00:24:48] It's also about having a predictive and systemized basic, uh, business plan. Right? New owners wanna see stability. And you've advised for over 25 mergers and acquisitions. So what are [00:25:00] some of the early warning signs that a company isn't ready for an exit? And how can AI help owners measure or even prove their readiness before taking, uh, a, a, a conversation with a prospective buyer?

[00:25:11] Brian: Yeah, so some of the early signs are, you know, if you are the business's sole salesperson, or you have to get brought in to close every deal. That's probably a good sign that you aren't ready be. And, and, and I'll back up because I'm also a, uh, investor as well. So one of the things that as an investor as, as, as well as advisor I, I, I look for is. Can the business run without the current principals? Because you know, if you're gonna buy a business and you're, you're gonna cut a principal, a life changing amount of money, check their motivation to, to, uh, stay.

[00:25:45] May not be the, may not be the, uh, same. You really wanna look at what's the, the systems that the business is running on, and are those ones sound for, for the current size, but two. Really set up so that if [00:26:00] you wanna grow that business, you know, two x three x, 10 x, that the systems have that sort of capability.

[00:26:07] Rich L: Most many business owners fear that adding structure will slow them down. Right. So how do you use technology or now AI to introduce systems without killing creativity or agility? 

[00:26:17] Brian: And so I think the benefit around AI is you can really look at and model and simulate a lot of things really quickly.

[00:26:24] So the intuition and the. Uh, creativity goes into what you sort of model and what you simulate, and then you can make a, and that, and that process doesn't take long, which most entrepreneurs are, are not a big fan of. Mm-hmm. Uh, but then it gives you a much higher level of confidence, you know, because you've looked at, you know, probably in the space of a couple hours, you know, 20 things, you know, you found out 18 of these are like never gonna work.

[00:26:50] And here's two, and these are probably the two best ones. And, you know, the, you, the entrepreneur can help pick. Which, which is the right one. 

[00:26:58] Rich L: Again, it's just making [00:27:00] things quicker for, you know, getting that information right in front of you as quickly as possible. Right. So, so we covered a lot of ground from operations to AI strategies, and I'd like to end with something that's more tangible for business owners listening right now, what's one AI enabled tool or operational step that they could take this week to get more control over their business?

[00:27:19] Brian: Absolutely, without a doubt, make sure you really have a good product level, profit and loss statement.

[00:27:27] Get all of the accounting right. on average, you're probably, my, my best guess is about 20% of most businesses SKUs they're actually losing money on.

[00:27:35] Yeah. So. Start there, that's gonna help you free up cash flow. It's gonna help increase the, the profitability of the business. And then after that, have an honest conversation around what are the, the things holding the, the, uh, business back. And now you have a pool of money to help go invest. 

[00:27:53] Rich L: Is that what you call like a lost leader?

[00:27:56] Brian: Yeah. I mean, like, it's okay to have lost leaders. [00:28:00] I'm not saying you can't. Mm-hmm. But. What the, not having that product p and l, you don't know the order of magnitude of how big that loss leader is, and you don't know how many and you, you actually have. So what, going through that exercise you find out that, you know, you had some that you thought were profitable because they had good gross margins, really aren't, and you had never intended for those to be lost leaders.

[00:28:24] Rich L: I can't, I can't thank you enough for coming in and, and sharing all your insights today. And you know, I, I think that for any organization or any business that's out there that is just struggling to scale, there are.

[00:28:36] Experts out there like Brian or his other COOs that can, can come in and help you figure it out. And I always say, uh, especially to, you know, my family, if, if something goes wrong in my house, like a plumbing issue, we call plumber. 'cause they're gonna, they're gonna be the best if something is going on with your business.

[00:28:55] Call COO, you know, make sure that you have somebody who can come in and, and [00:29:00] analyze what's going on and, and help you correct it before you lose your life savings because the business has to go under. it's been incre incredibly insightful. Tell us a little bit, you know, a little bit about how somebody can find you, what's the name of your website, and you know, how they can contact you if they're interested in speaking with you.

[00:29:15] Brian: Yeah, sure. So, uh, you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, and then also, uh, uh. Aevisor Solutions. That's A-E-V-I-S-O-R solutions.com.

[00:29:27] Rich L: That. Wonderful. Yeah, that's great. Perfect. So, uh, if you're a business owner and you'd like to reach out to him, we're also gonna put our, uh, that information in our show notes.

[00:29:36] Just take a look at that and you can certainly reach out to Brian and get any additional information, uh, that you might need as well as, uh, you can email us here at hello at EnRich Life Podcast. Dot com and we'll be more than happy to introduce you to Brian or get you the information that you might need.

[00:29:53] Uh, for our listeners, there's, if there's one thing that you could take away from today's episode, it's this, growth doesn't come from [00:30:00] working harder. It comes from building systems that work for you. So whether you're optimizing cash flow, preparing for an exit, or simply trying to gain back control of your business, the right structure supported by technology and now ai.

[00:30:13] Can help you get there faster, right? So the same way we align with your personal wealth plan and your business goals, operational alignment and technology can turn complexity into your clarity. Uh, and that's why we're creating our new business owner series. So check out our website, enRich life podcast.com

[00:30:30] I'd like to thank LMC Media and Vekterly for helping me produce this podcast. 

[00:30:36] Um, you can connect with us directly. Uh, hello@enRichlifepodcast.com and I just want to thank you for tuning in today andThanks, and have a great day.

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