Dashboard: You Control Your Destiny

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren Feldman I'm here with Lou mosa today to talk about the things we think business owners should be following this week Lou runs American Management Services a consulting firm that works with businesses all over the country that want to improve their performance welcome Lou how are you today I'm doing great I'm talking to you I think we did that last week I always enjoy it well you know we used to talk regularly uh on the Sirus XM radio show which unfortunately we don't do anymore um I miss that it's great be able to check in with you that was a good time well let me do what I always do which is put you on the spot and um ask you you know you and your team are out there in the trenches talking to business owners all the time this has been there's been so much turmoil of late uh you know going back a couple of years but it it just things just keep changing whether it's inflation or Supply chains or um you know the the threat of recession I think we've had seven rumored recessions the last uh year or so uh but no real ones what are you seeing what are you hearing from your clients I think that um you know from our perspective you know things for us have been a little crazy so whether it was pandemic or whether it's the threat of a recession I think the biggest driver recently with our clients has been the um the cost of money and not just and not just but as interest R have gone up Bankers have gotten a little maybe corluy sometimes everything is in their favor and they don't love it when things are not so much in their favor so our clients are feeling a little bit of stress but I tell you Lauren it's it's bizarre after 37 years of doing this and I've been doing it for 25 but after 37 years of doing this at American management our clients are always in a couple of bucks you got guys that are guys that are doing fantastic no matter what's going on guys that are borderline make a little lose a little make a little lose a little and I don't think that that's been any different for us in all my years doing it I just think it takes on a different perspective when you have economic challenges that go along with it but do you think that the success of your businesses depend primarily on the businesses themselves and how they're run or does the economy really make make the difference I I just have this fundamental um thing that goes on in the four WS of a business is the owner's responsibility it's their job to plan it right execute right have the right people hold people accountable outside factors can influence you but you should have created something strong enough I don't let our clients make excuses about the economy or recessions or anything we do our job right or we don't there's no middle ground and that's what we want for our clients and if tell us at the end of a project I feel great now because now my company is like yours and that could little daunting sometimes but I like that you you mentioned the concern about getting capital and Banks being a little bit slower to lend these days C can you generalize about what your clients are looking uh to get that capital for are they are they looking for expansion are they looking for lines of credit to tie them through a tough time what what are they looking for have a a client right now that's doing about $15 million and they're in their contractor and they owe no one a penny they have no debt absolutely no debt had a client recently in Louisiana that applied for about a million and a half dollars to open up two additional stores and got permission got a yes and then it blew up on her she had decided if she wanted to walk away or stick with it so I think uh banks are getting very particular in what they do whether you have borrowings with them or not I think they're getting very particular created ability for them to be a little bit selective um and now I think that um with inch rates having doubled or tripled in the last 12 months I think it's given them the ability to be even punitive on how they look ending opportunity sometimes the client you mentioned who had the uh the loan lined up and then it then it blew up did something change or did the bank just decide to walk away Bank didn't decide to walk away what the bank wound up doing is going from their customary letter of intent uh with terms in it and they changed the terms when it got to the closing and Jack rates up dramatically and the fees up dramatically I see and she actually walked away but the bank took tried to take advantage of what they could and quite frankly she needs to leave that bank did she proceed with the expansion or is she looking to find the money somewhere else she backed up did not do it backed up that's got to be tough well you know there you know it's a you George Who used founded our company and I know you knew him you know he used to tell me all the time and owners are the eternal optimist learn you know they think they can get that deal get that next sale open that next store you know that barge lift that bail kind of thing and i' I totally agree with that that an independent business owner just thinks that they can they're Ved in Teflon and they can withstand anything grow anything I think I I just think that there is a a a Warriors mentality in Soul but in this case I'm glad young lady walked away because what the bank wanted have killed her that um that Warriors mentality you refer to can can be a real advantage or it can be a disadvantage which do you think it is more often oh I think almost always an advantage I think that um uh if you if you treat your business as anything less than the war that it is then you're going to Short Change yourself and you're going to Short change your customers your vendors and ultimately your employee and your staff and business is war you know you could talk about the of business but business is a war right you need a strategy or a business plan you need something that says is what we're going to do how we're going to do it and why we're going to do it then you got to have timel you got to have deliverables it's not a game it's not nine innings baseball it's over and you go to the next one if you lose lose a deal in business could be the difference between you keeping the loan payment or supporting family and your friends so you know I just think I want every owner I meet to have that Warrior mentality doesn't mean to be a jerk but A Warrior's mentality in that you're going to go that extra mile for you what are you seeing in the labor market these days uh is the labor shortage over are your uh clients as well staffed as they want to be we were in Columbus IO with the conference of Mayors a couple of weeks ago and uh a couple of the Mayors were talking about employee shortages in their communities especially in in Industry restaurants there are about a last time I about two weeks ago again there were about 10 million job postings job openings country 10 million so employees and employers are getting more select um I I will tell you that most of our clients throughout the pandemic remained open and functioned inside four walls very few did this you know we're going to work from home eight days a week you can come in one day every other week they didn't do that and I I find I find the talent pool I'll talk about American management the pool of talent that we've been getting applications on has jumped dramatically Lou back when we did that radio show well before the uh pandemic we we used to joke a lot about working from home um as I recall you were not a big fan of it did the last few years change your impression of that at all um I think that while I hate to admitted I'm I'm willing to entertain Alternatives nowadays that I would not have five or six years ago just not have occurred to me um we have all of our folks back in the office if someone needs to work from home we've carved out a formula that if it's doable specific amount of time per month uh but beyond that it's not acceptable um and we try to keep it consistent every but I think there are people that can be productive remotely and I think there are people that aren't productive when they're not remotely so I think that's just human nature have you seen anything re uh interesting recently in terms of marketing have any of your clients figured out anything new I mean there's been a lot of change um in that area as well especially with digital marketing what do you seeing in there I think marketing is unique it's too often people lump sales and marketing together and they're really absolute distinct functions right yep we our clients from a marketing perspective don't spend a lot of money on digital marketing get off your fanny get in your car go visit people yourself even telling you to go to try to take orders play orders or have them buy from you you want to Market yourself get out there you want to Market yourself get out for marketing from an American management perspective you know we have spent fair amount of money in the last 18 months on social media and digital marketing and it is extraordinarily instantly inconsistent so what we spend on one month and we're talking about well into five figures sometimes and you would think it would you'd get some consistent type of yield and you don't so you have to be in it for the long haul which is why we never suggest to our clients they get up and go greet people you can reach a lot more people online than you can in your car um doesn't that depend on what kind of business you're talking to well I think that you can meet a lot more people online touch them than you can in your cars for sure except you might reach 2,000 prospects but only two of them might be qualified you as an owner should be able to know who's qualified for what you do where's qualified for what so I think that if you're a contractor or if you're a manufacturer you should be able to know visit and who to go see do think you should have social media presence and I do think you should have a a website that is functional and current so we just read the face of our website and some of the pages in our website about four or five weeks ago went live after about six months instruction and the traffic without the digital marketing spent so to keep and refreshed so that the Google monster can understand that you're out there and that you're alive it's probably a smart thing but I wouldn't rely on it because you can't compete with the Amazon look in my world right the largest consulting firm out there is probably Del how am I going to compete with Del from a digital marketing perspective so I can't so I put what I can I do what I can I rather touch people and shake their hands do you feel you're competing with deoe for the same customers when things tough everybody with the same customer so you know I'm not going to compete with deoe to get General Motors as a client it's never going to happen and why would I waste my time even trying the differ the difference is you know um they've got resources in the world and we just bring a lot of work in Sweat Equity that makes sense um you you mentioned Google before is that where you're doing most of your D digital marketing we're talking AdWords you know if you look at it in the in the last uh 18 months we've done prob Google in Facebook advertising and the only one that is PID dividend is Google interesting and the other were pretty expensive per click or however they do their measurements the one that's been beneficial to us is is Google correct me if I'm wrong I don't think you were doing that when we were speaking regularly on the radio were you no we just started this about uh year and a half two years ago we had a goal that we wanted it to generate X in Revenue in billable hours it surpassed it in September so it it was definitely the right thing to do um but keeping the message fresh all time and creating moreing pages to attract contractors or truckers or retailers is that what makes it unique and we have done that years ago so that's we've done in the last year and a half or so and really Pro proved beneficial us but from our clients perspective we just try to help get their websites functional Lear have them don't even have their websites functional and the links are broken and it's it's just challenge across the board and we want them to get out and touch their clients so so you really encourage them more to pound the pavement than to to to advertise digitally but you know if you think about it our our you know we we do work with people that do 3 million year Revenue up to $100 million year Revenue all almost always privately owned but our sweet spot is right in that $6 to 12 million range 6 to 12 million so to get them to even consider spending 50 $60,000 a month on Google ads or some type of social media activity is is a pill to swallow to teach them how to get in their car and go with them to go meet a client or prospective client where I really want them to go is go visit the people they've lost and how many times that they've not gone Revisited the people that us buy from them every month that I find absolutely alarming and you can spell the money you want on social media doesn't mean that guy's coming back you go knock on his door and have a conversation with them you you have an opportunity Le you got your face in the door again that's a that's a great suggestion um I I am curious I you said the idea of getting them to spend $60,000 a month is probably a non-starter do do you think it takes that amount of spending to to do it right um I think that it's different for everyone we've had to$ 35 or $40,000 primarily we wouldn't have done it if we weren't comfortable with our herds and all the landing pages um we track the traffic every week um we know what's working and what's not working if you're going to do it you got to be all the way to just dabble as a mistake the way we suggest instead of just throw more money at it and it's still kind of random when you're with the internet you don't know what kind of responses you're going to get you're uh obviously a B2B operation have you had any success on LinkedIn actually we've um we've had no success on LinkedIn with B2B advertising we've had a little success on LinkedIn with recruit um trying to you know LinkedIn Navigator allow you to select some candidates and CH with them um one of the things that's always concerned me about uh just the whole concept of uh digital marketing is I'll talk about us again we get a lot of contacts each week but even the ones that are in the threshold of the contact you and they give you the information so they'll fill out the landing page Lauren Fel owner of Lauren Feld Incorporated 9.5 65 employees I manufacture pens um my issues are one two 3 four five try to communicate with them that's it creates a little bit of angst I sort of feel like they fill this stuff on the internet then they get a of BU remorse that they you know expose themselves to someone from a client perspective client's pay us pretty hefty Fe especially uh you know if we're working with them for a long time I want to make sure they get good results in the way of time as you put the client in the car you go somewhere you greet someone you shake their hand they've done business with you before they do again and we much rather they do that thing of spending money on internet hoping something's going to rate Lou with all the um the mixed messages we've gotten on the economy for the last at least a year and maybe more I'm curious are are there any metrics that you watch in particular uh either about the economy in general or your business uh in particular is there anything that you watch to keep your eye on the ball I think that there's a couple of things that everyone should do whether they do or not I can't answer that so again American management we do cash p&l every week we do our financials within five days end of the month we our clients to be on top of everything that they do and I will tell you not one of our clients talks to us about angst over Rising costs or having to pay more for labor than they had to pay five years ago but all of them are confident in where their business is going and how they're getting there we want every one of our clients to do what we do cash p&l weekly balance sheet let's make sure we're checking where we're at all the time because you know you can't control if there's a formal recession or not and really you know recession I don't even know who comes up with this crap and who determines what is and what isn't sometimes you know my clients just worri about can I get what I need to make what I want to sell I have to and our job is to help them get there all right Lou mosca runs American Management Services a consulting firm based in Orlando this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thank you Lou Lauren it's always my privilege I enjoyed chatting the last week and I'll connect with you again real soon thank you for having me I hope so and I will certainly do that uh have a great week everyone