Discover the blueprint for scaling smart in your small business with Ryan Belcher, CEO of Spendwise, as he shares invaluable insights. Learn how Ryan, a former auditor turned entrepreneur, revolutionized spend management for small businesses. Delve into the benefits of niche market targeting, product simplification, and lean startup strategies.
Join me, a fellow small business owner, as I share firsthand tales and tips. We explore the dangers of premature expansion and stagnant offerings. Together, Ryan and I emphasize the importance of financial literacy and operational oversight, including marketing ROI and quarterly financial reviews.
Our discussion culminates in a practical roadmap for navigating business spending management during growth. Discover which industries benefit most from spend management tools and the critical role of purchase orders and inventory management. Visit businessownershipsimplified.com for a complimentary consultation and shape your business's future one financial decision at a time.
The episode crescendos with a practical roadmap for maneuvering the twists and turns of business spending management as your company scales. I outline specific industries that reap the most benefits from spend management tools and explain the pivotal role of purchase orders and inventory management in curbing excess and fostering efficiency.
Join us again for the next episode of Small Business Pivots, where we continue this journey, one pivot at a time.
Ryan Belcher: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryancbelcher/ Website - https://www.spendwise.com/
Discover the blueprint for scaling smart in your small business with Ryan Belcher, CEO of Spendwise, as he shares invaluable insights. Learn how Ryan, a former auditor turned entrepreneur, revolutionized spend management for small businesses. Delve into the benefits of niche market targeting, product simplification, and lean startup strategies.
Join me, a fellow small business owner, as I share firsthand tales and tips. We explore the dangers of premature expansion and stagnant offerings. Together, Ryan and I emphasize the importance of financial literacy and operational oversight, including marketing ROI and quarterly financial reviews.
Our discussion culminates in a practical roadmap for navigating business spending management during growth. Discover which industries benefit most from spend management tools and the critical role of purchase orders and inventory management. Visit businessownershipsimplified.com for a complimentary consultation and shape your business's future one financial decision at a time.
The episode crescendos with a practical roadmap for maneuvering the twists and turns of business spending management as your company scales. I outline specific industries that reap the most benefits from spend management tools and explain the pivotal role of purchase orders and inventory management in curbing excess and fostering efficiency.
Join us again for the next episode of Small Business Pivots, where we continue this journey, one pivot at a time.
Ryan Belcher: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryancbelcher/ Website - https://www.spendwise.com/
If you're selling to consumers maybe every consumer. But I would start with, try to find a niche to start off with and really try to go deep there and sort of test that out. And that you know, I think that's probably some things that I learned early on as well. We kept adding some different things to the product and trying to sell it in different ways, and I think over time learned that. Oh, you know, let's just try to be a little bit more narrow with what we're offering and just sort of crystal clear and be the best at what we're doing, rather than try to be you know, all things to all people.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, the small business coach and founder of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. We do that with professional business coaching, business loans and much, much more. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and make sure to hang around to the end of this episode for my recap and coaches corner, where I share applicable action steps that will help you grow your business.
Speaker 2:
Our guest today is Ryan Belcher. Ryan is the founder and CEO of SpendWise, a business spend management software company with over 500 customers managing billions of dollars in spending through its system. Ryan also has a consulting practice that specializes in providing executive financial services to businesses. Previously, ryan was the corporate controller at Fox Hollow Technologies, a publicly traded medical device company, and worked for Pricewaterhouse Cooper's LLP, an accounting and management consulting firm in the insurance and business advisory practice. Ryan holds a BA degree in accounting from the University of Utah. Let's get to Ryan now to hear his entrepreneurship insights that can help you take your business to the next level. All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots podcast. We have another special guest from around the world. Introduce yourself to us, as I know you can say your name better than I can.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, great to be with you, michael. My name is Ryan Belcher. I'm the founder and CEO of SpendWise. We are a spend management software company, have a few hundred clients around the world, mostly here in the US. We help businesses manage their spending, help them automate processes like purchasing and receiving and procurement and sort of everything involved in that procure-to-pay process.
Speaker 2:
Well, I've had this podcast recording circled because, as a business coach, I know that financials are the heartbeat of any company and you help businesses get through that. So I'm really anxious to hear what you have to share with your experience and your business and things like that. But first, who are you? Where'd you come from? Where are you at?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'll give you a little bit of background on me. So I started in auditing. So I joined PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor out of college and spent a few years there and worked with some great businesses here in the Bay Area. So this was in the late 90s when the dot-com boom was sort of raging and it was really exciting out here. And, yeah, I worked with a lot of different startup companies and then from there, one of the clients that I worked with was a company called Fox Hollow Technologies that was in the medical device space and so had the opportunity to join them just before receiving FDA approval. Yeah, it was an exciting time there. We were able to get FDA approval and quickly grow and spent five years with Fox Hollow. We went through an IPO and in the end we were doing, I think, a couple hundred million dollars in revenue annually and had over 500 employees.
Speaker 1:
So I was there for five years and then after that did a little bit of consulting and throughout all of my experience just sort of was frustrated with some of the tools that were out there or weren't out there for managing sort of this process of hey, somebody needs to buy goods or services that needs to sort of go through an authorization process. You want to make sure that resources of the company are being spent properly, and so how do we communicate that to the right people and make sure that whatever goods or services we've ordered are received and that we're billed properly for that? And so what I found whether it was with the companies that I audited when I was at Price Waterhouse Coopers, or as the controller at Fox Hollow, or even as a consultant afterwards these processes were very manual. I think there were some good tools out there for larger organizations, but when you're a small to mid-sized company, you don't want to be spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on tools to help you manage your spending.
Speaker 1:
You want to be putting that money into developing your product or your sales and marketing, and so what I wanted to do was to create a tool that was affordable, easy to use, fill in that gap, to help small to mid-sized businesses manage these processes efficiently, so that they could manage their dollars while, at the same time, not be spending a ton of money or experiencing a lot of complication with tools that were beyond what they really needed. And so that was the reason why I started Spendwise started it in 2012 as a side project, so I was doing some consulting as well and bootstrapped the company. I have just been slowly been building it up and so, yeah, it's been a journey and fortunately, we were able to get to profitability and continue to grow. You know sort of with profitability and, yeah, just as a healthy organization.
Speaker 2:
I just had coffee with a wantrepreneur, as we call them. Right, they feel they may not be qualified, they had kind of an upbringing that wasn't healthy and I had to give them a little boost of encouragement. Did you have any mindset backlogs of anything that happened, I mean, or did you grow up in a wealthy family, an entrepreneur family? I mean, what advice would you give this person Because I know she's not the only one- yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:
Well, I did, yeah, benefit from growing up in a family where my dad was always involved in small businesses small to mid-sized businesses, starting and growing those businesses, so I saw that firsthand. It's a bumpy road. I would say that, you know, I think for a lot of people going out and getting a regular job out of college and kind of working up through the ranks, I think that's, you know, that there's some comfort there. You're not going to experience nearly as many bumps. But yeah, at the same time there's a lot of satisfaction that comes with creating something on your own and growing that, and so there's kind of a balance there. There's definitely a lot of sacrifice that comes with starting your own business.
Speaker 1:
I did, for better or worse, I kind of tried to find a little bit of middle ground there by doing the consulting while I was growing the business. So I had already spent quite a few years in, you know, sort of a profession that I knew I could rely on for sort of steady income and had some good contacts, and so I was able to kind of balance it out a little bit. One thing I would say is I think there probably is some natural ability or background. That is helpful, but I think maybe one of the things that I've learned is I think it's like anything else, it takes practice.
Speaker 1:
So if you look at a lot of the great entrepreneurs out there, it's like wow, they were starting businesses when they were in their early teens and so by the time they're in their early 20s, they've got maybe 10 years of experience. And you look at that's when they're on your radar and you're like, oh wow, it's just kind of a natural thing or whatever. And I've definitely discovered over time that, oh no, actually you learn. There's a lot of learning that happens. Nobody's sort of yeah, you can have some instincts and there's some gifts there, but I don't know if there's true-born entrepreneur without going through those experiences, and so I don't know if that's helpful. What I would say is, yeah, if you're passionate about something, go for it, while at the same time, recognize the fact that it's gonna be a little bit bumpy and it's gonna take a while to learn the lessons that you need in order to be successful.
Speaker 2:
It's very helpful just hearing it from someone else, that's you know whether it's applicable to each individual that's listening. More than that, it just gives them a voice of hope that, hey, we all had to learn to walk right when we were babies, so we all have to learn to be an entrepreneur. Some people walk faster, sooner or later than others, but it's still a learning process, and so you pretty much nailed it on the head. I know from my experience of being an entrepreneur for well over two decades that it's I'm still learning and I'm a business coach. So you know, even business coaches don't know everything, and if they say they do, find another coach.
Speaker 1:
Right, right, yeah, and you see, mistakes made by you know, sometimes big mistakes made by people who've been out there for a long time. One thing that I would add, sort of coming back to this idea of you know, sort of for better or worse, I was kind of doing some consulting and trying to get the business up and running. I do think that for a lot of people that would be the best path, you know, rather than sort of say, walk into your boss and say, hey, I'm done, and go, and you know, go into the garage and try to make the prototypes and, you know, create that things work out a lot of times. There's a lot you can do in the beginning and I wish I would have done more to sort of make sure, understand the market and those types of things and maybe create a prototype. I do think that, yeah, at some point, you know you're going to limit what you're able to do if you don't sort of make a you know a plunge at some point to kind of just say, hey, I just got to commit and make it happen.
Speaker 1:
But I think there's, yeah, a period there where you can kind of not take unnecessary risks. That's sort of my you know what I try to do is say, hey, you know what there are. You got to get in your car and drive and there's some risks on the freeway. But you know it's not that much effort to put on your seatbelt type thing. So you know that's an unnecessary risk to drive on the freeway with your seatbelt off. It's super simple to put it on. Why not do that? But at the end of the day, if you just sit home and you know hope that whatever you know destination is going to arrive to you, it's never going to happen.
Speaker 2:
I love that analogy with the car Because that is something. As the world turns, we continue to learn as drivers something new every day. For instance, my son took a driver's or not like the driver's ad, you know and so one of the questions the instructor asked and I thought this was perfect for what we're talking about he said what does it mean if an approaching car has their left turn signal on and everybody's like, oh, they're going to turn left, or I better slow down? He said absolutely nothing, not these days. So buckle up, be ready to slam right, to go past the inner. You know, do whatever you need to do, but today that signal means nothing.
Speaker 2:
Neither does a red light.
Speaker 1:
No, and those are things we love. I love that. Yeah, sad but true, sad but true. You got to be ready for everything.
Speaker 2:
So you're consulting Was that in the financial sector?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely. So that was with the startup companies again, mostly in the medical device space. So I made some really great contacts when I was at Fox Hollow over the course of five years as a controller, and so those people went on and you know, here in the Bay Area obviously there's a lot of startup companies. So they went on to join other startup companies who may have needed help with their finance and accounting and administrative tasks. So, yeah, just sort of consulting with them, and that ebbs and flows as well. I mean, out here, you know, you're raising money, you're spending money and you're getting approvals and you're trying to test markets and so, yeah, it's not sort of you know, 100-year-old businesses where you kind of know, ok, yeah, here's how things are going to go this year. It's just kind of, yeah, but it's been a really great experience it's. You know, I love being sort of in this space where you can be around people who are innovative and creating new products and sort of trying to get these businesses up and running.
Speaker 2:
You mentioned earlier that you wish you'd have done some things differently, like maybe exploring your target market, things like that. Was there anything specific that you would offer to business owners that are looking to start a business or have just started one and they still don't know what they're doing?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think, try to get your idea out there and even just start with your friends. So I think some people I know I've fallen into this where it's like, oh, I've got this great idea and you know, yeah, I got to be a little bit secretive about it, someone might steal my idea or something like that. I would definitely throw that out the window. Execution is really where the challenge is. So, yeah, it's easy to have an idea that the hard part is the execution and so I wouldn't worry about that and I would talk about, you know, talk to as many people as you know, sort of in your circle of friends or professional circles, and have them try to, yeah, poke holes in the idea and see sort of what the weak spots are and sort of, over time, hopefully, yeah, if it's not a great idea, you have sort of saved yourself some trouble there. Yeah, if it is, then hopefully that's reinforced. I mean, you do ultimately, you know there's been, yeah, you know, a lot of successful companies where I'm sure would not have passed that test and so ultimately you got to kind of, you know, feel it in your heart and have some passion for it and but at least you sort of expose yourself to that criticism or the you know, maybe seeing things that you otherwise wouldn't have seen. And then I would say after that, one thing that's super critical as well is, stay very focused and try to be as narrow as possible. To start out, I think it's great to have ideas that could be, you know, really big ideas that could you know apply to if you're selling to businesses, that could be used by any business, or if you're selling to consumers maybe every consumer but I would start with, try to find a niche to start off with and really try to go deep there and sort of test that out. And that you know, I think that's probably some things that I learned early on as well. We kept adding some different. If you're selling to consumers maybe every consumer but I would start with, try to find a niche to start off with and really try to go deep there and sort of test that out. And that you know, I think that's probably some things that I learned early on as well. We kept adding some different things to the product and trying to sell it in different ways, and I think over time learned that. Oh, you know, let's just try to be a little bit more narrow with what we're offering and just sort of crystal clear and be the best at what we're doing, rather than try to be you know all things to all people, things to the product and trying to sell it in different ways.
Speaker 1:
And I think over time learned that, oh, you know, let's just try to be a little bit more narrow with what we're offering and just sort of crystal clear and be the best at what we're doing, rather than try to be you know all things to all people. And that can be tough because you're getting feedback from customers and you want to. It's critical that you take that feedback and, you know, build that into the product. But as well, you know, you have to sort of filter out maybe all right, that's, you know, is that sort of part of our path here. And you rely on customers a lot early on, of course, and you know they're sort of the lifeblood of the company. So it's hard to make those judgments. But yeah, I would get some people who can help you with making those decisions and, yeah, stay as focused as possible.
Speaker 2:
That's important advice for any small business owner, because most of us don't have those resources for an honest opinion, and I always share with business owners that what your business starts, how it starts, is not what it looks like in two, five, ten years. If it does, you're not going to be in business very long. You know what I mean. You have to evolve, you have to morph, you have to keep trying things, because somebody's going to leapfrog you if you don't and they're going to figure out your secret sauce. So you always got to keep adding another spice or something. So after you started your business, the purpose of the show is small business pivots. So pivots that were made. Some people call them iterations, but I like to call them pivots. What were some that you experienced that really changed the trajectory of your business?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So I would say, early on, the way that we developed the software was, yeah, more complicated than it needed to be. So I would you know, that would be another piece of advice. I would tell people, and I heard it all the time it was like, oh good, minimally viable product, minimally viable product, and you don't, I Think we don't appreciate sort of how simple things can be. So I think we sort of got ahead of ourselves a little bit. There was a little too much complication in the product and in my mind and it made it Harder to get those really early adopters and so kind of peeled things back. And so, yeah, our earliest customers, we just offered them a purchase order template. So, instead of sort of this spend management system, it's like, oh, you need to create a purchase order, okay, here's, you know, instead of using Excel, go ahead and use our product and you can create it, store it. And it was very simple that way. And so that was after we had kind of gotten ahead of ourselves with something that was beyond that and then from there we were able to sort of Slowly make it, you know, add more functionality and features, and then as we were doing that, we were able to open ourselves up to, yeah, larger opportunities and and customers who needed more Complicated systems, but the sales cycles were a little bit longer With them. But by then we're getting feedback from the earlier doctors on the more simplified version I would say.
Speaker 1:
Then, over time we've had to evolve and say, well, look, it's hard to make. You know, really small businesses have a very limited budget, and so we need to kind of then pivot back to where we started in some ways and say, okay, in order for us to continue to grow, we need to have more and more functionality and we need to appeal to businesses and other organizations that have a larger budget. And so along the way, we did different things like, okay, let's, you know, we've got these really small businesses, maybe we can charge them more if we allow them to create invoices in our system, so invoices to build their customers, which is sort of the other. You know we should have stayed focused on spend management, but it's hard not to when your customer base is small and you're trying to figure out how to Get them to pay more.
Speaker 1:
And so those were sort of the different twists and turns, and so I would say, yeah, there've been small pivots all along the way, but I would say the more significant ones have been sort of this hey, do we try to make it as simple as possible and and go for smaller businesses and try to, you know, have more offerings, or should we be very focused and go for larger customers night, I would say, yeah, my advice about staying very focused is from that experience. I think we probably should have Moved back to focusing on our core competency and trying to get larger and larger customers, should have done that probably sooner. But it's kind of tough when you have your early adopters and you're trying to make the most of those relationships as well.
Speaker 2:
Stay focused but be adaptable. It's kind of what you're saying hey, you know what?
Speaker 1:
exactly all those words. Yeah you've summarized. Yeah, crystal clear.
Speaker 2:
You're listening to small business pivots, a podcast created exclusively for small business owners. This podcast is sponsored by boss, where business ownership is simplified for success. Boss helps business owners create a business that runs without them, with business coaching, business loans, courses, events, additional resources and much more. Go to business ownership Simplifiedcom to learn why small business success starts with boss. If you're enjoying the podcast and want to stay up to date with all of our latest episodes, make sure to hit that subscribe button and if you're loving what you hear, give us a thumbs up or leave a positive review. Your support means the world to us and it helps others discover the show too. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to hit subscribe and like now, let's get back to our guests.
Speaker 2:
So your Background, your consulting side, is financial and I'm a big proponent of knowing your numbers. Yes, what advice can you give to small business owners? Because that is kind of the Unsexy side of owning a business. Most owners, as you and I know, they're really good at their craft. They could be a developer, they could be a Plumber, they could be, you know, whatever they are, they're really good at that. But and then they can get along with sales and marketing, and because that's kind of fun, but when it comes to numbers, yeah. So yeah, what can share us some, some knowledge in that area?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So I think it's always gonna be helpful. If you have some basic understanding of accounting, you can balance your own personal checkbook and hopefully take those skills. I guess people don't balance their checkbooks anymore. That's probably dated, you know. You just you're sort of plugged into the software and or your bank, but, yeah, sort of understand those concepts at a basic level.
Speaker 1:
I think it's sort of the language of business in a lot of ways and I think that can be very helpful a lot of times, and I learned this early. So one of the things that you know, when I first started the business, it was like oh, I'm gonna learn how to code, you know, I'm gonna, you know, build this software and you know you buy the books and and it's like man, this is gonna take a while To figure this out. And so what I decided is and this was part of why I, you know, was doing consulting along the way I had spent years in finance and accounting and had, you know, a lot of that. There was value there that people were willing to pay for, and so, rather than me learning how to code, I thought, okay, hey, if I can go Spend five hours doing accounting and finance and someone's gonna pay me Market value for that, then I can take those dollars and pay them to somebody who already knows how to develop software and is really good at it and so, yeah, it may make sense for someone who's starting out. You know, obviously you don't want to be spending a lot of money on accounting stuff, but maybe you know there's a bookkeeper or a friend or a family member who would be interested and kind of just helping you out and, you know, jumping in and taking care of some of the basics there.
Speaker 1:
Now, in my mind, numbers go beyond just sort of Balancing the checkbook and I think it's important you know, especially early on, to understand the value of different numbers. So one of the things that you know for me early on it was like oh, wow, we're getting a lot of clicks, we're getting a lot of conversions and sort of going back to the journey of spend wise and Sort of those early customers. We were figuring out ways to get conversions Really inexpensively and and getting people to sign up and use some of the basic features of the system. And you get excited about that and then over time it's like, oh, these guys are not actually we have had a free version and it's like, oh, they're not actually Becoming paying customers or even if they are, they're churning over, you know, fairly quickly, or they're not expanding, and so, yeah it's.
Speaker 1:
It was hard to sort of Appreciate the fact that, hey, you've got to really be on top of those numbers. Don't get to an amored with a certain metric. It's like, oh, we're, you know, our conversion rates really high. It's like, well, okay, and it takes time, and so you're not going to know that, oh, these customers are going to Cancel in the, you know, two years from now, and so that's not as valuable as these other customers that converted a much lower rate but are going to be paying a lot more for a lot longer period of time.
Speaker 1:
And so, yeah, even beyond just sort of the basic financial stuff, really looking at those, what are you putting into sales and marketing and what is the return on investment? That, in my mind, is more important than, hopefully, if you run out of cash in your bank account, then you're done. So that is critical to sort of really understand that and be on top of that. But yeah, I would say, beyond that, really understanding, ok, we're putting this dollars into this effort. What is the return on investment and that's a little bit tougher. So I don't know, I would definitely, if that's not your area of expertise, see if you can find resources that are maybe help you out as a friend or a family member, or maybe they just want to be, they enjoy being involved in business, so it's kind of a side thing that they're happy to help out with. I don't know, maybe give them some shares in the company. Whatever you need to do to kind of keep the burn under control.
Speaker 2:
I love what you said about the simplicity, but you also said something else just now. It takes time and I know, with Amazon being able to deliver things same day, we're all in a rush to get things done and make changes and pivots and all that. But you mentioned something that's critical that it's not checking the boxes, it's watching your numbers and over a period of time. Do you have a suggestion of? Is it? I mean, I have my opinion, but what have you seen? Monthly, weekly, quarterly, what's kind of a good time frame for that?
Speaker 1:
It probably. Yeah, maybe it depends on the number. I mean, I would definitely be yeah, I don't know Quarterly I like a lot, just because you have some sort of bumps throughout the course of the quarter. You have some ups and downs. You don't want a false positive or a false negative from taking too short of a time period. So we definitely at least for my business, we put a lot of emphasis on quarterly results and then, of course, annual, monthly. I mean you definitely want to be on top of it, or even really daily, to sort of see what's going on.
Speaker 1:
Certain numbers we look at daily, sort of you know how much are we spending on these different marketing campaigns and make sure that something hasn't changed, that we're just sort of bleeding money. I mean, things can happen. You know, if you're landing page, something happens to where it's not working correctly. You don't want to sort of wait months in order to find out. Oh, you know what that landing page. You know the link to sign up for a demo doesn't work anymore, and so you know that was not. Yeah, we weren't spending any money there. And so, yeah, we're staying on top of certain numbers every single day. But yeah, as far as like just big picture type stuff.
Speaker 1:
Certainly quarterly is where it looks at you know, it's more trends looking at it and saying, ok, yeah, this. You know why did we not do as well this quarter? And so because I've seen that monthly where it's like, ok, we had it down month, but then it's made up for the next month. Sometimes the sales cycles ebb and flow and then there's seasonality as well, and so you learn that over time. And, yeah, try not to be too hasty with your judgment, while at the same time make sure you're always staying on top of things.
Speaker 2:
Without giving the secret sauce for your competitors. I know I just had a conversation with someone and a lot of people, or small businesses especially, are not getting results from their online campaigns, their digital campaigns. And, like I said, without sharing your secret sauce, are there any tips that you could give someone that you have found that actually works in the marketing? Because everybody says content well, everybody's tried that. And everybody says post daily well, they've tried. You know. Is there any guidance you can give that you found?
Speaker 1:
That's a really great question. Yeah, yeah, where do you start? And I would say it's a constant. Things are continually changing. So early on we started with it was just Google ads and that's how we got our earliest customers, so bidding on certain keywords and trying to narrow that down. So that's one thing you learn early on as well. These businesses, they're trying to make money.
Speaker 1:
And so Google set all the defaults so that you're paying as much money as possible for At least that's what it felt like. And so it's like, and that's why you want to be on top of the numbers every day, especially early on, where it's like OK, hey, this ad it's not, we're spending money, it's not, we're not getting conversions, or we're getting conversions that are not the type of conversions that we want. So that works for a while. And then it seemed like they continue to change the algorithm and you're having to stay on top of that, and so, as those things were changing, we moved to some putting more emphasis on websites where they listed out business software and they had sort of ratings and things like that, and so they have similar business models. So it was paper click or paper lead, and so we've been really focused on those over the years, and I do think it's really important to develop trust with your customers and hopefully they're spreading the word of mouth. I think has really been super valuable for us over the last couple of years, and so we've been more focused on those niche again, kind of getting back to the focus, those types of websites we have recently. I've noticed that those aren't performing as well either, and it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly why. Are they paying for ads that are going to cause people to come in who aren't really looking for our software? And we're just paying per click, so you sort of see the conversions going down. It's like, boy, we didn't change anything.
Speaker 1:
And so I would say, be very aware of all the different avenues out there and recognize the fact that it's always changing and, to your point, everyone's trying to do the same thing. So how do you separate yourself? I think that's an ongoing struggle. You know, just have to realize that everyone's kind of trying to do the same thing. I don't think there's.
Speaker 1:
I do think you read these websites where it's like oh, there's the silver bullet right there, we just need to do this kind, we need to post every day, or we need to do this or that or the other. I don't think there are any silver bullets out there. As soon as there is a silver bullet, everyone's hopped on it and it, you know, it's kind of you're not differentiated. So I think it is kind of just a grind. You have to be doing a little bit of everything and it's going to change over time, you're? You know, we were emphasized on Google ads. We're looking at returning to Google ads, but we haven't been on Google ads for quite a while now, as we've experienced a lot more success on these niche platforms, but we're starting to see them not perform as well, and so, yeah, we just got to keep doing everything we've done to the best of our ability and try, try new things all the time as well.
Speaker 2:
In order to be of service and a voice of hope for business owners, we have to be a little bit vulnerable and I'm going to share a little bit. I'm going to piggyback on what you talked about, because I feel like we have fantastic people managing our marketing and things, and, to piggyback what you're talking about a lot of small business owners get frustrated right, because we're doing everything everybody tells us and it's not working. And even for us, our domain authority on one of our websites just went down. Why that's disturbing is because that's the one we've been focused on the most in the last two to three months.
Speaker 2:
It's like what it reminds me of what was it? Vegas vacation where the his girl got kicked in the head and then kicked back in the head and she can see straight now, or something.
Speaker 1:
Right, right, right, or Christmas vacation, whatever it was. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:
And that's what digital marketing is. It's like, okay, well, don't give up. Obviously, we have no clue yet, we'll figure it out, but those are the kind of things, the struggles, that all small business owners need to hear that all of us are going through that same challenge. It's not checking the boxes and you're done. It's like every day is a new day. So I thank you for sharing that information, because that's so important to know. I know when I started my first business one of the first things or one of the things I share with people and they say what's the one thing you would do differently on your first business startup and I'd say hire a bookkeeper, like first thing, don't even try to do it yourself.
Speaker 2:
You're in the financial space. What is one thing that you would specifically have done different outside of your knowing your target market better? Is there anything like that? That you would have gone? I would have hired this first, or put more money into this or that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I would say yeah, I don't know if there's one single thing I mean, it's definitely yeah, do your research upfront, stay focused. You know, that's definitely something that I think, yeah, made things harder for us. Maybe what I would say is, yeah, as I've mentioned, I bootstrapped it from the beginning. I do look back and think, oh, maybe, and we're looking into potentially raising money to try to accelerate things. So, yeah, I think and I did some of that early on but, yeah, look for resources, Try to move as quickly as you can, and that takes resources. So maybe I would have put more effort into trying to raise money early on.
Speaker 1:
A lot of times, that's family and friends, though. So, you know, I think I had the ability to sort of take care of that initial funding, in part because I was consulting. But, yeah, maybe trying to accelerate quicker and we'll be looking at opportunities to do that this year. But, you know, for any business, it's really I would probably go back to yeah, really doing as much diligence in the beginning as you can. Yeah, focus on what you do best, try to stay, you know, sort of as niche as possible early on, especially that's great advice, and you also mentioned something else about being focused.
Speaker 2:
Well, to be focused, you have to have a plan right. So what are some tips you could give? Because I know a lot of business owners they can't even think past today or they can't think past Friday because they've got payroll coming up. It's like how can I even think about five years from now? I can't even make it through Friday. Any tips on how to prepare a plan? I mean not the full plan, but just maybe some things that they can't stay focused on.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, I definitely you know sort of this idea of trying to do as much research about the market or the product. There's only so much you can do without experiencing it and I definitely wouldn't go overboard. You know sort of yeah, kind of plan out but I wouldn't go overboard. You know, I've seen. You know, maybe if you come from like a business school background or something like that it's like oh, I've got.
Speaker 1:
I need to put together my business plan and I've seen these documents that are like 50 pages long. You know I have time, you know, and your things are going to be changing so quickly. So I don't know. I would have my plan. I try to get it down to bullet points on one or two pages and then just sort of modify it as you go.
Speaker 1:
But you do want to be thinking yeah out, you know, as best as you can with that. There's a balance there, because I think you could just spend all day planning and never get in it. You know, never spend any time developing a product and you could overdo it. So you do have to, you know, kind of jump in at the same time. So I don't know there's a balance there. But I guess my advice was definitely don't go down the path of trying to put together a 50 page, you know, business plan. Formalize. That, you know, would get you an A in business school but isn't going to work in the real world and it's going to be changing all the time and it's just not going to be worth your time to sort of continually manage that.
Speaker 2:
I'm sure I'll get some debate on this, but we had a prospect called actually yesterday wanting us to help him execute his business plan. And he was talking a true business plan, and I said I'll talk. I'll talk to him Because I told him exactly what you said. If you're starting a business or you've already started you 50 page business plan, you're wasting your time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you go sell for you know, exactly, exactly, put some bullets down and go sell because, yeah, it's not, that's not going to work. 20 years ago maybe.
Speaker 2:
I don't see then having the time to do it, but these days at unless you're, you know, raising capital or a huge bank loan or something like that, that's completely different. But for startups, yeah, all right. So thank you, that's a great advice right there. That'll save somebody a lot of time, because those take a lot of time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and if you do need to, you know, prepare something that you can use to speak to other people. You know an executive summary and a slide deck, a modest slide deck, you know, I would think would be sort of hopefully, would you know, accomplish what you need.
Speaker 2:
Talking about your company real quick. How do you best serve a client through your company, and what size of kind? You kind of mentioned shuffling back and pivoting back and forth. How can you best help people?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so I think for us, you know there is. If you're a really small business you're, you know one or two people you really don't need our software. You're probably using credit cards and maybe even your own bank account. You know writing checks and buying whatever goods or services you need.
Speaker 1:
So I think there is, you know, I would certainly say you know 10 or more employees.
Speaker 1:
Then it starts to get a little bit difficult. It's like, oh, you know, let's make sure we're not buying things that somebody else bought or that you know we're prioritizing, we've got a certain amount of money that you know we can spend, and sort of what. I would say, yeah, at a certain point you kind of need to organize your efforts when it comes to spending to make sure you know you're making the most of your resources. And so I would say, yeah, 10. And then the bigger you get, the harder it is to keep those resources organized without proper tools. And so and we, you know companies go through the process. It's like, well, we don't, we didn't need anything when we were two people. Now we're kind of, you know, have grown to 10 people or whatever it is. Now we're using spreadsheets and emails to kind of communicate this. But then it's kind of hard to find and keep track of things. And so, hopefully, there's, you know, someone sort of realizes, gee, you know, there's got to be a better way. And you know, we're trying, we're doing our best, trying to get the word out that there is a better way. And so, yeah, from there we can automate those processes so that you know, hey, what is, you know, our new engineer spending? Are we, you know? Is that getting approved properly? Are we receiving it? How are our vendors performing?
Speaker 1:
The larger you get, the more important it becomes. It is maybe more important for some businesses rather than others. So if you're operating a consulting firm and it's you've just got your employees and they're charging by the hour and they have, you know, maybe they have the expense reports or something like that, our system could help with that. But, quite honestly, there's probably systems out there that are more designed for expense reports that would be better to use. We want to, at some point, be able to offer a complete spend management solution and be able to offer tools that can compete as well. But, yeah, certain other businesses like going back to my background Medical devices.
Speaker 1:
You've got an engineer, you're trying to get the next prototype out the door. You need to buy parts for that. Well, if you're a junior engineer, if you're the VP or Director of Engineering, you don't want all your junior engineers just buying whatever they feel like is needed. Maybe those materials are sort of we actually have them. They're sort of in the back store room or whatever. And so, yeah, I would say, businesses that are buying materials, I would say where we've seen a lot of success, interestingly enough in the hospitality industry, which I didn't have any background in. So hotels, or even I would say even not just hospitality, but maybe apartment buildings and things like that, well, they're trying to, they've got to buy materials for repairs, or at hotels, you're trying to keep the room stocked and make sure that you've got all your supplies for that. So I would say, yeah, medical device, biotechnology, both of those are buying a lot of materials and developing their product.
Speaker 2:
Hotels, for those reasons that I mentioned nonprofits.
Speaker 1:
We do get a lot of nonprofits schools, they're buying supplies and so and I would emphasize services as well a lot of businesses say, oh, you know, we don't.
Speaker 1:
They don't think of purchase orders, for example, when they're you know, sort of managing services that they need but that can help you control those costs. If you have a purchase order that says, hey, you know, it's $10,000 or $10,000 a month, whatever it might be, for these services, you can sort of issue that to your vendor and they know, okay, here's it's kind of a budget in some ways where it's like, okay, we're not authorized to go over this amount without you know further discussion, and then you can keep track of what they've built on, rather than sort of after the fact, when you're closed in the books and you say, gee, we spent all this money on this particular service. Well, if you had a purchase order in front of that spending, then you're sort of controlling the cost before they happen. It's really tough when it's like, well, we're over budget. Well that unfortunately you already spent the money you're over budget, but you're learning about that two weeks too late. You know the different ways that we can help businesses manage their spending.
Speaker 2:
Would it be fair to say contractors, you know people that have fleets of vehicles like, let's say it's an electrician or electrical company, heat in there, where you've got different, going to the parts store and this would something like that. Be fair to say, that would be a good fit.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely definitely. We have, yeah, a lot of customers sort of in the construction space. We recently did a case study on airport van rental and so they have a fleet of like 2,200 vans that they've rent out. They've got, you know, they've got locations throughout the US and so they're having to repair those vans or, you know, keep track of sort of spending on the different vehicles, and so, yeah, our system helps them to do that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, anything that has to do with sort of buying parts or materials or even off it. You know every business has office supplies, so even keeping track and sort of having a budget for office supplies and you know we also have add-ons that we offer, so inventory management. So we do have quite a few customers who want to keep track of. Okay, hey, we want to know that we've got 100 widgets in the back store room so that we don't buy you know 100 more that we don't need and we end up having to throw them out, or you know things like that. And so, yeah, I would say definitely, especially those who, those businesses that are buying materials, would benefit from our system.
Speaker 2:
Sounds and looks like an amazing product that could save a lot of headaches and unnecessary cost. I know as a business coach. I'm always stressing, especially if someone has inventory. Inventory management is usually the number one problem in most cash-strapped companies. It's just like, well, all your money's sitting out there in the yard. Does anybody know what's out there? You know, or the field, or the warehouse, or you know whatever? So it sounds very, very wealth of information you've been. If someone wants to reach out to you for more information, what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so you can go to spendwisecom. Yeah, we've got our phone number and our contact form there. Or reach out to me directly our Belcher B-E-L-C-H-E-R at spendwisecom. I would love to hear from you and, yeah, it's always great to sort of have these contacts that we can yeah bounce ideas off and learn from, and so, yeah, feel free to reach out to me.
Speaker 2:
Well, again, you've been a wealth of information. One last question Is there a quote or something that a mentor of yours has said to you, that stuck with you, that you could share with others?
Speaker 1:
Should I don't have a quote off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:
Advice. Well, I've always felt like, yeah, warren Buffett, I think, has been a wealth of wisdom. I think his investment strategy stick with what you know, you know sort of patience. There was a quote recently about, yeah, how some things just take time. It's not like you can sort of put more money into a certain marketing project that's going to take a few months to figure out how well it's doing. And so, yeah, be patient, stay focused, be aggressive as well. So, yeah, those are sort of some of the key points that I would share.
Speaker 2:
All right. Well, I appreciate you and your time, and I'm sure our listeners do too, and I wish you continued success.
Speaker 1:
All right. Thanks a lot, Michael. It's been great to be with you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode and welcome to the Recap and Coaches Corner. Building a business that runs smoothly without your constant intervention starts with small, actionable steps. Today we delved into the crucial practice of tracking purchasing expenditures, a fundamental habit for small business owners striving to maintain financial stability and growth. As we wrap up, I leave you with this actionable item for the Coaches Corner. Implement an expense tracking system that encompasses all aspects of your business, whether it's utilizing software solutions, assigning responsibility to specific team members or setting up regular reviews. Make sure you have a clear process in place to monitor and manage expenditures effectively. By taking proactive measures to track and control spending, you pave the way for a stronger, more resilient business. Remember, every small decision you make today contributes to the success of your enterprise tomorrow.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck or you need help creating your business to run without you, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and there you can schedule a free consultation to learn why your business success starts with Boss. If you have a guest or topic suggestion for our podcast or just want to talk anything small business related, please contact me personally at michaeldmorsencom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.