72 | Unlocking Business Success: A Workshop for Entrepreneurs with Justin and Kristen Deese

Welcome to Freedom Blueprint podcast. I am joined today by my amazing sometimes co-host. My wife, Kristen, is here hanging out with us and we're going to pepper her with some questions. And she's got a pretty big announcement to make. And she decided to make this announcement here on the podcast. I think it's I think I think I have an N. Yes, I think I have an N. So.

So welcome. Thank you. Thank you for being a guest co-host. OK, sometimes. Well, OK, guest co-host. So what's cool is this is the first podcast we've done in the new studio. It is worked on it all weekend. We've worked on it well for weeks now and the drywalls in and we got the trim and the pain and the I mean, it's never going to be done. We have some mad woodworking skills, though, because the number of windows that we framed out

Not framed out, but trimmed out. the answer would be 10, right? a door. Nine and a door. So just how you do one thing is how you do everything, right? So we have figured out in projects like this that there's certain steps that I do and there's certain steps that you do. Yes. One of my areas of non-brilliance is reading a tape measure. Because almost every time I would tell you the measurement, you'd have to take a blade off.

and then every time you got the measurement, you got it. I think the difference is because we're using two different tape measures. We'll totally go with that. Yep. Well, I like that answer. And so some people listen or make fun of me for this, but I use the tape measure that has the dummies numbers on it. AKA the three eights, five eights. Whatever.

It's dummy proof. I don't have dummy proof. I just have lines. I know you use like real tape measures like a real contractor. I do not matter of fact, if it would, I need to find one that has all the numbers on it. But luckily we don't deal with cuts that need to be any, you know, we're like a blade over. Yeah, right. Right. But it looks amazing and it's fun and soon we'll be able to do.

A lot more video podcasts in here, will be, you that was part of the whole vision behind building this is to be able to do that, which is, I can't wait. I'm so excited. So, yeah, we just have to get past a few challenges like lighting. Lighting is a challenge for anybody out there who's ever tried to do video lighting. It is a it is an art form that we don't yet possess. So if you look at anything we have on YouTube right now, please don't judge us.

is it doesn't the lighting is not good, but we're going to fix that with some professional help. Just have to find the professional help. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the upcoming event. You have made the decision to do a well, I'll let you tell the story, but I'm super excited, super proud that you are putting yourself out there doing this two day event.

and I'm pumped. So I'm doing a two day event. As I still your thunder. It's in May right here in Pensacola in May 15 and 16th. And it is designed to help business owners really lay out their KPIs and the different financial benchmarks that should they should be tracking on a regular basis. But it's not just a.

benchmarking workshop necessarily. It is pairing that with once I know where my benchmarks are, how do I get my team when I go home to actually like do the things that need to be done in order to hit the benchmarks? We enjoy going to events. I enjoy going to events. It's motivating. You learn new stuff. You come home, you're all fired up. And then, you know, pretty soon after that life kicks in and you either forget what you learned or you have a hard time getting it off the ground. So

I want to spend about half the time talking about numbers, but I really want to spend about half the time talking about leadership and how to really implement what you're learning and how to hit your goals that you're setting with these KPIs. There are so many data points and so much numbers available in the business that it can be a little bit overwhelming. So I kind of want to curate that down into the...

the numbers and the information that's really, really important. And once you get that like super dialed in, then you can start broadening the vision and adding in more stats and more data points to track. Well, and I think one of the thing, because this is designed to be a workshop style event. it's not a huge event. It's a smaller workshop style. And I think what's going to be neat is you're going to be able to help.

kind of help them get a little bit more of what their numbers are based on their business. And I think a lot of times what happens is business owners do benchmarking, which is good. You gotta do benchmarking. You gotta get some kind of idea. But then sometimes what gets missed is how are you getting to that number? Like sometimes. Well, yeah, sure. a little bit about that. So gross profit margin is one of those ones where there's a lot of variables involved there. One would think that

you know, direct expenses or the cost of goods sold is just that, but you can talk to different business owners who believe that different things should be part of your cost of goods sold and some people who don't. So it's really challenging to be able to have a conversation with a group of business owners and feel certain that you are comparing apples to apples in terms of goals and different things. taking that into consideration, part of the objective of the two-day event is

to be able to look at your own information and rather than setting super broad goals in terms of like your gross profit margin needs to be this amount, we need to look at it on almost like a line by line type thing because labor is labor. Materials are materials. Whether or not you put other expenses in your cost of goods sold is totally up to you, but let's not compare gross profit margin to each other. Let's compare

some of those singular line items, advertising, it's different, things like that. But I think what a lot of times gets missed in all of that, in broad generalizations, is that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your gross profit margin is, or what your overhead is, or what your percentages are, as long as you are making the profit you wanna make. So if you're making the profit you wanna make, who cares what your gross profit margin is? It's when your profit at the bottom line isn't where it is, that's when you need to be like,

Okay, well maybe I am spending too much on my gross profit margin or maybe my overhead is too high. Well, depending on the business model or the business or the industry is going to be different too, right? So if you're in plumbing, that's going to look different than HVAC and then inside HVAC, there's multiple angles. you're garage door, like there's all these different home services that really they need to understand the numbers.

but it may factor, I mean, your installation from HVAC is gonna look a lot different than plumbing service numbers are gonna look. Well, and so is the same industry, but different revenue mixes. So if you're doing commercial or you do new construction or you do different revenue mixes or you work with big box retailers or whatever you do, it might be that your gross profit margins are different amongst all of those different revenue mixes. the really wrapping the brain around

If my profit is where I want it to be, then I can then I at least know where like what the boundaries are that I need to be operating in. And then if something if you consider something an overhead and somebody else considers a cost of goods sold, it really doesn't matter because regardless, it is just above that net income line. Well, and as long as you're being consistent as the owner on how you're measuring all these things like you can't this month.

put it in this bucket next month, be like, you know what, I'm gonna put it in this bucket. And, you know, one of the things that I've noticed is us accountant type people tend to try to over complicate, usually unintentionally, but try to over complicate information and data. And I try very hard not to do that because at the end of the day, I definitely recognize that most business owners aren't.

data-driven, they're not fired up by Excel spreadsheets like some of us number people are. There are some business owners that are like that, but mostly that's not who we're working with. So we need to make sure that we're talking about this information, that we're displaying it, that we're really focusing in on just the key points that are really gonna move the needle forward because it's easy to get bogged down in the numbers and the data. And then what happens is then the business owner gets into the state of overwhelm.

because there's so much data in front of them that they don't know what it's like decision fatigue before you even make a decision. Analysis paralysis. So let's simplify it. Let's distill it down. Let's really focus in on the line items that are gonna move the needle forward the fastest and make sure those are in check. And then you can look at some of the smaller.

smaller items but if you're having problems with cash flow or you're having problems with financial your business find the biggest hole yeah and plug it first yeah so really the event is going to be kind of a mix between financial and operations right like it's not going to be two days of no red sheets is it no it's not going to be two days of spreadsheets i know my audience better than that um trying to decide if i get my ticket or not

No, so there's, we are gonna be looking at the different departments in the business and kind of setting up their tracking sheets and their metric sheets based on what it is that's important to that job specifically. And then we'll be spending some time talking about incentivizing those positions, holding them accountable.

realistic levels of expectation for the different positions because different, you can't just set like one group of KPIs across the company and have everybody hit them. There's a rhyme or reason behind it. And the accountability piece is sometimes the hardest. It's not sometimes, it's always the hardest part of all of it. And I think...

Most of the time when people think accountability, they think of? Micromanaging. Or firing or like, there's gotta be a repercussion, fire them. And that's not typically, gosh, if you're that far down the road, you've made some leadership doffs on the way for sure.

So this is actually not an event just for business owners too. I've talked to several people who have ops managers, service managers, GMs, that would be a great workshop for them as well. And a lot of times those positions don't always get to go to different events, especially ones that are learning and training of this nature. So that ops manager, that GM, to a certain extent the service manager, but really probably more.

more in operations and and that GM position would be able to get a lot of this to. Very cool, and there's going to be some play. Playtime to be some play. I don't know if you want to disclose what the fun is going to be yet or if you're to hide it for a to be a secret. It is sports related. How about that? sports related.

That's all I'm going to say. And again, it's it's going to be in downtown Pensacola, which is our as our stomping grounds as our stomping grounds. If you've never been to downtown Pensacola, what a cool place. Like the downtown area is cool. They've done a really good job of bringing that back to life, you know, 20, 30 years ago. And this is the truth in lot of downtown areas. It was not good. And now people are.

investing in it and it's becoming a really really neat place and cool place and great restaurants and I don't know it's exciting to have to be able to share that I always like to share our town with people it's always it's always fun and exciting so I think downtown Pensacola is a bit of a hidden gem there's a lot of people that I talked to who have never been here before

We obviously were on the Gulf of Mexico. Pensacola is. Ma'am, it's the Gulf of America now. Is it officially? I don't know. I don't know either. I'm not sure if it is or not. We won't get into that. The what is Pensacola the oldest city? It was the the first city in Florida in America, in America. Yep. And so then it got washed out by a hurricane and then St. Augustine took the.

took the medal of first city because it didn't go just so St. Augustine is the oldest Pensacola was the first. OK, yeah. OK. So there's a lot of history here. There's a lot of history, which is really cool. And we're very conveniently located to the water. And there's all kinds of stuff to do in the water, too. So there is and may as may as a great time to be here because it's not quite so hot yet.

So fun fact, this event is during our anniversary. It is. So May 15th is our wedding anniversary. So Kristen thought it'd be a really good idea to do an event during that time. It's fun. And another fun fact about May 15th, that will be the five year anniversary since we released the book. That's true. Five years or four? No, five. Five. we, yeah, we released it during the pandemic.

that's right. Good times. Wow. Five years ago. So that'll be fun. That'll be neat. So what? Just as you think of the event, you talked a little bit about who would be a good fit. We talked a little bit about that. There's going to be a balance between the financial side and the operation side. Probably a little bit of leadership stuff that's going to that's going to be a part of it as well. Some fun.

There's some there's going to be some fun packed in there too because nobody wants to sit in a conference room for two days. No, and it's pretty outside. Oh, that's boring. What did I what did I leave out? I don't know if there's anything specifically that you left out. I am really excited to be able to host this event.

We've been to a lot of different events over the years. There's always, every time we go to an event, you and I, we always recap afterwards with each other. Always. we liked, what we didn't like, what we wanted to make sure that we took home with us. We always debrief after that kind of stuff. So after going to a lot of events, it's really cool to be able to sit down and say, I really want to make sure that I incorporate this. I really want to make sure I avoid that.

So that is exciting. I love the content. I am certain I will see familiar faces, some of which are current clients, which is always fantastic. You talk to them on Zoom week after week, month after month, but it's great to be able to see them in person. So that's exciting. I'm excited to share Pensacola with everybody.

I'm just looking forward to it. We're only talking about 50 attendees, so I didn't want the group to be so big that we couldn't have those personalized questions and conversations and topics and stuff. So, really looking forward to it. And I think a big thing too is workshop. Like this, there's gonna be work. It's not gonna be just information poured on you. There's gonna be work and time in order to...

work on it and not necessarily implement it, but yeah, in order to process what's going on. I totally get that financials numbers is not a lot of business owners strong suit. I get that and there's nothing wrong with that. There's stuff business owners do all the time that's not my strong suit. So I think...

I know what I want to avoid is a fire hose of information that is not digestible. We've got to bake in time and opportunity to really digest and process the information so that it's absorbed. It's kind of like, like I think about a dry sponge. A dry sponge does not take on very much water, but a damp sponge takes on water a little bit better than dry sponge. just rolls right off the top. So we need to be able to have time to let it soak in, let it process.

figure out how we can like what are some things that we can do in the business right now that can help implement that and Move move the needle forward ultimately at the end of the day My goal is to help home service business owners get more comfortable with their numbers and make more money Faster because who doesn't want to do that I mean at the end of the day the point of running the business is to be profitable and if you're running a business and you're not profitable

It just doesn't sound like that much fun. It's not fun. Like dang, you got all this time and effort and energy and money invested in this business. Why not make money? It's almost like it's sometimes the last piece of what business owners.

it's OK that the revenue, you're not throwing massive numbers of growth at their revenue because ultimately at the end of the day, if your net profit is higher, you're making more money. What hurts my heart is to see people get crazy revenue numbers at the top, but then they're not running their business efficiently and they end up coming home with two or three points on the bottom line. Like, no.

That's not fun. The saying revenue is vanity. Profitability is sanity comes to mind because it yeah, at the end of the day, would you rather have more sales and revenue and less money or would you rather have more money and have less work? I think it depends on your ego. Well, there's a lot of people whose ego is driven by that top number and you can you can see it like it's it's exciting to get the

to the top number. But at the end of the day, I personally would rather have a bigger net income. Yeah. Make make mo money. Mo money, mo problems. Well, that's awesome. So how would someone go about registering for the event? So you're to go to my website, which is KristinDees.com and there's an events page on there that you can click on. It'll take you right to the registration page for it. So it's

Kristen D's K R I s t e n d e s e dot com. And I'll have obviously I'll have all this stuff in the show notes. And here's the deal. It's going to sell out. It's going to sell out. So if you're if you're wanting to attend the event, not

Not that we don't want to hang out with everybody and we don't want everybody to come and hang out with us. The truth is, the space is limited because we will, you know, I know one of your goals is to keep it in intimate settings so that you can work on their business to make sure that they get the maximum impact for the investment that they're going to make in being here. So the hotel's great. It's close to downtown. It's right in downtown. It's just going to be fun.

Purposely scheduled on a Thursday and Friday so that you can extend your weekend and enjoy Pensacola after it's over. Yeah outstanding. So I'll have all the stuff in the show notes and yeah, thank you for coming and being a guest co-host. Yes, yes co-host Today and now we've now that we've got the studio done. You will have to be in here more

Mm It's close enough. I guess I could make the commute. It is commutable except for last week. It snowed. It did. And that made for a crazy commute like from the from the house to the studio. I had to wear snow boots, which let's hope that doesn't happen again. So anyways, thank you all for tuning in again. Check out the show notes to get registered for the event. Kristen Dease dot com.

When you go to the website, click on events and we will see you there.