Valuable Finance Insights from Tier 1 Capital

Olivia: Hello and welcome to the Control Your Cash Podcast. Today we have Kenny Harper, a renowned business coach from Growth Amplifiers. Kenny, thank you so much for being with us today.

Kenny: Glad to be here and glad to be participating and sharing some helpful insights. Some of the things I’ve learned in my experience to help others on theirs.

Olivia: Great. It’s great to have you. I know that you’re going to bring a ton of value to our audience today. Um, do you want to start by telling us a little bit about your backstory, how you got started in this industry?

Kenny: We’re gonna go way back, way back to when I was a kid. You know, cause I believe, you know, we’re all born with unique purpose. We all have our individual talents, and sometimes we find them quickly, and sometimes it takes the scenic journey to find how to shine our light, how to show up as our best self.

As a kid, I was a little shy.

I kind of was, um, quiet, didn’t know how, how to connect with others, more of the artistic type. The loud, boisterous, um, sports professionals, they were complaining and competing about achieving their goals. I didn’t quite align with them. I like to play and be creative, but along the way, I realized that that quiet self, I developed empathy for others.

Empathy for those who maybe did things a little bit differently or weren’t on the top, weren’t the top, most successful, passionate people and connected with them. Then about the time I turned 14, my cousin took me to a rock concert and I, I got into rock bands and played rock and roll. 

And that was the first passion that I pursued where I was like, this is really what I like, but I didn’t learn the business side of how to be successful with that gig. So at some point in time, I had to find a way to pay the bills when I started getting just a little bit older, becoming an adult, and I found out that about marketing and advertising and helping people with, with design and using that creative mindset to still help others still use that creativity.

But now I found a way to get a job, to be employed with that. And I went to school for it, graduated top of my class, worked for some of the best advertising agencies uh, it was really great experience, but I had that little thing inside of me that was like, Hey, do you ever want to try doing your own thing?

Do you ever want to try going out there on your own? And it was about almost 12 years ago now. Oh my gosh. And I had just got married. I bought a house, had a kid on the way. And what I started to notice is that the clients and projects that are really appreciated and loved were the ones that I was getting to connect with the owner connect with someone who had more control and seeing how it could light them up, seeing how it could help them see their vision at a different altitude versus the large conglomerate, um, corporations or brands that they’re making money, but I don’t get to connect with people. So I said, if not now, when?

If I don’t try this now, is it going to get easier later? Probably not. So although I had a nice steady salary, although I had a vacation package and benefits, I said, let’s give it a shot.

I jumped out

And on my own. And I didn’t know, honestly, if it was going to work. I was going to be a freelance web designer. I’m like, we’ll see if this happens, see what happens. I’m going to try it for a year. If I do do it good, then maybe I’ll continue. If not, then maybe I’ll get a job again. I don’t know. Well, remember that whole thing I told you a little bit back where I was following my passion, but I didn’t really know enough about business. Well, that same thing revisited me.

I learned how to do another trade, another craft, but I didn’t know enough about business. And I was watching my bank account say dwindle because I didn’t, I didn’t know the business side of running a business. I knew what I did for a trade. And I, that’s when I really hired my first business coach because I was like, I really don’t know what I’m doing and I want to know. And what I really appreciated about having a coach was. It helped me step into my true potential. And I had the, the knowledge, passion, drive, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I had a blind spot and without having someone to help me see that and help hold me accountable to achieve my personal best. I probably would have been getting a job, but I was able to get past that hump.

And started to grow my business. I met a business partner and we started a marketing agency, started hiring some people. We were elevating our firm and things were working really well. And I, I again, started to notice a trend where, you know, I can, I can do work. I can manage people, but what I really like, what’s my zone of genius.

Where I always get people complimenting me is when I’m connecting with people directly really understanding what they’re trying to achieve and help empower them to get past their fears, to get past their blocks so that they can achieve their personal best. I was inspired by my coach. And over the past decade, I’ve devoted myself to learning the knowledge, the skills, the disciplines to help empower people to perform at their personal best.

So when I started my business, uh, the agency was Rock My Image. It was playing off the background in rock music. And we were initially helping people with their image and their brand. But then as, as it evolved and started to helping more holistically realize that name was a little misleading. So hence the name Growth Amplifiers.

And really trying to help people see holistically, what are the actions you need to take? What are the things you need to do to grow, to achieve your full potential? So I’m inspired, I’m driven, blessed, grateful, and I’m grateful for the, for the wins, but also for the, the challenges as well, because that has empowered me to be able to help people avoid taking the painful, scenic route.

Tim: Well, you know, it’s, it’s funny you mentioned that because there’s an old saying that success is a poor teacher, but we learn a lot when, you know, when we’re going through the struggles and we’re, we’re, we’re making the mistakes. That’s when you learn and you grow at a faster pace. And we have seen that, I have seen that, in my own practice and personal life, and I’m sure Olivia could, uh, amplify that.

Right, hon?

Olivia: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, it’s funny. It’s, it’s like when, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear and you could hear something a million times, but when you’re ready to hear it and only when you’re ready to hear it after you’ve made the proper mistakes on your path, um, does it hit you and does it resonate and does it, um, inspire change and action.

Um, and it’s funny because, you know, I feel like so many people can relate to this. I mean, because no matter what life is, life is never perfect. Um, and we always, no matter how good we are, we always have room for growth and improvement and, and to work on ourselves to be better, to be our best selves and that best version of ourselves.

So I love what you do and I love, um, what you bring and how passionate you are about it.

Kenny: Well, thank you very much. You know, I was reading a book this weekend, which happened to be on coaching. Um, and it was talking about how, like, no one needs coaching. It’s like, no one needs coaching. You don’t have to have it. However… If you want to go further, faster, you might want coaching, right? It can help you.

And some of the best, most successful people have multiple coaches. So I think there’s, as there’s been a, an opening an awareness of like mental health in the past few years, people’s mental health and fitness. I think there’s also an evolution of what people understand coaching to be. It’s not for people who are struggling.

I mean, sure. People who are struggling might need. Might benefit from having a coach, but people are doing good and are already successful, can still benefit. As the top athletes, champions, and Olympians have coaches to help them get to the best version of themselves. So it’s, it’s really a shift of the minds.

And I know I, I didn’t have that mindset early on, and I’m grateful that I’ve developed it.

Tim: Yeah, you know, that’s a great point because, you know, you look at these guys that are on the PGA Tour and they don’t have one coach, right? They have a nutritional coach. They have a fitness coach. They have a swing coach. They have a short game coach. They have a putting coach. And then they have. Like a psycho-, like a, uh, what do they call it?

Like a, a Sports psychology coach. And when you hear these guys talking after they. Win a tournament or something, you know, well, you know, my, me and my team got together and we had, we made these adjustments and it’s, it’s amazing when you see the amount of success that they’ve had and think, oh, wow, that just all comes naturally.

And it doesn’t. And it’s, you know, anything that you can be good at. You can be better at with coaching and you can be better at when you focus on the things that are important to making you better at those at those skills.

Kenny: Very nicely articulated because I know you have like a. A lot of knowledge and expertise to help people see things deeper, to help like see through the matrix, because we’re busy managing so many different things from day to day. We can’t be the master of everything and even if we know things and learn things, eventually we can start getting tunnel vision in our own worlds.

We can get into our own way. We, like, wasn’t I supposed to be doing that? Oh, yes, I was.

Olivia: Yeah, absolutely. Um, another thing I was thinking about is how success leaves clues and what one person could do another person can do. And that I feel like is, um, something that a coach is so valuable for, you know, they’re able to bring experiences and knowledge. And another thing that comes to mind is, you know, most people get into business to be their own boss to make their own way to, you know, take a chance and become their own source of income. But with that, there’s not necessarily a lot of training. You know, anyone could start a business. Um, anyone could start a business, but that doesn’t mean, you know, even if you have 90 percent of the skills, you could still do better, um, for yourself, for your community, for your family, for your employees.

There’s a lot of, there’s a lot at stake when you’re a business owner.

Kenny: And there’s probably like just like selling can get a bad rap, you know, people have some people like, oh, I don’t like to be sold to I don’t like selling and I agree that bad selling is bad. If someone’s trying to connect with you and push their agenda on you to sell something for their benefit, then that is bad.

However, if someone is honestly trying to understand your challenge and help you get what you want and resolve your challenges, and they’re sharing how they can do that, which is another way of selling, it’s more like. Consultative selling, then that is what helps people. That’s what makes the world go round.

That’s a positive thing. It’s the same thing with coaching because it’s really easy to call yourself a coach. It’s, it’s not like they have licenses, uh, for coaching. They do have certifications, but they’re not all made equal, but because a lot of people can say, Oh. I’m a coach and they can go out and they don’t really don’t know what they’re doing.

Um, and they could give bad advice or they don’t know how to do powerful, transformative coaching to really help people have the self inspection, um, reflection to make sure that they’re making meaningful change. To get to where they want to go. It’s a different skill level.

It’s a different understanding of how to operate.

The reason I’m sharing this right now is because, I still hear in conversation that they’ll say, if I can afford coaching. I don’t know if I have the time for that. And in reality, it’s like, how do you not have the, um, I guess the, the time, how can you not dedicate the time or find a way to invest in yourself when it’s all about helping you be the best version of yourself, like investing-

Tim: That’s a great point.

Kenny: -investing in your self development is perhaps one of the best things you could ever do.

Cause you are you, right?

Tim: Right.

Olivia: Absolutely.

Tim: So, Kenny, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see people doing when they, when, you know, when they’re sort of like DIY or, uh, for those of you don’t know, that’s Do It Yourself.

Kenny: So when it comes to Do It Yourself and from. I’ll talk from the marketing and sales side for a moment, for a moment. So I do business coaching and my background and expertise is more in the marketing and sales arena. And a challenge a lot of businesses have is. They, they get the tunnel vision on what they’re focused on and they may, they may suffer from one of these, these ailments.

So first off, we’ve got marketing that is exploding at such a rate. We can’t keep up with all the tools, software, uh, media channels that you could possibly get involved in. Even if you’re involved in one of them, they change so rapidly. It’s hard to keep up to date with the latest trends. So hearing all these different things. People are looking for the silver bullet bouncing from one idea to a next.

They’re trying to find that easy button

And by shifting gears and bouncing all around, chasing the shiny objects, they can’t really build laser focused momentum.

That’s a mistake to avoid. You don’t need to do everything.

To get focus on what works for you and then be consistent with it.

The second thing when people are trying to. Increase their business is they have a misunderstanding of what marketing is. They think marketing is advertising. I was talking with an attorney who said, well, we don’t need to market our business. We get most of our business through word of mouth. I said, I think you have a misunderstanding what marketing is. You’re at a networking event right now, that’s marketing. Do you think it would be beneficial for your customers to know the other services that you provide? Do you think they’re utilizing your services to the full capacity? Do you think it’d be helpful to make sure that they know how you’ve served other people and to let them know how you appreciate their business?

That’s, that’s marketing.

Uh, do you think it would be helpful to share with them the other types of businesses that you would like to work with so that you can get more referrals or introductions? 

Those are all important things. It’s like, well, that’s what marketing is. It’s just, it’s not just lead generation, it’s not just new business. It’s looking at how do you provide value to those you serve? How do you ensure that they know what you do and that you appreciate them in the type of business that you would appreciate getting introduced to so that you can provide a great experience? So, and to keep it all condensed, it’s just not really looking at the, the full customer value journey from getting the marketing message to your ideal customer.

And then how to keep in contact with that, that customer to build a long lasting relationship that best serves them and provides more value to your business as well.

Tim: Nice. So, when? Do people normally engage with you or come to you? Are they looking to improve or are they sort of in crisis? In other words, Oh, my gosh, you know, my leads dried up completely. I need to do some marketing or, you know, four, four of my key employees left, you know, they went out and started their own business, you know, how do, how do you you, how do people generally onboard with you and like, are they like again, are they in crisis or are they looking to improve?

Kenny: So it’s, it’s a really good question. Um, because my people that may be looking for me aren’t necessarily my ideal customers. Uh, because more of somebody who helps people amplify good to great is more of an ideal. 

Um, people who are struggling definitely can help them out, can help them get a framework so that they can have consistent results, can help them improve some bottlenecks they may be holding them back, but ideal customers are the ones that are doing good already. And they may not even be looking for me because they, they may think we’ve already got an internal marketing person. We already have a marketing agency. We, we already have things that are working for us. And I’m looking for the people that say, you know what, I know, I don’t know what I don’t know, and I want to do the best I possibly can so I can get the best possible result. And for them, I, what I do is I do a, uh, overlook of their customer value journey. Help them look at what they’re doing now, understand what their goals are, and help them see things that they may not have seen before. Explore untapped opportunities. Explore, um, the bottlenecks that could be holding them back.

Help them see their blind spots. And then I’ll just say, hey, these are things. That if you resolve these things and put them into action, you can maximize all of the marketing and sales efforts that you’re doing right now. So if you’re looking to amplify your results and you need help doing that, or your internal team needs help doing that, or the agency you work with could use a fresh perspective. Then let’s have a conversation and we’ll find a way to amplify your business.

A lot of the times, the people that are looking for me or end up reaching out. They, um, they are the ones that are looking for some help. They’re having challenges with what they’re doing now. They’re not quite getting the result they want and they, they’ve tried working with other firms, they’ve spun their wheels. And they’re, they’re getting like, I need to find something that works, but the ideal ones are the ones that are, that are doing good and want to do great.

Olivia: So, Kenny, what does it look like working with you? Is it, um, you know, a short term, um, consultation commitment, or is it more of an ongoing, you know, week to week or month to month type situation?

Kenny: So I’ve been working with a lot more service professionals, a lot of people in the B2B advisory sort of work, they’re helping advise people, whether that’s with their finances, with tax planning, kind of like as a controller or exit planning, retirement planning, things of that nature. And one of the things I suggest to them is, is to follow how I engage.

The challenge I see a lot of them making is you’ve got to hire us and commit to a full time gig if it’s going to make any sense.

So to answer your question, I’m more like prescribed based on the situation.

So in some cases you might have, if, I’ve worked with a company that they were selling real estate lots.

So lots of land in rural communities, they had an internal marketing team. They had a sales team, they had a marketing agency, and their challenge was they, they were just having trouble connecting. It was a little bit political. Uh, they couldn’t see their own blind spots. So I told them what I did and they said, you know what, it’d be kind of helpful if you could help us, like, meet in the middle, get better aligned, so we can get better results. So for them, I facilitated a workshop where I invited everyone from the team. We worked through some exercises and over a period of time, we helped, uh, define the biggest bottlenecks that were holding them back, how to resolve them for the current time, but also for the future so that they can, um, get past those bottlenecks and move forward. Um, prior to that sales was blaming the marketing that your marketing isn’t really driving good leads and marketing was blaming sales. You guys are doing a pooey job with the follow up. Once we give you the leads and what needed to happen was they needed to have a more refined process in the middle for building up the relationship prior to passing off to sales. 

For other people. I have one of my clients that have been working with for about three, coming up on four years. And I work with him regularly. Initially understood what his business was and started helping out with his marketing system. But then in the past year, I’ve been working with this team to help get them aligned so that they can play a better role, so long story short, different results for different people. So if you, if you do serve people and like I was talking with the CFO that was trying to get more CFO clients and their offer was hire us for this term. I was like, what if they don’t do that?

Then they’re like, well, they’re not a good fit. I’m like, could you do something that, you know, maybe a strategy session that could at least help make a little progress. Like, that’s a, that might be helpful. I’m like, it would be because you’re losing business right now because there’s some people that probably really want your help.

They just have a block and they’re not ready to make that full commitment. But once they’ve worked with you a little bit and can see the transformation you could provide, they would be glad to follow you and work with you because you really do transform lives.

Olivia: Yeah.

Tim: Nice. You know, one of the things that, so the thing that we do is, this show is called Control Your Cash. And our whole focus in business is helping people and business owners find the cash flow they need. To fund their exit plan or to, you know, retain their key employees or to fund their succession plan.

And a lot of times they don’t realize that they have the money within their wherewithal. It’s just being utilized inefficiently. So everybody thinks that they’re using their money in the best way possible, right? Because you wouldn’t get up in the morning and say. You know, I want to see how much I could screw myself up financially this week, but nobody does that.

But the key is, so everything you’re doing, you think is moving you forward. Unfortunately, some things are actually holding you back. And what that leads to is maybe sometimes where cash is a little tighter than others. We have found, we had commissioned a research report and found that 61 percent of business owners around the world struggle with cashflow and 69 percent either sleep less or lose sleep due to cashflow concerns. So Kenny, if you could, share with us a time where you got sort of knocked on your butt, uh, you know, from cashflow or financially and tell us what led to that. Tell us what you were thinking as you were going through it and sort of how you got your way out of it, and what you, what you took away from that.

Kenny: So, oy, oh joy, reminiscing on struggles, but I’ll be glad to share. And it’s funny because there was a time that this situation really messed with my mind to the point where I was getting some bad anxiety over it. At the time, I was working to transition from being the director and manager of the agency to more into coaching and advising.

This is about five plus years ago. And I had a, I had two business partners. Now I have one, I did have a second one. And. That other business partner kind of had a change of heart with how they wanted to show up in the agency. It was a lady and I’m not going to point fingers. But, let’s just say we had an agreement of how things would work out and it didn’t work out that way.

So we ended up running into putting some, for the first time we ran, uh, put some bills on credit because we had her as the head communication person in our agency. When she started to pull out, we weren’t really in tune to that. 

So around the same time, she said, I’m going to run with these new prospects. We lost our biggest accounts and we had debt, and we’re like, what the heck just happened? And I was so, um, I felt so victimized in that situation because I’m like, I would never do that to someone. We had an agreement. We could have communicated things differently, people, people change, and the cash flow, because we lost our biggest accounts and the, some of the opportunities that we had weren’t there anymore.

It got hairy. So what do you do when life hands you lemons? You throw them at the people who betray you. I’m just kidding. You make lemonade. So, I, I realized that we’re not going to give up we need to find a way to proceed and so I, I created a plan to be really focused and we said, we know a lot of people, we can provide a lot of transformation.We just need to get our message to more people. 

So we’re going to host workshops and we’ve done workshops in the past, but typically it’s been like one a quarter. said, we need cash fast to turn things around quickly. And we put six workshops, six workshops on within a month’s timeframe, really get focused and said, how can we, who can we call, who are the influencers we know?

And not like online social media influencers, but like local influencers, because these were in person workshops. Um, how can we cultivate a workshop that provides a lot of value and helps people see things differently so that they can have transformation in their business? A lot of the content that we’ve put in that workshop is outlined in our book, Amplify: How to Maximize Your Profits and Claim Back Your Time.

On the five profit drivers in your business, the leads that you’re generating, the percentage of leads that you’re converting in the customers, the average number of transactions per customer, the average amount per transaction, and your profit margin.

If you can get focus on creating the systems to improve each of those five profit drivers, you can. Amplify your business. You can maximize it and take it to the next level. You can double your profitability without having to double your workload. It’s truly transformative. And so we did the workshop. We were able to find the clients we needed in the timeframe.

And the rest has been onwards and upwards since then, but to share one other takeaway so that the thing was don’t give up, but a bigger takeaway for me that I learned is has been impactful is during this, um, challenge. I was, my ego was so angry and victimized, and I felt like I’m the, I’m trying to be a business coach.

I can’t admit this out to the public. I can’t share this with other people. That was working against me. I, I was trying to be strong and plow through that. But luckily I was attending, um, some meetings with the International Coaching Federation. And I met a mindfulness practitioner, she was a coach that did a lot of mindfulness.

She was going through grad school and she asked if she could do some sessions with me for her grad school.

And I’m so grateful that I had that opportunity because what I realized was, had I not had some guidance and communicated some of those things, why I was having anxiety and stress was because I was trying to force through it versus process it and work through it.

And now, looking back, like, I’m fully transparent about it. I’m like, yes, I have mistakes. Yes, I have failed. I, I wear that as an object, um, badge of honor because it’s not failure that leads, it’s not like avoiding failure that leads to success. It’s, it’s failing again and again, and coming up with enthusiasm and drive and consistent persistence to achieve the result.

That’s how you get to success. So now I’ve, I share that with others because I know there’s a lot of people. That have failures that they’ve faced or are facing right now, and they’re fearful to share that and they don’t realize the impact that working to resolve that might have if they give themselves the grace of saying, you know what, maybe I did fail at this, maybe it did hurt me, but I’m willing to work through that now so that I can show up as the best version of myself, not for just me. But for my inner circle, for my family, for those I serve, so I could just be the best as that, that I can be. So that was a, the biggest challenge that I ever overcame. And I’m really grateful to have went through that in hindsight.

Although I wouldn’t have said that at the time.

Tim: Yeah, well, you know, well, thanks for sharing that because, you know, I, again, our biggest growth comes when we work through some problems and working through those problems isn’t a bad thing. You know? Yeah. Hey, it stinks when, when life throws crap at you or when you, when you get handed lemonades, you gotta make, I’m sorry, you get, get handed lemons, you gotta make lemonade. And uh, it’s really great to see that you have done that and more importantly that you’ve learned from it and you’re sharing that.

Kenny: I, I’m really glad and I’m advocate for being transparent and sharing those, those failures. And those lessons learned, we can get out of our egos, get out of the ego. It’s, it’s, it holds us back. It really does. We don’t even realize it’s, I didn’t even realize how much of a grip on it until going through some of that work.

But that was, that was my ego saying: Victim! Revenge! Rahhhh!

Tim: How dare she do that to us?

Kenny: Poor me.

Olivia: But hey, you came out on the other side stronger and, you know, I think, thank goodness, hindsight is 20/20. Um, and you’re able to reflect back on that and learn the lessons. But more than that is have that lesson to share with others and have that. Ability to connect with others because so many people go through the same exact thing and are afraid to talk about it so you coming forward and speaking on it and talking about it from a perspective of gratitude and coming out on the other side with more to give is really inspirational

Kenny: Thank you. And I’ll, I’ll share. That I hold no ill will to my partner. I was frustrated at that period of time, but now I’m wishing her the best. And you being grateful for that experience. Cause it, it did help me grow. It helped me step into a different level of leadership and challenged me to be a better version of myself.

So like you said, you can look at it with the right perspective.

Olivia: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, Kenny, share with us also, like, some, uh, what resources have been beneficial to you, whether they’re, you know, books or authors or websites or technology tools? What, what, what, what are you finding that’s, that’s worked for you in the past?

Kenny: So I’m a certified DigitalMarketer, uh, trainer and advisor. DigitalMarketer is a company based out of Austin, Texas. They help put on one of the biggest conferences on marketing called traffic and conversion and their concept of the customer value journey, which I alluded to earlier and really focusing on optimizing your customer value journey, looking at the different stages of the relationship that you have. With your potential customers and guiding them from one stage to the next. You can craft a process to get your message in front of your ideal customers and seamlessly and subtly guide them to become customers that pay, stay, and refer. You can avoid doing a lot of excess work, spending a lot of time creating content, a lot of time doing busy work and just work on the 20 percent of the efforts that give you 80 percent of the results.

By honing in, looking at that and fine tuning it. It’s like building an engine versus trying to be the master of plethora of different marketing trends and sales techniques and all that jazz. Just build good relationships and optimize the process that does that, the systems that does that. Uh, so that’s, that’s one is the customer value journey optimization from DigitalMarketer.

Um, a book that I, I really like, um, is Positive Intelligence. So this is a book on how to develop mental fitness. So, inspired by some of the challenges that I went through and also working with other business advisors who were running into their own mental blocks. I didn’t have a framework to help them through that, but Positive Intelligence is a framework to help people strengthen their mental fitness so that they could reduce their saboteur self, sabotaging thoughts and habits and step in to their better version of themselves more often. So I went through that program and got certified through Positive Intelligence as well.

Uh, it’s a great book and what I really like about it is it takes a really complicated process that I’ve studied in the past about mindfulness, about habits, about thinking, personal development, and makes it to a easy to understand process that you could share so easy that even my kids understand the concepts and have been implementing them into their development.

Olivia: That’s pretty cool

Tim: Nice, thank you for sharing that. Kenny, how could people, uh, get in touch with you? What’s the best way?

Kenny: So my website is growthamplifiers.com. And if they went to. Growthamplifiers.com/success. Um, we’ve got a free download of our book, um, we’ll have our assessment that you can take on there. If you have business and you’re looking to perhaps see some of the blind spots that you may have, get some direction on which areas you can improve upon to maximize your results.

You can take our free assessment, you get a checklist. And you can also find me on LinkedIn, Kenny Harper, or YouTube, Kenny Harper. And I will share that, approach to building relationships, business relationships. It’s not to try to sell anything to anyone. So if you do go to our website, growthamplifiers.com/success, and you opted into one of our assets, we’re not going to try to sell you things. We’re simply going to share resources. And if you want our help, then we’ll be there to help you out.

Olivia: We appreciate that Kenny.

Tim: Very nice.

Olivia: And thank you so much for joining us today. I know that you brought a lot of value for our listeners and a lot of value to your clients based on what you’ve shared with us today, um, your positive light. And we greatly appreciate you spending time with us here today.

Kenny: Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Olivia: Absolutely.

Tim: Well, Kenny Harper, thank you very much, and, uh, we look forward to having our growth amplified.

Kenny: Yes!

Olivia: Welcome to the Control Your Cash Podcast, where we talk to business owners about how to regain control of their cash flow. Today, we have Tom Brainsky with us from ProfitMax.

Welcome, Tom. 

Thomas: Hello. Thank you.

Olivia: So, Tom, tell us a little bit about your journey and we thank you so much for joining us today. And, um, I know that you’re going to provide our listeners with a ton of valuable content.

Thomas: Well, absolutely. I intend to do that. And thank you so much for having me. Um, as far as my journey goes, uh, I am a through and through entrepreneur. Um, not one of the greatest students that ever existed in the history of high school, uh, but, uh, ended up, uh, flailing almost out of high school, managed to.

Passed by the skin of my teeth, um, got into the working world and realized that that was actually more where I belonged. I did a series of crazy jobs in my life and then, uh, ended up taking to aviation. I had fan, I still maintain a fantastic career, uh, within, uh, aviation. I still own a company that provides really awesome, unique, niche services to airlines that do charter flights that led to, um.

Uh, me entering the dental field because those two don’t go together whatsoever. Uh, but when your clients are airlines and you know, they owe you $60,000-100,000 and you wake up on a Friday morning and go to the toilet and grab your phone as most of us do, uh, and then you look and you go, Oh, look at that. Oh, another one went bankrupt.

So there goes that money. You’re not going to get. And then subsequently you’ll get sued for something called preferential payments, which is awesome, by the way. So I’ve really mastered, um, dealing with those types of lawsuits. I don’t need attorneys anymore. I just call opposing counsel, make a deal, and I make those go away.

Uh, but, uh, that kind of led me into dental because it was something that wasn’t aviation. I thought, you know, maybe I’ll, uh, buy a dental laboratory. Um, it’s available. It’s nearby. It’s something, uh, you know, different basket, different eggs kind of thing. Very difficult business by the way. Uh, and, and, and that one ended up, uh, opening up an opportunity where, uh, recently, um, I was able to get my, my ERTC and we’ll go into that a little bit later in the call.

Uh, and, and with that, I met my partner now in ProfitMax. So that is another venture that I’m in now. And, uh, and she convinced me to, to join her and we’ll be kind of focusing on that today because that one really lines up with, uh, you know, what you guys do. So, um. Uh, ProfitMax is, uh. It provides accounting, tax, uh, tax guidance, tax strategies, ERC submission, or, you know, research and development tax credits, things like that, that can just make a world of a difference for business owners.

And so, so there’s the fit, and that’s how we came to where we are today.

Tim: That’s quite a, quite a journey, Tom, and I’m sure it comes with many scars and bruises along the way.

Thomas: Uh, Yes, yes, plenty of that. Lots of really hard lessons learned and in multiple sectors. Um, and, uh, I think if there was one word that could be used to describe me, it would probably be resilient. I’m just unwilling to stay down because I’ve had plenty of body shots that have, that really should have knocked me out, but I just, I don’t know, maybe I’m stupid, I just keep getting back up.

Tim: Well, you know, um, that’s an interesting point because most successful business owners, entrepreneurs, it, you know, it’s not all unicorn and rainbows. 

Thomas: It’s never unicorns and rainbows.

Tim: Yeah, so there and I think the struggles along the way and those times where we get knocked down are the times of great growth and. So if you could share with us maybe one of those times where you really got knocked down, what were you feeling?

How did you get through it? And what, what was your biggest takeaway?

Thomas: Well, uh, I probably have one of the most unique knockdown, knockout, dragout stories that exist. Um, There was, uh, this actually happened, I think, uh, last summer, summer ago, I think, maybe, I can’t remember, it’s all a blur, but, uh, running a dental laboratory, I have, uh, I have employees, technicians, equipment, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a brick and mortar business, and, um, I was, uh, taking my wife’s car to, uh, get fixed because, uh, her door handle was broken, so I took the car to, you know, the dealer on an average, you know, mundane Tuesday or Wednesday morning, I forget, and, uh, I was in the shuttle coming back from the dealer, and I received a phone call from someone who worked for me.

It was my HR manager, and she was very upset at me. I can’t even to this day tell you exactly why, but something really torqued her up bad, and she was screaming at me, and I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down. I, I almost felt bad for the guy next to me who’s driving because I, I just couldn’t figure out what was going on and she’s yelling at me that I don’t have a company anymore and when I got to work, she basically had fired my whole company, told them all that the company was sold, uh, that the company didn’t exist anymore and no one had jobs anymore, go home, good luck, and of course they would take that from HR as being legit.

Of course, if I sold the company, somebody better tell me, did I get a good deal and who bought it? When was the closing? None of this I knew. And, and so I literally had no company after years of trying to build this thing. And it was just gone, you know, instantly. And, and I had to kind of put it all together.

So there was a few people I was able to salvage that day. And, uh, one of them was this great kid. I had hired this homeless kid a couple of weeks before and gave him a job. And he was really starting to excel and appreciate, you know, what he was doing. And he stuck around with me and I taught him how to do customer service because we immediately had to figure out how to service our customers.

Um, And then, uh, you know, while I had him trying to let the customers know that we wouldn’t be picking up or delivering that day, because. Well, we had no staff because our person just let everyone go, which is insane. Thank God. We had tremendous support from our clients. They were very understanding. They were like, my God, I can’t believe anything like that happened.

Either can I, but it did. Um, and, uh, and, and so the rest of the day, it was just a matter of trying to take stock, figure out, you know, fire by fire, what, what do I have to do to bring this thing back online? How do I make this function again? How do I get the employees back? And so I was able to at least get everyone to agree to come in the next day and have a little town hall meeting, a heart to heart.

And, um, and, and through that experience, I’ve been able to, uh, learn and grow with transparency, unlike most business owners have ever experienced. Uh, there was a trust that was broken. I didn’t even do it, but it was broken. And so, uh, you know, it’s, tears were shed on both sides. And how do we put this thing back together?

And, and we were actually able to create a very cohesive team, uh, almost in, in moonshot fashion, uh, and be closer and stronger than we ever were before. And so, uh, if you want to talk about a challenge, having a business just disappear on you, and one day and having to put it all back together, the next. I.

I can’t think of anything worse in my life. And I mean, I’ve, I’ve had some really unusual experiences. I, I’ve had, I’ve had a, a Minister of Oil in the, in, in Kuwait, personally threatened to put me in jail through circumstances that I did not create. Um, I’ve been, you know, I’ve had, uh, French, no, I’ve had, uh, Mexican Federales hold me at gunpoint.

I’ve had guns. Uh, I’ve had, uh, been escorted out at, uh, gunpoint in, in Jordan during, you know, major combat operations during one of the wars. Uh, it’s, I’ve had some pretty bad days. Yeah, but none of them compared to that.

Tim: Wow. 

So what were you feeling? Like what, you know, I, I, I can, I can think of several emotions, but What were you feeling when you were going through all that crap?

Thomas: Um, well, first of all, uh, one of the managers that, that worked for me was very, very upset. And so again, I do feel bad for the dude that dropped me off. Uh, the guy was coming at me and like a raging bull and there were employees that were holding him back. And I don’t know whether it was the normalcy bias or not, but I literally was like, no, no, no, you don’t understand.

We’re going towards him as he’s wanting to kill me. Uh, you know, you don’t understand it, you know, and trying to argue with him and eventually employees like just go in the building, go to it because they couldn’t really hold it back. And he ended up calming down. Thank goodness. And he’s just a godsend to have on staff to this day. Um, but you know, so so there was that there was this this, you know as far as emotions go you, you, you have confusion. Um, you know, and and then you have fear. I mean, there’s this tremendous fear of everything that i’ve, i’ve put into this is gone. Do I have to sell everything? You know the unknown so you’ve got the fear, the anxiety, the stomach is in knots.

I mean, you want to talk about not sleeping that night. I there’s never been a night where I’ve been that wound up and unable to, to, to sleep because you just have that much stress on you, because you don’t know if you’re actually going to even have a company by the time you come back, no one had agreed to stay working with me.

They just agreed to talk to me. And so there was just so much unknown. And, and so working through the fire like that, while still trying to service the clients and do what I could to patch up. As much as I could to salvage what could be salvaged until this thing could be brought back online. Uh, just, in a word, Tim, insane levels of stress.

Tim: Yeah, I can imagine. Well, it’s a testament to your resilience that you’re able to get, you know, to obviously get through that and, and get through it, uh, not only successfully, but to, you know, to certainly to thrive. So, um, tell us a little bit about ProfitMax.

Thomas: So, ProfitMax, uh, I joined ProfitMax, um, sort of unexpectedly. Uh, I did not, I didn’t have any aspirations, uh, to, to jump into the… Tax field. Um, it’s never been in my wheelhouse, but, uh, I had met my partner Stacy, uh, at a, at a, um, a business convention. And, um, you know, she and I, I guess both wanted a good seat.

So we were like first people downstairs. Uh, and I mean, Tim, you know, Stacy, so you could probably actually imagine. That being true. Uh, and, and so I met this woman and you know, what do you do? What do you do kind of thing? And she tells me, Oh, you know, I help people their ERC. I’m like, I have no idea what that is.

She goes, Oh, you know, it’s this thing and it’s from the CARES Act and you know, you’re probably qualify. You’d probably get money back. How many employees do you have? So she’s asked me questions and you know, I said, well, I’ll have to check with my CPA. So, you know, at a break I run upstairs, I go to the bathroom because I mean, it’ what you gotta do, uh, and, and, and then I, I check with the CPA and my CPA is like, ah, yeah, you know, I don’t think you’re going to qualify.

You know, you make money during COVID. It’s, you know, so I went back downstairs. I said, Hey, you know, I ran into her. I’m like, Hey, by the way, you know, my CPA said, no, you know, you’re, uh, you’re not going to qualify. She goes, okay, why don’t you just. After the show, hook up with me, we’ll talk, you know, schedule time Tuesday, uh, and, uh, and, and, and we’ll see if you actually qualify.

So, she sent me a link, we filled out everything on the link, and, uh, oh look at that! Uh, we qualified! For over six figures. My CPA could have screwed me out of six figures. I mean, you wanna talk about something that really bothers you? That really bothered me, because they were so nonchalant about it. And so that, that’s, that shot up a red flag.

A long story short is, uh, I did process my ERC, uh, through, uh, her company ProfitMax and, um, got everything back. Everything’s wonderful. I couldn’t imagine this having no knowledge of this before I met her and and I, I pushed her so hard. I said, you know what, you’ve, you’ve been so helpful to me. Let me help you.

I am deadly at trade shows. I mean, I can sell anything to, you know, to anyone on the floor of a trade show. Absolutely deadly. And, and I said, there’s this trade show. It’s a dental thing. It’s dental technology. I realize it’s probably doesn’t make sense if I, you know didn’t know about this. I guarantee there’s hundreds if not thousands of people that don’t know about this.

Just go, I’m gonna be at the show anyway. I’ll stand at your booth. I’ll help you out a little bit, you know, while I’m doing my business there. And, and so I really forced her hand and, and of course she saw me in action. Good. And, uh, and, and so, uh, her husband and I, uh, lemme, sorry, her husband, uh, and her sat me down at dinner one night and they’re like, um, You need to get into this.

This is, this is definitely something you can do. Um, and your ability to, to connect with people and help people is unbelievable. I mean, they were just very complimentary of it and was like can I at least make some money doing this? You know? Yes. Okay, great. And so that’s kind of how this started. And, and I really got involved with her and, and got to see what the company does and, and how they help people.

And I mean, I have to tell you, you know, I do it a little bit differently just because I, I do love helping people to me. My, one of the biggest motivating things is to have someone just fill out the survey. And I love to get on a zoom call with them instead of just send them an email and say, Oh, Hey, by the way, you know, you qualified.

I got the email, you know, uh, but, uh, I, I love to just get on a call and face to face and say, listen, you just qualified for $250,000. I had one where I was so excited. I said, listen, you just qualified for $1.2 million and to see their faces. And, and to see what that can do for a business owner. And I mean, you want to talk about impact. Tim, what would you do with 1.2 million dollars? Just think about it. That’s impact.

Tim: It would definitely improve my golf swing.

Thomas: I mean, Olivia, what would your dad, what would your dad be like if all of a sudden he qualifies for this and about six to eight weeks later these checks start rolling in? Man’s happy, isn’t he?

Olivia: Yeah, yeah, because I, I mean, I always say this, um, I would argue that most of life’s frustrations come from not having access to money when you really need it. And then number 2, I would say is paying more in taxes than you need to.

Thomas: Oh, my gosh. And I mean that you want to talk about a lesson learned. That was a huge lesson learned. So not only did I fire my CPAs, but now I also moved all of my accounting over to the firm that I now work with. Uh, and we’re partnered with an organization called Lifetime Advisors. But, you know, they do a lot of heavy lifting for us.

Um, but, uh, Having now learned and seen what this does, first of all, I can say most small businesses out there that have between say five and maybe 20 employees, you know, some of the, I would say the average that we see as far as people recovering their ERCs is around $250,000, you know, for a small business, that is no joke, you know, for mom and pop shops have been working really hard and they’ve got their employees and they, they toil away in their business.

They’ve been working and they don’t know. And the accountants aren’t doing it because the accountants, they do what they do really well. They look backwards, they do taxes, they try and find deductions. The deductions they’re comfortable with, that are quick and dirty and easy because they’ve got thousands of things to file.

And I’m not trying to knock the CPAs, but that’s sort of the lane that they live in. And so when clients will go to them and say, you know, Hey, tell me about this or tell me about research and development tax credits. Yeah, they don’t really want to do it. So it just becomes this discouraged thing. It’s too much work or they’re not really good at it.

You know, conversely, you’ve got these pop ups now with this ERC thing, it’s crazy. And I guarantee all of your listeners have been receiving phone calls left and right, over and over, did you know that your employees and you’re eligible for blah, blah, blah, blah. Are, are they like accounting firms? Do they, do they do strategic tax, strategic tax planning?

No. So all they do is they’ve really gotten into their, let us just do this for you, we’re going to submit this for you, and we’re going to make money doing this. So they’re going to make their money doing that. But the problem with that is, What if they do it wrong? Or what if it does create an audit? Are they going to defend you during an audit?

Well, the answer to that is no. Or if they do, do you really want someone who’s just a pop up defending you on an audit? Probably not. So that’s why I really liked what Stacey had going, because you will have audit protection. So, anything that our organization does, they’re going to make sure it’s absolutely right and conservative and not go for the moon crazy because they don’t want to trigger audits either.

And if there are, then they’re going to sit in that first chair. And so there’s, there’s a lot of reasons why it makes a lot of sense. And to me, I really wanted to get in on that. And once I got in and started getting my feet wet and realizing what we could do, then it was fun to get on calls with, with clients who didn’t qualify for ERC.

They didn’t have enough employees. Maybe they weren’t in business at that time. Uh, but then it’s like, you can help them with your taxes. And it’s like, Oh wow, this is really fun. You know, just like me, it’s like you could help erase people’s tax bill. I mean, you know, you can, you can increase profits a few different ways.

You could either sell more, so sell more products, right? Uh, you can cut your expenses. Or you could pay no taxes. That’s about the three ways that you could really increase your profits. And, and to be part of that and helping business owners do that, the, the, the biggest stumbling block that I see is that most small businesses have no fricking clue because they do their thing.

They’re busy, their heads, their knee deep, you know, their, their, their, their heads are in the weeds. They’re knee deep in it. They’ve got to worry about their vehicle maintenance. They’ve got to worry about maybe their employees and their medicals. And they got to worry about, are we, you know, making enough money?

You know, how are we doing on sales? Do we need to cut the cost? All these things that you think about as a business owner day in and day out. When somebody talks to him about taxes, no, no, no, I got a CPA. I’m good. Are you though? Are you really? Because I guarantee all of them would say yes. Uh, uh. They’re really not.

It’s not something they really know about. And so, unless the right questions get asked, unless it really gets pointed out, they’re going to miss it. And they’re going to miss out on a lot. You know, I’ll give you an example. Um, dentists. Here’s something I know about, right? I own a dental laboratory. Dental laboratories and dentists, all of them, almost all, qualify for a research and development tax credit. That they can get every year somewhere between say maybe, you know, $8,000 and $30,000 a year alone, just that one thing CPAs don’t want to touch it. They don’t want to touch it because it’s too hard. It takes too much time. They do not have the time. They’ve got thousands of, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of filings.

They’ve got to do extensions. They got to do then additional filings. They’ve got to do, they’ve got to go what gets them their bread and butter. So this is what we do. We, we focus on the areas that are different. They can help people in ways that most CPAs can’t, and I mean, you know, it’s like, yeah, look at it this way, right?

So CPAs, they got a rear view mirror. They look in the rear mirror. What did you do? How can we help you with what you did? A strategist looks forward through the windshield. What are you going to do in the next three to five years? Are you going to have any events that trigger, you know, large taxable hits?

Okay, what can we do to mitigate those? And all the strategies that are done can then be shared with those CPAs. Now, we have our own CPAs on staff, if people want to work with us, that’s fine, but they don’t have to. But at least by, by, by thinking ahead and working that direction, you can really lower your tax bill.

And I’m telling you, I’m a small business owner. I’ve been operating as a small business owner in different sectors for 20 plus, 25, 25 years. Didn’t know, no idea. Had different accountants. No idea

Tim: I read a study that said 72 percent of people think that taxes are too high, but 93 percent of people overpay in their taxes.

Thomas: That is actually correct. 93% overpaying their taxes, and of that 93% they’re actually overpaying somewhere between 34 and 71%, which I mean, hello? That basically, I mean, what that boils down to guys is that that means that there is a 7% chance that your taxes are spot on.

Olivia: Those are pretty low odds.

Thomas: It’s, it’s, it’s astonishingly low, but for all the reasons I’ve outlined, it all makes sense. I mean, I just learned today that, uh, there are hundreds of thousands of CPAs that are retiring who are not being replaced. So if you think about it this way, uh, if all of these CPAs start retiring and there’s not enough to replace them, that means the CPAs that do exist are only going to get busier, meaning that they will have even less time to devote to really trying to maximize the amount that you can save in taxes.

It’s only getting worse.

Olivia: Tom, you seem really passionate about helping people save on these taxes. Tell us a little bit about for the listeners who may not know or may not have gotten one of those pop ups on the phone, what the ERC is and, and what a good candidate would look like to qualify.

Thomas: Well, let me predicate this by saying that even though I’ve qualified for it, I got mine. Hallelujah. Thrilled. ERC is one of the stupidest creations the government has ever done. I mean, it really is. Um, thrilled to have it. It’s wonderful. But, uh, it, it is essentially, uh, during the CARES Act, uh, ERC was established, or ERTC, Employee Retention Tax Credit.

And it was basically done, uh, during COVID to encourage businesses to keep their employees, right? And… So initially you could, you had to have less than 100 employees. I mean, they had all these restrictions and nobody was taking advantage of it. So 2001 rolls around and, and Congress and the president revise it and open up the

Tim: 2021, Tom?

Thomas: What’s that?

Tim: You said 2001, you meant 2021. 

Thomas: I’m sorry 2021, uh, they, they revise the law. Which basically now says that you could have, you know, uh, up to 500 employees and you don’t just simply have to show a loss. You could show a loss, but you know, show, show how you were affected during COVID. And this is kind of where a lot of the CPAs will just take the quick and easy and say, well, you know, I’ll work with you client or you client because you did have a loss, but they don’t want to actually do the heavier labor of showing, you know, well, if you didn’t have a loss, how were you affected?

You know, did you have to, put up ridiculous pieces of plastic or redo your ventilation system or have to buy, you know, this or that, you know, um, was it impossible to find employees? Uh, so anyway, this program was put in place and it is not actually based on the, uh, on the actual physical numbers of your payroll.

It is a payroll. It’s a payroll tax refund, but it’s not actually based on your payroll. This is what I mean. It’s ridiculous. And so you have three quarters in 2000, which, you know, any W-2 full time employee, uh, would be, uh, you know, worth $5,000 or up to $5,000. And then for the three quarters in 2021, those same employees could be worth, you know, $26,000. Where do they come up with these numbers? I, I don’t know. I mean, it’s, that’s government at work right there. However, it exists. It does expire. This will not last forever. And so that’s why, you know, everyone’s phones are just being blown up, you know, with every pop up that there is going, hey, you know, we could submit this for you, you know, and, and, you know, that’s just, just be careful, you know.

You want to you want to go with a firm that’s that’s very reputable, been around for a long time. At least our firm’s done well over $1.3 billion in recoveries with zero instances so far of any audits and, you know, zero instances where mistakes were made. As a matter of fact, some of our clients, um, we, we, we did it.

We actually, we did have one where, where an audit, um, a letter was sent from the IRS and the IRS had screwed up and they had to own up to their own screw up. And, and there was an audit that took place that actually found money that the CPA, uh, screwed up and the CPA got it wrong. So we had to run cleanup on that.

Um, so it’s um, It’s an unusual program. It does expire and I encourage all of your uh, listeners and viewers if you have not looked into it. Now would be a really good time to do it. Um, even through our website and I’ll make sure that I give you guys the link. Sign up the link. Just go to go to the link.

Put your information in it’s free and we’ll tell you what you could expect to get back. And it’s a rough estimate. I mean, you know, we’ll give you that. And if you want to move forward, then get all your documentation against get your real estimate. But it’s going to be pretty close. And I’ll give that to you.

So that way, you know, any of your viewers and listeners can at least go in and just get a free estimate and find out. You have nothing to lose, except if you A, take no action, at which point you could possibly be like me and almost lose hundreds of thousands of dollars because your CPA is not telling you what to do. I’m not bitter.

Olivia: Oh,

Thomas: I’m smiling.

Tim: Tell us about, uh, you mentioned, uh, research and development, the R& D credit. Tell us a little bit about that.

Thomas: So that was something that, uh, started back in, uh, 1981. It’s been revised several times throughout the years to make it easier. It’s basically the government trying to, uh, help support small businesses. Uh, and, and, and, you know, usher in research and development. Uh, if you were trying to get it in 1981, very similar to ERC, most wouldn’t qualify, too difficult to get.

And I mean, they don’t make it super, super simple, but it’s also not the most complicated thing in the world either. And believe it or not, most businesses that actually work on process improvements or work with technology and they implement this or that to, to make their businesses better, smarter, faster.

There’s a pretty good possibility that they would qualify and it’s an annual tax credit. So as long as they keep continue working on their business and doing improvements towards their businesses. They’re probably gonna qualify. I’ll give you an example. Let’s talk about a dentist or a dental laboratory again, my wheelhouse, you know if a dentist gets one of those like intraoral scanners So instead of taking, you know physical impressions that make people want to choke to death and they put the little wand in your mouth to you know Well, that’s something that they’re doing They get it, they’ve got to test it, learn how to use it, put it in the park, they’re probably going to qualify.

Uh, you know, 3D printing is now a thing, or, you know, chair side milling is now a thing. And so there’s all these things that are out there for many businesses where people use technology, they bring in new equipment, they have to learn how to use it. And there’s time that goes into that. And then there’s testing and tuning and, you know, losses of products and materials because you’ve wasted it as you’re trying to get better at it.

And, and that’s what this, this, uh, this law is out there for this deduction, uh, is for a tax credit, I guess is for, is for that. And so that’s something that can be applied for every single year. And no, most CPAs do not want to touch it. It’s a lot more work. It’s not that it’s hard work, but it’s just simply.

More work.

Tim: Interesting. You know, it’s, it’s funny because one of the areas that we identify for people. So we, we view things through the lens of, are you in control of your money or is somebody else in control of your money? Cause whoever controls your cashflow controls your life. And we identify five areas where people are.

Unknowingly and unnecessarily giving up control of their money. And one of them is taxes. And, you know, having stated that, I was totally unaware of this Research and Development Tax Credit. So that’s certainly something that I think, you know, you and I could talk about areas of collaboration where we could help our clients, if they’re eligible for this credit, too. You know, apply for it and qualify for

Thomas: Why not? What do they have to lose?

Olivia: Absolutely. And Tom, just for clarification, um, the difference, what’s the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction?

Thomas: Uh, deductions would be, you know, you, you bought a, you bought a house, you got interest, you’re gonna deduct, you know, your interest on the house. You know, a credit is, I’ve done these tasks, we’re gonna send you a check.

Olivia: It’s a dollar for dollar reduction in the tax bill, correct?

Thomas: Yeah you know, like if you look at the ERTC, uh, program, uh, there are six quarters that you could qualify and you will receive six different checks from the government. This is, comes to you in the form of a check and you cash the check. You feel like adding a, you know, garage to your house. You have the garage.

You want to buy a car, buy a car. You want to throw it into a life insurance policy and throw it into a life insurance policy. Um, you know, it is. Cash money to you versus just less that you have to pay.

Olivia: Absolutely. Well, that’s a huge value, especially for, for business owners, because I know, um, certainly speaking with business owners, they’re always looking for ways to save on their taxes and to optimize their taxes and, you know, ultimately make the machine of the business run as smoothly as possible.

And. Looking at different strategies to do that is certainly very valuable. So we appreciate you speaking about that. Um, and the different ways that, that we’re able to, to do that. And, um, that ProfitMax brings that to the clients.

Thomas: Well, you know, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. And, you know, I do want to mention one other thing that I think is, is very important. Uh, this is something that would normally come up with, uh, a ProfitMax based conversation, depending on the direction that the client wants to go, which is just asking.

Asking a business owner, what are their goals? You know, if a business owner’s goal is to work in their business all the time and, you know, be there, be their own janitor, be their own lawnmower, be, be one who just works in the business all the time, uh, that’s, that’s one thing. But a lot of business owners get into business cause they, they like the idea that they’ll have freedom. Yeah, how many business owners out there really feel that right or they like the idea of not having to think about payroll, how are we going to make payroll or how are we going to make it manage that cash flow to where I don’t have to think about it that much. And so, you know, we also have programs in place that can actually help business owners if their goal is to actually enjoy and have a good time. With their business yet still have that business, not as a job, but as an asset, asset that makes the money. You know, we, we, uh, we invest, right? So, you know, I invest in stock, right? So you invest in Apple. I like Apple. Um, you know, I’ve invested in Amazon. I don’t work for Apple. I don’t work for Amazon.

Yet that is an asset that makes me money. You can look at a business and do the same thing. But most business owners can’t even do that because they’re too deep in the weeds. So if they have certain goals, if they want to be free, then we actually can also help them and guide them to actually scale their business up, to grow that business into something, to become that asset, to give them the freedom.

Maybe at some point they even have a CEO. And so they could actually manage and run their business from the beach. These are things that are absolutely possible for a lot of businesses if they would take the time to go, You know what, I need to take a step back from my day to day, what I normally do, and have a conversation.

And so we’re more than willing to have those conversations as well.

Tim: Right, so most business owners are so busy working in their business, they don’t have any time to work on their business.

Thomas: And when they’re working on their business, Tim, chances are they’re working on their next marketing plan or campaign or their social media posting, which, by the way, is still technically working in your business if you think about it that way, but to take it and just kind of open up that that window a little bit more and look at it from a different You know, vantage point, a lot of things that you’re doing to work on your business might still actually be working in your business.

So you go back a little bit further and you go, okay, well, you know, what if I could replace myself and this thing still makes plenty of money. And then, you know, a few years later, if that’s my plan to sell in three, five, six, 10 years later, maybe I can get this thing into like private equity, you know, and get, you know, seven times normalized, you know, EBITDA or five times normalized EBITDA.

Well, you’re not going to get that unless you’re really well structured. And that’s something that doesn’t just come with most companies. It comes with people who can come in there and actually help the company structure for that to actually happen.

Tim: Right.

Olivia: Absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially because there are so many business owners looking to retire and get out of their business. But how do you make sure that asset doesn’t dwindle when you leave, when you walk out that door? And that’s something that I know a lot of family business owners and small business owners struggle with.

Thomas: How do you maximize the asset before you sell it? Many

Olivia: Yeah to get the most out of it.

Thomas: Right. Many business owners do not think in those terms they should. But they don’t. Because they’re too busy with their head down.

Tim: Right.

Thomas: I mean, I’m guilty of it. I’ve been that guy. I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’m professional when it comes to that. But we all are.

And it’s just a matter of, you know, once the scales come off the eyes. And you can’t unsee something. What do you do with that?

Olivia: It doesn’t matter how you start. It matters how you finish, Tom.

Thomas: Correct.

Tim: Well, Tom, it’s been a pleasure having you here. Um, how can our, our listeners get in touch with you if they’re interested in, in, uh, talking with you?

Thomas: I am so glad you asked. Uh, you can certainly find us at www.profitmax.co. That’s www.profitmax.co profitmax.co. And uh, also, like I said, I’m gonna give you guys a link and if you just wanna put it with the, uh, show information, uh, it will be a link to the survey for, uh, ERC and I’ll probably also give you a link just to get in contact with me directly.

And feel free to reach out. I’m free to talk to. Your life can change. Big numbers can roll in. Massive numbers that you never expected could end up in your bank account in the next three to six months. All you have to do is just pick up the phone. The phone is not that heavy. It really isn’t. Or, or, or click the mouse.

It’s, it’s not, it’s not heavy. And see what can happen. You won’t know until you look.

Tim: Yeah, it’s certainly worth a phone call, right?

Thomas: Doesn’t hurt. I’m a nice guy. Look at me. I’m smiling.

Olivia: We could attest to that, Thomas. We appreciate you so much. And if anyone wants to get in contact with Tom, please do so. We have links in the show notes and, um, you could certainly reach him at profitmax.co. So thank you so much, Tom.

Thomas: Thank you guys so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Tim: Thanks, Tom.

Thomas: You bet.

Tim: Hello, welcome to the Control Your Cash show with Tim Yurek and Olivia Kirk. And our guests today are Jason and Liz Peart from JPE Enterprises. And we are so happy to have you here. I think you have a great story to tell, and we would like to share that with our audience to see the potential of what can happen when with a little hard work and maybe some luck.

Olivia: Yes. Thank you, Jason and Liz, for joining us today. We look forward to our conversation and everything that you bring to the table. 

Liz: This is exciting for us. 

Olivia: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. And would you like to get started with telling us a little bit about your backstory, how you got to where you are and exactly where you are in your, in your, in your journey, if you will.

Jason: Sure. Um, we started, uh, our. first business in 2015. Um, it was me solo as a, uh, I bought a Tasty Cake route, which most people probably don’t realize that you can buy a route and be at the distribution rights to deliver, um, certain products to grocery stores and Wawas and convenience stores. And, um, it was a small route that, uh, bought, I was, I worked for Frito-Lay at the time and, uh, so I was in the business, but not, I worked for a company and, um, an opportunity came upon to buy the route and to be a business owner.

And luckily my wife, Liz, uh, supported me in that decision and, uh, was able to get into that industry. Um, so that’s how it started in 2015. 

Tim: So,

Liz: And then today.

Tim: So, yeah, I was going to say, I, I mean, I know you’ve got more than one route, so tell us a little bit about how the business expanded and how those opportunities came to you and.

And how you were able to take advantage of them. 

Jason: Sure. Um, so from 2015 to 2017, it was just the one route, um, learning the business, learning about taxes, you know, um, corporate stuff, um, and then just networking with other people in the industry and, um, Utz Quality Foods, which was a snack company, which I had an experience with, with Frito-Lay.

Was going IO, which they consider that to be like the independent operator. And I was able to secure two routes, um, in 2017. Um, so that went from one to three, hired two people. Um, so that was a big change, uh, you know, managing not just myself and one route, but all multiple people and three different trucks and, um, So that was in 2017.

And then 2018, a bread guy, um, on the street wanted to sell his route, and he was willing to give it to anybody, like, for dirt cheap. And, uh, I said, what do I have to lose? So it was a $3,000 down payment to buy this bread route. And he, he said that he would stay on and run it for me. So it was a no brainer.

So 2018 was the, you know, the fourth route. And, um, when we closed on that Flowers Bakery, whose product we distribute for the bread, uh, Dave’s Killer Bread, if anybody’s heard of that. Um, yeah, they said, Hey, we have two other routes. Would you be interested? And I said, uh, not really just because of finding more labor and another truck and they’re like, well, what if we make it, you know, really worth your while.

And I thought about it and we said, you know what, we have nothing to lose because they weren’t asking for any money down. And, um, I had lined up another, uh, two guys from Wawa that worked at Wawa. And they came on board and we said, yes. And, uh, I think that’s the key thing is sometimes you’re scared to do something, but if you say yes and figure it out later, it, you know.

It can work out.

Tim: So, Jason, could it, could it be said that they made you an offer? You couldn’t refuse sort of like in the Godfather? 

Jason: Yeah, pretty much. And I will tell you, um, when I first bought my first route, uh, Tasty, it was a Tasty Cake route. They brought me down to Philadelphia to the bakery and they had like a council, a distributor advisory council.

And, you know, you go with other distributors and, you know, you network with them and you get to see the bakery. And they took us out on a, uh, the Spirit of Philadelphia cruise, a dinner cruise. And they had a couple guys up from Georgia, which is the main Flowers, so Flowers Bakery owns Tasty Cake. They bought it in 2011.

And up here in PA, the bread didn’t take off that well yet. Like, it came up in 2012. Um, their bread nationwide is like one of the top sellers, but in this area we have a lot of competition. So they didn’t get a good stronghold, but the guy in Georgia told me who I just met him for the first time. He said, buy as many Flowers routes as you possibly can.

You’ll be rich someday. So that kind of stuck with me when this guy came up to me and, you know, was willing to give it to me for. $60,000, uh, $3,000 down payment and, um, and then Flowers offering the other two. And then they just grew, um, and yeah, I had to put on more trucks and more people. And so my timing was extremely fortunate.

Tim: Yeah, I would, I would assume that. And, and would it be fair to say that, you know, the pandemic might’ve helped you a little bit as far as business or what do you think?

Jason: The pandemic was a huge winner in all of, in my industry. Um, one, everybody was staying home and eating more, you know, restaurants were not doing so well and people didn’t want to go out.

Um, the kids were home for school for a year and a half almost. So snacks were huge. Bread was huge. Um, and then on top of that inflation. As all the prices went up, um, we’re based off of a commission basis. So it’s based off of what we sell into the store. So each of the products got more expensive. So our commission rate went up along with that.

Olivia: Food is sort of an inflation proof income, right?

Jason: Yeah. That’s what we joke. Recession and pandemic. 

Liz: And pandemic.

Tim: Well, you know, there’s, there’s an old, uh, story. If you know, somebody is always making money regardless of what’s going on out in the world. And, uh, If you recall back in, uh, after 9/11, air travel went down, literally went down to zero. And, uh, then it started slowly coming back. Well, these major airlines had hundreds or thousands of planes that they couldn’t keep them at the airports because the airports charged them, like, almost like it’s…

I don’t know what the word is, but it’s, it’s a storage fee or, you know, in, in boating, they call it a docking fee. So to keep your, for an airline to keep hundreds of airplanes at, you know, let’s say Philadelphia International Airport would cost them a very large amount of money. So what these major airlines were doing is there was a guy who had, who owned a lot of land out in Phoenix and he had.

It was basically desert land and because it was so flat, he was leasing his property out to these airlines who were renting the space so they could store their planes. Um, you know, again, just just to underscore that somebody is always making money, even no matter how bad it is out there. 

Olivia: Right. Yeah. It’s like making lemon.

When life gives you lemons, give you make lemonade, you know, rent out your, your barren land in Arizona. 

Jason: Well, money’s always moving. So, you know, yeah. Trying to get ahold of, you know, or catch as much as possible. 

Tim: So now you’ve got all these routes. Theoretically, you have more cash flow coming in, but you also I’m sure that wasn’t without its problems.

What are some of the biggest challenges that you had to face as you were expanding your business? 

Jason: Personnel mainly and, and trucks, uh, maintaining the trucks, you know, keeping them on the road, safe. Um, you know, we’ve been lucky. We haven’t had a whole lot of turnover, but you know, you can’t get. You know, all rock stars.

So the training, mentoring, you know, people and trying to find the best home for them sometimes, you know, the guy might’ve started on a Tasty Cake route and then he, you know, well, he didn’t like that or, you know, wasn’t a fit for him. So let’s try him on a trip route and you know, not giving up on people until the very end, I guess, but always trying to figure out a solution.

Tim: So what, what would, uh, Be some of the well, let’s put this way. What didn’t you know when you first got in business that you wish you knew when you started? Like, what do you know now that you wish you knew when you started?

Jason: Um,

well, it’s been learn as you go. That’s that’s for sure. Um, 

Tim: Right.

Jason: You know, when we first started, it was a J Peart Enterprises, all everything under one company. Um, and then we, we attended a couple of seminars, um, starting in 2019. It was like real estate seminars, but learning all about business and real estate and investments and applying that to our business, um, because, you know, business is pretty much business.

It’s doesn’t matter if you sell, you know, snacks or real estate or, you know, insurance, it’s all the same principles. Um. So, you know, being, uh, going from a W2 employee to running, you know, wearing six different hats and always learning on the go and, um, be able to transition, um, It has not always been easy, you know, here we are, you know, start eight years into it and, uh, finally getting to a good spot where, you know, we’ve made mistakes in the beginning, but, um, you know, now we have multiple, we’ve kind of spread it out over multiple entities, which is good for accounting and liability purposes, but, um, You know, there’s other, there’s complications to that too with banking and, uh, getting loans it’s, you know, and that’s, you know, kind of why we got hooked up with you in the first place with the whole life insurance policy and infinite banking concepts and learning to play both sides of the equation, you know, cashflow, but also the banking and, um, try to be a full service, you know, operation.

Tim: Yeah.

So, you know, our, our whole thing is all about teaching our clients how to be in control of their cash and be in control of their cashflow. And, you know, you’re, you’ve taken the first step. You and Liz have taken the first step to start that process to be in control of the loan process or the borrowing process.

And you’ll find as time goes by, if cashflow is Gets pinched a little bit. It’s easy to stop a payment, you know, a loan payment on your life policy when you’re dealing with a bank. It’s not so easy to stop a loan. You know, they’re not as sympathetic. Let’s say 

Jason: Right.

Liz: Right. Absolutely

Tim: So I guess another good question would be to say to ask is, uh, Talk to us about a time where things were a little bit difficult, whether, you know, whether it was from a business perspective or a personal, you know, when you got sort of knocked on your butt from a financial perspective. 

Liz: Back in 2019. Um, again, as Jason talked about was, Besides the personnel and bringing on contractors to run the routes, was also working with the trucks and these vehicles.

And we found that one, it was expensive to get them maintained. And two, um, people didn’t want to, you know, the local garages weren’t too crazy about working on these box trucks. And so the thought was, is that we’d start our own. Um, company that would, um, work on the box trucks. Um, so we bought into, uh, somewhat of a franchise like business, um, so that we can do the maintenance, um, and, um, be the auto mechanics essentially.

And, uh. That we opened in 2019, the pandemic happened in 2020, and we closed it up in 2020, so it didn’t even last a full year, and we lost quite a bit of money in that endeavor. I think, it had, It had a good, we had good intentions with it. Cause even today, Jason’s running around fixing the trucks on his own. He’s learned a lot.

Um, but I, I know we, we kind of lost a lot in doing that financially. We lost a lot of money. 

Jason: I think we’ve got, you know, when you, when you win on the first couple of businesses and everything’s going really good, you get pretty confident. And you think like. You’re going to succeed at everything. And, you know, that’s not always the case.

You can’t always have, you know, five home runs in a game, you know? Um, so that was unfortunate, but also I’m grateful for, um, the experience. You know, I’ve, like Liz said, I’ve learned a lot about maintenance and, um, auto repair, um, that I probably wouldn’t have without going down that route. But 

Tim: Right. 

Jason: And on the backside, we still have a thriving business that is generating lots of cash.

And, um, you know, that’s the beauty of business. You can take one loss, business loss, and offset the, you know, the income on the winning business. You know, some people call me a, you know, I pulled a Trump, you know, Donald Trump’s airline, uh, endeavor that didn’t work out, but he just didn’t pay taxes for a while.

Olivia: Let me ask you this. Was there a learning experience in that? In that event, or was it just because of the pandemic? I know, obviously the pandemic had an impact on it, but looking back on it, was there any lessons learned from that experience? 

Jason: Yeah, well, one, we couldn’t really find a good mechanic. Um, I think labor shortage everywhere in every industry is a big deal.

And on the route side of things, it’s not, there’s, you know, it’s a skilled position, but not like a mechanic. Um. So it’s more teachable where a mechanic, you know, is teachable as well, but, you know, it’s more specialized and, um, finding the right person to, to do that. And neither of us are mechanics. Um, I call myself a junkyard mechanic now, you know, I think also, you know, one thing that I, you 

Liz: I think also, you know, one thing that I, you  know, we learned was that we went into this thinking that. We put all our money into it and then we thought we could get loans and so forth. We thought we could get capital on the back end and then, and it didn’t happen out, it didn’t happen that way. We just, because of our businesses and the multitude of them and so forth, we really were not able to get an SBA loan.

And so we were cash strapped from the beginning. Um, and so that’s just another example, you know, jumping into something without really. Padding ourselves on the back end. I don’t think we would do that again and get into any type of business without making sure that we had, you know, some sort of cushion on the back end.

Olivia: So, yeah, it’s funny. It’s funny. You don’t know the things you don’t know until you’re in it sometimes. You know, no matter how much research or lack of research there is, there’s just things that you don’t know until you’re in the thick of it. Um, but. Hindsight is always 20/20. So 

Liz: Absolutely.

Tim: Well, you know, it’s also sort of like, you know, Jason, you didn’t mention this, but you sort of alluded to it.

It’s like you had a little success. So then you have this curse of recent, you know, of recent success, and then you endeavor into something that you really don’t know that much about.

Jason: Correct. 

Tim: And then in the process, like when you’re starting to capitalize your business, you’re taking all of your free cash and dumping it in the business and thinking that, oh, this will be easy to, to get, you know, used for collateral, et cetera, et cetera.

But the problem is… You know, when you’re dealing with banks, if you have a dollar, they can give you up to a dollar of, of, they could loan you a dollar against that dollar. But if you have a dollar in business equity, you know, they may only give you like 40 or 50 cents on the dollar. Because that business is not as liquid as the cash

Jason: Right

Tim: And it all, it goes back to the old saying, right? Cash is king. And unfortunately, we sometimes learn those lessons a little bit, you know, slower and, and, and they’re, they sting a little bit, you know, when you’re, when you’re going through those, those situations. And it’s not uncommon where we see a lot of business owners over the years, right?

All of their profits back into their business on the thought that, Oh, when I, you know, go to retire, I’ll be able to get all this money out and not so fast. It, it, it doesn’t generally happen that way. 

Jason: Right

Liz: Yeah,absolutely.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, that’s, what’s a little different about the route. is, you know, all you, all you really have to do is show up and fill the shelves and fill the products, um, and customers are going to come buy it.

So, you know, it’s, um, like you said, we had early success because, you know, all you had to do was show up. And with the Promoc, uh, which the name of the company that we started. The fleet maintenance, uh, you, you needed to find the customers and, you know, yes, we had our own trucks, but we’re not going to make money.

You know, we’re going to save money, but we’re not going to make money on ourselves. Um, and then all the other route owners that are in the same boat as us that need their trucks, they’re all cheap and they don’t want to, uh, they rather have the wheel fall off and then they’ll figure out what to do that.

They don’t want to be proactive

and, you know, I’ve, I’ve rescued a couple of guys out on the side of the street, you know, where their tire had blown and they kept driving and the rims all bent. But luckily, you know, we have enough trucks and I have some spare tires and now I have the skills to go out on the roadside and change a tire and, you know, yeah, 

Tim: Yeah well, let me ask you this.

Have you ever had had your drivers pulled over and, you know, get D. O. T. Or anything like that? 

Jason: A few times, but we’re actually not D. O. T. Because we stay in state and so we don’t cross any state lines. But yeah, they have, and they just usually, where are you, you know, where you going, where are you from? And then they kind of, uh, wave them through, but I’ve had guys drive under bridges with the, uh, 11 foot box truck and destroy, you know, the box.

Getting that phone call.

Olivia: I heard that’s a problem in Philly

Jason: Yeah

Liz: Yeah, yeah in our area down here

Jason: Getting phone calls at three in the morning. The guys ran out of gas on 76 and I, you know, I have to go there with a gas tank and dodge traffic, putting I mean it wasn’t a lot of traffic its 3am, but. It was at a bad spot, you know, we’re holding a flashlight and, uh, trying to put two gallons of gas in this thing to limp it to, uh, the gas station.

So 

Tim: Well, I don’t know that there are, there are actually any good spots on 76.

Liz: Yeah. Not at all.

Olivia: Seriously. I was going to say there’s no better time to have a breakdown than 3 a. m. That road is always jam packed.

Liz: It is.

Jason: Yep. But you never know what, what’s going to happen each day. Like I could get a phone call in an hour saying, you know, I got to go, you know, I got to go take care of this or it’s, you know, it’s 24/7.

Tim: Right. And, and, you know, that’s the thing, right? So as a business owner, you’re never off because if you’re not, if you’re not working in your business or working on your business. You’re thinking about it. 

Jason: Constantly

Liz: Absolutely 

Tim: You’re always waiting for that call. 

Jason: Right. Well, now we’re in the midst of vacation season.

So, you know, I cover the guys vacations and, you know, and then. Bad planning on my end. I let two guys go the same week on vacation or, you know, one guy won a trip and another guy, you know, it’s, it’s bad on my part. And then I’m scrambling, trying to figure out, okay, how, how am I going to cover two routes this week?

And, you know. It’s always an adventure. 

Tim: Well, and then, and the key is, somehow, someway it’ll get done, right? 

Jason: That’s right. 

Liz: It does. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Olivia: So, Jason and Liz, tell me a little bit about, um, some mentors that have had an impact on your life, whether it be someone directly in your life, someone you follow, I know you mentioned some seminars that you go to for business.

Who’s, who’s made an impact? Because, you know, we could only learn so much. You only want to learn so much from your own mistakes. But it’s also, it’s often easier to learn from other people’s mistakes and experiences. So who has had an impact in your lives? 

Liz: And I guess we started with all, well, some of this with Robert Kiyosaki, that, you know, a Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Um, and he has, he has. Some pod, a podcast as well and has a lot of great, um, people on his show that we follow and listen to. Um, I don’t know if there’s anybody personally that you in the business. 

Jason: Um, there’s a couple of guys that had multiple routes prior to me even getting into the rock game that I kind of looked up to.

Um, And, you know, picking their brain. And, you know, they always said, you got to pay the guys, you know, pay them well, like they own it because turnover will kill you. So I think we, you know, we pay our guys very well in order to keep them. Um, and luckily for us, our timing was really good. So we got a lot of these routes pretty cheap.

So we can afford to pay them well and still cashflow, you know, money. Um, but we’re always, you know, looking on YouTube and, um, the seminars, there’s a couple of guys that, you know, uh, we developed some relationships with, um, guy named, uh, Pip. Stehlik? 

Liz: Selnick 

Jason: Stehlik, I think. I don’t know. But, uh, you know, he, he had a little bit of, uh, he’s family owned grocery stores in the Midwest.

So I was able to talk to him about the route business and then he also had, um, some experience with Little Debbie routes. Um, so he was a good resource to, uh, and every once in a while we reach out, um, you know, like I was saying earlier about business is business, like whether you’re doing real estate or what, you know, the same principles can be applied to any business.

And um, so he’s been somebody that’s been helpful in the past. Um, and then recently we started, uh, we sold a route in January and ended up buying another rental property.  In our area, you know, hometown area here. So we’re starting to convert, you know, business assets to, uh, rental income.

Tim: And how is that working out?

Jason: Okay. Um, we’re still doing some work on it. So we closed in April. Um, I do have a renter lined up. It’s just a matter of finishing. The property off and, um, you know, getting them to move in. But, um, and we have another rental property that was, uh, a house that I owned prior to meeting Liz. So we kept that one.

And then we have a couple out of state, um, that we bought through a seminar, um, in our, uh, self directed IRA accounts. 

Tim: Right. So, so did, did the real estate come before? Or after your first route in 2015? 

Liz: After.

Jason: After. 

Tim: After. Yeah. So, you know, I think if you, if somebody said to you ten years ago, this is what your life is going to look like, you probably would have said, what are you, out of your mind?

There’s no way that’s going to happen. 

Jason: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, it’s nonstop, go, go, go, and some, you know, when you. Think back on things and reflect on what you have accomplished like day to day It’s like you just keep moving on to the next thing But you know when you do take the time to realize, you know, what you have accomplished already and where you’re going.

It’s pretty Remarkable. 

Liz: Yeah, it’s awesome 

Jason: To think you know

Tim: Well, so so there’s a there’s a concept where you measure backwards And if you’re measuring, see, if you’re measuring forward, you’re never going to get to your goals because your goals are always moving, right? So if your goal was to have one route and then.

Then, you know, then, uh, or if let’s say your, your goal is to have 10 routes and you had, and you got those first three, well, you’re, you’re sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I’m such a failure because I only have three routes, but six months prior to that you had one, right? You know, so, so, but when you measure backwards to see the progress that you’ve made, and then you sort of take that, uh, growth curve or that growth rate.

And interpolate that over the next 10 years, my gosh, think about what, what would happen like if you look at how many routes you have today versus how many you had eight years ago, and then you say, well, if I could have that same rate of growth over the next eight years, that number is going to blow your mind.

But here, but there’s a difference. The difference is now, you know, you can do it and the reason, you know, you can do it is because you have done it. So I don’t, I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s really the value of all the experience that you’re getting being an entrepreneur. And I would say from what I’ve seen or from and from what I’ve heard today, both of you are serial entrepreneurs, like it’s, it’s in your blood and you’re not going to, you’re not going to get rid of it because You’re always looking for the next, you know, for the next opportunity.

And fortunately you’re in a position to take advantage of them as time goes by. 

Jason: Yeah, we haven’t even talked about Liz’s, uh, business or 

Liz: what’s in the horizon and someday coming up. 

Olivia: Tell us more, Liz. 

Liz: Well, I’m just, I’m a psychotherapist, a trauma therapist. So, um, right now we are actually looking for properties where, that have multiple acres.

So that, um, I can start an equine psychotherapy business on, on the property. So, so that’s the next endeavor that we’re kind of looking forward to coming up. So we’ll see.

Tim:  Wow. Yeah, that’s exciting. My understanding, and I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard a little bit that that is sort of like the next level in psychotherapy.

Liz: It is. It’s, um, it’s amazing to use equines, um, as part of, uh, partnershiping with them, um, in order to do therapy. It’s very, it’s experiential, um, something that, um, more and more, it’s just a growing, uh, part of the field. So I believe. Wholeheartedly in it. And so hopefully we can find this property and and move to there and then that business can be started.

Tim: Right. So they say the results are are fairly convincing in right for the patients who go through that. 

Liz: They are convincing. They are, um, because it’s a lot about, um, connection with the horse, horses are able because they are prey animals. Um, they have a sense that’s a lot broader than even humans. And so they, um, have this connectivity with humans that helps with a trauma person who might, you know, have PTSD and are very triggered by things and having flashbacks and so forth. And horses are very grounding and solid. Um, and again, just connecting so you can do ground work with them, meaning being on the ground with them and working with them. And you can do some riding and it’s not classic riding, like you’re going to be doing Western or English riding, but just sitting on the back of the horse, um, and being able to, um, connect with the horse and so forth.

So it’s a little bit of, you know, if you’re going to bring in some yoga, you’re going to bring in other types of practices. 

Tim: Right. Well, that’s awesome. We wish you the best of luck with that. 

Liz: Thank you.

Olivia: Absolutely. Liz, what area are you looking to to do that in? 

Liz: Um, actually we’re thinking of moving back up towards where Jason’s from in that Perkiomenville area.

Um, so right now I, I partner with a farm down here in Bluebell and, um, and, and I’m able to do some of that therapy there. Um, but we’re gonna hopefully go up towards Perkiomenville area.

Olivia: Cool. Is that far from where you guys are?

Jason: Uh, about 40 minutes. So it’s like closer to, in between Quakertown and Pottstown. Okay. I’m sure you’ve heard of Quakertown. Yeah. 

Tim: Okay.

Jason: I’m sure you’ve heard of Quakertown.

Tim: Yeah.

Olivia: Right

Liz: Yep

Jason: Yeah. So, you know, the goal is to have, we’ve always wanted to have property and like a little hobby farm. And, you know, now that Liz is learning and, uh, getting into that field, we can.

You know, legitimately use the property for business purposes and her business can help generate, you know, to pay for some of this, uh, for the property. So it’s all about, uh, business is the way to go. Keep trying to tell everybody, recruit everybody like, you know, college, you know, going to college to get a W2 is, you know, good for some people, but don’t feel that you have to go that route because there’s so many op opportunities elsewhere.

And if you have your own business, there’s a lot of upsides. Mm-hmm. so, 

Tim: Well, you know, there’s a lot of upside, but there also, there’s the idea of controlling your own destiny. Right. And as we all know, it’s not, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s not all. Unicorns and rainbows, uh, but at the same time there is, you know, the more you do, the better, the more you make usually.

And, uh, so there’s, there’s always those, you know, that aspect of controlling your own destiny, I guess. 

Jason: And betting on yourself, you know, like Wall Street, like you can put your money in a 401k or a stock market, but I mean, who knows what’s going to happen, you know, I rather bet on another route or putting in life insurance and being able to control it way more and use it to our benefit rather than Wall Street using it for their benefit.

Tim: Exactly. Very well said, by the way, Jason.

Jason: Thank you. 

Olivia: I was just thinking about that the other day, how, how, how you invest in the stock market and these are actual companies that are, that are run for your profit. An interesting thought process. 

Liz: Yeah, absolutely. 

Olivia: So, tell us a little bit, so tell us, um, if you had to go back and you could talk to your younger self, what would you, what would you tell them about the future?

Like, how would you get them to, to, Maximize their potential.

Jason: I think staying disciplined like we all think like we have a 16 year old son and he’s working with me, uh, two days each week for the summer, but he’s not as far as we know, going to be college bound, doesn’t have any interest in that. And I kind of made him a deal that, um, I could make him a millionaire by 30 if he listened to what I said.

And, uh, he’s receptive to it and he’s, you know, tomorrow would be day three of this summer, you know, job. But, um, you know. I think we can, we all know what to do, but staying disciplined and doing it like with saving and, you know, um, investing in yourself. 

Olivia: Absolutely. 

Liz: Yeah. 

Olivia: And in essence, it is, it is like you’re, you’re talking to your younger self when you put it in the perspective of your son, right?

Liz: Wow. I think unfortunately though, you know, history tells us that. They say, yes, yes, yes, I know, I know, I know, 

Tim: You know, Liz, I thought my kids were the only ones that did that. 

Jason: No, I’m sure we did it too with our parents. And you know, that’s what’s it’s frustrating and it’s just nature. I don’t know, like natural, but you know.

It takes until you’re, you know, older to realize, Hey, I should have listened to, to mom or dad. 

Tim: You know, it’s funny, right? There’s a saying that When you have a kid, they don’t come with owner’s manuals, right? And it’s the same thing in business. And in many ways, our businesses are just an extension of our family.

It’s, it’s sort of like your business is, is like another child. And it, cause it, it demands a lot of time, a lot of attention, and a lot of nurturing. 

Liz: Absolutely. Well, Olivia came into your business, right? 

Tim: Yeah, we never saw that coming. We really didn’t. And, uh, we, there’s two different versions of the story.

My version is right, but she has a, she has a different version. 

Olivia: It’s funny. I can’t believe I’ve been working with you for almost, it’ll be nine years in September.  Which is just astonishing to me. That time goes so quickly. Even this year, I can’t believe it’s, you know, this, this deep into 2023 already.

Tim: Almost half over

Liz: Yeah.

Jason: Time is flying.

Tim: So, any parting shots? Any words of wisdom? Thoughts?

Jason: Um, I think, I think the, the key thing that, you know, I think we learned at one of the seminars was, you know, don’t be scared to say yes and figure it out on the, you know, on the way the journey is part of the process, you know, if you, if you say no, I can’t do that or a million dollars. No, I could never afford that.

Or like, there’s always a way. And, you know. There’s ways to be creative and there’s, uh, there’s ways to get things done. And, uh, so if you’re, if you’re negative from the start, it’s never going to happen. 

Liz: And ask questions. There’s so much, I mean, in this day and age, everything’s at our fingertips.

Google it, right? So always ask questions. I mean, it’s like the teachers used to say, there’s never a stupid question, but there really isn’t. You need to ask. questions and find, you know, mentors out there and have many, um, I think that’s really important. 

Jason: Yeah. I, I always enjoy asking people about, you know, how they started their business or, you know, I love learning about all that stuff.

And, uh, You know, being able to network with other people and help each other out. And, you know, one of the, Robert always says it’s, it’s a team effort. Robert Kiyosaki, it’s, you know, it’s not a one man show. So, 

Liz: And I think patience is another, we come across quite a few people that are saying, Oh, well, I did it for a couple of months and I’m not, I’m not there.

And, and, and in business there’s patience. Um, and. So learning to be patient and going through the steps, you know, yes, we want, you know, that big house tomorrow, but, you know, we’re not going to get there yet. 

Tim: Right. But if with hard work and maybe some, some luck, it’ll happen. And that’s, I guess that’s really the big lesson in entrepreneurship.

Um, you know, you’re never, you’re never that far away from success. And unfortunately, you’re never that far away from failure too.

Jason: Right. 

Liz: Yeah.

Olivia: I would go one step further.

Tim: As business owners, we all know.

Olivia: Yeah. I would go one step further and add faith in there too. Yes. You know, having the faith in your, in yourself and that you’re being guided on this journey to do the next right thing.

You know, those little moments of silence where you have a, a ringing in your ear saying, this is your next step, you know, take that next step. 

Liz: Absolutely. I agree.

Olivia: So Liz and Jason, if our listeners wanted to get in contact with you, how, how would you suggest they do that?

Liz: Well, they could always, email is always best, I say, I think Jason has about 500 voicemails he hasn’t gotten to, so email is always best.

Um, so, you know, certainly I can always provide my email address. I’m usually the contact person and then, and then I can. Connect with Jason, um, from there. 

Jason: Absolutely. Well, thank you. Liz Dixger is, she, she’s the C, CFO, C, CFO. 

Liz: Yes. Yeah. The chief financial, financial officer. Yeah. I’m the 

Jason: Yeah. I’m the operation guy. Yeah. 

Liz: But, and then of course, business manager and you know, you know, the hats.

Mechanic. Mechanic. So, uh, did you want me to provide you with that email address? Sure. Okay. So the email, best email address actually for the business is liz, L I Z at J P E distribution. com. Awesome. 

Olivia: Awesome.Well, thank you so much guys for joining us today. We really appreciate you taking the time to spend with us and our listeners.

Liz: Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. This was wonderful. 

Jason: Thank you for the invite. 

Tim: So, Jason and Liz Peart from J. Peart Enterprises Incorporated. Yes. Thank you so much for appearing on our show and sharing your story, and I’m sure our listeners will get a lot of value from what we discussed today. Thank you so much.