1002: Cash flow, SMARTER decisions, and entrepreneurial GROWTH w/ Justin Merritt

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I am so excited about today's guest because this is truly a lifelong entrepreneur.

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I always argue that entrepreneurship is in our DNA.

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Once we've gotten bitten by that bug, we cannot avoid it, and today's entrepreneur is such a shiny example of that.

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He's been an entrepreneur really since he was eight years old, and I think it helps that his mom is an accountant, because even when it came to his allowance, he was forced to budget, he was forced to track all of those things, and it's followed through into his adulthood and into his career and into the business that he's launched into the world to help other people make better decisions when it comes to growing their business.

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So let me tell you all about today's guest.

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His name is Justin Merritt.

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Justin is the co-founder of Twin Six and an industry leader in financial and operational performance management.

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With over 20 years of experience in finance, business strategy and technology, justin has worked with companies of all sizes to streamline decision-making and drive growth through data-driven insights.

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If you're listening to that and you're thinking I've never made decisions with data-driven insights, well, justin's going to demystify so much of that today, and he's going to make it really simple, which is why I'm so excited to chat with him today.

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His passion for empowering finance and operations teams with innovative tools has been a driving force behind Justin's career and the nexus for starting Twin Six with a mission to simplify complexity for businesses across various industries.

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I love that simple mission.

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It's easier said than done, though, so we're all going to learn a lot from Justin here today, so I'm not going to say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Justin Merritt.

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All right, justin, lots of good stuff for us to get into today, but first things first, welcome to the show.

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Thanks, brian, good to be here.

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Heck, yes, I teased a little bit about your very young entrepreneurial beginnings and, obviously, all the cool work that you're up to now, but take us beyond the bio.

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Who's Justin?

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How'd you start doing all these cool things?

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Take us beyond the bio.

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Who's Justin?

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How'd you start doing all these cool things?

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Yeah, I guess you know from from early age, uh, just very driven to try new things and experience things.

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Uh, you know, I think the way to sum it up is is I love learning.

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So that that's kind of always just driven me, um, to explore.

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And I think, fortunately, you know, from my parents to my grandparents, you know they always encouraged me to do that, which gave me a lot of space to kind of just try different things and figure out what what worked and what didn't.

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And then you know you mentioned it in the bio, but having a CFO for a mom, she was very, you know, accounting oriented and making me track my budget and things like that.

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So even when I was doing like lawn mowing business, you know I had to keep track of, like, what I was spending on gas for my dad's lawnmower and do the maintenance on the lawnmower myself.

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So just kind of instilled that, you know, end to end understanding of everything that's involved in going and actually doing something.

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Yeah, justin, before we get to the stuff that you currently do, I want to pick on those young beginnings, because I think it's so important for us to address that entrepreneurial bug that I teased at the top of today's episode.

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Because I'm similar to you, I didn't start quite as young as you and I didn't have that entrepreneurial influence from my parents, but I started my first business when I was 18 years old, and so from that point forward, justin, it was really hard for me to accept kind of the traditional view of get a job, work for 40 years, retire, live off your 401k.

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That always struck me as a little bit differently, because I started to see opportunity everywhere Once I started to create opportunity for myself.

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Talk to me about that mindset and if that's been the case for you throughout your career.

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Yeah, I think that you know, kind of learning mindset and just experimentation mindset really helped shape things.

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And then when you think about different jobs and different roles, it helped me kind of question, but question positively right, like, is there a better way to do this?

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Can we look at or approach this problem differently?

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And that's something that I've always tried to carry through and carry with me into everything I do.

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That's something that I've always tried to carry through and carry with me into everything I do and really that shaped kind of my professional career before starting Twin Six quite a bit and that led to some pretty accelerated growth, just career wise, and great career opportunities, because I worked at some companies who really responded well to that kind of approach.

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You know they wanted to do things better, they wanted to improve, and so having somebody to be that kind of improvement advocate you know I'll call it uh was was really helpful for them and and I got rewarded for that, which was really fortunate.

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Yeah, and that's why I love, even within the world of corporate, we always hear that term it's it's a newer term, but we do hear it on the rise which is intrapreneur, having those internal entrepreneurs, because, justin, you are a change agent, you so correctly pointed out.

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I think it's so smart and articulate the way that you brought it up, which is you question things, and I think that's at the heart of being an entrepreneur.

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Let me ask you this, though, because starting out as a young entrepreneur where, along the way, did you have that thought of this?

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Is what I actually want to do and contribute to the world, Because, as you said, you obviously had a career in corporate as well, and, with that in mind, it's something that's always sitting there and wondering well, what form is this going to take?

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What's my business going to be?

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When am I going to pull the trigger on it?

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There's so many questions in that realm.

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Walk us through those thoughts yeah, you know, I think, for for me it was something, you know, over the years definitely always kind of had side projects and side things going and really a goal to eventually get to a place where I could kind of fully shift and really start something completely on my own.

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And the thing for me, and probably because of my business background and engineering background, it was very, you know, making sure that the timing and the market was right, which I know is not always kind of how entrepreneurs approach things.

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But fortunately for us at Twin Six I had a great group of people who kind of all wanted to kind of try something new at the same time as many people I'd worked with that I knew we worked very successfully together and that really shaped and created, I think, a great runway for us to really try this out and go after it.

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And that was kind of the people side of it.

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Then, from a technology side of it, there's a few new entrants to this market of performance management and a couple that are really making waves, and one in particular, and so, you know, working with them to figure out how could I work with them but not for them, and so that opportunity was there too, as they were really starting to take off in North America, and so kind of all those pieces lined up and made it.

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You know it's still very risky.

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Of course you know to do something like this, but essentially a no brainer to go after it.

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Course you know to do something like this, but but essentially a no brainer to to go after it.

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And and you know, the timing was right, the people was right, the technology was right, and so we knew that we could.

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We could attack it and do it well.

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Yeah, really well said.

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And, Justin, anytime I hear people using words that are at the crux of what they do, I always want to know more about how they define it, they view it, and obviously you've you've let the cat out of the bag there with performance management.

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It is that umbrella under which you operate.

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What the heck is performance management, justin?

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Why is the timing right?

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Why did it?

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Why is this the area that you focus on?

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yeah.

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So it's kind of.

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It's kind of interesting.

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You know, when I started my career early on and and you know very much, you know I'm not crazy but very much in the days of we didn't have iPhones and stuff like that, and so I think back like working at Verizon and working in their internal audit and corporate finance team, and we did, for example, audit packs, and those audit packs were to essentially assure that the revenue was accounted for correctly and everything else.

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All that was done by paper and manually.

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And so we looked around and we said there's got to be a solution for this and I came up with the idea of let's do this through Adobe PDFs, and so we created this kind of electronic audit process that we trialed out and then eventually rolled out and saved a ton of money and a ton of time from the audit process.

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And so that was kind of those types of initiatives not just at Verizon but at companies everywhere were kind of the early forms of this concept of performance management.

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How do we look at the business, how do we understand what the business goals and objectives are, and kind of look systematically through the different things the business is doing and make it easier for the business to achieve that kind of peak performance.

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And so that's everything from, you know, forecasting and budgeting to closing the books and account reconciliation, to reporting the results, analyzing the results and and really, ultimately, how do you empower those decision makers that are in the departments to have better tools so they can understand you know how they're doing as a department and understand you know what decisions they should be making day to day to again help the business achieve their goals, whether that's, you know, revenue growth or profit growth or both, or expense reduction.

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And so that's kind of the market of performance management is different tools that help businesses and empower businesses to do that.

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And the great thing is that over the last you know, probably I guess, 10, 10, 15 years, there's been incredible advances in technologies, as we all know, and that's really set the stage to actually, you know, rather than Adobe PDFs, you have tools like Blackline for accounting, close and reconciliation, right.

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You have other tools like like pigment, the tool that we work with for doing planning and budgeting, forecasting things, and so there's great tools out in the market that can really help businesses kind of accelerate that journey and improve the overall toolkit or toolbox that their employees have to help the business perform.

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Yeah, justin, I really appreciate.

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Even in that overview that you just gave us, you made a stark difference in contrast between revenue and profit and clearly that is so ingrained in the way that you think, in the way that you approach business.

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Talk to us about painting that financial picture, because I feel like most entrepreneurs and most business owners don't have that level of strategic intentionality that you have looking at businesses and making decisions on behalf of businesses.

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What is that overall picture that you look at?

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Even I mean differentiating.

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I love those insights about differentiating revenues and profits, but even broader than that, yeah, I think you know, when you think about entrepreneurs or any business, a lot of times there's focus, you know, on top line growth.

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Right, we want to accelerate top line growth or get new customers and because I lived through the deep recession and manufacturing and things like that.

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But there's a lot more important things and I think when you look at the business, you have to, of course, understand how are you going to grow your top line and understand where is your revenue going to come from.

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How can you have diversified revenue streams so that if one thing starts not going as well or a competitor enters, you're protected and can still make revenue.

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But then, of course, you know your margins and your profit become very important too, along with cash flow.

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You know those kind of things really start to drive your ability to reinvest in the business, to grow the business and continue to provide better services ultimately out to your customers.

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And a lot of times, like you said, people kind of ignore the profit line in pursuit of the revenue.

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But what I think you know, a lot of successful businesses and certainly myself, you know, over my career have found that sometimes you know it's okay to have lower revenue, right, but if you're getting more of those dollars into your pocket or into the profit line.

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That's a great thing right Through.

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What if?

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If you're an accountant or a finance person, you would know as contribution margin, um, and so that's something you know.

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I always talk to businesses about you know, understanding and and making sure they're considering that contribution margin and their decision making yeah, justin, holy cow, we've got to go deeper into this, because you just revealed one of the lessons that was hardest for me to learn as an entrepreneur.

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So, starting out as a teenager, I'd always heard that phrase.

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I think we've all heard it by this point.

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Cash is king and it's become a cliche, and the beautiful thing about cliches is that, one, they're rooted in some very profound wisdom and important insights, but two, they're also kind of watered down because we've heard it so much, we don't fully appreciate the importance of it.

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You just talked again about the importance of cashflow and it comes down to that, and obviously we're talking about big topics today with regards to financial modeling and data-driven decision-making and all of that.

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Why is cash so central?

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Why is cash so unique?

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When we're talking about revenue and profit and all of these different things, cash is that one component that we always strip out and focus on.

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Yeah, and a big part of that, I think, comes down to the simple fact that, as a business, you can't pay your employees, you can't pay your bills, you can't have cool software that helps you out with stuff if you don't have the cash to support that.

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And so focusing on certainly growing the revenue line, but then how are you converting that revenue into, ultimately, cash and converting it into a positive cash flow that exceeds your costs?

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That's going to generate that ability to invest and continue to hire more people.

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For example, for us as a new business that's starting out, that's a huge focus of ours.

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Right is, how do we make sure that we have a quick cash conversion cycle, we can have cash in the bank, so that gives us the confidence that we can go out, we can hire ahead of, essentially, the demand curve for our services, we can get people in, we can get them trained, and without cash and without a focus on cash, it's really hard to make those decisions.

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And I think that's where a lot of businesses find themselves in a really tight spot.

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Maybe they overhire, now they're having trouble making payroll and, especially as a newer business, it's really hard in today's credit markets and things to get access to lines of credit or funds, and so it's not as easy as go down to the bank and they'll just happily give you a 2%, 1% line of credit.

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That stuff's really hard to come by these days, especially for new businesses, and so focusing on that cash conversion and generating free cash flow into your business is going to give you that assurance that you can continue to grow, continue to add people, which will then ultimately drive your capacity to generate revenue and ultimately generate that almighty contribution margin that we've been talking about.

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Yeah, justin, hearing you talk about these things it's fun, because not only are you giving us a crash course and all of these financial considerations, but even I would argue, more importantly you're giving us insights into how all of this leads, into the actions we take as business owners, the decisions that we make, the places that we focus.

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You talk about cash conversion and cash flow generation.

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Justin, talk to us directly about how those things factor into the way that we operate, because this is touching our operational and strategic decision making as well.

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Is it in the way that we structure terms?

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Is it in the deals?

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Is it in payment terms?

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Is it in the way that we charge for our services?

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How many different components does this touch and what are examples of some of those decisions?

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Yeah, it's really all of those things that you touched on and more.

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I mean from you know I think about it.

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You know, first and foremost, your cash outflow.

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You know with employees, you kind of have a fixed schedule right.

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You have your payroll schedule, pretty hard to negotiate with employees and say, hey, why don't we pay you once a month instead of semi-monthly or bi-weekly?

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So you know, you kind of have that fixed.

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And then when you think about your other vendors right, just thinking about like a lot of the software that you might be looking at for your business, maybe they offer an annual subscription for a discount and maybe that discounts 15, 20%, but they also offer the ability to pay monthly.

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And so one of the things to really consider strategically is is that 20% worth it for that additional cash outflow?

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Because if you do that annual price right, you have kind of that big cash outflow to pay for.

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The annual license versus the monthly license is much lower.

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So that's going to give you more cash month to month to actually invest in things like people or marketing to generate additional revenue coming in.

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So the vendor side, you know it's definitely something to think about and focus on.

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What are those terms that you're accepting Is the discount they're offering for, you know, paying in definitely something to think about and focus on.

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What are those terms that you're accepting?

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Is the discount they're offering for, you know, paying in advance for a year?

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Is that worth it?

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Are you absolutely sure you're gonna keep that software for a year, for example?

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Then you know, on the other side of that, when you're working with your customers, you know, I think there's a lot of flexibility from customers because they're going through the same challenges that you're having as a business.

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Right, they're really thinking about cash flow.

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They're thinking about where and how and when they want to invest that cash.

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And so if you're providing a value added service or a product to them, that's often a lever that you can have.

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And so kind of the flip side right is how much is it worth to you to accelerate that cash collection?

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Can you negotiate that?

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Maybe somebody pays a higher amount upfront in a contract in exchange for a discount, and maybe that higher amount upfront, that cash being in your bank, is going to give you the capacity to go hire a couple more people, which can then generate more revenue, right, and so that kind of you know, strategic tug of war in terms of?

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You know we always don't.

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You know we want to not give things away or not discount things, but a lot of times that can be a really effective strategy, especially early on as you're trying to generate that positive cash flow, because you can get your clients to actually accelerate their payments to you and that's going to be really more helpful to you to have that cash so that you can go make those investments and continue to grow your business.

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Yeah, justin, you and I were joking off the air before we hit record about the improv nature of these conversations and these episodes here on the show.

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And what I love about that is you are so effortlessly reeling off all these very important strategic decisions because it's second nature to you.

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But I'm sure that you understand even better than I do that it's not second nature to business owners.

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It's not second nature to business owners.

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They can't see all of these things as objectively as you can, which, of course, is why Twin Six exists and why you're able to bring these services to so many clients.

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But my question to you, strategically and really business-wise, is how are you so able to effectively and efficiently walk into a business that's not yours and dissect and analyze all of these things, because you're talking about so many different factors.

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We're not just talking revenue side today.

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It's very clear that you're making very strategic decisions on the expense side as well.

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How the heck do you walk into a business and dissect all of these things to paint that picture of where we can start making decisions?

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Sure, yeah, I mean there's a couple of things right.

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So over years of experience and working at the large kind of corporations that I worked at for a long time, I got the exposure to a lot of different business models and a lot of different business challenges.

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You know, managing things through the Great Recession, for example, where we had markets disappear like literally down 90 plus percent for a few years.

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So some really tough times and I certainly learned a ton through that right, Learned how those kind of things that I knew inherently, as you know, that experience growing up and kind of starting these little micro fund businesses like mowing lawns and making stress balls and stuff right.

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Learning how those concepts that I was familiar with, those concepts that were then reinforced in university and an MBA school how to actually apply them and get results from them.

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So when we work with a business, we can quickly identify some common factors, right, Because for different businesses obviously things are different.

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There are things that are unique and things that are very special about every business.

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But a lot of these core concepts and ideas are core and sometimes what you need is you need to have some skilled people who are able to kind of take that step back, look at the big picture, look at what are you trying to achieve as a company, what's working well, what's not working well but then have that ability to then dive down into those micro details, to start to dissect things like when we're talking about cash, um, and and is cash a problem?

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Well, let's talk about some of the different strategies to help make it not a problem and let's look at those different sides of the equation.

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And so, while every business is special and unique, there's a lot of those kind of common factors, um, and kind of common starting points for the analysis that can, that can kind of kick things off and and lead to some, you know, low hanging fruit for quick wins and then lead to some you know, medium and longer term goals and objectives to help improve that, that longer term performance of the business.

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Yeah, I really love the way that you articulate that, and it's easy for all of us as business owners to convince ourselves no, my business is totally different, it's totally unique, it's unlike anything else that's out there.

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But you're right, those commonalities are true across businesses because, at the end of the day, business is simple.

00:20:24.746 --> 00:20:38.474
We just complicate it in so many different ways, and so, with that in mind, I do want to talk about in fact, I'll out myself here publicly, justin because one thing that I'm so fascinated by about what you guys do at Twin Six is financial modeling.

00:20:38.474 --> 00:20:54.817
Because I think back to my days as an undergraduate business student and junior year of college, we were tasked with doing some financial modeling for a local it was a theater company in the Boston area and, justin, as teenagers, as students with no real world experience, we mostly made things up.

00:20:54.817 --> 00:20:56.079
We didn't know what we were doing.

00:20:56.099 --> 00:21:09.565
When you ask a bunch of teenagers to financial model for a real life business, it's so hard to understand what that looks like, and so I feel like just like when we sit down and write a 10 year business plan, we're really just kind of making things up, we're dreaming a little bit.

00:21:09.565 --> 00:21:12.018
Of course, we hope to be making educated decisions.

00:21:12.018 --> 00:21:14.781
So because teenage me got that all wrong.

00:21:14.781 --> 00:21:18.086
Justin, in the real world, what does financial modeling look like?

00:21:18.086 --> 00:21:18.667
What is it?

00:21:18.667 --> 00:21:24.796
What's the benefit of it, why is?

00:21:26.362 --> 00:21:29.394
it so important for us as business owners to understand and to actually have in place in our businesses.

00:21:29.394 --> 00:21:30.175
Yeah, I think you know.

00:21:30.175 --> 00:21:31.136
I'll start this maybe with a reflection.

00:21:31.136 --> 00:21:42.200
There was a recent interview with Howard Schultz at Starbucks and he talked about the initial business plan that he was out trying to pitch to get investment to open more Starbucks stores.

00:21:42.200 --> 00:21:49.381
And he had in the plan he had it as I think it was 1000 stores that he was going to go open.

00:21:49.381 --> 00:21:52.941
And you know, this is back in the days of, like printed copies and stuff.

00:21:52.941 --> 00:21:57.978
And then he was looking it over right before some of these pitch meetings and he's like, yeah, nobody's going to believe that we can open 1000 stores.

00:21:57.978 --> 00:22:00.176
And so he was looking it over right before some of these pitch meetings and he's like, yeah, nobody's going to believe that we can open a thousand stores.

00:22:00.176 --> 00:22:07.461
And so he took white out and whited it out so that it would be a hundred stores, because that seemed like a more believable number.

00:22:07.461 --> 00:22:08.243
And so you're absolutely right.

00:22:08.335 --> 00:22:15.500
You know, when we think about kind of some of those long-term, those aspirational plans five, 10 years those are kind of in a lot of ways, made up right.

00:22:15.500 --> 00:22:16.642
They're aspirational.

00:22:16.642 --> 00:22:22.009
They should be goals that you believe you can achieve and that you can put loose plans around how to achieve um.

00:22:22.009 --> 00:22:34.217
But then when you kind of dial that back to okay, let's not talk five years, let's talk the next 24 months, let's talk the next 12 months right now, okay, let's talk the next three months and and look at that in smaller chunks.

00:22:34.217 --> 00:22:52.103
And then now you get into kind of the month to month and so that the financial modeling right it takes different forms based on kind of what you're looking at from that timeline perspective and when businesses are really running highly efficiently, they have those kind of long term you know aspirational goals.

00:22:52.103 --> 00:23:06.928
They're able to stick to those and hold to those and then they're able to adjust in that more near term, in that kind of monthly view or sometimes even weekly view, depending on the type of business you're in, to make sure that you're always realigning toward that long term objective.

00:23:07.955 --> 00:23:31.823
And that's something that you can see over and over again in highly successful businesses that have been around for a long time is they don't compromise on what those kind of aspirational goals are, but what they're doing is they're really focusing on that day-to-day performance decision making month to month, you know, week to week to get you to that place where everything is is kind of guided toward those goals.

00:23:31.823 --> 00:23:36.439
And that can be really hard because you know we get caught up in the day-to-day of the business, the you.

00:23:36.439 --> 00:23:38.202
You know things go right, things go wrong.

00:23:38.202 --> 00:23:39.566
We get really excited.

00:23:39.566 --> 00:23:39.885
You know.

00:23:39.885 --> 00:23:50.355
I'm sure, as you know, brian, you get really down because, like, maybe a deal falls through or something right and those are okay right, and what you have to do is be able to take that step back, understand how does this impact?

00:23:50.355 --> 00:24:01.469
You know kind of my near-term, my current decision-making process, and then how does that tie into those longer term goals and what are we going to do to adjust so that we can still get to those longer term objectives?

00:24:02.190 --> 00:24:03.936
Yeah, Justin, the way that you talk about it.

00:24:04.017 --> 00:24:29.102
I so appreciate the realities that you bring to the table with regards to what businesses go through, Because, just as much as you've been talking to us today about a well-oiled machine, a business that is running efficiently, you're also acknowledging those hiccups along the way that, yes for sure, we can all relate to, and I think it's important to not only call those out but build those into our expectations and our expectations internally, as well as our expectations when it comes to our financials.

00:24:29.102 --> 00:24:39.269
It's so important to hear that, which leads me to ask you what is it that causes businesses to work out and reach, or reach out and work with a company like Twin Six?

00:24:39.269 --> 00:24:47.122
Is it in those good moments where they're saying, hey, we're growing really fast and we want to unlock even more growth, or is it in those moments of being stuck?

00:24:47.122 --> 00:24:48.226
What's some of that?

00:24:48.226 --> 00:24:51.287
What's the catalyst that inspires people to say you know what?

00:24:51.287 --> 00:25:00.001
It's time for us to start making more data driven decisions and insights and start to understand the financial picture of how we can be a well-oiled machine.

00:25:01.727 --> 00:25:07.766
Yeah, I think, you know, I'd really think there's kind of three main points that businesses hit, you know.

00:25:07.766 --> 00:25:25.364
One is if they're struggling honestly and they're saying, you know, this is really a challenge and we're really having trouble getting to those long-term objectives, or you know, something has dynamically changed in our market and we're struggling to kind of adjust the course right of of the business.

00:25:25.364 --> 00:25:28.674
A lot of times kind of that can be a catalyst to start to look at.

00:25:28.674 --> 00:25:32.169
You know, hey, we want somebody else to kind of help us take a look at this.

00:25:32.169 --> 00:25:40.121
Maybe there's some, for example, some technology that can help us model these things out better, model it quicker, so we can be more nimble as an organization.

00:25:40.121 --> 00:26:00.086
The second would be, like you mentioned, things are going really well and sometimes, you know, fortunately it still happens today, even in the crazy markets and stuff we have going on but things go really well for businesses and businesses grow, you know, unexpectedly fast, you know, going from pre-revenue to revenue to like, wow, we might be IPO-ing in a couple of years.

00:26:00.086 --> 00:26:02.029
You know that kind of insane growth.

00:26:02.029 --> 00:26:17.167
And a lot of times that can be a good catalyst too, because they're now having to think about, you know, we don't have the process in place, we don't have the systems, we don't have a great way to tie our day-to-day operational decisions and things that we're doing into those longer-term objectives.

00:26:17.167 --> 00:26:18.491
How do we get better at that?

00:26:18.491 --> 00:26:26.096
Because we want to sustain this growth, we want to not lose what we've kind of all of a sudden been so successful at doing.

00:26:26.758 --> 00:26:30.973
Um, and then, and more recently, um, actually a big catalyst has has been around people.

00:26:30.973 --> 00:27:05.432
Uh, you know, as I think anybody who who has employees knows um, you know, the market has become extremely difficult to to hire and retain talented people and and just generally, right, the labor pool is shrinking and, um, especially for some of those core skills like finance and accounting and analytics, there's actually less and less people going through school for those types of of degrees and and those kind of educational paths, and so what that means is that organizations often now are looking and saying, hey, we just need some help with this stuff because you know we can't find the right people.

00:27:05.432 --> 00:27:07.317
So let's reach out.

00:27:07.317 --> 00:27:21.273
Maybe there's an external organization, maybe we can look at some software that can help supplement that people gap so that with a smaller team in place and some of those core functions, we can still do more and still continue on that growth path without experiencing hiccups or challenge.

00:27:21.976 --> 00:27:36.028
Yeah, justin, hearing you talk about these things, I think what's really evident is not only do you love the financial and operational side of the world, but you genuinely also love business, and so, with that in mind, I mean, you're bringing up some really important business considerations.

00:27:36.028 --> 00:27:44.250
Pre-revenue phase, the revenue phase, the scaling phase there's so many different phases of our business cycle and so many different questions that we face along the way.

00:27:44.250 --> 00:27:52.028
I'll confess to you publicly that, as a marketer, I fall into the trap of saying you know, more revenue often solves a lot of business problems.

00:27:52.028 --> 00:27:58.692
But today you've gone in a far more intricate and articulate way there of expressing well, here's the considerations along the way.

00:27:58.692 --> 00:28:04.094
Yeah, revenue is one thing, but revenue trickles down into so many other complexities and considerations.

00:28:04.094 --> 00:28:14.256
With that in mind, what are those inflection points that you've seen for businesses, thinking all the way through to the pre-revenue companies, to the companies that you've seen scale incredibly well?

00:28:14.256 --> 00:28:21.146
What are the different questions or focus areas that we should be thinking about throughout those different stages and inflection points?

00:28:22.891 --> 00:28:56.423
Yeah, I think you know, like like pre revenue, recently, working with a company who's who's pre revenue, they have a concept on a product that's, that's really cool and it's it's been really interesting because it took off way faster than they thought the concept, and so all of a sudden they're selling, you know, their product and they don't have a great plan for how are we actually going to deliver this product and deliver the service around setting this product up in their customers, and so you know, that is an inflection point, that that I see very commonly in businesses, whether they're established or new businesses.

00:28:56.423 --> 00:29:27.106
They have a new product or new service and when it's a great idea, people, people want it, which is a good thing, um, but but a lot of times, right, that demand can kind of, can kind of outpace your ability to actually deliver, um, and so that can be a really big inflection point and challenge of how do you manage through that and and not disappoint those potential buyers or those, those customers, um, and how do you make sure you're you're providing a great experience but kind of, you know, almost taper back some of that revenue?

00:29:27.106 --> 00:29:34.134
You know another, another common inflection point, especially in kind of the technology, software type of industry is.

00:29:34.134 --> 00:29:40.778
You know, as companies get get older, as kind of your software ages, you have decisions about investment.

00:29:40.778 --> 00:29:43.405
You know, should you be investing heavily in the product?

00:29:43.405 --> 00:29:47.057
Should you be looking at creating a new product with new technology?

00:29:47.057 --> 00:29:51.967
And those things can be really challenging decisions for organizations, especially.

00:29:51.967 --> 00:29:57.374
You know, if you're a well-established product and brand but you're starting to see some flatline in your growth.

00:29:57.374 --> 00:30:00.634
You're starting to see customers choose newer competitive products.

00:30:00.634 --> 00:30:05.246
You know that can be early signaling that that you've got some big decisions coming up.

00:30:05.246 --> 00:30:12.932
Should you be looking at building, you know, a new product to try to address that and fight off some of those competitive concerns?

00:30:12.932 --> 00:30:15.252
Are there investments you can make in that core product?

00:30:15.252 --> 00:30:31.625
And then you know another inflection point that happens a lot is kind of the kind of third side of that spectrum, which is, you know you're losing customers, right, the business is not performing anymore, things are not going well, and so what are you going to do about it?

00:30:31.886 --> 00:30:42.207
And a lot of times what I've seen, unfortunately, is a lot of businesses they just kind of keep trying to do that same play over and over again and then those are the companies you end up seeing kind of get.

00:30:42.207 --> 00:30:46.113
You know, I always say like auctioned off to PE for pennies on a dollar.

00:30:46.113 --> 00:30:50.359
And it's really unfortunate because a lot of those companies are still very viable.

00:30:50.359 --> 00:30:51.888
They have, you know, great employees.

00:30:51.888 --> 00:30:53.231
They have really smart people.

00:30:53.231 --> 00:31:03.909
But sometimes you have to really rethink and be willing to kind of completely change the approach and what you're doing If things have changed around you in the market.

00:31:03.909 --> 00:31:10.586
The classic example this, you know, of course, would be like Kodak with the digital camera revolution and they were like no, we're not going to do it.

00:31:10.586 --> 00:31:12.392
And you know where's Kodak now.

00:31:12.392 --> 00:31:13.836
And that happens.

00:31:13.836 --> 00:31:19.686
You know, whether you're a giant company like Kodak or you know a smaller entrepreneurial company, it can happen to anybody.

00:31:20.548 --> 00:31:23.993
Yeah gosh, Justin, so many real world insights.

00:31:24.054 --> 00:31:52.893
I feel like not only are you sharing knowledge and insights with us today, but we've all got a lot of homework, because these are giant questions that you're inviting us to ask within our own businesses and so many important decisions that we have to make with regards to where we're going to go on our growth journeys, and the fact that you're bringing that unfortunate reality to us of sometimes things don't go our way, but that calm understanding of let's let the data drive us, let's make that smart decision so that we can be sustainable not just today but long into the future.

00:31:52.984 --> 00:31:54.988
So I so appreciate those, Justin.

00:31:54.988 --> 00:31:58.424
You've handled every single question I've tossed your way completely effortlessly.

00:31:58.424 --> 00:32:03.750
So let's see if this last one can throw you off, because it is super broad and you can take it in any direction you want.

00:32:03.750 --> 00:32:11.902
And that is what's your one best piece of advice Knowing that we're being listened to by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs at all different stages of their own business growth journeys.

00:32:11.902 --> 00:32:13.672
You are also one of us.

00:32:13.672 --> 00:32:18.297
You are also a fellow entrepreneur growing your own business along the way as well.

00:32:18.297 --> 00:32:21.414
So what's that one thing that you want to impart on listeners today?

00:32:23.645 --> 00:32:24.548
Man, all right.

00:32:24.548 --> 00:32:30.669
So the thing I guess that I would say is this is something that I personally struggle with and always have.

00:32:30.669 --> 00:32:54.213
I love challenge, I love excitement of, you know, bringing on new customers, working with new clients, working with new people, and I think one of the things that I've really had to learn very quickly since we started Twin Six is that it's okay to slow down and sometimes that creates a much better result.

00:32:54.213 --> 00:33:03.480
And you talked a little bit ago, brian, about the flow through of generating revenue is one piece of the puzzle, and then that has a trickle down effect to other areas of the business.

00:33:03.480 --> 00:33:06.182
And so you know, that's something like for Twin Six.

00:33:06.182 --> 00:33:10.305
Right, we are primarily providing services and value added services.

00:33:10.305 --> 00:33:14.856
So we have to have the capacity to deliver on those services.

00:33:14.856 --> 00:33:24.316
We have to have the people who can go and work with clients and help them improve, and if we don't, then it doesn't really do us any good to bring in additional revenue.

00:33:24.316 --> 00:33:32.229
And so that's something that, for me, I had to kind of learn and get okay with really quickly because of the people challenge.

00:33:32.450 --> 00:33:38.250
And you know, while we are actively hiring and we've hired some great people and we've got great people in the pipeline for hiring.

00:33:38.250 --> 00:33:57.749
You know, it's one of those things where, when you find yourself in that position where you're struggling to maybe not struggling yet, but where your ability to kind of get customers exceeds your ability to actually go deliver on what you're gonna provide to those customers it's okay to slow down.

00:33:57.749 --> 00:33:58.230
Right?

00:33:58.230 --> 00:34:06.314
You've identified a great market, clearly things are working well, but the last thing that you wanna do is disappoint those customers, right?

00:34:06.314 --> 00:34:22.907
You want to create a great experience and build that body of customers that are going to be brand advocates and love what you provide, and in order to do that, you might have to slow that pace of revenue growth to focus on growing the people in the organization, which is where we get back to talking about cash flow and things like that.

00:34:22.907 --> 00:34:27.074
But that's the thing, I guess, that I would say for people to take away.

00:34:27.875 --> 00:34:29.197
Boom, justin.

00:34:29.197 --> 00:34:35.594
Maybe not the advice that we impatient entrepreneurs want, but certainly the advice that we need.

00:34:35.594 --> 00:34:36.597
I'm so appreciative.

00:34:36.597 --> 00:34:40.213
This is exactly why this show exists, because this is the real stuff.

00:34:40.213 --> 00:34:42.748
This is the stuff that, justin, you've transparently shared.

00:34:42.748 --> 00:34:44.353
It took you a while to learn that lesson.

00:34:44.353 --> 00:35:05.211
We're all constantly learning that lesson and the fact that we share that with other entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs around the world hopefully it accelerates their growth journey as well, because it is important to sometimes slow down, step back, reassess and make sure that we're doing the things that we want to and over delivering in all of the ways that we want to serve the the customers and clients that we aim to serve with our businesses.

00:35:05.211 --> 00:35:08.259
So you, I expected it, but you have absolutely delivered.

00:35:08.259 --> 00:35:09.710
You've been a wealth of knowledge, justin.

00:35:09.710 --> 00:35:17.976
I know that people are going to be eager to go deeper into the wonderful world of all the great work and meaningful, important work that you do for other businesses with Twin6.

00:35:17.976 --> 00:35:19.751
So drop those links on us.

00:35:19.751 --> 00:35:21.190
Where should listeners go from here?

00:35:22.485 --> 00:35:29.527
Yeah, so you can go to Twin6.io, or you can find us on LinkedIn as well, and we look forward to hearing from you.

00:35:30.108 --> 00:35:31.934
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:35:31.934 --> 00:35:38.387
We are making it as easy as possible for you to find those links down below in the show notes, no matter where it is you're tuning into today's episode.

00:35:38.387 --> 00:35:41.891
You can find Justin's website quite simply at twin6.

00:35:41.891 --> 00:35:44.094
That's the number six spelled out.

00:35:44.094 --> 00:35:48.079
So it's T-W-I-N-S-I-X dot I-O.

00:35:48.079 --> 00:35:51.938
Or you can click right on through from the show notes, no matter where it is that you're tuning in.

00:35:51.938 --> 00:35:57.195
So, justin, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

00:35:57.195 --> 00:35:59.309
Amazing Thanks for having me Brian.

00:36:00.144 --> 00:36:05.713
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the wantrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.

00:36:05.713 --> 00:36:09.699
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:36:09.699 --> 00:36:18.920
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at the wantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:36:18.920 --> 00:36:27.695
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:36:27.755 --> 00:36:29.759
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00:36:29.759 --> 00:36:31.347
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00:36:31.347 --> 00:36:34.833
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00:36:34.833 --> 00:36:45.791
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00:36:45.791 --> 00:36:54.295
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:36:54.295 --> 00:36:55.626
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00:36:55.626 --> 00:37:00.235
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00:37:00.235 --> 00:37:01.666
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00:37:01.666 --> 00:37:11.063
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