How to Stop Guessing and Start Winning in Business with Brad Warren

How to Stop Guessing and Start Winning in Business with Brad Warren

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 202 of the business development podcast. And today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome back Brad Warren. Brad is like the Dave Ramsey of business operations. He is no nonsense, no bullshit. And he is all about the numbers. And he is going to tell you why knowing the numbers is important and why you have to put your business first.

Stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 202 of the business development podcast. I hope you guys all had an absolute rockstar Christmas. The funny thing is we're actually recording this show about six months in advance. Cause it's, that's how fortunate we are on the BDP. So it's very exciting. We're recording in July, but.

You guys are getting this in early January and I hope your Christmas was amazing. Today I have the absolute pleasure of welcoming back to the show Brad Warren. Brad is a powerhouse entrepreneur based in Alberta whose ambition and drive have revolutionized small business development and financial management.

As the mastermind behind Our Invisible Empire, Brad has co founded over 10 startup companies in under four years, with plans to launch five more in 2024. His ventures include Boulevard Auto Glass, White Raven Accounting, EconoBasements, EconoRoofing, and Spacious Basement Builders, showcasing his remarkable ability to scale and succeed across diverse industries.

Brad's innovative approach has rescued numerous small businesses from bankruptcy and formed countless successful partnerships. Brad first joined us on episode 130 of the Business Development Podcast, where he passionately discussed his commitment to helping small businesses and his unique approach to building his invisible empire.

Brad's commitment to helping small businesses thrive is evident in his hands on approach and his philosophy of creating opportunities rather than waiting for them. He is not your typical CEO. He builds his own table instead of waiting for a seat at one. Brad's expertise spans communication, operations management, cash flow management, digital marketing, business development, and entrepreneurship.

His relentless energy and transformative ideas inspire and empower entrepreneurs to defy conventions and challenge the status quo, making him a true revolutionary in the world of small business. Brad, it's an honor to have you back.

Brad Warren: Dude, I appreciate it, man. That was another good intro. I like it.

Kelly Kennedy: Dude, I've been I've been excited about doing this show with you again.

You know, I appreciate you. I really, we've met a few times now and I've, I've always enjoyed every one of our conversations. And I can't say that about everybody.

Brad Warren: People are going to start thinking we're like friends or something prior to this. I know it's smooth though. It's very easy. Right. And, and, you know, not to like.

I don't need to boost your situation that you have going on. I mean, you you're filming in July and releasing in January. Case closed. I mean, you're, you're a big deal now, but I can say it's definitely the favorite out of all the podcasts I've done. I look forward to doing yours because it's just easy. I, you won't let me swear, but, and last time I did really good.

Like, I think I did really, I tried really hard.

Kelly Kennedy: No, man. I I appreciate that. And you know what? I, so I don't really care. Like in the grand scheme of things, I'm not a anti swear person. What it is, is this weird world we live in that is very anti swear, right? And it's like, it's like, I don't actually swear a lot in real life, but yeah, of course I do.

Like, of course I swear occasionally. And of course everybody does on a certain level. But there's this like weird thing where if you swear on a podcast, especially certain ones, you got to click a box that says there's swears in my show. And I don't know what happens when we click that box, but I don't know if I really want to find out either.

Brad Warren: You know, it's funny. Like, I don't, I think I don't, I don't swear as much in my personal life since kids, for sure. Like you watch it, right? You just. Out of, I don't even know if it's respect, but just out of respect for myself. I'm not gonna sit there and swear around my kids, but it does get taken overboard.

Like, we were just chatting before, you know, we started the Greenlight, but we were just, about Gary V. And like, a lot of Gary V's messages, like, I can relate to. I think he's off in his own little world in certain areas of things. Like I said, I'm not. Going garage sailing at eight o'clock at night after I put my kids down, but I mean, good for him, but he swears.

I find he swears so much in so many areas he doesn't need to. It actually makes it a little difficult for me to watch him. Like I find my swear words are very well placed, very arrogant with how smooth I swear. I find it, it plays well, but Gary Vee, I think every 6. 4 words. is an f bomb and it almost like and he's sitting there talking to these kids in grade 11 and even i'm cringing a bit i'm kind of like man like i get it but holy moly.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh boy yeah i don't know dude i don't know like i I definitely swear less.

There's no question. I, mind you, I feel like in business, I've always kept it pretty clean. Mind you, I've been in business development, right, where it's like, and I grew up in old business and new business and old business, whereas we're very much not appreciated or looked at as appropriate. And I would say that it's starting to sway, but I still do watch myself.

I still like, I'm still pretty careful in like a professional and it's not too hard because I don't swear a lot, but I would say, I swear considerably less than I used to, but yeah, it's like there are certain points where, why not? It makes sense. There's certain things that a good ol swear is the right, is the right word to use.

Brad Warren: Well, I think you're in a different world than me too, right? Like, you're, I think it's more important in your world. If anything in my world, it's almost more important for me to swear. Like, I think the biggest thing that we caught traction with was how authentic everything is. Like there's just zero smoke, like we literally meet with entrepreneurs for a living.

That's 80 percent of my job is sitting, meeting and communicating with entrepreneurs. And they almost they're at a point in time where they don't. You'd be surprised how a lot of them are so close to their business, but they actually don't really care how much you hurt their feelings. Because once someone gets to a point where they think they're going to have to close their business and they just don't know what they're going to do.

At that point in time, when you start telling them, Hey, you suck at this. And you might as shit the bed at this. And like, we're not judging, it's just when it's just straightforward, they're kind of like, okay, that's what I need to hear. Let's get moving. Like they're almost coming for the hard answers. So they want the tough, they want the tough love.

Like you can't be a dick about it because then you're judgmental. Like, cause I've made more mistakes than any entrepreneur that could come sit in my boardroom. Like, I can go preach this and preach this and preach this, but I'm a do what you say kind of guy. Don't do what I do. Cause that might be tough to get out of.

But you can't preach to them or be judgmental because they know. I always say to them, like, yeah, you're not doing this. Neither do I. I don't like doing it either, but it's not optional. Your business won't run without this being done. So because I suck at it and I don't want to do it. You know what I do is I hire this person that is very specifically strong in that area because there's certain things in business that you can't, you know, You can't make optional because you're uncomfortable or you don't want to do them.

Kelly Kennedy: I would say that probably 99 percent of the advice that I give on the business development podcast is advice that I learned the hard way because I wasn't doing it.

Brad Warren: I know, and I hate preaching at people because you only get the 48 minutes on the podcast that you're like, do this, do this, be like Mike, read this book, track this number, do this.

But they don't see all the Tuesdays I was like, I'm not going to work, I'm eating pizza. I'm going to sit here and play video games and eat pizza and I'm not talking to anybody.

Kelly Kennedy: Like, yeah, it's like, it's funny because it's like I talk about my business development process all the time on the show. But like, first off to everybody listening, do you think I would have a process if I was killing it, not using a process?

The answer is absolutely not. Yeah. And I, I created a process because I was sucking horribly.

Brad Warren: That's the whole point. My wife said, but my wife is always like, sometimes I just want you to listen. And I'm like, yeah, I don't really do that. If there's a problem that needs to be solved, let's solve the problem.

If you need someone to talk to about the problem, but you have a no interest in solving the problem, your mother beth, these people are phenomenal people to do this with. But if you come to me and like, this client is this, this, and this isn't happening, I'll be like, okay, so we can put it into this process, dump it off on this employee, make sure this followup happens and all this will disappear.

And we won't have to vent about this problem anymore. Well, no, I just want to vent about the problem. That makes no sense to me. Why not delete the problem?

Kelly Kennedy: Well, let me let you know that that is a very common conversation. And that conversation has happened multiple times in our household as well. See? And Shelby's just like, why can't you just listen?

And I'm like, because I want to make a solution. I don't like not being able to do something about it. Like the whole reason I'm an entrepreneur is because I hate waiting for things to happen.

Brad Warren: Well, and like you need to have a big enough, we talked about this, like we need to have a big enough ego to understand that we have that ego towards success.

But you have to be good with failing, like when you're like, Hey, don't drop any F bombs on the podcast. My ego kicks in. I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this. I can do this. I've done more complicated things. I got this and I'm just not going to fail at that. But there's just, if you're good with failure, you can speak that way.

I love failing. Like I learned nothing more than when I make either big mistakes, small mistakes, whatever they create, that's the only way you get to figure out how you do it better the next time. But if you're sitting there being like, oh shucks. I failed Eeyore and like, it's like, that's not going to work because you'll just keep failing because you're upset that you failed.

It's like, no,

Kelly Kennedy: or you won't try, which is, which is equally as damaging.

Brad Warren: Embrace it. Like, you're crushing it. You're releasing things. Two years out. We'll call you Rogan number two. You probably made seven mistakes today. Like you know, we've got equity in 23 businesses in four years and I've made more mistakes than anybody that could come in and challenge like they'd be like, I did this and it really screwed me over and be like, Oh yeah, I've done that three times.

Yeah, it screwed you over in one business. It screwed me over in six.

Kelly Kennedy: Let's chat about it. Yeah, well, and dude, like, that's why I wanted you on the show today. We've talked multiple times. Last time we kind of got the rundown of, you know, who is Brad Warren? What is the invisible empire? What are you doing?

And that was awesome. And actually, I want to spend some time back there because at this point, 72 episodes ago. So there's going to be some people who have been listening for a long time and still didn't necessarily listen to that episode. So we're going to you know, we're going to go back into it. Who is Brad Warren?

But when we're done that, I really do want to lead into operational excellence because that is your specialty. You are an operations rockstar. And I would say most business owners, that is where we suffer. We are not operations rockstars. What we are is the job that we were good at that we started a business around rockstars.

Running the business. Completely different. And you, my friend, are a an expert of experts of operational excellence. And so I do want to spend some time there with you today because we're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs who struggle with it, who don't even know that they're in trouble, who don't even know what to measure, who don't know what they should be doing on a weekly basis to ensure success, who frankly probably don't even know what to charge for their service.

So I think if we can spend some time Talking about that today, that'd be great. But before we do, take us back, dude. 72 episodes! You were here for episode 130. It is now episode 202. Who is Brad Warren and what's new, dude?

Brad Warren: Nothing's new. Kids, in and out of BC, as close to water as I can get. I'm a simple guy.

Gardening. Swimming in lakes and rivers. I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, my wife tries to convince me to buy new socks and sweatpants and I'm like, ah, time for that shit. But you can go get those. That'd be great. Yeah. With the big intro you wrote though, I probably should invest in a new pair of flip flops. Cause like that described a guy that comes into work, ready to go.

I come into work in flip flops and pajama pants and just go to work on companies. You know what, man, Yeah, Invisible Empire is doing good now. Like, we're at a point where, we're at a point where we're totally different the first three years. Like, like anybody else, we were begging people to work with us, begging banks to talk to us.

Like, I mean, it's a grind no matter what you do. And so now we're kind of like, I think we're signed, like we just, eh, this isn't released until January. So we're good. I'll have paperwork signed, but we're going to be doing deals with Calgary Bike Swap, which is a big non profit here in Calgary. And I love the stuff they're doing with homeless youth and like, yeah.

We're starting to get to the point where we can be really picky and choosy about our project because like we talked about, it starts with the person. You can be as operationally excellent as you want in every area. It always starts with the person. And I think just with my experience, I was, I had a mentor that was so relentless with operations.

And I mean, relentless. I think he was the V and don't quote me on it but I'm pretty sure he was the vice president of future shop operations for Alberta before he went and started his own business. And then I hooked up with him, grew with that company. So it's not even something where it's like sitting here and it's like, oh this and this.

That's what I know. Like, and everybody starts businesses like decks, okay? I don't know how to build a deck. I need the people that started that business to know decks or windshields or these things. But believe it or not, every business is the same. It's a product that gets sold regardless of what it is.

It's revenue, cost of goods sold. You know, whether you put your labor, your payroll above the line or below the line, gross profit, expenses, net profit, every business is generally the same. But believe it or not, we're come with the amount of meetings and stuff we have. It's crazy how it starts. And I mean this in a very, very, very, Let least disrespectful way possible, but it starts at a very kindergarten level that even we wouldn't fathom that some people just don't know the direction that they need to go.

And we don't, we're not judging. If anything, we're sitting there being like, wow, it's almost admirable, like, because they're trying so hard and putting so much effort into it when it could be simpler. Like, if that makes any sense, like, you know?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well, you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, and if you're still trying to achieve an outcome, you're going to do it the way that you understand that doesn't make it the right way, it makes it just the way that you can wrap your head around it right or wrong to get to achieve the outcome you're trying to get, but yeah, it's like if you're, if you're, you know, trying to fish and you don't have a hook on your line, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you're never going to catch a fish.

Brad Warren: Yeah. Yeah, and if there's no Google and there's no nothing and you're not, you know what I mean? Like, it takes a little bit of a step back because people could research it, but. Oh, man, like all that stuff starts with the people like it's so easy for me to preach or this and I hate preaching at people and I hate giving advice because it's so there's so much variables to it.

It works for these businesses, but it's not going to work over here. And then if you run a Canadian tire, things are much different than if you run a three person sandwich shop or if you and your wife are out aerating lawns for a living. Yeah, you can sit and track all these numbers as much as you want, but it becomes pretty simple.

Where's the bank account? Or down, like there's some areas where you're creating work to get into tracking it, but you just have such respect for these entrepreneurs and these people that, and I, whether they're banging their head against the wall, you just look at it where it's like, say if my wife's trying to learn how to knit a sweater and there's just no resources out there or anything, but she just keeps trying.

I look at that as, you know, I respect that. So it's very easy to help people and not like you don't look down on anybody because I can't, I don't change the air filter in my car, but we own part of rusted nuts mechanical.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Brad Warren: So we do the business side because I know that in and out, but he's never going to call me being like, Hey, can you come fill in and do some tire rotations for the day?

I'm going to be like, okay, like, what do you mean? Like, I know that there's a 13 mil socket set and like, that's what undoes the blade to my lawnmower. Like, man, that's not my strong suit.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. And yet so many of us business owners are taking that on, we're taking on the things that we may not be great at.

But maybe it's because we don't think that we can afford to have someone else do it. Or maybe it's because I don't know, maybe we think we can. And you know, I think in a lot of cases in my life, I'm not afraid to pull out a 13 mil socket and do it even if I haven't done it before. But that does not make me an expert at doing that thing.

It makes me someone who is willing to try.

Brad Warren: Yeah, which in the end, it's really just skipping a step like if entrepreneurs like we're gonna we're just did a couple startup deals last week that we're going to be green lighting to startup companies and the amount of headache it saves from them doing it with us. Everything is just bing bang boom.

From logos to incorporations to bank accounts to insurance to everything from SEO to digital marketing to branding to uniforms to data tracking to QuickBooks to P& Ls and the list goes on. The person that we're starting a business with is a very, very, very good journeyman master plumber that he's very good at.

All this other shit would take him three, six months when it takes us three to six days. Yeah, because it's one email to our contact at the registry, one email to our bankers. We have a full fledged internet team. Like everything just gets snapped off and green lit. And then in two, three weeks, the company's ready to roll.

It's not that they couldn't do it. It's that how much money do they have to sink into it? Trusting that someone's building a website. If they don't know anything about websites, how the hell are you going to manage the fact that the website's being built properly? What if someone's just charging you 10 grand and they put up a site and you know nothing about sites and you're like, okay, that looks good.

But what if it doesn't function? So it's a mixture between the trust, the cost, and then the amount of headaches it saves. So, I mean, I don't know. That's ultimately, yeah, people, Invisible Empire is just, it's just helping entrepreneurs, man. Keeping small businesses and just trying to take, it takes a village.

Like it literally takes a village to raise kids. And if, You know, I have friends that raised them by themself with parents out in Ontario and stuff and you see how it weighs on that family, not even having a Wednesday night to be able to go out for dinner like there's no grandmas or anything to be found business is the exact same.

And if you're using a marketing firm and paying them three grand a month, that doesn't mean anything. That's just, it's just a marketing firm. And I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong, but you definitely don't have somebody looking out for your best interests of the business itself. You have somebody looking out for the best interest to prove the best reports that their marketing services are carrying value for what you're paying.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I mean, you could probably talk for a while on, on digital marketing. It's a tough one. It, you know what? It's, I would argue that do we all need a little bit of it? Yes. But is it a really hard system to navigate? Double yes.

Brad Warren: It's a hard system to navigate if you're trying to do it at a very, very excellent level.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Brad Warren: Yeah. You know, and, and we could kill a whole episode on that. So it's like, let's, you know, but yeah, man, accounting, bookkeeping, digital marketing. Those are the three areas we see Entrepreneurs being taken advantage of the most. Hands down. There's so much to it. There's so many layers. There's so many things like you have to be, you know, and like, even operational excellence, like we meet with so many businesses that it's it starts at a level of kindergarten and then it goes up grades.

If you're a retail based business, for example, like you're dealing with people like yours is that way, but it's a little different. Like when you live in the corporate world, you have a little bit more room if you're living in like decks or windshields or stuff like that. It's a little bit more fast paced.

Like you're trying to convince a customer to build a deck with you versus 20 other people. No different than what you're doing, but it's just a different, it's a different mentality.

Kelly Kennedy: It's. You're right, like everything moves quicker, and I would argue that B2C is very, very different from B2B, like, you know what I mean, it's a completely different level of expertise.

Brad Warren: It really is, it really is, and I couldn't agree more, like, I would have less knowledge in B2B, probably, you know, and so, say for example, if you're, let's use decks for an example. It starts with like, do you miss phone calls? What's your process on replying to emails? Because if do you ever reschedule site visits, if you tell a customer you're going to have an estimate to them in 24 hours, does it show up in 24 hours?

Or you so behind the eight ball that it's nine o'clock at night. And you're like, Oh, I don't want to do this anymore. I'll do it tomorrow. And I'll talk my way out of that. When you start. With not giving your business an option to these things, when you're in the retail sector, it's just a matter of time before that catches on.

That's arguably more important than anything. Like you have to drive the leads, but if you're driving the leads through the internet, like we use Econodecks as an example, like they, it's a Cadillac website. It drives a ton of leads. It's been around for a long time. We have a ton of SEO into it. It does very well.

Whether we have AdWords flipped on or AdWords not flipped on, it does well. But if our receptionist is calling customers back in three hours, and the estimator is not getting back to customers for two days, and a deck should be 13, 000, and you have five other companies in the city quoting it at 12, 12, 13, 13, 14, and our quote is 22, All of this digital marketing and all of these numbers and P and L's, they're all useless because then you're not going to track it.

So, I mean, the biggest thing is, what are you charging for your services? Well, you don't decide that the market decides that. Get it shopped. It's not difficult. If windshields are this, great. Get your wife to sit in the house and call 10 windshield companies and say, Hey, I need a quote on a 2012 Dodge Ram and use the same truck, same everything, and call 10 competitors and find out where their pricing is.

It's called competition shops. So if you don't know what you should be charging, your market will tell you what you should be charging. And as soon as you're like, Oh no, we're better. We're better. We're better. Everybody's charging 14 grand for a deck, but we provide better service. We're going to charge 22 and convince people of that.

The chances of that working short term are pretty slipped. If you have six companies and five of them are 14 grand and one of them is 19, the one that's 19 gets chucked out of there right away.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and I would say even more so in B to C, like I feel like that as a consumer, like an end user consumer, obviously the dollars and cents, it's a serious consideration on literally everything from windshields to decks to whatever to the latest and greatest piece of electronic.

Brad Warren: 100%. That's where it starts. It starts with the kindergarten stuff, like How operationally excellent are you with the basics? Do you reply to emails within two hours? Do you do these things? Because going past that and having all your numbers and everything, that makes it much easier to grow and scale a company, but it's not going to pull you out of bankruptcy if you're banging your head against the wall every day.

The big thing with that will be hustle. You're much better off not tracking any numbers and never missing a phone call to your business. Yeah. That would probably be a better place to start.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. And you know, like since we're talking about pricing, obviously we have a lot of people out here who run service companies where maybe it's not so cut and dry.

Maybe it's not as easy as calling five places and trying to figure out how that works. And I know that you also operate services. When you're pricing services, what's your strategy?

Brad Warren: It's a good question. You say, and just to rewind, you say, it's not that easy to call other companies and see where their pricing is.

Isn't it though?

Kelly Kennedy: I think it just depends on the type of company, right? It really does. Like, there are a lot of places now that talk about like packages, like they have package pricing, which makes it a lot harder to try to identify what they're actually charging for things. So, I think that sure, like you could, but not all packages are priced the same.

So, and there's lots of great books on this. Obviously, I just wanted to know what your opinion was on it.

Brad Warren: No, I agree. Like, and you could take automotive, for example, automotive is very wide. Like you can get an air filter changed at a local minute lube mechanic shop. Those are privately owned at a fraction of the price that you're going to get it done at the dealership because then you're not getting a shuttle car and you're not, you know, dealerships have brand recognition.

The pricing structure is really like, where does the business need to make money? And that's where the numbers come into play. Like, Say, for example, if you want, like, if you want to take decks, let's stay on decks, and let's use, these are all fake numbers, and I'm just, I'll rip through it quick, but it's, it's also where the business needs to make money, but it needs to be within market value.

Like, if you have all these expenses every single month, and you're like, okay, I gotta charge 20 grand a decks when everyone else is charging 13, there really is no strategy to that, you just have to hope. I guess someone's gonna bite. Yeah, do less work, have a very good salesperson, hope that people only get quoted at one spot.

But say for example you do, I don't know, let's rattle it off. Like if you do a million dollars in decks in the course of a year using completely fake numbers and your revenue's a million dollars. Say you do, 86 decks, like, and that's your part count. So if you're doing your services, keep track of how many you're doing because your average sale is your king.

Like your average sale is our block, pretty much Bible to everything. So if you have a million in decks in revenue, 86 decks done, your average sale is going to be 11, six, something along those lines, 11, six. So if you have a 50 percent material cost. Like you build a deck and all your materials, your boards, your screws, your frames, and all that stuff, are say about 50%.

And then the labor for your deck builders to build that deck are say about 25%. Well, you're left over with 25 percent gross profit, which on an average sale of 11, 600, your gross profit is going to be 2, 900, give or take, 4, 5, 6, whatever it may be. Well, if you have monthly expenses to run that company at 10, 000, Well, that means you need 3.

4 decks a month to break the company. Even if you do six decks, well, then you're going to be 17, four in gross profit, and you'll end up making 44 grand at the end of the year in net profit. So it's, it's, if you can get your average sale. And then you can track what your materials is costing. And that works in every retail business.

If you're making a sandwich, would you sell donair subs more than you sell Turkey subs more than you sell this? Well, what's the average sale. Okay. You did two grand that day in sandwiches. You sold 200 sandwiches. You know, 10 sandwich, whatever it may be, but what is the material that is making that sound, the bread, the meat, like all the stuff that goes into the actual sandwich, and then what is your staff labor to be producing that sandwich.

And if you have these profit losses and you have these, this basic numbers worked out, then it's just a numbers game. Your business has 6, 400 in expenses. You're making 100 a day in sandwiches. You need to quadruple the amount of sandwiches you make. That's where the numbers, that's where the numbers come into play where it actually really helps the business.

But with pricing strategy, I mean, ultimately the business you want to, you need to keep it in line, but you also can't be out of market. Like there's, you know what I mean? Like it's different for every single industry.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. I love this. And I want to spend some time here because I agree. You're right.

You're absolutely right. It's like if you don't have a profit margin on every month, right, you're in trouble. But I think I don't think I think most companies are okay with this. They understand it in the beginning, right? They understand it. I need to make X amount of dollars. I need to pay X amount of bills.

I think where it starts to get out of control, Is this company start to grow and they start to pick up more expenses and there are those little shadow expenses to you, right, Brad? There's those like those monthly subscriptions of 30 bucks. Well, pretty soon you're paying 3000 bucks a month and these stupid little monthly subscriptions depending on the size of your organization and maybe you slip.

You're not paying complete attention. You have a couple bad months, but you're not ready to like to just cut all the things and then next thing, you know, you're in some serious trouble. Like what's your advice? Like, like let's say that you are a deck company and you were building 10 decks a month and then suddenly you're down to five.

Yeah, how, like how soon before you need to make out like an immediate, like how quickly do you need to make a decision to start to figure out? Okay, like what are all my expenses? What can I cut immediately? Like what is the timeline for something like that?

Brad Warren: Yeah, you know, good question, man. And it's, it's a tough thing for me to touch on in depth too, because it's different for me.

Like, I have the resources and all the numbers to back it. So if you track these numbers and you track everything for years on end, then you can extrapolate everything. So if your, if your website produces 500 leads and decks in a season, say a season, six months, and you produce a hundred leads a month.

Okay. And if you close 30 out of those hundred leads, your closing percentage is going to be 30%. If you have all of this in your QuickBooks or in your accounting system, And you're reviewing these profit and loss numbers like. With 20, I mean, with stuff we've signed now, who knows in January, but right now in July, we're sitting at 26 companies and every single month, I review a full profit and loss from every single one.

So what was the revenue? What was the cost of goods sold? What was the labor? What was the payroll? What were the expenses? If you're reviewing it as much as you possibly can and you have your finger on the pulse, you can pivot. Much easier and the numbers are going to tell you exactly where you need to do like if you use boulevard auto glass for a great example, they'll do if they have a 40 percent cost of goods sold one month.

And then a 43 percent cost of goods sold the next month. We're into it. Like, where did that go wrong? Did we do a lot of parts? Did we run out of a specific windshield for a dealership that they eat up a lot of? Was it inventory? Was it efficiency? Was it warranties? But if your pulse is on those numbers all the time, if your labor percentage jumps, If you sell a hundred sandwiches a month at your sandwich shop and you have two employees, and then the next month you sell a hundred sandwiches and you have four employees, something's wrong there.

Why do you need four employees to sell the same amount of sandwiches? So, I mean, it's such a complicated thing. Like if you ever, you should get into video podcasts so we can like put it up on the whiteboard for people.

Kelly Kennedy: You should create a masterclass.

Brad Warren: Oh man. Like, yeah, I mean, that would involve me figuring it out to the fullest.

First, it's yeah, it's like, it's so hard to touch on at such an in depth level because you don't know where everybody is starting, right? Like if you're a husband and wife and you're out there landscaping lawns, you can't just run it out of the bank account. First thing you got to do is divide the business bank account from the personal bank account.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Brad Warren: At all points in time, never even have them cross over by a dollar, because at least you can track it. That's right. And if you do eight lawns a month, invoice those out in your accounting system. If you don't know how to do that, whatever, come see us. We'll set that up for free. That's 45 minutes of work.

That's fun stuff. But it's like if you're doing eight lawns and six of them are aerate and two of them are fertilizer, well, if your fertilizer bills are 50 bucks and your aerating bills are 120. Then you're, as your expenses grow and you're like, okay, I'm gonna buy a new company vehicle. Okay, we did 800 in revenue.

Our profit was a hundred. If we buy a new company vehicle that's a $400 a month payment, our revenue needs to go from 800 to 3,200 to keep the business at the same level. With that truck coming in, it's all in the numbers. Like you don't, in business, you don't have to make an emotional decision almost ever.

Like in, even with forecasting, like you're going to have your last year, if your business is growing at 20%, forecast that if you're going to buy two new trucks, put those into the expenses and see where your business lines up. See what happens. And actually Invisible Empire by January, it'll be live, but we're going to do a lot of these templates and a lot of these calculators and we're going to actually have them right on the website where people can download them for free.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Brad, we're talking to like a lot of business owners who, you know what dude, they might not have even come across a profit loss sheet before. I know that sounds a little crazy, but I think it happens more often than you think.

Brad Warren: It doesn't. Like, sorry to cut you off, man, but like, I couldn't explain the velocity of businesses that we meet with that are doing half a million a year in revenue.

Have never seen a profit loss sheet. It's like, I'm not sure that I would.

Kelly Kennedy: I worked operations for many, many years in organization. And so part of my job was to review the monthly profit loss and try and figure out what's going on here. Right? So I'm very versed in it. I totally understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a lot of people who don't.

And let's just walk them through it. Can you maybe walk them through a business owner who maybe they are going to ask their accountant tomorrow, print me off the profit loss for my company, show me, send it over. Let's walk them through a review. Can you walk them through how you review a profit and loss sheet?

Brad Warren: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, depending on your business, it all depends on every business like sub businesses. You can review the monthly and it works because the money's in and out. Like if it's a retail service business, if you're doing something like construction, that's tough because everything's all over the place for three, four months at a time.

But if you're doing it in a simple monthly look and You have a profit and loss, your accountant or your bookkeeper should be setting it up if they're doing it properly and it's not so much their job, it is the owner's job to say, hey, I want to get this profit and loss streamlined, but if you took a look at like say a boulevard auto glass profit and loss, it's, we could tell you how many back glasses we did a year and a half ago on a rainy week in June, like it's so down to the science of how we have it figured, so at first you have your revenue, you.

At all points in time, and then you have your cost of goods sold. So that's your product cost, the actual job. So I mean, if you're, say, in your world, you don't have a whole bunch of product costs. You're not actually using a product. So if a plumber is going to install a sink, the product cost would be the faucet.

And then some businesses have labor above gross profit. Some of it have below it depends. I mean, I'm a big fan of putting labor above gross profit. If it directly relates to getting the job done. So with windshields, we put it, we don't put payroll and expenses. We put it above the line because every person is responsible for doing a windshield.

So in a sense, it is a cost of goods sold. Sure. So you're going to have your revenue, your cost of goods sold. And then you're going to have your labor, whether you put that down in expenses or not, either way, and your gross profit. And your gross profit is what comes before expenses. And then you're going to have your expenses, and then you're going to have your net profit.

And you're, so, that's a basic P& L. When you're reviewing it, you should always review it month to month, in the same month. Like, you, you know You're never going to review a Boulevard Auto Glass profit loss. You're never going to review a June profit loss compared to May because they're completely different months.

You want to review June of 2024. against June of 2023. And so how did you do year over year? Did the revenue increase 18%? Where was your cost of goods sold at? Did they charge more and buy better? You know what I mean? And as you're going through, go through line by line. Like I make it so simple when I'm overlooking 26 companies.

It's like, and I learned this from my mentors, like make it simple, blockchain it out. Revenue. Are you higher or lower? Check. X cost of goods sold. Are you higher or lower check X payroll? Are you employing the same amount of people to do more work? Are you employing double the amount of people to do less work?

It's a problem. X or check. Are your expenses in line? X or check. Your business should be doing better, ideally, in all categories year over year. So, I mean, there's, you're right. I almost should record a video on it, but you never.

Kelly Kennedy: You almost, you almost should.

Brad Warren: But that's the problem is like, I hate, I don't care if I offend people.

Hence why I have no internet presence because my staff, my staff, I'm like, Hey, you want to bring a camera? I'm going to go do this and every single one of my staff are like, yeah, we don't want that smoke breath. And I'm like, Oh, come on, it'll be fine. We're just going to get a bill paid. This is the fun stuff.

You don't want to offend people because if you're talking to someone that's running a environmental services company with 47 employees he's sitting here listening being like yeah I learned that in like grade six tell me something I don't know it's like will does he actually hold his bookkeeper and accountants accountable does he hold himself accountable to reviewing it weekly monthly does he slip and stop looking at things a great example of that is planet builders I don't know if you ever heard of Planet Builders.

Kelly Kennedy: I haven't, no.

Brad Warren: In Calgary, they ran the show in residential construction. Like when it came to decks, when it came to basement development, maybe not as much decks, but definitely basement development. Planet Builders was king in residential construction. And they're still dealing with courts and lawsuits and different things.

But this is a 20, 30 million dollar a year company in revenue that And I'm not, I get it, boats, Kelowna, you grinded it out. You finally made it. But as soon as the people in charge stopped looking at the nitty gritty, they started pumping out 20 mil a year in revenue, but they were losing money every year.

And then it took them three, four years to figure it out. And the whole thing came crashing down and it was a really big company for a private, for a privately owned business. You have to hold yourself accountable to looking at these results consistently, even when you don't want to.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Yeah, and that's it, right?

Like whenever we're worried about money, it's the moment that we're not looking like it's like, oh, I don't want to know what's going on, like when we're good, we don't we're not afraid of it. But when we're when we know we're kind of struggling a little bit, we intentionally avoid looking at the numbers.

And that can be our personal bank accounts. That can be our corporate bank accounts, that can be our income statements, whatever it is, what you're saying, ultimately, is that you have to be brave, you have to just, you can't fix the problem, if you don't look at it.

Brad Warren: Yeah, or you know what? And telling them a different side of the story.

Be in my spot, have the resources. If you want to pawn it off, I do it all the time, man. When things are humans are humans, I'm no different. You know what I mean? Everybody's the same. Me and you run businesses and we do these things. There's still Wednesdays I mail it in because I don't feel like working.

It's everybody's the same, but I have the resources in place to make sure that I'm looking at those. And if you don't have those resources, find them. Like, because these are not options. If you stop, stop looking at the numbers of the business, every time I've done that, and it's funny because it's always in good times.

I look at the numbers so much more in bad times, but when things are flowing and windshields are pumping and decks are pumping and basements are going and accounting is signing clients like crazy, the marketing department's on fire and everything's going good. I'm sitting here being like, Hmm, I should buy a boat.

And then I go boat shopping and then I go to BC for two weeks. And then I go to BC for another week. And then I come back and I kind of check back in a month later. And you're not making as much money as you think you are. As soon as you stop looking at it, you can't. And I hate going in the bank accounts.

Whether it's, especially during bad times. Good times, I'm fine. Bad times, I'm terrible with it. I avoid it. But I have a wife who's a CPA accountant and we own our own accounting firm. I can avoid it. If you don't have the resources, you can't avoid it. And that sounds very arrogant, but if anything, I'm admitting to areas of business that I'm not strong in, I'm very strong in reviewing the financials all the time.

I'm not a big fan of going to stare an RBC app in the face when I'm broke. It's not something I look forward to.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I agree. Like I'm, I'll be the first to say that I've avoided my bank accounts more than once. I don't want to know. But you know what? The time comes and I get to it and I deal with it and I'll tell you what.

I feel better. Oh, I usually feel better once I really know the situation. But yeah, there's those moments where I just don't want to know. And you know, I mean, I'm not alone in that. I know that for sure.

Brad Warren: No, I did that for like a year and a half. Yeah, the things were so and I'm not saying so bad, man. We just took on a lot.

Yeah, and it got to the point where like, I'm like, oh, man. I don't have one more line. I don't have one more credit card. Like if I make one more mistake, this thing's done. And so for like a year and a half, instead of. Honing in on it. I did the opposite. I'm just like, eh, I'm going to avoid it and find a way to blame the wife because she runs the financial side of it, but it has absolutely nothing to do with her.

And I'm joking. Cause I'm very self aware in that area, but a hundred percent, I'll be like, Hey, how's money situation should be like, not great. She'd be like, I don't know when it's great. Why do you never have anything positive to say? And she's like, okay, I'll lie to you. It's awesome. She was like, she'll tell me I'm not in charge of the operations.

Like, okay, the operations are what make the money. I just track the money. Go do your job and I'll be like, I hate that she's right.

Kelly Kennedy: Damn it. You're right again. Yeah, just solid point. Okay. Okay. I think this has been really great. And I think you've convinced a lot of people to look at their profit and loss.

You've convinced them to compare it against last year's same month. Don't compare it against the last month. Compare it month, month to month, year over year. Yeah. And do we do this every single month, Brad? How often do we do this?

Brad Warren: I do it. Every month for the businesses that make sense. If retail is in and out, Boulevard Auto Glass retails in and out all the time.

It's a very nice business. You can track. Everything's done that day. They're doing windshields that day. They're tracked that day. Construction, you might be buying material like 51 North Interiors, our biggest business partner, Kyle Catling. I mean, he's got three, four million running around in revenue.

He's buying a quarter million of material that he's not installing into Planet Fitness for six months. More difficult to look at it month to month. But Boulevard, we look at every two weeks. We have a mid month P& L that comes out on the 15th that shows us how they're doing to last year. So July 15th, we will have a mid month P& L that hits extrapolating them, which is predicting the rest of their month.

So I don't even let it go a month. I don't, I let it go for two weeks and if they're not on par to hit the targets and financials and forecasts that we have in place for the end of the month, we're, we're pivoting that ship two weeks in. But I would say monthly minimum if your business, most owners of small companies are in their bank accounts all the time.

Yes. But if you have a situated mechanic shop with six employees, that can be looked at monthly. And even quarterly, the only business that I see that makes sense to look at it, like there's lots, but construction is one of them.

It's hard to look at construction monthly, but yeah, you should do the best way I can describe it is even if you're doing 400 a month in lemonade sales out in front of your house.

It's not just the numbers. It's a mental thing. Like, do you think Michael Phelps would ever swim a faster lap if there was no clock? Being timed.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. No, if he wasn't timing himself, he wasn't paying attention.

Brad Warren: How would he even know where he's going to even get better? The numbers actually don't become, Oh, where am I doing bad?

Eventually they become almost like a motivator because you're like, Oh wow, I'm 20 percent up in all these categories. How do I get 30 percent up? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're timing all your swim laps. Eventually you will swim faster lap. So it's half a mental thing by just the motivation it creates by seeing something that isn't fudged.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Brad Warren: They have to be accurate.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Let's make a little assumption here. My, my people listening, we've started, we've started comparing our P and L's year over year. And unfortunately, Brad, we're starting to see a decline that, that, that net profit percentage month over month. compared against last year is going down.

What would you do in that situation?

Brad Warren: Check revenue. Where's revenue at? Up? Down? If revenue's up 6%, then you probably have a bigger problem. First, like, the best case situation is your revenue's dropped, because that's the easiest way to tell. Next, go to your material. If you have material, are you paying more for your salami, paying more for your deck boards, paying more for your windshields?

Have your suppliers upped your prices? You haven't caught it? Have you increased your prices to keep up with inflation? One of the biggest things small businesses are scared of is increasing their prices. Biggest fear, but it's like everything else. Stakes are 30 bucks a stake now. You have to keep up with it.

So if your suppliers are charging you more for your faucets and you're a plumbing company, have you caught that and have you added that to your price? Your cost of goods sold should stay the same percentage. If you're running a, like, I mean, for construction, we'll run 40, 50 percent cost of goods sold. If it starts running at 61 percent cost of goods sold every month, something's up.

We're either charging much less for a plumbing job or paying a lot more for the material that we're buying to do the same job. So check your material, check what you're using to do it. How much are your buttons costing you in your sandwich shop? How much are your air filters costing you in your mechanic shop?

Then go to your labor and go down the line. You just go down the line. Revenue, cost of goods sold, labor, and expenses. The problem will be in one of those. They're going to be in your revenue, your cost of goods sold, your labor and or payroll, however you track it, or your expenses. If your revenue is a hundred grand a month.

And your expenses are traditionally 10 grand a month and your expenses have jumped to 16 grand a month because you brought on three new vehicles or whatever you did, there's your problem. Like, take a look at it. You either have to increase revenue to get your expenses back down to the percentage that makes sense, or you need to cut percentage.

If you take a look at labor. And you're running a 28 percent labor rate to do the same amount of work when the year before you were running a 24 percent labor rate, it generally means your staff are not as efficient as they were, because how are they doing less work with the same revenue a year later?

It's going to be your problems if your business is not making money, it will be in one of those four items. Revenue, cost of goods sold, labor slash payroll, or expenses. And just go down the line, like the four horsemen, you will find where that problem is, you will figure it out. But if the numbers aren't accurate, then you're on a wild goose chase.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. That's how it's equally, it's equally important to be a handing your receipts to your accountant.

Brad Warren: Dude, it's, you know, we, do you know how many business we've pulled numerous businesses out of bankruptcy and they had accountants and bookkeepers, but no profit and loss. Like I'm not even going to get into it.

It accountants and bookkeepers profit and loss should be such an important part of their job, but it's just not something they're going to do unless you put pressure on them and they might charge you for it. But it's, Oh God, it's, it'll, we'll do six more episodes. I'll just keep rambling on with this.

Just anybody that's like, Oh my God, this is slightly intriguing. Come down and have a coffee and I'll just show you on the whiteboard. That's yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: That's why I wanted to have this conversation with you, right? Because I know how diligent you are with numbers, and that is very unique. Because I think a lot of business owners, as much as we like to think we like numbers, we don't really like numbers.

No. And it sucks, because if we don't, if we don't get good at following them, eventually, they're going to bite us in the butt.

Brad Warren: Yeah, and I don't have some grave passion for numbers. I have a passion for helping small businesses succeed and without the numbers almost dead in the water. Yeah, it's hard to tell what you need to fix.

100%. Like Rusted Nuts Mechanical came to a meeting with us just this last week. Love working with these guys. And he's like, Hey, I got this one employee quitting. He makes this amount. He's a third year. I want to hire a journeyman. I've got this loan coming off my books. Can I afford to do this? What do you guys think I should do?

Should I put more money into marketing here? I don't even like, he doesn't know if he can substitute a 28 an employee for a 43 employee. He doesn't know the answer to that question. Never has throughout running his business for six, seven years. Is the bank account growing or lowering? And I look at my accounting team and I'm like, Hey, how many months of accurate and I'm talking dead accurate P and L's do we have for rusted nuts?

And we just started working with them. So they're up to about two months of really accurate. And I'm like, okay, when you get me three, I need three. And then Myron, I'll be able to guide you in this area. And they'll have the, they'll have the third month to me in a week. And we will be able to answer every question he's asking purely based off numbers.

I mean, no emotion or no anything to it, but unless they're dead accurate and they're being done at a very high velocity, then it enters too much of a guess and check.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. I want to spend some time with you on employees. And the reason being is I know you deal with quite a few of your own. And I know that when you're working with companies, Employees come up because they tend to be a variable that you have to take a look at.

Talk to me, how do you, how do you hold your employees accountable? Right? Because I think, I think obviously if sales are down, you got to have a conversation, right? Typically there's somebody responsible for sales or that isn't doing it that, that we need to figure out why. Talk to me a little bit about how you, how you hold employees to task and, and how you found managing them in the most successful way to provide benefits to organizations.

Brad Warren: Oh man. It's going to be such a like, It's gonna be like a broken record eventually, but again, It really does honestly fall into the numbers. Employee reviews are something that's super undervalued. I'm not great at it. I'll admit that, but I have staff that are. Employees should have a review once a year at a minimum.

Employees don't wake up in the morning, man. I think we talked about this in the last podcast. Nobody wakes up at 7am and their alarm goes off and they're going to go and say, Install a windshield. Let's keep using the same thing. No one wakes up saying I'm going to go to work and do the worst job I can today.

If you like your job or hate your job, that's never anybody's mentality. So they like the biggest. It's funny because when we were in auto glass before, like the biggest complaint we got is like, hey, we messed that up. Why didn't you talk to us about it? Cause then we don't know. And then we can't learn. So auto glass, we'll run a labor percentage of say 26 percent on the month, but every employee is tracked to every windshield they do.

So if you're have service employees, and I can only give one example, because you have sales employees, it's totally different, but it's accountability. On the numbers in the forecast that I let them choose a lot of them. So with Boulevard, it's like we have this labor percentage. Well, every employee should do 35, 000 in windshield installations in a month.

How much time are they on the clock? Okay. This employee worked 160 hours this month. We expect one windshield every hour and six minutes, because that's the time it takes to do a windshield properly across average of all the different cars. And if his employee referral source or his. Income source comes in at 31,000, 1 month and he worked 170 hours.

And then the next month that comes in at 37, 000 and he worked 150 hours. Well, that's a completely different performance from the month before. So if you were reviewing the performance with them and you show them the swing in it, believe it or not, they're much more receptable to it than people think.

It's usually the leadership that's more scared to confront the employee base on performance than the employee actually takes it overly personally. There are some that do, but if they sit there and being like, well, I'm allowed to have a bad month and you don't do it. It's like, okay, Fire that person.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Brad Warren: I mean, and it sounds cold, but no higher, slow and fire fast.

Kelly Kennedy: Drilling in on actually what I wanted to drill in on with you was what is your threshold for saying, you know what? I don't think I can work with this person. I think it's time to let them go and replace them. Like, cause I think that's a really hard decision for 99 percent of business.

Brad Warren: Oh, yeah, I, you know, if, oh if I ever wake up in the middle of the night, because I always, I think everybody wakes up in the middle of the night, like we're old, we're old now, so like, if I wake up once, it's a good night, but yeah, exactly, if I wake up at 1 a. m. and an employee pops into my head, And I have the slightest issue getting back to sleep.

That person doesn't work for me the next week. And, and, oh man, I hate coming off like super cold or callous, but most of the time, when you know an employee isn't performing, you can track all the numbers and have all the fancy shit that I do, but you can generally get a pretty good gut instinct on it.

That person's not happy either. It's usually a little bit of a relationship thing. Nine out of 10 times, you're going to let that person go. And they're probably going to go find something better. Anyways, sure. You have to look out for your business first. It sounds so cold, but, and I was meeting with the girls at Smith cosmetics a couple of weeks ago that we're doing work with now.

And it was just like, she was a little nervous to email out some of her packages to all these vendors and different things, because she's worried about like, what, what the employee might think on the backend or what the vendor might think on the backend. Ask yourself, if your spouse dies, or if your kid gets in a car accident, is that employee going to be at your front door with a lasagna?

Probably not. And, and it sounds so cold, and you can edit it out if you want, but your business has to come before the employees, because that's what's feeding the kids. That's what's creating room for more employees. And it's not saying, oh, employees aren't appreciated. I've had very little turnover in Invisible Empire.

Like my executive assistant has been with me since day one. We have numerous employees that have been with us since day one, but we're remarkably not shy at letting go the ones that aren't fitting in. And you can take the feedback from usually your other employees. You're running a kitchen at Moxie's.

If a guy keeps calling in sick and someone's got to come pick up his shifts and you're like, Oh, I'm not going to let this guy go. I'm going to be short staff. Chances are everybody in the back of the kitchen is going to be happier that you let them go anyways, because you're setting a terrible example for the rest of the staff.

So my. I hire very slow. And I fire very fast dishonesty in any way, shape, or form. across any company that's it. You catch someone in a lie, it'll happen again.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So, so you don't, you don't wait, you don't necessarily give them too many opportunities because at the end of the day, your thought is, you know, if they're going to burn you once, they'll probably burn you twice.

Brad Warren: Yeah. And I mean, it depends on what, like, If my graphic designer missed a deadline on a video edit, pick your battles. She's human. She's going to miss a deadline on a video edit. How does she respond to it? Hey, Kat, we had this deadline in place. We had to have the business development podcast cut down to 30 and 60 second reels.

We wanted our intros. We wanted our music. We needed to get them over to Kelly Kennedy to get them approved. And we had a deadline of this of July 1st. You were the, we sat in the meeting. We asked you, what is a fair deadline to complete this? You said this should probably take me about four weeks. We gave you five, always give them more rope to hang themselves.

Let them choose their own deadlines. Half the time I let my staff choose their own because it's a more cordial response. But when the deadline's missed, Hey, cat. Why did we miss the deadline? You know what, Brad, to be honest, my focus released last week. Things were getting thrown at me. It was my bad. I should have stayed on task.

I kind of got really excited about this animation we were doing, and I fell off from the deadline. Perfect. I'll work with that person for the next 30 years. I'll never, because that person's self aware. And they're just like, Hey, my focus went off. My focus goes off every week. Who cares?

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. I love that. I love that because we live in a weird, we live in a time where we're asked to be, you know, more supportive of people.

And I think I am an incredibly supportive boss. I do, I do my best to make sure that if people need time, if they got some personal stuff they need to deal with, that's fine. Like I, as long as the work gets done, I'm good. Yep. But what happens when the, when the excuse seems to be consistently Personal issues.

I struggle with what to do in that situation because it's like at the end of the day, I care about my employee. I care about their personal challenge, but I also care about my business and I care about what we're here to do, which is help other business. What do you do? Like, it's a tough, it's a tough scenario.

Brad Warren: Yeah, it's there's so much to that man. That's such a cool thought process because Are you enabling them is a good question. You know what I mean? Like if the employee says, Hey, I'm going to be on time. And if the point is pulling no shows every Monday, are you providing the alcoholic with booze by just allowing them to keep doing it?

You know what I mean? Like for all, you know, you might be hurting them. Like how many times do you hear in a relationship where it's like the husband and the wife and one person's not happy, but it's like the whole point of that is to move on from the relationship so that both people can be happy. That employee.

Who knows, it might be the wake up call they needed. I got numerous of those wake up calls. What if I'm not sitting here because someone was too protective of my feelings when I was calling in sick every Monday for six months when I was 20 years old. I got, I think I got fired from every job I had before the age of 25 and eventually I was like, okay.

I think this is a me thing. This might be me. This might be me because this is six companies, can't make it a year with all of them. Maybe they're not as good with me walking out at one o'clock on a Friday because I got a pub crawl to go to. They might not like that, but it's a good, it's you know what man, everybody deserves the chances like missed deadlines and this type of stuff.

I have rules in this organization. Honesty. If you say you're going to do something, do it. And if you're not going to do it, be honest about it. If you can't do something in two weeks, tell us it's four and we'll give you five. But then we will hold your feet to the fire, to that five every time. Because if an employee, I can tell you our, our digital designer, Cat is so amazing.

I love working for her. Shout out, shout out to Cat. She's so phenomenal. If she misses a deadline, she won't miss another deadline for six months. And it's because it's just that type of person. But if you miss a deadline and you're in that type of business and you miss a deadline every two weeks, chances are there, you know what I mean?

Like. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's usually a duck. It's a really, yeah, it's it's super basic to say, but that's what I've learned from hundreds of employees coming in and out from decks to windshields, to accounting, to marketing, to all the different industries we're involved in.

If it's consistent, it will happen consistently to keep going.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. So basically what you're kind of suggesting here is Be patient, but hire slow, fire fast. If, if you're consistently seeing a challenge, it's probably not going to go away on its own.

Brad Warren: No, cut the bullshit. Eventually cut the bullshit and trust your gut.

And if it's a you problem, own that. Do you know how many times I can tell you that I have let go numerous employees, Kelly, in the first two years of running this business? That was a hundred percent my fault. A hundred percent. I should have managed them better. They needed more supervision. They needed more deadlines.

Everybody's different. Some people work very well without supervision. Some people thrive on supervision. I can name a couple really big names that were big weights in our company in the first couple years that I let go. But it took me a while to realize that that was a me problem. And if I was a better leader, there's an overwhelming chance they probably would have performed better when you give people that can't operate with freedom too much freedom, then you're trying to expect a fish to climb a tree.

You have to, you know, you have to manage everybody to their area. Like again, I keep bringing up cat. She works phenomenally better with freedom. She's very creative. She has her headphones on. I talk, I bug cat one is little as humanly possible. But I have other employees that if I don't, it's almost like they want that collaboration.

You know what I mean? Like our manager who is a rockstar down at Boulevard Auto Glass, he loves the collaboration. He doesn't like being left alone to his own accord for two months at a time. He loves being part of the team.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that because actually, I worked in an office for 10 years, right? And then COVID hit and suddenly I was working from home and dude, I struggled.

for months to get my shit together. And now I work from home all the time. I am absolutely killer at it. I'm great. I did recognize that I had to change as a person. I had to change as like my mental attitude towards working at home had to change. And I'm not confident that had I not started my own organization and had to figure it out and frankly lock myself in a room, which is what I did for months when I was learning.

I'm not sure I would have been able to work from home effectively.

Brad Warren: It's great that you say that, man, because I'll take me and my wife, like, and we did this all together. Like, she does all this side, I do all this side, and we're very church and state. Like, we really don't speak as much as people think we do.

If anything, our assistants have to get us in the same room together most of the time, but my wife's the opposite of me. She's, she's a workhorse like she could just pick up her laptop at eight o'clock at night on the couch and just start smashing stuff out. I'm not like that. I need to be in my comfort zone.

I'm not going to work from home. Like if I'm not at the office, I'm probably not working. But I know that about myself now and we're just very different. I'm very emotional. So like the one thing that helped me the most in business of managing employees was to remove the emotion. Remove it. Don't have a reaction to anything.

Just base it off the numbers. Oh, I didn't hit my financial target this month. Okay. How come? Oh, I had a tummy ache. Oh, well, that's too bad. What are we going to do next month to hit it? Take the emotion out of it. Like, whoa, you got to be trying harder. And like, as soon as you start reacting, you're giving them the ability to react back.

And then it becomes about emotion and not About the performance where I was going with that is like my wife's completely different. She'll work from home. She likes working by herself. She just will sit there for 12 hours and crush it out on her laptop. I'm a collaborative creature. I like working in the boardroom with a team.

I like working with the entrepreneurs. I like working plugged into the projector with my assistant. I don't like working by myself. And that's it just will never be something that I enjoy. So I just don't try and fit a square peg into a round hole. Learn who you are. If you hate doing sales calls, don't do them.

Don't pretend that you're going to do them. Don't say you're going to do them. I know how to go to the gym. I don't go like, yeah, I agree. You know, I've had the experience in life to know that you shouldn't eat pizza four meals a week. I still do. I, it's great.

Kelly Kennedy: It's just amazing.

Brad Warren: Yeah. If you're not, if you're not going to do it, don't do it.

If you're like, Oh, I'll handle the social media because it'll save me 300 a month. Well, if two months go by and you're not doing it, it's not going to magically become an interest of yours. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Kelly Kennedy: I think we're all intrinsically great at things, and the more that we can do the things we're great at and outsource the things that we suck at, the better we're going to do, period, because who wants to do shit they don't like anyway?

Brad Warren: That's the whole point. Like, I think I posted that on my LinkedIn like six months ago, and the whole point, and this is not an old saying, the whole point of every good leader, every good entrepreneur, every good CEO, is to continuously be working at replacing themselves in the role they're in. I'm the marketing manager for the first two years.

Will you bring in a marketing manager? Yeah, he might not know everything like I do, but he's doing a better job. Because I'm watering it down. I'm doing 30 percent of the marketing, 30 percent of the operations, 20 percent of the financials. As soon as you hire a marketing manager, even if he's not as good as you, he's still doing a better job because that's his focus.

Kelly Kennedy: That's where he's putting 100 percent of his time.

Brad Warren: Yeah, who cares if you suck at shit? If you're not gonna do it. Be honest with yourself. You and your wife are going to go start a landscaping company. Are you going to go door to door? I'm not. You couldn't pay me enough money to go door to door. It's like my biggest fear in the world.

So either find someone to go door to door for you, or realize that that is not how you're going to gain your clientele.

Kelly Kennedy: This has been amazing. Yeah, so much of this conversation has really come down to that one thing, hasn't it? Be honest with yourself, whether it be your finances, whether it be your people, whether it be the job you're doing, whether it be the job you're not doing, be honest with yourself.

Brad Warren: Be honest with yourself and trust your gut. It plays into everything. If your accountant and bookkeeper are saying, Oh, 1, 000 a month for me to start tracking your P& Ls. It Trust your gut. That seems strange. Why would it cost that? If they're doing their job properly, it should just print like, come see us.

We'll tune them in. You know, if you have thoughts on employees that aren't doing a good job and they're keeping you up at night and know there's someone better out there, but you don't want to fire them because you'll be short staffed. If you're going through the proper hiring processes, there's always staff.

Trust your gut. Be honest. The person isn't doing what they need to be doing. Move on. You know, and there's just, yeah, there's so much to it and I just love working with people that, you know, like rusted nuts, mechanical man, he came in and I'm like, well, the easiest way to build your revenue quickly is going to be sales calls.

Let's make you up some beautiful marketing material. Let's go door to door. Let's go to every business that has trailer repair welding that might need your services. Hi, my name is Tim Smith from this and I'm in the area. Just want to drop this off. If you ever need anything from me, give me a call. No pressure.

Yep. And he looks at me and he's like, yeah, I would do that if I wasn't utterly terrified of it. Like, that's a perfect answer. That's right. That's a good answer. I like that. Because I'm not terrified of it. So how about we go do it together? And then afterwards, if you don't like it, let's get a salesman to do it.

You bet. You know, so anyways, we could ramble on for 400, Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy: But we are closing in on the end of our show. I would think so. And I want to spend some time, because I know we've talked a lot today about operational excellence. And I know there's a lot of companies, both in Alberta and around the world, who are thinking, Oh my gosh, man, like I, yeah, this isn't my world.

I'm really great at welding. I'm really great at fixing cars. I'm really great at, I don't know, accounting, but I'm really not great at running my day to day business operations. And that is where our Invisible Empire can come in and help.

Brad Warren: Yeah, it's kind of where we sunk in and found our niche is we let plumbers plum like we let deck builders build decks and do nine 99 out of 100 entrepreneurs that we talked to.

If you're a plumber, you are terrified and want nothing to do with marketing. The banks, fundraisers, like scaling, looking at real estate, writing, hiring ads, like it's just crazy how there's like, and cause I'm scared of plumbing, so I get it. You know, and so yeah, it's just taking everything off the business's plate that either a they're struggling with B.

They don't have the time to do C. They're scared of D. They're unknowledgeable and then all of this is not a mad like it's great that we created it and I don't like really think it's maybe that big of a deal, but. When you keep doing the same thing over and over again on the back end, the only variable is how well does the plumber plumb.

All the rest is the same. The SEO, the business, the bank accounts, the line of credits, the cash flow, the forecast, the sales, the marketing, the data tracking, the lead generation, all that's the same. The only difference is how good are you at building a deck. And if you're very good at building a deck and you're terrified of all that other stuff, great.

Come see us. We'll partner up and build a whole ton of decks.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing.

Brad Warren: Yeah. Amazing.

Kelly Kennedy: And Brad, this is like probably our second guest interview of 2025. And With that being what it is, we have a lot of entrepreneurs who maybe are taking the jump. Maybe 2025 is that year, man. And dude, you've started. You've started a few businesses.

You've got a couple under your belt. What piece of great advice might you give a new entrepreneur just looking to get his feet wet?

Brad Warren: Ah, cover all your angles. It's easier to do something you know, for sure. Not saying you can't do something you don't know, I do it every day, but I'm weird. Do something you know, make sure it's for you.

I think there's a lot of thought that needs to be put into it, man, because It's hard. No matter how easy you think it'll be, it will be hard. Right off the first three years for sure. And if you think, oh, no, I'll pull it off in one. You won't. I've said that 26 times over. It won't happen. It's tough for three years.

And you know what? We're going to be putting some startup stuff on our website. Yeah. When it launches, when the new one, like it's not new, it's just a revamp, but we're going to have one of the templates is going to be downloadable for free to entrepreneurs is going to be a startup checklist of everything.

And it's what we use every time we green light a new business, I sit in the boardroom and I check boxes and the team goes to work and in two weeks, the business is green lit. So we partner on startups because we save people that six month of hassle and all the money it costs to do all that. But there is things you should consider and not all of them are on there.

But yeah, you could also, once we have that up, go check out that startup checklist. There needs to be more of that on the internet. Like when you search entrepreneurship on the internet, you get ATB, you get BDC, you don't get, you don't get as much help as you actually should.

Kelly Kennedy: No, and there's, there's not a lot of guideline and I'll be honest, like I went to business school.

They're like, you know, they teach you the basics, but running a business is completely different than school.

Brad Warren: Oh man, like, and like, all I'll say is I, I think I have grade 10 science and I think I have grade 11 social studies. And that's it. Like, I was done school at the end of grade 10, beginning of grade 11, and I went for like half a semester, and I have a calculator on my phone, I have Google, I have my team, I think school is very important, but I think school Business school is a smidge pointless at times because...

Kelly Kennedy: I think they can't teach you how hard it is.

Yeah, no, they can't. And they can't teach you the mental resilience that is required. Yeah. And there's no two ways about it. You're going to have sleepless nights. There's going to be nights you wake up at two in the morning and look at the room and be like, why did I choose this? But you're going to have just as many days where you wake up and you're excited to go to work and you're excited that it's your business and not somebody else's that will change your world.

Brad Warren: And again, it comes down to being honest with yourself. If you're going to go start a plumbing company because you've been plumbing for 20 years, if you hate plumbing, you'll hate it equally working for yourself. It won't change. You might even hate it more. You might even hate it more. Like if your passion in life is to get into I don't know, aerobics and you're a journeyman plumber, you'd be much better off starting an aerobics business because at least you don't know that and you might fail at that, but your passion towards it, you'll be silly enough to bang your head against the wall for years and then one day you'll wake up and it just works.

Entrepreneurship is pretty much how much risk can you stomach?

Kelly Kennedy: How much risk can you stomach and what is your passion? Yeah. And try to make sure that Even if the risk is high, then at least the passion is equally high.

Brad Warren: 100 percent because then it makes it easier to power through the bad times, right?

When you're ignoring the bank account for a year, you better damn well love aerobics.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Brad Warren: You know? Agreed. So, I mean, new entrepreneurs, the biggest piece of advice I would have is get into it. It's awesome. The freedom is awesome. And it's nice that it all falls back on you.

Kelly Kennedy: And I would argue that people say that they don't want to take the risk because it's not safe, but I would argue that your employment is equally not safe.

Brad Warren: And you can always go back. That's right. That's the biggest thing, man. It's like, if you're working at Subway and you want to go start your own sandwich shop, well, you can go back to work at Subway. It's not like your job's gone. Like you can always go back and do it. Why not try? But be planned, know your numbers.

If you're walking into the, I'll close the show out like this, just, you know, I take, I take up a lot of air in the room, but if you're getting a startup business going and you're going to start your business January 1st, and you don't know how much money that business will win or will make you or lose in a calendar year from then do not start it.

You have to know that. And if you don't know how to do that, come see us, go see somebody, but you have to be able to forecast if in your first year, you're going to lose 46, 000, it is dramatically easier to plan for that than think you're going to make 13 and lose 46 because you're guessing there's a way to research it.

There's a way to forecast it. And there's a way to know exactly how much money you're going to make within a somewhat guess. Don't get into it. If you don't know where you're going to be in a year. Amazing. Then you just follow the numbers, follow the numbers. Yeah. At all points in time, follow the numbers.

It's so much easier to lose 50 grand in a year, man. When you know what's going to happen. Sure. Versus being blindsided by it, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Pretty, pretty. It hurts when you're not expecting it. A hundred percent.

Brad Warren: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Until next time, dude, this has been amazing. Thank you for coming on again. 70 episodes later, that's pretty grand.

Oh dude. Congratulations, man. I'm super happy for you. You guys are killing it. Thanks, dude. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you. And like I said, if there's anything we can ever do to help you, let me know. I will have obviously all the links to your website. And if you give me a heads up, there's anything else you went on here, we'll get it on there.

But until next time, this has been Episode 202 of the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020 his passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.