Edmonton Business Builder | The Business Builder Guide with Bruce Baker Episode 3
Broadcasting from the business capital of the world, this is the podcast Business News Network. Bruce Baker, joining us again, our chief business builder from workplaces. We’re excited that he’s back today to talk more about, of course, you know, how he’s helping business owners cut the complexity, boost profitability, and find more freedom in their day. So he’s based out of Alberta but serving clients all around the world, and we are excited that he’s back today. How are you? Not bad, chill, thanks for having me. How are you? I’m doing well, sweetheart, thanks so much. Pleasure to see you back here. Let’s talk a little B about what four workplaces is all about before we get started.
Well, the simply put, we help business owners, CEOs, either scale up business, startup business, or fix up businesses, and that’s what we do, and you have quite a a record, a great path of people you’ve helped, a lot of experience, and in scaling businesses, financial growth, and so much more. So for today, I know you kind of wanted to dive into this whole profit‑is‑a‑habit, not‑an‑outcome conversation. What are we talking about today?
Well, you know Jill, at the end of the day, most, most business owners, a lot of business owners and people, will brought up this way—unfortunately and fortunately there was a fix to it—but most business owners have money man management completely backward. They’re so consumed by tracking money and the money, money in and money out, that they neglect the various actions driving profitability in the first place. Profit is an outcome; it’s a daily habit. Now, when we think of profit, we think of cash, growing this amount of cash, growing like Scrooge McDuck in his big vault, but it’s not really that, right, at the end of the day.\
Focus On Activities That Drive Cash Flow
So what I want to emphasize this morning is for business owners to start thinking about redirect their attention away from the anxiety of a, of a bank balance, more so towards critical activities that actually drive cash flow. So what I talk, when I talk about driving cash flow and those activities, I talk about sales‑team performance, managing accounts payable, receivables. Once you do this, you create that incredibly powerful shift.
Recently, just to give you guys an example, I coached a client who has been struggling with cash flow for a while. I continue to drive and encourage him, saying, you know, Nick, at the end of the day, it’s not about focusing and getting stressed and using all your calories on looking at the bank account, wondering, stressing, where am I going to get the money from, but actually moving his direction, pushing him to examine the cause of negative outcome, right, or cash outcome, like sales inefficiencies or delayed receivables. The good news: I actually had a discussion with him about, what, four or five days ago, and over the last five to six weeks there’s been a massive turnaround just by him moving himself, directing himself to the cause, not necessarily looking and waiting at, you know, at the outcome—in other words, cash problems.
The final point I’ll make with this is that business owners, CEOs, when it comes to business, regardless of stage of business, where you’re at in business, three cardinal rules and obligations: number one, know your cost; number two, ensure, sure, you break even; number three, even before you look at profitability, break even. Once you know that, then inject margin to create profitability. So just something I really want to emphasize to everybody listening in today.
Beautifully said, thank you so much. All right, what else do you want to dive into specifically? Well, I think, you know, staying on the same, on the same line, talking about or path, thank you, talking about profitability, talking about, you know, cash management, the emphasis or the, the main motivation is for people to look at books too, and I’m not suggesting, don’t read books, fabulous way to learn things, courses, various other things, but we tend to focus on what we call is the left‑brain side, the text stuff, and we wonder why, well, you know, I’ve read so many books, I’ve taken many courses, I’ve dealt with so many coaches, Consultants, but I’m not getting the Stu stuff done, it’s not happening, I’m not making a change, and the reason being is because, again, we’ve got it the other way around.
Don’t Unconsciously Sabotage Your Business
I want people to really think about their behaviors, and a lot of our behaviors are also very unconscious. We don’t really know what, what we’re doing is either moving our business forward sometimes or preventing our businesses from moving forward. So, in terms of cash and profit, I want to just provide a few practical behavioral tips.
So, number one, routinely challenge yourself to investigate root cause of, in this case, negative cash flow, then just reacting to symptoms. A lot of the decisions we make are, are based on emotion, and we either react too quickly or we react inaccurately or ineffectively. So challenge yourself to investigate what is actually causing an outcome; take a few minutes more to think about that; don’t be in a rush with this. Once you figure that connection out, it’s amazing the turnaround you can make in your business.
The second tip I want to give people is regularly scrutinize accounts payable and receivables and look for inefficiencies, like, right, give us examples, what you see, what you find. Absolutely. So, so, a business, at the end of the day—and I, I use this quite a bit—is it’s like you and I breathing in and out. We breathe in oxygen; we breathe out carbon dioxide; we breathe a little bit more oxygen in than carbon dioxide. The other big thing is just when, when we breathe in and breathe out, there’s a rhythm to it, there’s, there’s timing to it, right? So the timing, in terms of cash flow in your business, is absolutely critical.
You’ve got your accountant, your bookkeeper, that’s, you know, dealing with your payroll, maybe dealing with your AR and AP, whatever, but things are not working out. We don’t necessarily connect the day‑to‑day activities, let’s say, in accounting, bookkeeping, to the actual outcome of cash flow. So we want to look at money coming in and money going, going out of the business, and we want to look, ensure that the timing of those two components are, are, are even or working in favor of the business, right?
So don’t just assume that, Ah, that’s, you know, that’s John’s responsibility as my bookkeeper, accountant, or that’s Jill’s responsibility. They may be doing it, but they don’t necessarily understand the impact of doing certain things in the outcome being negative. Does that make sense? Sure does, absolutely. Yeah, okay, two more, go for it.
Manage Your Sales Team’s Performance
Actively manage and challenge your sales team’s performance, ensuring their activities align directly with profitability, and there’s so much literature and so much discussion around this topic, but remember it’s, it’s not just about throwing money, and, you know, at your sales team; it’s not just about managing your sales team in terms of how much money they brought into the business. It’s about really looking at, you know, their activities, their actions, their commitments in terms of how, you know, looking at the funnel, looking at the number of leads, looking at prospects, looking at conversion rates. If you focus on their actions, their outcomes will likely be far more positive than, opposed to, did you make a 10,000 bucks target this month, for example?
And the last point I want to make, or last tip I just want to give, is be deliberate and analytical about which expenses you pay, which you strategically delay. Yeah, always be mindful, mindful of your cash‑flow Health. Remember, cash is the oxygen, like we have in our bodies; cash needs to be flowing in the business at any point in time. The first time we don’t have that happening sends a shock wave through the business. Yeah, so don’t be too quick to pay—I’m not saying don’t pay your bills—but don’t be too quick to push out cash, because you need to push that cash out is based on emotions for the most part. So really take a little bit more time, a couple of minutes more, to think about those tips, and I can absolutely promise you that it, it’s a significant turnaround in the way you see your cash at the end of the day, in profitability.
Oh my goodness, amazing, amazing. And now, by the way, just for those, you know, not familiar, what type of business are you helping and what type of businesses can you help specifically, give me some examples.
Well, it’s a great question. We work primarily with for‑profit businesses in multiple industries, the construction trades kinds of businesses we work extensively with. We also work with financial‑based businesses and service‑based businesses, restaurants, that kind of, kind of business, but everything that just said as well is also very applicable to non‑for‑profit, and a non‑for‑profit business may not be focusing on profitability, but the same system, the same principles exist, so we also, we also work to a smaller extent with non‑for‑profit business as well.
Got it, wow, and everyone could use a little help, especially since the pandemic. I mean, right? I’m sure how many businesses did you see fail, but now you’re seeing new businesses starting to thrive, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there was unfortunately a lot of carnage back, back after, after the pandemic, but we’re proud to say that we helped a lot of good businesses get out of the trap and, and get back on track again.
Business Owners Can Benefit From Coaching
Beautiful, well, we love having you here, and I think our listeners can really benefit from, you know, your expertise and your coaching and your skills, and if you are just tuning in, we just want to remind you that we are here with four workplaces, and really, you know, you can be, be helped by Bruce Baker. You may be overwhelmed, right? There’s a lot going on in, in, in, in the world, and now you’re starting a business, but you offer so many different programs, one‑on‑ones, and then there’s that, what’s that, seven week living life, the living business plan that you have, what’s that all about?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so I’m glad you brought that up. So we are currently promoting our first startup seven week boot camp program. This program is dedicated to those that are just about to start up or have just started up their businesses and really want to make a good go of it. There is so much failure out there in terms of startup, and that’s, it’s not acceptable, right? These folks need the assistance, but the kind of assistance they need is not just feeding them theoretical constructs for information; it’s about giving them impactful information that they can apply.
So a large portion of the seven week is actually working with you in person, but also in a group with like‑minded entrepreneurs. The key differentiator in this program is that we start with you, we prepare you, but we also, there’s also a level of accountability where we will work side by side with you to ensure that what you learn, you actually put in place. Once people know that—we found—once people know that, look, I can actually do this, look, this actually produced a result, people start to engage far more, and we see results far quicker. So it’s a very exciting program, highly recommend. Anybody that’s interested, you’ve got nothing to lose, give us a shout, and you’ll be well in your way, I can guarantee you that.
A beautiful, and you clearly have an amazing success rate with what you do. I know it’s hard to talk about yourself, but yeah, and you are verified, you are also, I mean, you’ve won many accolades, many awards, and I, I know you’re not into talking about that, but there’s a lot of happy people out there and that you’ve helped, and you know we talked about some of these stories before, we can talk about more if you’d like, some people maybe need the help more of the startup, some maybe just want to grow, you know, and a lot of people though are stressed, right, don’t know where they stand. So what else did you want to add for today?
Well, it’s, it’s that, that stress component that I want to talk about. It’s unfortunate and fortunate, because as humans, right, our biggest strength is our ability to emotionally express ourselves, to emotionally interpret our environments. But what happens is that it’s all about survival first; the brain is not there, and, you know, Mr Donald Miller, great, great author and business, business M, who I admire significantly, always says the brain needs to survive first; then the brain needs to survive, needs to thrive, right? And it always makes such a big impact on me.
Business Ownership Can Be Overwhelming
But when you look at people in general—people that are either starting up a business or people that are trying to grow their business but are so stressed and overwhelmed—what’s happening? Their minds are limiting them, right, and the mind wants to survive, but what we need to do is to try to help people break through that and show them that they’re actually going to thrive. And once we’re in that position, just amazing things to see people actually break out of that and do well is probably worth all the money in the world—more than that, quite frankly.
Beautifully said, I love it. And, you know, if someone does want to work with you—clearly you’re working with them virtually—do you want to share some specific stories about, you know, how you’re helping manage people or the business systems? You know, I love hearing, you know, this work that you’re doing and, of course, the difference that’s making in all these businesses.
Absolutely. You mentioned a very important word there: people. Right, and, you know, and this probably sounds like a, a cliche, but businesses only move forward, businesses only become successful and re maintain their success through people. If we think about it, people—like I said to a client the other day—people are your only growing capital asset; everything else in your business devalues, right? It’s, it’s a devaluing asset. If we’ve got this beautiful asset called a person, and we know that it’s the only growing capital asset we have, why wouldn’t we invest in it?
Well, the gentleman that I spoke to said, well, Bruce, if I train people, all they’re going to do is leave, and then I’ve trained them for another business, another organization, and the focus is on—well, at least my response was—it’s less to do with worrying about if they’re going to leave; it’s more to do with what are we doing to actually keep and grow these great people. People don’t leave companies; people leave their bosses; people leave their managers.
And I’ve done quite a bit of work over the last couple of months with various clients and focusing on how we can actually take the complexity, which is people—because business is not complex; the only thing that’s complex is people, right, just add some people, that’s what happens—so focusing on how you can actually leverage your people power and stop allowing these misnomers or, or rumors to actually move you away from utilizing and leveraging your people. So there’s some really potent, quite simplistic things that you can do to take your people power to the next level and grow your business.
Amazing. And Bruce, you know, in your, in your experience, in your world of helping businesses, has there ever been a time where, you know, the truth came out where maybe you couldn’t help and change that business—maybe there was something wrong? What are some of those, those types of things that people can expect, because it can happen—what, what are, give us some examples of when we’re not getting the good results, because it’s a part of life and it’s a fact, sometimes businesses can’t stay open, they can’t stay thriving. Could you share a little insight to that?
Being Held Accountable Can Help Entrepreneurs
Yeah you know, it’s, it’s funny. I’m, I’m certainly, I certainly don’t want to ever come across as the knight in shining armor, because that’s not the way that we, that we see ourselves, and certainly not what I want people to see. What I want people to understand and know is that, at the end of the day, your, your coach, your consultant, your mentor, your, your accountability buddy is 50 % of the solution; the other part of that solution is you finding yourself and realizing the capabilities that you have.
Yeah, so we’ve worked with, you know, and what was very profound was specifically during the pandemic and covid, where, you know, we did a lot of work, promo work actually, to give back to the community and get businesses set up again, but unfortunately we couldn’t, we couldn’t save all businesses. And one of the primary reasons we found that, that pretty much stops that, is people becoming paralyzed—no one can help me with my business, yeah, there is no way that this is going to happen, I just can’t move forward, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to risk the money that I have available right now to move forward and change.
And what we find, at least n times out of 10, is that if they just moved forward and just trusted the process, they would have been in a far better position. But again, you can’t save any everyone. The primary reason why you can’t save everyone is because they can’t see a way to save themselves, and that’s the unfortunate part. But, for the most part, we get to save a lot of good people and a lot of good businesses.
Perfectly said. All right, we still have six minutes left here today, and what else do you think is, you know, worth mentioning too about the work you’re doing, the care, the dedication, and why people really need you—why should they reach out?
Yeah, absolutely. The, the, the consultant and coaching space—and again, like I said a couple of sessions ago, Jill, to you—was, you know, many, many good friends in the coaching and consulting sphere, and many of them agree when I say this, is that a lot of, a lot of companies that seek, will expertise, that seek the coaching in the gardens, worry about the expense involved, worry about, well, you know, they’re going to come back for more, they’re going to want more over and over again, and then we’re reliant on them.
One of the strongest messages that I find really gets people start thinking differently is that workplaces drives to work ourselves out of the job. And what do I mean by that? Workplaces is there to be at your side every step of the way, ensure that you get the results that you need, otherwise we’re not going to go anywhere, but, most importantly, teach you how to fish, not us fish for you. We want to empower you; we want to give you the systems, prepare your mind to execute not just for today but for tomorrow as well. So two, three years down the line, we hear about success stories, which we do on a regular basis, about businesses that have succeeded—needed, man alive—that is, that is our currency, that is what we, we strive to, to build sustainability in businesses, regard, regardless of industry.
How A Business Building Session Can Help You
Beautifully said, thank you so much. And also, just want to point out, on the website that we can also do a profitability quiz, show, show you where you’re at, that’s kind of part of, right, that’s part of it when you start up with Business Builders, and you do offer a free initial consultation, correct?
We do. We call it a business building session, and it’s a, up to a two‑ to three‑hour session, pro bono, and we do a complete strategic overview of your business and an overview of where you’re at personally as the owner or owners, and you leave with some really, really cool golden nuggets after the session.
Beautiful. And I know we talk a little bit about the clarity, the accountability, the taking action, and, you know, I read there’s an article that I saw on LinkedIn about this, I don’t know if you wrote it or somebody, but it was about entrepreneurs not failing, right, and how your team—could you share a little bit about that?
Yeah, assuming I’m thinking of the same article—it’s, it’s, it’s about, you know, we, we, we tend to have this major adversity to failure, especially in the western world, and our culture, our culture tells us that it’s okay to fail and we need to fail, etc., etc., becomes, but unfortunately it’s frowned upon as well, and of course there’s lots at stake in terms of when we fail.
So all what we want to see is, is we want to see people being more comfortable with taking a little bit of a leap sometimes and understanding that there are guard rails around a lot, what a lot of what you do. So don’t hold yourself in your growth and your company’s growth back because you feel that a move in a direction that is not entirely clear and that might be a risk might leave you failing. If you fail, so what? As long as you learn from the failure, you’re allowed to move forward, because if you don’t fail, you’re not learning, and if you’re not learning, you’re not growing, and if you’re not growing, I guarantee your business is failing.
All right, thank you so much for your time today, Bruce, always a pleasure having you. Thanks for having me. Great. What’s the way that we can reach out to you?
Absolutely, folks, go on to the website www.4workplaces.com, or shoot us an email at info@4workplaces.com.
Beautiful, and I want to thank you for being here. Check you out on LinkedIn also on social media as well. I believe you’re on Facebook, Twitter, I don’t—is it Twitter anymore? I can’t, X, I think it is. Yeah, not on X; Elon will not like me very much, but whatever.
All right, well, thank you again for your time. We appreciate it. Okay, Bruce, have a great day. Bye‑bye.
Broadcasting from the business capital of the world, this is the podcast Business News Network.