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BRX Pro Tip: Pay Yourself First

September 16, 2021 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Pay Yourself First

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BRX Pro Tip: Pay Yourself First

Stone Payton : Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here. Lee, one of the disciplines that, fortunately, we adopted pretty early on as we built this thing of ours out and I think it served us well, and our recommendation would be that other entrepreneurs, other people who aspire to build something, that they follow this advice as well. Simply put, three words. Pay yourself first.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Early on we found the Profit First methodology of Mike Michalowicz, and that book was really instrumental, I think, in reframing how we thought about, you know, how we go and do business as Business RadioX.

Lee Kantor: So, that old formula of sales minus expenses equals profit, that just wasn’t working for us. You know, when you do it that way, then whatever’s left is what the profit is. And we found that it’s more useful to do it kind of the Profit First way where it’s sales minus profit equals expenses. So, when you have your sales and then you then take your profits, then whatever is left is your expenses. And that’s where you’ve got to kind of live within your means of your expenses based upon that formula. So, that allows us to pay ourselves first and then still live below our means.

Lee Kantor: So, our first move is to adjust expenses, not profits, and then we see if we can efficiently and effectively deliver our brand promise to our folks within those expenses. That’s our first choice. And so, that’s really been instrumental in terms of keeping us going and keeping us through hard times and good times. So, I think it’s worth exploring for folks who haven’t heard about it. That book is called Profit First, and I think it’s something that you should consider, especially a new company consultant, the coach, I think that this is a really good methodology when it comes to running a business.

Stone Payton : Well, so do I. And I mean, look, let’s be candid, we are actually taping this particular pro tip on the very last day of the month. So, tomorrow I’m going to look at sales volume for this previous month. And I can tell you right now, unless a check comes in today, it’s not as much as we thought it was going to be. And I don’t have to clutter my mind with a lot of decisions. I’m going to take that number times it by the percentage that we’ve agreed to pay ourselves first, and those are the checks that we’re going to cut. I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t have to put a lot of energy and effort into it.

Stone Payton : And then, next month, you know, maybe it’s going to be a little bit bigger, but it just removes a lot of the clutter. It takes the emotion out of it. And, yeah, I think it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, man.

BRX Pro Tip: Prioritizing

September 15, 2021 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Prioritizing

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BRX Pro Tip: Prioritizing

Stone Payton: Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you this afternoon. Lee, let’s talk about strategies, tactics, disciplines for prioritizing.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. This is one of those things when everything is important, then really nothing is important. So, your ability to discern and prioritize what is important is critical in order for you to lead. And this kind of ruthless prioritization is a non-negotiable critical skill that you have to master if you want to be successful.

Lee Kantor: If you can’t tell what is the most important thing to work on, then how can you kind of communicate that to your team? How do they know what to work on? So, you really have to identify the main levers in your business, and you have to relentlessly kind of move those levers.

Lee Kantor: So, prioritization is really important. You better be kind of on point when it comes to saying, “Okay. These are my top three priorities this quarter, this month, this week.” That way you know what to do every day. That way your team knows what is the most important thing to work on every day.

BRX Pro Tip: Delivering ROI

September 14, 2021 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Delivering ROI

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BRX Pro Tip: Delivering ROI

Stone Payton: [00:00:01] Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about delivering ROI.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:10] Yeah. Having the conversation about ROI is really what differentiates our platform from traditional media. Traditional media wants to duck the ROI conversation and they want to focus in on audience and listeners and things like that that aren’t real and that they can’t really control. We want to focus on green dollar ROI and have a conversation and understand the value that putting our clients in contact with and the communication with their most important, most coveted prospects that that’s what’s going to bring them.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] So, you always have to tie back our activity in here with the ROI, which means more money that the client can make, because they’re getting in front of these hard-to-reach people that’s going to eventually buy their things. But another area of ROI that I don’t want to ignore that’s just as important in a lot of cases are these more intangible, these softer kinds of ROIs. That might be this sense of belonging they get when they are the hub of a community. The relationships that they’ve nurtured with existing clients and with new people.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] The status that they get by being the host of a radio show. This credential that they now have and being seen as somebody important to the ecosystem that they serve. The feeling that they’re contributing to something that’s bigger than themselves. The impact that they’re making. These are all kinds of ROI that it’s important for you to remind your clients that they’re getting and it’s important for them to realize that they wouldn’t be having this if they weren’t affiliated with Business RadioX and they weren’t hosting a show that serves the ecosystem that serves them.

Stone Payton: [00:01:47] Well, you bring up an excellent point. I think it is an important discipline as a studio partner or studio operator to have your client articulate and I mean consistently, regularly articulate specifically the ROI that they are getting, because they are getting it, they do know it, but have them say it out loud.

Rome Floyd Chamber Small Business Spotlight – Chad Smith with Trinity Motorcar Company and Austin Matthews with Matthews Lighting and Electric

September 13, 2021 by angishields

Rome Business Radio

Rome Floyd Chamber Small Business Spotlight - Chad Smith with Trinity Motorcar Company and Austin Matthews with Matthews Lighting and Electric

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BRX Pro Tip: The 30 Percent Rule

September 13, 2021 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: The 30 Percent Rule

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BRX Pro Tip: The 30 Percent Rule

Stone Payton: [00:00:01] Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about the 30 percent rule.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:09] The 30 percent rule comes from Steve Jobs when he was in Apple. A lot of people don’t remember that Steve Jobs, he started Apple, but he was also fired from Apple. And when he left, they struggled a little bit and then, they brought him back. And the first thing that he did when he came back was he looked at all of the activities that were happening in the Apple business and he decided that he’s going to focus only on the most important 30 percent of the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] The things that were really true to the core of what he was trying to do. And then, he was going to prune the 70 percent of the business activities that were just okay, that they just didn’t need to be doing anymore. So, he just honed in and focused on the activities that mattered, the stuff that really was going to drive the business going forward, and he got rid of all the other distractions. And in today’s world, there are so many activities that really don’t move the needle.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:04] They are nice to have, it’s great that they are happening, but they’re not the things that are really driving sales and really driving results for you and your clients. So, it’s better to prune those activities that, you know, maybe, at one time, they were great idea to do and you should have been doing them a while ago, but they’ve just kind of aren’t as productive as they used to be and focus in on the 30 percent of activities that really moves the needle in your business. Focus more and let these distractions go away. Prune what you don’t need, do more of what you do need.

Stone Payton: [00:01:36] All right. I want to put you on the spot for a minute. What do you feel like is the 30 percent that is most important for the studio partner?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:45] The 30 percent that is most important is selecting the right guest to come on a show, having good shows, and having follow-up meetings. If that’s all you did, is pick the right people to be in the room, have good experiences with them, and follow up with the ones that are prospects, you will grow your business. That’s the only activity that needs to be done. Anything else are nice to have, in my book.

When Things Go Wrong

September 8, 2021 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: Rank Your Top 100 Connections

September 3, 2021 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Rank Your Top 100 Connections

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BRX Pro Tip: Rank Your Top 100 Connections

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you, Lee, you’re recommending that all of us take some time and rank our top 100 connections.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Yeah. This is an exercise that we have our prospects or our new clients do, is, kind of put together that dream list. Within your network, who are those top 100 connections that you have and kind of put them in different tiers. Your number ones are your current clients, your current vendors, partners, referral sources. Your twos are your best prospects, the people you know and like you but they haven’t done business with you yet, but you’d like them to. And your threes are people who you think could benefit from your services, but they don’t like you or trust you enough yet. But they are, in your mind, good potential fits for doing business.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:55] And then, once you’ve determined the kind of top 100 dream list, now, reach out to each of those folks regularly. But, remember, each constituent should be communicated with in a slightly different manner. And the objective, though, is to move the threes to twos, the twos to ones, and the ones to either more business or more referrals. And then, just invest some time communicating and providing value to each of those groups so that they move from one tier to the next. And if you do this on a regular basis, you’ll be surprised on how much more business you’re going to get and how much stronger your brand is going to be.

Why We Decided to Pitch our Company on the TV Show “Shark Tank,” with Katy Mallory and Lou Childs

September 2, 2021 by angishields

North Fulton Studio

Why We Decided to Pitch our Company on the TV Show "Shark Tank," with Katy Mallory and Lou Childs

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Why We Decided to Pitch our Company on the TV Show “Shark Tank,” with Katy Mallory and Lou Childs

Lou Childs: [00:00:00] First off, getting on the show is like a needle in a haystack. So, 40,000 people apply every year.

Mike Blake: [00:00:09] Forty thousand. Wow.

Lou Childs: [00:00:11] Yes. Every year. So, when we realized when we went on Amazon and after the first five months of being on the market, we had $150,000 in sales and we said, “Why not? You know, we’re crazy. We really do love to have a lot of fun.” As those of you who have seen our pitch can see that we’re in pink pajamas with shark slippers. But we just said, “Hey, what the heck? We’ve got Delta Miles, let’s pick a spot and go stand in line and be in the casting call.” And that’s exactly what we did.

Lou Childs: [00:00:54] Katy is so good at public speaking. I’m a great sidekick and I’m a lot of fun. Of course, during the pitch, I forget my lines and the producers thought, like, that was hilarious. But I think we’re endearing. I think that people kind of feel once they get to know us, that they want to be our friend. So, it was easy. It was easy to just say, “Hey, what do we got to lose? We’ve got a great story and let’s go have some fun.” And that’s what we did. And I think it really paid off that we had that attitude.

Katy Mallory: [00:01:34] My mom mentioned, Mike, that we had some sales and I wanted to expand on that a little bit. Because from watching the show – which I think we’ve both seen every single episode over the last 11 years – we’ve seen that when companies have no revenue or their only revenue is Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns, they really get the ninth degree from the Sharks. Because the Sharks don’t feel like there’s enough to go on to feel confident investing. So, having that revenue and not just $5,000 of revenue – but, you know, I think when we applied, would you say, mama, it was more than 200 or 150 or something like that when we first applied? And then, by the time we recorded we had $600,000 or 650,000 in revenue in just a couple of months. So, that made us feel confident.

Katy Mallory: [00:02:27] Of course, there is the exception of the comp fee, which is a brand that Barbara Corcoran invested in that was pre-revenue, but she just really felt like those entrepreneurs were magnetic and she she went out on a limb and invested in them. But, historically, that’s not the case.

SlumberPod

The idea for SlumberPod started in December 2014 when Katy and her husband and baby were visiting Katy’s mother (Lou) for the winter holidays. Because it was a packed house, the three had to share a room. The baby woke up two nights in a row—seeing her parents across the room—and refused to go back to sleep. Sleep-deprived and frustrated, Katy and her family went home a day early. Thing was … their baby was rarely a bad sleeper at home.

Katy scoured the internet for something she could bring on trips to provide her baby a private, dark place to sleep. When she didn’t find anything that fit the bill, she (like many others) resorted to homemade solutions to provide a visual barrier between her and her baby. The homemade solution worked but wasn’t safe, especially private or easy to set up.

While Katy was on maternity leave with twins in the spring of 2016, she and Lou decided it was time to create a safe, easy and portable solution to help make vacations more restful and fun for everyone—and SlumberPod was born!

They’ve had a ton of support and encouragement by way of friends and family, product designers, fellow entrepreneurs, advisors, and are proud to bring SlumberPod to market.

Between the two of them, Katy and Lou have nine children and lots of experience traveling with them.

Company website | Katy Mallory LinkedIn | Lou Childs LinkedIn

Find their full Decision Vision interview here.

The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.