The Importance of Efficiencies in Business

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Running a small business can be messy, but it doesn’t have to be. QuickBooks is a great way to track all of your expenses in one easy to use place. I’ve been using Quickbooks since 2019, when I launched my first business. My favorite part is the app because I can quickly and easily take a snapshot of my receipts if I’m on the go, and Quickbooks stores it in my account so that I don’t lose track of them. Never lose sight of your business expenses again. From tracking everyday expenses to being ready for tax time, QuickBooks helps you understand where your money goes. Head on over to calanbreckon.com/QuickBooks to grab yourself a special promotion. Or just click the link in the show notes. Now let’s get into today’s episode.

Welcome to the Business Gay podcast, where we talk about all things business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have business growth strategist Marc Smith. Marc has over 40 years of diverse experience in driving growth and innovation across multiple industries. Most recently as a fractional coo of a multi-location cafe, Marc successfully overhauled operations, introduced modern hr policies, implemented strategic marketing initiatives, and boosted gross revenue by over 30%. His expertise in refining operations and improving cost efficiencies made a significant impact on the company’s bottom line. I’m excited to talk efficiencies with Marc today, so let’s jump in.

Welcome to the podcast, Marc. How’s it going?

[00:01:35] Marc Smith: Amazing. Thank you for having me, Calan. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:38] Calan Breckon: I’m so excited to have you. So we’re just jumping right in with you because I really am excited to have this conversation. I love efficiency, and I know that that’s a lot of the things that you do. So, as a previous coo of a business, is it safe to say that you are a fan of efficiency?

[00:01:56] Marc Smith: Absolutely. Although, ironically, I love. I love doing things well and with as little amount of time as possible, unless we’re talking, and then I like to take as much time as possible.

[00:02:08] Calan Breckon: Right.

[00:02:09] Marc Smith: Chatty Kathy, but efficient in my processes, 100%.

[00:02:14] Calan Breckon: So what would you say some lessons that you’ve learned are around being more efficient in business?

[00:02:20] Marc Smith: Oh, I think number one for me is just because it’s been done that way doesn’t mean it has to be done that way. Um, I always jokingly say that I’m. That I’m inherently lazy. Um, which everyone looks at me like, you’re what? And I’m like, well, I’m lazy is another word for efficient.

[00:02:38] Calan Breckon: Yeah.

[00:02:38] Marc Smith: I’m like, you know, and I’ve always, throughout my entire 40 year career of working, actually 42 year career of work, I’ve rarely ever really had a proper manager that sort of sat over and mentored me and sort of guided me along what I was doing. And of course, when you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t have that unless you’re lucky enough to have outside mentors.

But so I always sort of had to self manage and they would say like, oh, this needs to be done over here. This is how we do it. And then I would sort of figure out, oh, well, there’s a quicker way of doing this. So why do I have, so what took 4 hours now just took me an hour and a half. And then all of a sudden I’m like, well, now I can do other things, which is great for, for a company, but it’s not good as an employee because all of a sudden I’m like, oh, I got paid for this amount of work and now I’ve literally done three times as much work because I just keep doing it faster. And so I, yeah, so I love efficiencies, but maybe sometimes I, you know, I do the work of two or three people.

[00:03:43] Calan Breckon: I have been too efficient.

[00:03:45] Marc Smith: Yeah, I have been replaced when I’ve left jobs, I have been replaced by two full time positions. So that’s happened many times. Yeah.

[00:03:53] Calan Breckon: So it’s funny that you say, you know, you think of yourself as can be lazy, but then you’re efficient. I’ve actually always thought that if you want something done efficiently to get a lazy person to do it, because they’re going to find the most efficient way to do it by that deadline, and then you learn from that and implement that. Cause I’m also of the same mind. I have always thought of myself as like a bit lazy, but I’ve switched that in recent years to say, no, I’m just efficient. I’m not lazy, I’m efficient with my time. And I never bought into this belief system that you had to be busy. I think people glorify busyness with like, oh, I’m so busy, I’m doing all of these things all the time. I don’t have time for you or I don’t have time for this. And they glorify that to make it seem like they’re important. And I’m like, that seems like a really shitty, like, trade off. I would rather have all the time in the world to do the things that I want while getting the work I need to get done, efficiently done.

[00:04:55] Marc Smith: Oh, well, you know, because I’ve been, you know, I’ve had my own business for just shy of 20 years, two different forms or two different businesses. Um, but I, when I hired people, it was never an hourly. Um, it was always, this is the job that needs to be done today.

If it takes you 5 hours, guess what, you’re leaving early. If it takes you 12 hours, guess what, you’re staying until it’s done. You know, and I mean, these were not unreasonable tasks. These were like, you know, 09:00 morning meeting for 15 minutes, talking about the day, what needs to be accomplished, what’s reasonable, yada, yada, yada, talking about a strategy. And then, I mean, one of the things that I always used to say when I had the event business for ten years, I was always like, because when you’re an event producer, you’re juggling multiple clients with multiple events in multiple, different times. And as you’re building your production schedules and your budgets and all of these things, you’re often waiting on other people to get back to you with information before you can do something else. And I’m like, so I would always used to say to the, to the people that would work for me, I’d be like, here we are, we’re sitting down our day, we look at what we need to accomplish. The first thing I do is I just go through and email all of the third parties that are required to send me information so that for next steps, so it doesn’t matter what order of task it needs to be done because those people are going to take two or 3 hours to respond. So I do, would do all of their requests first and then I would just go on with the rest of my day and just finish tasks out because as those answers would come in, then I could just go in and plug it in and next thing you know, everything is done. But if you wait until the afternoon to email your caterer for an update on the menu and the costing, well, they’re not going to get back to you until five or 05:00 p.m. or the next morning. Whereas if you’d emailed them that at 930 in the morning, you’re going to get it before the end of the day.

[00:06:57] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely.

[00:06:58] Marc Smith: So little, little tricks like that, like, doesn’t sound like much, but in practice it’s actually, it was a, it’s a huge game changer. And all of the folks that worked for me were sort of like, oh, yes, this is like and I’m like, again, once that’s all done, you go home, you know, the work is done. You don’t need to sit around waiting for an email. So there’s a bonus to it.

[00:07:21] Calan Breckon: I’m in the same mindset of like a per project kind of a thing. And I know, like, big companies and stuff, you can’t necessarily pay for that. There has to be some sort of a salary or hourly. But I’m the same state of mind where it’s like, well, if this is your project and that’s what’s being worked on, as long as it’s done by this due date, I don’t care when you work. And, like, the work from home lifestyle and that energy, I’m so bought in. I was bought in beforehand where I’m just like, yeah, this all just makes so much sense because the efficiency of it, of somebody being able to live a more well rounded life, maybe take care of their kids a bit more or be at home more and like, have time to pop out and go get groceries during the day or do whatever when there’s a lull in time, is just so much more efficient than okay. You have to come and be changed to this desk for 8 hours. You get this much time for your break, and like, the other amount of time, you have to just be sitting there and there’s just study after study out of study of saying, like, this isn’t actually really efficient. And most of the time you get about two to three good hours of work max, and the rest of the time they’re just bullshitting and wasting time. So, like, I would rather you go and waste that time or use it efficiently in your life, because that’s just going to make you feel better. And then maybe even later on in the day, you come back to it and you get another burst of an hour or whatever. But as long as that project is getting done, that’s the important part.

[00:08:48] Marc Smith: I’m a day drinker, so I love a glass of rose on a summer patio, so. And I have a lot of friends in morning television, radio and stuff like that, so. Because they would also be free, you know, after 11:00 I like, wake up in the morning, you know, throw some clothes on, grab the laptop, go to the coffee shop, do what I gotta do, get the important stuff done, and then all of a sudden it’s 02:00 hit a patio, then I’m on personal time, do whatever I’m doing, and then at 07:00 I get home or whatever, and then I just, you know, maybe another hour and a half or 2 hours of emails, it’s all done, you know, and then I wake up the next morning and do it again and it’s sort of like, yeah, like nobody knows, you know, cares that that email I sent was at 08:00 at night or whatever. They just care about the answer and they’re not going to look at until the next morning anyway. So yeah, you know, I’m a big, like, I love project work and even, you know, there are obviously positions, companies, et cetera, like the coffee shop chains and things like that. They have retail hours that you have to physically do that. But even within those businesses there are still projects, you know, menu developments, costings, inventories, things like that. So those can be done as projects as opposed to here’s, you know, you’re on the clock. Get going, get going, get going. So, yeah, and also as an employer, it’s a really good bonus for the employee to sort of like, say, you know, this is how long it should take. I’ll agree to pay you this many hours for it, go at it, you know, and if they get it done, they get the little bonus. If they don’t, then, you know, then it takes, you know, and it gives them that little bit of flexibility. So because, you know, not everything in employee satisfaction is compensation. You know, there’s that the ability to sort of create a little bit of their own domain on the ability to kind of like, you know, manage themselves. And as long as they’re, you know, the right employee to do that with, you have to not advocating, you just go to every employee and let them do whatever they want. But that’s how you reward the great.

[00:11:05] Calan Breckon: Employees, you know, definitely. And there’s a saying that, you know, people don’t quit bad jobs. They quit bad bosses 100%. And if you’re a hovering boss or like, you’re like a dictator and everything has to be this way and that way and this is how it is and you don’t allow people to have that freedom that is going to push your good people further and faster away because your absolute people are going to stay and because they don’t care because they’re like, whatever, and your good people are going to be like, no, I’m going to go do something better. So sticking with this thread of efficiency, do you have any advice for folks who are maybe starting a business or who currently run a business but they want to make things run more efficiently? So I know we were talking a little bit before about some things, so maybe we could start off with those things we had before.

[00:11:54] Marc Smith: I guess the thing is, so one of my number one rules as an entrepreneur is, and this doesn’t always pertain to like when you very first start out because you will have no money and you know, you’re your, the only resources available are you, your time, your body, your energy and all the rest of this stuff. So understand that this is probably at maybe month six or, you know, or once you’ve got a little bit of traction. But I’m a big believer as the owner of not doing the things that don’t make you money.

So if your talent is administration, then, then run it. You know, do all of those things because you’re going to do and then like have somebody else be the front, you know, who works the counter or does. But if sales is your thing, well, then the idea of you spending 4 hours a week trying to keep up to date with your bookkeeping and everything else is probably just blowing your mind and is probably, whereas somebody else who’s good at that could probably do it in an hour and a half. And the thing is, is like if you think about it, if you take your 4 hours that you were doing on that and you paid someone $15 an hour, $20 an hour, you could probably generate more in sales than it cost you to have somebody else do it. So it’s always sort of like folks, like where are your strengths and what brings you in the money? What brings your business in the money? So for me, when I had my event business, I was constantly networking because that is how I landed clients.

And then, you know, and I had a trusted team of suppliers and then I would have assistants and stuff like that. And so, and I had, you know, I built templates. So again, into the efficiency, I had all these templates. That’s, that’s the thing is like, if you’re going to, if you’re going to do bookkeeping, build a template, you put your front load. You know, when you’re building a house, you start with a foundation. So when you’re starting a build a business, you build a foundation of templates. So if you’re going to have to do inventory, if you’re going to have to do, you know, bookkeeping, if you’re going to have to do sales reports and all of this kind of stuff, you spend the time to build a one and done template that you just copy, paste and repeat and fill in the gaps with. Like, you know, we had the last operation that I ran, there was 40 employees, four different locations, multiple tip pools and all of this kind of stuff, and we had to tip out the kitchen staff and whatever. I. So I literally just built an excel sheet with all of the staff and then just created the formulas. So it was like, okay, based. Here’s the tip pool, here’s how many the total hours, tips per hour. Da da da da da. So I literally would just. Every two weeks, I would just drop in the employees hours because I’d also automated our payroll, so it no longer was manual. It was all check in, checked out, and I just data entry that there’s the number, I just took that number, went over to payroll, put it in as their tip portion, and it was done. Yeah. So, you know, whereas the previous system that they had done, they would take the time sheets, they would take the two up, they would. And every single time, it was always like a piece of paper and a calculator figuring it out, and then they would count out the cash and, you know, which, the way they did it is actually not compliant with. With the law, so with tax law. So that’s why for us, it’s not common for hospitality businesses. But if the employer, if the tips are only paid out, every, you know, are held by the employer. We were not, most of our customers paid by credit cards and debit cards. So, which means we did not have a huge amount of cash every single night for every employee to tip themselves out. So because the tips were held and paid on payday, that’s a control tip. And so by actually putting it, by doing this and then putting it on their payroll, there were taxes that got paid, but it also meant it was a one and done bank withdrawal.

All the remittances to the CRA and everything was all handled and all done. So, I mean, that was a massive payroll. Went from a 20 plus 20 to 25 hours project every two weeks, including tips and everything else, because it also had to be handed manually, handed to everyone, you know, went to, you know, a modern payroll system that it took me 2 hours once a week. And that was just because I just was, I was making sure that everyone’s hours were right. It was just me being super, you know, anal retentive about making sure that people got paid properly and everything. And so, yeah, so that’s an 18 hours savings every two weeks, 9 hours a week. That’s an entire day.

[00:16:37] Calan Breckon: It’s about creating systems that work, that are repeatable, that you can build into your business that will make your life so much easier in the long run, because I hear exactly what you’re saying, way back, way back in the day, my first job was working as a Starbucks barista, and I used to like doing the tip out because it was all the coins, and it would collect, I think, over a couple of weeks or whatever. There was no set time. It was kind of like, okay, we have too much of a build up time to do this. And I loved doing that because I was really efficient at it. And it also meant that I got to work in the back and, like, got, like, alone time, and I didn’t have to be upfront. And so I also like what you say about if you have something you enjoy doing or that you’re good at or that, like, you know, you can be amazing at, hire somebody to do the other parts that you don’t necessarily love doing because you will save time. And the amount of money you can bring in based upon that small amount you’re going to pay, that person could sometimes double, triple the amount you’re bringing in because you’re doing the part that you love or the efficiency part that you love. Everybody has their space of genius, and it’s finding the right people to fill kind of those spaces. And it sounds like also like, working collaboratively can really impact a business in that way when you’re working collaboratively with your team.

[00:18:01] Marc Smith: Well, we had four locations, eight managers. I do not oversee everyone’s personal schedule, so I don’t know when someone clocked in, didn’t clock out or whatever. So each individual manager, so, you know, it took a couple of weeks because it was changing systems. But once everyone understood, I’m like, by Sunday, 08:00 p.m.

all the timesheet records have to be approved in the cloud based system because they knew that Monday morning, every two, every second Monday at 09:00 a.m. till 11:00 a.m. i was doing payroll verification. And, you know, I mean, sure, the first couple of times I would have questions and everything else, but after that, you know, I mean, and another, here, here’s another saving grace. When your system, when your payroll is automated, you don’t have to generate roes manually. So when someone, you know, and this is hospitality, so there’s a lot of employee churn for lots of different reasons. Click a button, it’s their final payroll. Roe is automatically generated and is, you know, submitted to the CRA in Service Canada.

Also, t four s boom. Automatically generated. At the end of the year, they didn’t have to pay the accountant, which they always had done before that. The accountant submitted all of that paperwork and everything. So it was like massive, massive time saver. And all the t four s were electronic because the system that we use, every employee had an app, so all their paperwork, payroll stubs, etcetera, was all generated on app. So at any point in time, they could do it. I actually did my taxes this year by just pulling the app up, pulling up the t four on my phone and just doing my taxes from my phone and just entering the information. So I didn’t even have the physical t four in front of me. It’s fantastic, Jeff, but it just, in.

[00:19:52] Calan Breckon: The digital age that we live in now, it just makes sense that these things should be implemented. And I’ve noticed that there is something really interesting happening in the, well, specifically the canadian economy, because that’s where we are. So we can speak to that. Where there is this old, older generation where they’ve always done things the way that they’ve done things, and that’s where it is. But they have stable businesses that are good businesses that we dont necessarily know what theyre going to do with those businesses. And then we have these young people who want to be entrepreneurs or want to have businesses, and theres this gray zone in between where nobody really knows how this changeover is going to happen. And I think a lot of that starts with somebody like yourself coming into a business, creating these efficiencies, updating everything, so that then you can turn around and go, okay, how, you know, when do you want to sell this business? Or have you thought about selling this business? Because.

Exactly. There’s going to be a lot of that, especially coming up with baby boomers aging out, wanting to not work for the rest of their lives. But what’s going to happen to all these kind of mom and pop shop businesses that are very important for our economy to run?

[00:21:10] Marc Smith: What’s going on if the children don’t want to take it over? Because that is, I’ve actually seen quite a few businesses in Fredericton that were really successful, very popular, and quite, you know, you’d call the mainstays of the community.

One or two companies snapped them up because none of the children wanted to take them. You know, parents are a restaurateur, but the kid wants to be a doctor or the, or, you know, or wants to be a mechanic or wants to be or whatever. They just have a different dream. Just because your parents opened a restaurant or your parents started a tattoo parlor or a barber shop doesn’t mean that, you know, their offspring want to do the same thing. Right? So that family generational switches. And, you know, when I do go into a business and talk and sort of help them find the efficiencies, I think it’s really important to know because sometimes, you know, folks that have been, that are established that have been doing it for a long time, the goal is not to change for the sake of change. Like, if something works for you, that is like, doesn’t need to be touched, but if there is something that you’re struggling with that takes up time, that’s where modernization or, and processes and procedures that are maybe a little different than the way you’ve done it can help. But if you’ve done something and it works for you and it’s, you know, you don’t have a problem, then you just leave it alone. You don’t need to touch it. You know, it’s like not everything needs to be modernized all the time because that doesn’t always work. It’s like, you know, 30 years ago you’d buy a fridge in a freezer and they would last you for 30 years. Now you buy them and they might only last for five or six, and then you got to buy a new one. So not everything that’s new is always better.

So, which definitely people may not agree with that, but I’m a big, you know, I’m a big fan. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

[00:23:02] Calan Breckon: Definitely. So. So diving deeper into this kind of looking at these older businesses that we’ve been speaking about, when do you think it’s appropriate or important to look at outsider advisor advice?

[00:23:15] Marc Smith: Yeah, so I think there’s a couple of key points. So maybe if you’re struggling, if you’re kind of banging, if you’ve got a bruise right there on your forehead because you’re constantly banging your head because you’re frustrated with stuff, you know, like your turnover is higher than you want it to be or the, you know, like coming out of COVID the customer count, you know, if your business was in a downtown area, but there’s no back to work or the, you know, back to office is taking longer than you then hoped. So, like, you know, the foot traffic and so. And if you’re not, you know, the challenge, like, so that’s an opportunity there because I find a lot of times the business owners are. It’s not that they don’t know the solutions. It’s just that they’re tired from, you know, keeping their head above water every single day. So sometimes what they need is someone to come in who’s got an outside perspective and who. And this is really important when you’re hiring a consultant, no matter what kind of consultant it is, that consultant needs to want you to succeed. You know, which, that might sound like a funny qualifier, but I actually don’t believe every consultant because I’ve seen a bunch of them. I don’t believe they come in all the time feeling that way. Like, when I work with someone, I only take clients that I really want them to succeed.

I need to feel passionate about that they’re actually going to do the stuff that we’re going to. You know, I consulted with the psychology clinic, which is very different than a patisserie coffee shop chain, and, you know, within 2 hours, you know, identified five things for them. And two weeks later, when I did a follow up and said, how did that go? And they’re like, oh, my God. Like, you know, we realized that we were underutilizing our office space, so we. They hired another clinician because they realized they had the space. They just didn’t, when they looked at it, they didn’t see it. But when I pointed out a few things, they’re like, oh, absolutely. So that increased revenue, but did not increase any capital outlay, because therapists only get paid when they see clients. So increase to the bottom line right away. They planned a renovation to kind of rejig the space to meet some, what they thought would be client needs. But when they explained it to me, I was like, no, this none of like, you can do the renovation, but it actually doesn’t serve any of the purposes that you’re talking about. It’s purely aesthetic. And they were like, oh, yeah. So they didn’t spend the $10,000 on the renovation.

The owner was doing five days a week, plus one day on the weekend doing admin catch up. And I showed her that she could actually offload one day of her client work to other clinicians because she, as the owner of the clinic, she’s still making money off of those sessions, and then she could use that. And then that one day is her, is her admin day for paperwork and all the rest of the stuff. She then realized because they’d hired another person, she could give herself a raise because they were bringing more money in. And they do monthly meetings with their staff and that her staff are all subject matter experts and can all contribute one story a month for their social media, because one’s a financial wellness, one is trauma based, childhood issues, things like that. So they can all part of their, you know, their expertise. So they can contribute to the marketing of the business, which is going to generate more revenue. That was in 3 hours. And so, you know, we’ve had a couple of follow ups and she’s like, oh, we can’t wait. She says, we’re going to bring you back it in the six month Marc to kind of just give us a fresh over and see, you know, what else we can tweak and everything else. So that’s, you know, you wouldn’t think that a psychology clinic is the, is the opportunity. But again, there were some efficiencies there and, you know, not everyone needed a dedicated office if they’re only going to be in that space for 20 hours a week. So how they could adjust those things so that, so one opportunity is where the business owner is struggling to keep their head above water and to come up with new ideas and stuff like that. I think the other opportunity is when they’re just, maybe there’s a manager switch or there’s an, or there’s some staffing changes. And so it’s a good time to sort of, let’s look at things. How can things be done a little bit differently? Because I’m bringing in some new people and so those new people don’t maybe have a 1015 year history of how things were done. And that might have worked great for that employee manager, whatever, but it might not work great for the new folks coming in because they might work and think differently. So that’s another opportunity. And then I think for new businesses, the opportunity to bring a consultant in is to sort of, because this happens all the time, is when you start a business, you’re always thinking about, you know, what the business is going to be, but you’re always thinking from yourself’s perspective and you know all about your business and all the things, but you, it’s very rare that you think from a customer’s perspective. So I know you have experience, for example, building websites and, you know, obviously you’re super familiar with user design and all of that. And I’ve done this for many friends that have launched websites to support their business. And before they go live, I look at it and I’m like, okay, I know nothing about your business.

And you’ve explained a bunch of stuff to me, but none of that makes sense from your top menu or any of the descriptions. Or you say that this is included, but you mentioned these things. Are those included? Are those included for free? Are they fee based? Whatever. And so you kind of have that. So when you’re launching a website and stuff like that, as an example, always have three or four people that don’t know your business intimately go through it. Yeah. You’ve dealt with this, I’m sure, many times because it’s like, the website was great, but again, it already answers questions that, you know, like, when you read it as the owner, you’re answering questions that you haven’t asked, so you already know the answers. But when you’re a new person coming to that site, they don’t know it. And so that is the same correlation for other parts of the business as well. It’s sort of like, you know, what’s the flow as an event designer?

As an event producer, there’s another category called event designer, which is not just about floral and backdrops and things like that, but what’s the psychology behind, I always say, like, for banquets and things like that, one, you never put the bar at the right by the front doors of your banquet room because it’ll always traffic jam. And you always, and I always say, like, you always want your bars in different spots towards the back of the room because it gets people moving to the back. And then you stagger your other things and you want to create pockets of interest and all these things. Like, there’s a lot of psychology in event design and. But it’s the same thing in when you’re setting up your business. So again, if you’re, you know, if a $500 consultant to just come in for a couple hours to do a quick glance of things means that, you know, you avoid, you know, four weeks of unhappy customers or bad experiences because they didn’t, you know, it was a bad layout or inefficiency or staff are tripping over themselves or whatever, you know, it’s a good $500 spent.

[00:30:57] Calan Breckon: Yes, definitely.

[00:30:58] Marc Smith: Sometimes I hope that answered the question. I kind of went off a couple there.

[00:31:02] Calan Breckon: You definitely did. It’s, sometimes it’s, you’re so far in it yourself that you can’t pull back to see the bigger picture and new, fresh eyes coming in as a consultant can see these inefficiencies of going, well, why are you doing it this way? Why are you doing it that way? And if there is very valid explanations to it, not just explaining to the sake of, like, I don’t want to change it, but, like, truly, like, well, we did it this way or we did it that way, and we found that this was the most efficient way to do that, and they can truly explain it. Okay, but if they can be like, well, that’s just the way it’s been done. It’s like, okay, well, that’s not the most efficient way. And you’re actually losing money or losing sales or losing customers or whatever, what have you. This is how you can change that. And bringing it to that website piece, it was always like, what action do you want this person to take on your website? Is the purpose to set up a call with you? If the purpose is to set up a call with you, then why don’t you have a single book now? Or book call button should be the first thing on your website. Top right hand corner never moves. And the first thing there should be like, hey, book a call with me, or whatever. Get them to know that that’s the action you want them to take or whether it’s to sign up for your email or what have you. But people would put it way down at the bottom after all this explaining, and I’m like, people don’t want to read all the explaining. They want efficiency and quick and they want to talk to you because they’re going to ask all these questions anyways when they book that call with you. So don’t bother educating the people. Do that on your blog posts where it’s just the blog, and that’s where that stuff lives. Your front page tells people exactly what you want them to do right now, in this moment. And that gets the traffic moving.

[00:32:44] Marc Smith: Well, and if you’ve ever, like, I love analogies, and I’m like, if you’ve ever renovated a kitchen and you’ve ripped all the cabinets out and your cabinet makers come in, they lay your kitchen out, nothing gets bolted to each other or to the wall until everything’s in place. The walk around space, you know, like everything is done to make sure that it’s right. And then they go and do the bolting because that’s your only time to tweak it. And if you need to move the island a little bit or the top, you know what I mean? Like, that’s your. And that’s kind of how for me, that’s what. Like if you’re just starting a business and whether it’s a retail or an online or whatever, a website that’s also, before you hit live, that’s the time to bring somebody in. And that doesn’t have to be necessarily a me, a consultant or whatever. It can even just be like really smart people that you know and trust to just kind of come in, you know? Again, if you’re just starting out, you don’t have tons of bucks to be throwing around for stuff so I don’t want people to spend money if they don’t need to spend money. If you have two or three people that you know in your life that are super trustworthy, smart in areas that you’re not, because hopefully, you know my goal. When I pick, especially business friends, I want to pick people that are smarter than me because that’s the only way I’m going to learn.

Then bring them in and let them rip it to shreds. And don’t take it personally, because, you know, it’s not personally, it’s a business. And at the end of the day, you want to make money and you want to make more money. And the goal is to make money with the lower you want your money to go up and your revenue to go up and your cost to go down. So if you can figure that out at the beginning with doing a couple of tweaks before you open the door, turn on the website, then it’s worth it.

[00:34:32] Calan Breckon: Definitely. So we’ve covered a lot today. Do you have any last words of wisdom for anybody listening?

[00:34:40] Marc Smith: Yeah. So never go into business with a friend.

If you go into business with a friend, make sure that your expertise are polar opposites so that you’re not. I don’t mind a little overlap, but you want to make sure that one’s a great front of house, one’s a great back of house as an example.

And I say the. I say that don’t go into business with a friend because only one thing may survive or both of them may not survive. So, you know, is that something to think about?

You know, I’ve relearned that I will never work with a friend as an employee. I will consult, but I will never work for a friend again full time.

[00:35:31] Calan Breckon: Okay.

[00:35:32] Marc Smith: Yeah. Unless there’s a lot of conversation and a lot of exit parachutes like that are sort of like, okay, if this happens, these are the consequences. Everyone’s an adult, so.

And then another thing, like I said, never. Or do the things that make you money and outsource the things that don’t. And then point number three, even though a lot of times it’s called solopreneurship, no one is ever solo. So when I had my event business, I came up across a couple of roadblocks, obviously. And a great example is with the market crash in 2008, just before the Olympics in Vancouver. And what I ended up doing was I ended up having, I kind of formed an informal board of directors. And so I chose five people that I knew that. And the criteria was they had to be smarter in an area or an expert in an area that I wasn’t. So, you know, I’m pretty good at marketing, but it was great to have someone that, that was their specialty. You know, I had, and I had a bunch of other sort of categories and things like that, sales related and whatever. Two, they had to absolutely want me to succeed. That was like primary for them to be in the room. I needed them to care about my business as much as I did. And then three, I needed them all to be willing to be brutally honest with me. So when the session started, I also hired someone to take notes so that I didn’t. This is before Zoom meetings and dictation and all of that stuff. So I hired someone to literally just record the notes and everything else. So I assembled the board of directors. I brought food in, I had some bottles of wine on the table because I wanted it to be conversational. I presented my business to them and my plan and what I had done, and then they literally ripped it to shreds.

They pointed out, just like I’ve done for other people, they pointed out the assumptions that I’d made, not realizing that that made sense to me. But it wasn’t the customer flow and various other things, and it wasn’t like the customer journey, and that’s another marketing term.

So they made all these comments, and I’m not going to lie, I had some tears in my eyes because I’d worked really hard, but at the end of the day, it was not personal. And I told them that, I said, like, yes, you’re going to hurt my feelings because I’m a human being and I put time and effort into this, but at the end of the day, it made me better. And that’s exactly what it did it. So I didn’t waste time on various things. I became more focused. And while eventually I decided that I was ready to do something different and launched the travel blog and did that for ten years, and I still had various aspects of that. If you can build a board of directors and doesn’t have to be the same people, but six months, once a year, kind of go back and do a, yeah, do a deep dive on what you’re doing and where you’re going, that is a gift.

That is, you cannot pay for that. That is a, it’s a true, it’s an, it’s a great opportunity. So that would be my three things, 110%.

[00:38:57] Calan Breckon: And I, I’ll equate that to, like, mentorship, having more than just one mentor, being able to like, ask these people and bounce ideas and information and advice off of those people and get their expertise in their different sectors is crucial to the success of any business. Whether you’re solo entrepreneur or not, there’s no such thing as doing it by yourself. Like you said, solo entrepreneurs have mentors, they have contractors, they have other people. And, you know, don’t reinvent the wheel. Somebody else has done it. Before you go find somebody who has, ask them what they did wrong, what they did right, and then improve upon that.

[00:39:34] Marc Smith: Yes, because I. And then again, my, I guess, sorry, I have one more point, is fail fast, but fail often. Cause if you’re not failing, you’re not trying. I mean, I know, like, again, none of this is new, none of this is unique. This has all been said by other people. I am not the smartest person on the planet. I’m not even in the top half. But, you know, I have made lots of mistakes, but I have learned from every single one of them. And, you know, I’m a better employee, business owner, consultant, whatever you want it to be now than I was, you know, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, ten years ago, maybe even five years ago. So, you know, if I was to launch a new business now, there are lots of things that I would do differently. And, you know, and so that’s so fail. Do not be afraid to fail. Just fail quickly.

[00:40:24] Calan Breckon: Definitely hold the shoot before you lose your shirt a hundred percent. I’m definitely of that mindset of like, do the thing and get it wrong and fuck it up real quickly and then learn and improve and change and be open to that. Some people can get so stuck on an idea and the vision that they have in their mind that they’re unwilling to compromise. And I’m like, that is a baking a disaster because like you, you have to, in order to succeed, be ready to pivot and change and evolve and grow, because that’s just the way the world works and that’s just how business works. This has been a phenomenal conversation, Marc. Where can folks find out more about you if they want to, like, get some consulting or chat with you or what have you?

[00:41:08] Marc Smith: Yeah, so I think the best way is just go into my LinkedIn and I know you’ve got the link for that in this podcast. I don’t even know how to say my profile URL on this, but I think that’s the easiest way because quite honestly, I don’t know where I’m going to go next. So I didn’t recreate a brand new website just for this portion of my life. I’ve done way too many websites as it is, but they can reach out to me anytime. Obviously, I’m on Instagram as the Marc Smith and it’s Marc with a c.

And then I’m on Facebook as well. So you can reach out to me in any of those platforms. And happy to chat. And I, as you can tell, love to talk. So do not be. I’m not afraid of a phone call. Text me first or like, send me a note that you want to chat. I’ll call you. I love it. I usually grab a cup of coffee. I do a five k walk every day, so I love to talk and walk. So that was, I mean, we’re from Vancouver, so I used to always grab a blends Americano and then go down to the seawall and do my little walk. And that was 90% of my business meetings were walking and talking. So I love it because honestly, if you don’t have to take notes, activities is a great, creative, inspirational moment. And so I had some of my best ideas come up just from walking, talking, meetings.

[00:42:22] Calan Breckon: Awesome. Perfect. I’ll make sure to have all those links in the show. Notes for everybody. Thank you so much, Mark. This has been absolutely lovely.

[00:42:29] Marc Smith: Great. Thank you Calan.

[00:42:30] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode I would love a star rating from you. The business gay podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace. Love. Rainbows.