S5E12: Get Scalable Live, Building Relationships, and Scaling Smart

This week Pam and Francis are talking about their key takeaways from the Scalable Live event in Austin, Texas. If you're looking to grow your business, this is for you!

They break down the importance of:
Build Scalable Processes: Steps to grow your business without burning out.
Create Effective Playbooks: Streamline operations for smoother scaling.
Leverage Networking Wins: Real-world success stories to inspire your journey.

Ready to scale? Tune in now! 💡

Transcript

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Yeah, it's been one of my mantras for a long time, but he puts it really succinctly. I can't remember the exact language now, but it's basically that. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest things that's resonated with me as we've worked with them, as we've kind of seen their process, because, you know, they do such a good job with this event and it's so tailored exactly to how they want things to flow and, you know, understanding that they've taken the time to really develop the process hosting this event and make sure that everything is flowing in the right way and that people are getting their time on stage and people are getting the exposure to the stuff they need to get exposure from in the audience as well. I think that it's really helped me frame the way that I would want to structure our business as we grow. I love that. Hey, welcome back to the Cash Flow podcast with me, Anne Pryor. Glad to have you here, where we talk about everything money related in your business. So without further ado, let's hop right in and welcome to a very special episode of Cash Flow Podcast. As you can see, we're not in our normal studio. We're actually in Austin, and we've just finished up a fantastic week at the Scalable event. Scalable live event. Yeah, get scalable live. It's been a great week out here. Yeah. So this is Richard, Richard Linder, Ryan Dice and Roland Frazier's event for their skill, scalable process, which is an incredible process that they provide for scaling instead of failing. And the tools that are in there are just fantastic. And you might know Ryan from digital marketer days, and I know you got a story about that. Yeah, I mean, you know, when we first started working together, digital marketer really built the foundation of all of our marketing practices that we use currently. I dove deep into all their certifications and all their courses and master classes, and that really was my crash course in marketing and everything that we do now. So shout out to Ryan and Roland and Richard for all of the awesome insights that they provide. Yeah, we got a chance to tell Richard how appreciative we were of that particular product, and he made a really interesting point. And this is really true of all courses, I think, because of all the people that take that course, which probably now he was guessing was around half a million, he's really only 2% ever put it all to use. And Francis, blessedly is one of that 2%. And we got some great feedback from Richard that our social media is pretty darn good. Yeah, it's a good reassurance, but, you know, we always want to continue to drive it forward and get better, so. Well, that's why we're here, too. So priority sponsored the event, and I spoke at the event and it was spectacular as usual. But the thing really kind of hit me the most was just how dedicated all of these folks were at various stages of their businesses to preventing mistakes. Yes. And the cool thing about it is that they know, they come here and they're going to learn all the things to prevent because, and this is what I love, all of these guys, and myself included, are very transparent about the stuff we've done wrong and why that has kind of changed how we do some things and now that's been packaged up by them to help entrepreneurs really scale correctly. So just, you know, from some, somebody who's getting ready to scale our business, what's your biggest takeaway from the stuff you heard in the room? Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite things that Ryan says, I think every time I've seen him speak, is, you know, what is it about fixing a process? Do you know the exact quote that he uses? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't, you can't. Essentially what he's saying is, if you put a person on top of a broken process, you're just gonna break the person. Yeah. If you put a system on top of broken process, you're gonna break the system. Yeah, yeah. It's been one of my mantras for a long time, but he puts it really succinctly. I can't remember the exact language now, but it's basically that. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest things that's resonated with me as we've worked with them, as we've kind of seen their process, because, you know, they do such a good job with this event and it's so tailored exactly to how they want things to flow and, you know, understanding that they've taken the time to really develop the process of hosting this event and make sure that everything is flowing in the right way and that people are getting their time on stage and people are getting the exposure to the stuff they need to get exposure from in the audience as well. I think that it's really helped me frame the way that I would want to structure our business as we grow. I love that. And, you know, at scalable, one of the biggest things, and it's in the name, is that they focus on helping you scale your business. So being able to connect with so many entrepreneurs out here that are in that process of scaling their business, being able to meet people that are in these different industries, because there's. One of the things that we've run into is there's so many different people out there in so many different industries, but meeting all the different business owners out here has really opened my eyes to like, wow, there's so many people out here doing it and doing it the right way and doing exactly the things that they need to, to make sure that they are fixing the processes, that they are tailoring their business to be set up for success. For success. Yeah. And the thing I like about this is that the scalable process is basically moving from an idea through the owner operator to a CEO, to an owner that's a little more passive to somebody who starts to own and buy a lot of businesses. And no matter where you are on that spectrum, there is information that's really valuable to you. And they split it up nicely so that you always know kind of what room to grow in. I think my biggest takeaway from inside the room is something Ryan calls playbooks. And the thing that I think makes a big difference for me is it's not just a. They're not saying, hey, here's a system, put it in, and we're adding bureaucracy. They use the playbooks. And he talks very honestly about, you know, do this by hand the first time, draw it on paper. And don't be stupidly obsessed with getting every detail right. Get 80 20. You know, you don't want to go back and have your team document everything. You want to go back and have your team identify the major sort of drivers in your business. And they break it up into the different types of drivers from your, you know, the engine that you use to grow your client base to your actual operations, to your marketing, to your sales, to your finance your finances, and identify the main drivers. Like, what is that? If you ask. If I ask Francis, what you do in marketing, what are the five main drivers for what we do? That would be five playbooks, maybe. One of them is podcast creation and editing. One of them is social media marketing. One of them is email list nurture. One of them is, I don't know, what else, advertising. Then put your playbook together from that. The idea of the Playbook is not to document every detail. The idea of the playbook is to be able to articulate to, first of all, your team internally, when you're still owner, operator, or CEO, but then to have something you can automatically take and translate into process documents when you're looking to exit your business or merge your business, or in a lot of cases, what I learned outside of the room and loved it, a lot of franchisors. So we may choose to franchise our business and boom, you've got your structure already set up. So every tool that they provide has a reason, and they don't have you do anything just for the sake of doing something or for saying you've done the process. And that's such a hard balance because a lot of these big companies, they'll give you a process and they drop it on you. EOS is an example. It's a great process. Don't get me wrong, I love EOS, but EOS has a system that you follow from start to finish and it just, that's what it is. And you follow the details. And a lot of times, quite honestly, and I've seen some EOS implementations done really well and I've seen some done very poorly. It becomes a checklist. It becomes a thing people have to do. It becomes a, oh God, it's that time again. And what this allows you to do is create the culture and the environment and the workflow that makes everybody go, okay, yeah, I know I've got a playbook that makes sense. And then if you choose to do something like an EOS or whatever system you might use for communicating goals and managing your, your performance reviews and that sort of thing, you're only working from stuff that really needs to be done. Yeah. And that's, to me, what makes scalable the place to go for this sort of an event. Yeah. So outside the room, what is sort of the biggest thing you heard or what the biggest takeaway you're going to take from the conference, from the people you talk to kind of outside the room. Yeah, it was, you know, I met a lot of awesome people, and one of the people specifically today that we both connected with, I think his name was Aaron, he stopped by and. Heidman. Yeah. And he just said, shout out. Aaron grabbed me to talk about my tattoos because he had spent some time in Asia and he would ask me the meaning behind some of these. But then we dove into the conversation a little bit more and he's done so many different businesses, he's had so many different experiences, and it was just, I think, really cool to connect with him, get some of his insights, specifically on how he approaches business ownership, because that's what he does. He buys and sells businesses, he helps people acquire businesses and I feel like that has been one of the kind of highlights for me. And then also just connecting with some other videographers out here and hearing how people are approaching and how they see the industry progressing throughout the next couple of years as well. Both the actual AV and then the editing and production as well, and then. Leveraging AI in this type of process as well. There's so many creatives out here, and just being able to connect them and pick their brains on some stuff has really been the standout for me. How about for you? For me, I think. No, I mean, not Noah. Aaron was a great. Noah's great, too, though. Yeah, Noah's great, too. Aaron was really fascinating to talk to, and that points out to me what was really neat is all the different industries that are here. Yeah. And you mentioned this, but, I mean, everything from. I realized that there's a massively brilliant brokerage business between junkyards and smelting or melting plants. Yeah. And I. There are actually three different people I talked to here who are in that junk reinival imagining business. And for me, that's fun, because, you know, of course, the minute I hear a business, I'm thinking about the financial model that supports it. And got to talk to a couple of these people. We're going to have follow up calls with two of them, because they're like, oh, wow. We can really start to see some of the profitability by types of car part that we're changing. And there are three or four things that come out of that process that I never knew about, which was really interesting. And then I met a couple of bakery owners. I met some guy who's just doing roll up or just doing company acquisitions. He's not really focused on any particular industry. I thought that was interesting. A couple of franchisors. Very neat to talk to the franchisors, because I think a point, when you get to scale and you have a business that can be replicated, that becomes a big question. Do I just go open four more of these, or do I franchise it? And they address all that here really, really well, too. So took that away. And then I had a great time on stage talking about kind of the founder to exit book process, which is, you know, you do not want to scale into bankruptcy. And here are five or six things you can take away with you to, you know, go implement tomorrow. If you're not communicating well with your bookkeeper, if you don't know what kind of accountant to get, if you don't have a forecast for cash flow yeah. And so we were able to hand them a lot of tools to really execute on that stuff. I think a lot of people got a lot of meaningful insights, you know, from your keynote today. They sure said, so. Somebody must have been paying them well. Stop by and just, you know, one of the things that we had talked about yesterday, I think, was what stands out when you feel like you have, when you've had a good keynote on stage, people coming back and mentioning things specifically to you. Yeah, I know when you came off stage, you had mentioned to me, oh, I feel like that was kind of one of the lower, lower energy ones that I've done so far. And I didn't feel that. I felt like you went up there and killed it, but I might be a little bit biased. Well, we can talk imposter syndrome and self criticism and all that, because it is true. You have what you think is one of your best moments, and then you want everything to live up to that. And in truth, as it turns out, as I learned from talking to people after, it was exactly the perfect speech for this crowd. So I give myself now a nine for identifying what they needed and hitting the nail on the head. What I faulted myself for when I first came off the stage was, wow, I wasn't really interactive. I wasn't as entertaining as I like to normally be. But you were telling me the room was engaged. And that's the job. The job is to give them something that they can walk away with and not forget about tomorrow, like, literally go do. And when I revisited it for those sort of characteristics, I was pretty happy with it, especially since we got so much feedback on stuff. People are going to actually go do and change, and they came to ask more specific questions, and there were so. Many specifics that people were taking away, and there was. They translated it well. Yeah, so many people came by. I can't even count on my hands how many people stopped by to specifically follow up with key parts of your keynote that you had talked about, because it resonated with them so much. That's fun. That's fun. So we're going to share parts of that, certainly with everybody here. We have the keynote of you getting the full film of it, and there's some really good pointers in there that are in the book that I articulated a little bit more about and kind of how to translate that into action right away. The biggest thing, I think, for all of these guys that really resonated with them is we have all these great dreams and we're going to scale. And we're going to do this and we're going to get organized and we're going to fix all these things, like at the root. But the reality is we're all running 1000 miles an hour, and while we're flying, while we're building that plane, we're still flying it. So we've got to have triage. So what I did was a little segment on the Band aid for cash flow issues. Is this while you're building your brilliant strategy, here are the five things you can do today to fix that stinking cash problem. The band aid for people. Is this the band aid for strategy is this. So that was the piece that seemed to get the most from people. And I think that's the reality. We're all always in triage while we're trying to build that plane. Yeah. And I think one of the other kind of key takeaways here has been that everybody that's here has a team that they can lean on. And sometimes they feel like they're doing it by themselves, but they might not be communicating with their team the right way. They might need to adjust how they work with their team. They might not have the right team, but they're never alone. And they don't need to feel alone. Great point. You know, that's the sense I got from here, is everybody wanted to stay in the room. So this conference, very cool. The room was still full, 45 on the last day for the last speaker. The room was full for two finance talks back to back between them and. The bar last night. The second one was taxes and the. Second one was taxes, and they stayed in that room. And that's a group of people that are like, oh, I found my people. Yeah. And that's, I think, what's really special about this event. So that was a lot of fun. So, yeah, we're having a great time out here. What, I guess to kind of close out this mini episode, what would you say the biggest goal for Roas is? Would it be connecting with people or would it be closing clients or would it just be kind of experiencing this type of energy in this way? Yes, yes and yes. So what I say, and I think I really want everybody to know this is whenever you attend an event, whether you're attending as an attendee or a sponsor or a vip or whatever you're doing, no going in. Hey, this is what it's going to cost me to do this. And therefore, while I'm there, I need to expect to. I'm going to expect the return to be this, this, this and this. It doesn't always mean money. Right. It doesn't always mean I'm going to spend $1,000 and I need to make $3,000 by, you know, March. Yeah, but you hit the nail on the head, certainly from a relationship. But first, building existing relationships, because a lot of people come back here for the few years we've been with them. So many repeats. Yeah. So a lot of repeats because it's that good of a conference and it's not repetitive. Yeah. Like, they don't come back this year and go, oh, it's the same stuff I heard last year. It's always new, it's always fresh. It's always incorporating the most recent stuff. The second is new relationships. And, you know, as we've talked a lot, the biggest thing in the business to me is relationships. Everything else falls from that. So will there be from sales? Yes. Do I have some math about what I expect that to be because I did the sponsorship, which is a little different than attending. Yes, I do. And I know that'll happen. And that's why when you go to events for marketing and stuff like that with forward press media, you want to make sure there's some roas. And it might not always be financial, but know what you expect because it makes you show up. So in the beginning, when I was an entrepreneur, I would go to an event and go, and then in the afternoon, I'd be like, I'm just going to go back to my room or whatever, because I didn't say I want to meet five new people and develop really cool relationships, or I want to at least meet five new people. And of those five new people, know I've made two new friends. Yeah. And now I go into these events with that mindset and it changes how I attend. So I feel like that's, that's a good, really good mindset shift to make because it is hard to get out of your shell, especially when you're. Everybody's an introvert in their five extroverts and 395 introverts. I mean, let's just get real. Yeah. And when you have that mindset of coming into these and focusing on one specific thing, it's hard to not have that tunnel vision. But putting yourself out there experiencing things in a certain way and just making sure that you have an open mind, open heart and open vision, that's the biggest key. And that's the biggest thing that I would take away from these types of events. You know, I'm still new to the kind of the event circuit. I've only been to a few over the past couple of years, definitely have ramped it up over the past year and two with you. But as I've come to these, I've really learned that the biggest roas that you can take away, yes, you quantify clients and closing and financial returns and stuff like that, but the connections are the biggest part. It's not transactional. Yeah, yeah. It's not transactional. You know, you walk away from these and you get people in your inbox. Hey, it was awesome meeting you. And people genuinely want to follow up and stay connected and stay in your circle. And it's important to, to continue to drive those relationships and important for me, I think, especially learning from you to make sure that you have your map set. Yeah. Building out that map from the get go when you're starting is so important. Because that map of relationships. Yeah, that map of relationships, yeah. Because as you grow your business, as you scale your business, leaning on the relationships is really important. Even the big guys that are here, Ryan, Roland, Richard, you know, leaning those, they lean on relationships as well to continue to drive their success. So making sure that you don't forget that, you know, tithing relationships and continuing to build relationships is one of the key drivers to success. Aside from the financial side of things, I think that is one of the things that I've learned on Roas as I've come to these. Yeah, I love that. And it is without being transactional, it's a rising tide that raises all ships 100%. So that if you get into those relationships, if you cherish those relationships, if you give into those relationships, if you're just there for people sometimes. Yeah. Everybody lifts up from that because you have all those shared resources then. So if you go into it without a transactional mind, you end up getting amazing transactions. Exactly. If you go into it with a transactional mind, people feel that out in a second and you're done. Yeah. And that's what's so cool. I think this felt very relationship oriented, but yet I cannot imagine the amount of commerce that's going to take place after this event from people who've met each other. Yeah. I wish there was a way to categorize it or capture it because, wow. It has been an awesome event. You know, shout out to Ryan and the scalable team. Great job, you guys. They do such an awesome job. Deanna, Josh, Michelle, everybody. You guys rocked. It is one of our favorite events to sponsor. I know, for sure, right? Absolutely. We'll be back. We'll be back next year, the year after that. Maybe in this same apartment. Maybe. No maybe. We'll see. That's right. You had the weight room next door. Am with people just dropping stuff, and people are dramatic. I respect the grind. There you go. Perfect. Awesome. All right, you guys have a great week. We'll see you on our next regularly scheduled cash Flow podcast. Be sure to, like, comment, subscribe, do all the things we'd love to hear from you. Awesome. See you guys. Thanks so much for watching the cash Flow podcast with us. We want to bring more and more of this to you. So please, like, share, subscribe, comment, comment so that we can keep bringing more of this content to.