Finding Your Grit with Richard Walsh, Part 2

Continuing from last week, today's episode features the dynamic Richard Walsh, a seasoned marketing agency owner turned business coach. Imagine finding an extra $100,000 in profit sitting right there in your business—Richard knows where to look without extra marketing expenses. 

He will offer practical strategies on juggling clients and feeling stuck as business owners. We'll explore compelling insights from his journey and how he's reshaping the way we think about success. 

Curious to learn how to make your business work for you? This is an episode you won't want to miss.

Show Highlights:

• Do you feel stuck as a business owner? [01:43]
• This is the mindset you must have to achieve more [03:42]
• How does Richard find inherent money inside businesses? [07:44]
• Are you utilizing these business analysis tools? [08:43]
• Is a business all about sales? [11:22]
• The role and importance of accountability [15:06]
• Explore the world of Sharpen the Spear Coaching [17:50]
• This can be your key to increased profits and revenue [19:43]

For more updates and my weekly newsletter, hop over to https://betterquestions.co/

To learn more about Richard Walsh, check out the websites below: 

https://sharpenthespearcoaching.com/

Transcript:

0:09  Hey guys, welcome back. You're listening to the second part of last week's episode. Let's jump back in. So I recently started working with a small group of like, my primary business marketing agency, and I started working with a small group of other agency owners, and it's really my first time doing any Coaching for Business Owners. Like I coach my clients on doing the thing that I do, right, the marketing stuff. But it's the first time I've ever worked at I'm not I haven't charged them anything, is mostly just me being like, do I like this? Is this a thing I could do? Am I good at this? Right? Just run a test. Like everything. I run a test, and so many of them perfectly match exactly what you just talked about. It's like, eerie, you know? I mean, so let me ask you, how you sort of deal with this, because they get trapped, and I think this is such a common entrepreneurial thing, and to be honest, I can't even really remember how I got past it, but there's a point that they get to where they have enough clients are paying their bills, but they're doing all the work, and they need to market more work on The business in order to grow the sort of incoming lead flow and get more clients. But they don't have time because they're doing all the work, and so they need to hire someone, but they're like, I need more clients in order to make the money to hire someone. And so they feel stuck. It feels like they have to not get paid or whatever, and they're unwilling to make that jump for a number of different reasons. So they're kind of stuck between kind of stuck between, well, I need to hire in order to create the time to work on the business, but I don't have the money because I don't have the clients, because I can't work on the business. And they go, they kind of vacillate back and forth. So I'm curious. One, do you is that one of those patterns that you see? And two, how do you coach people through that? Because it seems like a I basically, the best I've come up with is you just got to do it. And that's not helpful to them.

2:10  Yeah, let me tell you how you do it so you're exactly right. That is the pattern. Okay? So there's a couple approaches you can do for this. And the critical thing is, when you're looking at this and they're giving you all those reasons. Oh, I can't afford I can't do this. Two things. First, there's always sacrifice in business, there's always sacrifice of one way or another, right? We understand that, just like we'll call them calculated risk right? As entrepreneurs, we're risk takers, inherently risk takers, but we're calculated risk takers. We're now rolling dice on the table and playing cards, and where we literally have a business, but we're gambling on certain things that are going to come through now, in this situation that you just described, what, what they don't do, what the owner doesn't do, is, again, how do I duplicate me? What? How does it? How do I take the inner genius that I am, put it in a format that I hire someone, they can follow it to a tee, quickly be up to speed. And what does that mean? They're making money. How do I turn a new hire into an asset? And the important thing about what I just said there is everyone on my team must be an asset, which, to me, means they're free, right? Because they're producing more value than they're being paid for. They're bringing that money in, right? You have to have that mindset. 

Too many people think, Oh, it's another drain on the payroll. Oh, it's just you. You have to stop thinking like that, and that's why you hire slowly and fire quickly. Okay, we want to make sure we know who's coming on the team. Do we have their lane built out? Can I Because? Because, here's another little saying I have. It's called, everybody leaves. Okay, anyone you hire sooner or later, it could be five days, five months, five years, 20 they're gonna leave. You're gonna have to replace that person. And you again, you go back to the hostage situation with the sales guy. He leaves. What are you gonna do? Everything grinds to a halt. Now, if he left on Monday and I got a new guy in on Tuesday, by next Tuesday, can be 100% can you be up to speed and going? That's what needs to happen. If you don't have that, it's not time to hire yet. You have to build that lane, build that complete system. So there's, there's, there's, I told you, job functions. There's expectations, right? There's consequences, right? There's boundaries. They know how to operate, where to operate. You can drop someone in that slot, they can grab the ball and run to the goal post. Yeah, they need to know what success looks like on the day, the week, the month, the quarter, the year. Again. This is what the owner doesn't do, because for us as the owner, that's a that's a way of living, basically, know what that looks like really, even though we don't have it like solidified and written down on paper. But until you can do that, they're always going to be afraid to bring someone on. But if that gets built out, so we just take a step back. Let's build it out. Okay? We get that perfect now find the guy, because guess who's going to come and be in a position like that, a players, a players aren't. Come into a hot mess. Stand. Yeah, they want to come and win. Okay, you want to get dropped in. Let me go. Let me sell. Let me close. I'll make money for you. I'll make money for me. Everybody's gonna be happy. But I'm not. I'm not coming here to create your sales system, right? Were you? Right? There's the

5:15  I think you you hit something that I just want to underline, which I think is so smart, which is the fact that there's part of the problem that the owner has trouble, or part of the reason that they have trouble. And when I say the owner, I mean me. I'm just, I'll just talk about people generally, but you can just read, in damn America, I definitely do this is there's elements of how you view the world that you don't realize you have to make explicit, because they are assumed in in you, right? Like, I just had this conversation with someone today where they were I asked, I was like, Hey, can you give me, like, the ad account data? Like, give me the marketing campaign data, and they gave me a year's worth of data, and I'm looking over and I'm like, great, where's the client's revenue? Like, what? What revenue did the ads generate? And they're like, well, we don't know. And I was like, then, how are you managing it? That's like, saying you're driving the car, but you can't see the road, where, where are you? And I realized they had this whole beautiful dashboard and all the stats and everything. And I was like, I forgot to say, the client has to make money. And it's sounds silly, because it's like, of course, that's our job, but it's like, but I didn't realize it's so easy to get lost in the minutia. And I was like, it's on me. I had to say this, right? And now I have to go back and be like, let's make sure we know. And I know it's a pain in the bump, but you got to figure it out. So let's talk about revenue. Part of what you do is you help business owners find hidden revenue. We talked about this right before we hit record. You were like, I can help business or find $100,000 in hidden revenue without any additional marketing or ad spend. And I was like, that's a really good pitch. And it is a really good pitch, right? It's immediately like, you're a business, you're like, I want $100,000 so let's start with that idea of when you're looking at all these different businesses, and you're obviously, you're very you're very analytical in your approach, right? And I mean that the best possible way, right? You're you're cut and dried. In that sense, what are you looking for? And what tells you in a business that, hey, they're leaving money on the table somehow? Is it just something that's like inherent in running a business, and everybody does it? Is it a mistake that people make that tells you, like, yeah, that's where it's coming from. How do you think about that process? How do you find hidden money inside people's businesses?

7:45  So now, and I'm just gonna make a quick clarification, because we just started talking about this, but yeah, I find profit in their business. I don't find revenue. I create revenue. But here's a saying, If you never heard it, revenue feeds the ego. Profit feeds the family. Yeah, you, if your scorecard is your gross revenue, that's where we start. You got a problem that doesn't mean anything, right? Okay, that's that's ego. That's all it is. So we want to talk about the profit. Now, I'll tell you, in the big picture, there's over 40 areas of your business, okay, of which probably 35 you don't even know exist for creating profit. Profit. Okay, now revenue goes up as well. All right, okay, of course that's going to go well, we're looking at what you're going to keep right? So I start really simply with 12 areas, okay? And I go through that. Now, here's the beauty of it, the things that people don't know. Okay, we start. We can go as simple as P and L's a lot of business I talk to, they don't know what one is. They couldn't create one. They don't know what to look for when they see it, right? Simple things like that that they should literally be looking at every week. It's your profit and loss, okay? And there's only three numbers in that profit and loss statement that you can control. That's your revenue, that's your cost of goods sold, and your overhead. Yeah, those three things. Okay, so it actually makes it relatively simple, but what we want to do is go in and find these different areas and make small, incremental changes. It's a compounding effect, right? You know, if you take a penny, may have heard this, double it every day, double it every day for 30 days. How much do you end up with on day 31 I don't know. Yes, the math challenge, yeah. People will be like, oh, a million dollar. No, you almost, almost five and a half million dollars. Okay? Wow. In 30 days doubling. 

So one to two, two to four, four to eight, eight to 16, etc, etc, right? That's the match of compounding. Now what we do in the business? Same thing, let's, let's increase this by 3% let's do this by 3% this is by 5% so by seven all these areas compound. It's exponential growth. All of a sudden you start to see, holy cow, look how. You know, I cut some costs. May I raise some prices? I changed my my market position, right? My dominating position, my USP, right? I perfected that. I have compelling offers. Now I'm not. I don't have a website like every other person in my industry. I can, I can do what's called a conversion equation that's interrupt, engage, educate and offer. Everything that I do has those four things in it, right? So we start to understand these things, and those little changes start to compound. Now imagine when you do all 40 plus. So I've taken businesses, and I'll show them, 1.2 million in profit in a year, how I can increase it, and I guarantee it. And we walk through, and we go through, we start, we have, it's all implemented, right? We got a whole calendar. How long this is going to take, and this is going to take who we're going to work with on the team. Here's the biggie, Dan, because no owner is going to do everything. We don't have the bandwidth, you know. We're not experts in anything, so we work with people on the team as well, you know. So I'll spend two, three weeks with them, and I'll get that doubt, and I'll work with the next person, you know, come back and show the owner what we did, and he'll pat me on the back and say, Keep going to the next thing you know. So, you know, it's amazing. So that's really what happens. There's a lot of these elements inside a business that most people are too concerned about. What I call your business is an economic engine, okay? And what's the fuel for an economic engine? Sales? Okay, you got you gotta make. 

Sales you gotta drive. So we get fixated on that, and rightly so, not saying it's wrong, but there's a lot of components to just the sales process itself. You know, 689, different things that you can do to increase your sales again without the additional spend, just the way you're doing things. So we take them through that whole thing. I print out full reports for them. The whole thing is really cool. They can do it on their own. They can have me help them whatever they want to do. But when you see it and you start to realize I am leaving all of this money on the table just from lack of knowledge, I just don't know. And that's okay. Who knows? They said in the beginning, you start a business because you're good at something. I did the same thing. It was with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. I shovel rock, okay? And I did 35 tons thing. A guy paid me 1000 bucks. I did the same thing yesterday at a job for $50 that's my future. I'm a rock sheller. Okay, so what's good if I can make that kind of, you know, turn into custom water features and steel sculptures and all this cool stuff. But you start because you just have that and and this is the beauty of entrepreneurship. You had that energy, that desire, and you put it into it, but the sooner you can get that help, sooner you can find the people who can show you the things, like I can right? That's when you start to be able to live. That's when you start making real profit. That's when real freedom begins. That's when you can make impact with your money and your business in the community, your family and everyone else the hamster wheel. You can't help anybody. You're just trying to keep it moving. And it's and people do it for 20 years, you know, then they retire, they get nothing for the business, because no one wants to buy a business like that. Their kids don't want to take it over because you were never around. Why am I going to do that to my family. Okay? So it's like, it's a vicious cycle, right?

13:04  Well, and I want to point out too, like we mentioned this before, but for people who are listening to this and you're curious, like, what Richard is talking about, you can literally go to sharpen the spirit coaching.com and he's got a simulator, like, you can just enter your information and kind of get a sense of what his approach looks like. The whole point that you're making about how it all adds up is so smart, and it's funny, because I'm going through again, I'm auditing my expenses. I mentioned that I'm doing that. That's the task I keep putting up. In fact, I I hired for the last five years in a row, I have had a I sit on my I audit the year, and I say, I really gotta audit my expenses. I gotta lower my expenses. And I put it on my task list, and I never do. It's five years I never do. So I hired an executive assistant, and I was like, your only job is to make me do this test. Like, call me, shame me, yell at me, whatever you gotta do. She's amazing. She's doing great. But it's like, so I'm in the process of auditing my expenses, and part of the thing that I run into is you'll have some monthly expense that's like, $25 a month. And I'm like, it's not even worth the trouble to log in and cancel it. Like, I have to have that set to like, Oh, I gotta, I gotta go figure out how to can they're gonna make me email them, and it's like, and I it's easy to ignore it, but $25 a month every year, for five years of something, you're not even using it, it adds up so quickly. It really is, like, it's such a it's such a truism that, like the entrepreneur, that's not why you're starting the business. Very few people are like, I can't wait to audit my books. You know what I mean? It's you like the art of what you do. So I think having someone like you in their corner is so smart, because not only have you been there and you've done that, have you seen it with other businesses, and you can kind of guide them, but also it's like an accountability buddy. It's just. Want to be like, hey, just like you said, we show up and we do the hard thing. Does that

15:04  make sense? Yeah, it's, it's the accountability is key. Okay? Because we're entrepreneurs, if you're like me, you really don't like to be told what to do. I am that times whatever number you want to pick. I'm that. Okay? I I have a real issue. I only spent four years in the Marine Corps, because I'm not really good at taking direction. I want to move along, because this is not the life for me, right? Okay, unless I am telling everyone what to do. But, and same thing, when I work for people, if I work for them, eventually I gotta either run the company or I'm leaving, you know. So it's just how it is, but we gotta understand that, right? So we have to know, and like you did the right thing, Dan, you brought someone in just do it. You will save so much money because you already have three grand in the 25 $25 a month subscription for five years, you got three grand. Okay? Like, if I walked them said, Hey, Dan, you want three grand? You'd say, heck, Yeah, nah, you know. But 25 a month, you don't care, right? Or if I came up and said, Give me three grand and say, Screw you. Who are you? Right? But no, you're happy to do it to this nothing software company. You know you're paying because you're too lazy to find the password to get back in and send a two sentence email. I don't know how you got a spy in my office, Richard, I'm in all everyone's office. It was in my office, same thing. We all do it. Those subscriptions are murder. That's why they made apps. Now they go and search them out for you and cancel them and do all that stuff, you know, it ends up being 1000s of dollars. Yeah, you got all the great intentions of doing that program, you know?

16:36  Oh, yeah. Oh, that least education is the worst, because you can always justify it. You can always justify it. Well, this is it's an investment in myself. Well, I'm going to blame, I'm going to blame people like you. You're a marketer. You're the ones who sell that crap to us. Hey, you don't want to make it so good. I mean, but it's, but it is true, and it's, I will say too. It's ironic, because, like, I do marketing, like you said, but as I've gotten older, I find I have to really deliberately pull back from like I use less and less social media. I use less and less the internet, period, more and more reading books, specifically because people are very good at dictating what you pay attention to. And my ability, whether they've gotten better or my ability has gotten less. My ability to separate from that is, I feel like it's diminishing, right? So you have to protect that asset in your in your mind. But I'm one of the good ones. Everybody else is garbage. I'm living with I'm with you. I highly recommend Dan, yeah. See there you go. That's going on, that's going on. Thank God, the full blessing. So for people who are curious about you and want to know more about so we talked about sharpen the spirit coaching, com, obviously, that's the website. Do you do? Like social, I know you said you have a podcast too. So like, what are the other things you do online, where people can find you and kind of explore your body of work? Because I know for a fact I didn't know about the simulator before we did the podcast, I'm gonna go do the simulator personally, and that's what I'm into. But like, good. What else can people find from you online that you want them to look up? If you go to LinkedIn, of course, I'm on there, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on x. I don't do anything on x, but I'm there, so you know, if you want to find me there, but that probably not going to do much. You'll see a lot of videos. Okay, I've been on hundreds of podcasts, sharing different stuff like this is great. A lot of clips, a lot of stuffs out there on me now where I used to not exist according to the internet. Now I you pull up, Richard Walsh, will be four pictures. Three are in black and white. Mine's in color. So there's been a really big gap in a quality Richard Walsh, okay, but I have, I finally felt that truth.

18:43  All right, awesome. Well, you are shoveling rocks. That's right, I'm doing I'm out doing stuff, but so that's a really good again, sharpening spirit coaching. Com is awesome. You can do sharpening spirit coaching.com/simulator, takes you right to it. Now, let me just say one thing about that, when you do it, it's super simple. You need three numbers, your revenue, gross revenue, your gross profit in percentage, and your net profit and percentage. Very simple. Okay, now if you really want to, you're like, I need to know how to do that. Just shoot me an email right off the website, send me and I'll send you the formulas and do it in like two minutes. It's very, very very simple, but you get on there. But I want to, what I want to encourage you is to get the report, because it's going to give you, like, a 10 page report. It's going to give you a road map on those 12 areas, and it's going to give you a slide bar that has zero to 10% like, increases do like, three or 5% that's it. Don't go to 10% just keep it really low, right? Like, I'm always super conservative on that right? And then it'll show you the increased revenue and profit. And then it's going to give you a roadmap. When you get the report, get that, and you'll see it's gonna get a little, little two minute video by each one that's gonna tell you how this works. So it's super valuable. I'm telling you like, you'll be like, floored, and then you'll want to set a call with. Me, and we'll talk, and I'll take you through a 12 step assessment, and I'll really show you what we can do for you. But from there, that's the way to start. Well,

20:08  I love it, and I think it's just like you said, it's value upfront, right, which I think is one of the hallmarks of people who are both truly good at what they do and ethical about how they do what they do, right? And that really comes across in you, just as a person. So yeah, if you are listening to this, sharpen the spirit coaching.com, you should go check it out. Go check out the simulator, your backslash simulator. Go check that out as well. What's your podcast? Sharpen the spear. Sharpen the spear. Podcast, it's amazing. You mentioned that in the beginning. Great, great interviews on there, really good stuff on there, all varying times and stuff comes out, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Yeah, great, just great conversation with some incredible people. Three times. You got three times the podcast that I do. You're killing me out here. Well, you know, I told you, I'm all in wake up in the book. Up in the morning being like, I know Richard's out there hitting the 11 daylights out of a bag right now, I gotta get up. You know what? I mean, let's do one more thing. So, because I'm a Whooper, so now I gotta crush you again. Dan, okay, do it. I love it, because everyone's hung on and listen to this podcast. I'm gonna give you a gift. Okay? Same thing. Sharpness, spirit coaching.com, go there. Send me a one sentence email. Go to the contact. Send me a one sentence email that says, Richard, I heard you on Dan show. I'd love a copy of the audio version of escape the owner prison, and I'll send to you for free.

21:34  Awesome. Well, that's amazing. So just like you said, you go to the sharpness. Spirit coaching.com, send an email one sentence, heard you on the end show, and you will hook them up with a free copy of the audio book. That's awesome. Do you read your audio book, or did someone else read it? You tell me, what do you think I would do? I think you would read it. That's darn Skippy. Darn Skippy. I read it. I was gonna say, you get this, you get this, like, two and a half years I was gonna say, you have such a distinctive voice and manner of delivery, you've got to read your own. Yeah, it's one thing. If you're like, Hello, I'm Joe playing voice. You know what? I mean? Like, there's points in the book where I literally choke up. You don't mean because there's some moving stuff in there, because my story's woven there all the things to do. I mean, it's, it's, I love the book. It's great for people. Great place to start. They'll get a million takeaways from it, you know. And there was, I was with a guy who's a roofing company just the other day, and right, we're going to be meeting today, okay? And we're talking about his business, and he's five years in Australia. So they said, here, I reached in my my, my backpack, pulled out, escape the owner prison. He took it, looked at, he goes, that's where I am, you suck. That's exactly where I am. I'm sucking. I'm like, well, we can, we can fix that. And he's coming tonight. We're gonna fix it. So, yeah, I just handed you the key, man. He read that thing in like, a day, the next day. He's like, that was awesome. I go, there's, there's a warm lead, a hot lead.

22:57  Okay, all right. Well, again, just crushing me non stop, left and right. But again, if you listen to this, go to the website, send Richard an email, tell him you heard him on the show. Get a copy of the book, which is escape the owner prison, which you can buy all over the place. But of course, sharpen the spear the podcast you can find everywhere you find your podcast. And then, of course, sharpen the spirit coaching.com which we've talked about many times. Richard Walsh, dude, thank you so much for your time. Man, that was super fun, super useful, high value. I really, I cannot tell you how much I really do appreciate your time. So thanks for being here. I appreciate being here. Just letting me share, Damn man, this. This means a lot to me. This is what I do. I love to see people succeed. That's why I do my business. The joy I get from taking someone from in that prison to, like, spending time with their family, going on vacation, never being on the phone. You know what I mean, having the things they actually want, that that's what brings me joy, and it's it's so obtainable for people.

23:56  I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Richard Walsh. I know I did. I mean, that dude is so much fun to talk to. He did send me, by the way, a video of him working on the heavy bag. So if you want to see that video, should go over to better questions.co. That is better questions.co. You can find all the show notes for this week's episode, all our past episodes, plus the best of what I am learning every single week. It is one blog post, one email a week where I talk about the best of what I'm reading, the best of what I'm learning from the people that I'm meeting. It is something I'm deeply passionate about, and I would love for you to go and subscribe so better questions.co. That's the place to be. Go check out the video that Richard scent of him absolutely pummeling this heavy bag, and you will see what he means when he talks about getting after it. I had such a blast with Richard. So thank you, Richard for your time. Okay? I will talk to you guys again next week, as always. Thank you so much for giving me your time. I really appreciate. It and I will see you again next time. Cheers. You.