Jay Fairbrother With The Profit Architects

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Jay Fairbrother with the profit architects. Welcome, Jay.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:00:44] Hey, Lee. Glad to be here, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Profit to me is the most important thing in the business. A lot of people don’t put it at the top of their list. They kind of hope it happens at the end of the month. But I would love to learn more about how you, as the profit architect, elevate that in importance for your clients.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:01:06] Yeah, absolutely. So the reason I’m focused on profit is totally from personal experience. I’m, you know, I think I’m on my ninth of business over the last 30 years, so I’ve had some pretty good success and I’ve also had massive failures. But the profit thing is from when I started my first business, like most entrepreneurs, you know, it’s all about growth, growth growth, more leads, more clients more revenue. And so I found myself, you know, I built it up my first company to 50 employees and I felt, you know, my egos was doing pretty well. I grew to five million in sales and I kind of thought I was a hotshot, but I was still making no money. You know, I was barely making six figures and income. I hadn’t had a vacation in seven years. So, you know, it took me quite a while to figure out like, wait a minute, maybe we ought to start making some money. And I fortunately figured it out, and by the time I hit 200 employees, I was very profitable and ended up selling that business a few years later. But I think that’s a very common path for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs, is that, you know, we kind of have this thing. We just grow, you know, if we just we increase revenue, we spread out overhead and that’s going to create more profit. But when you increase, when you’re focused solely on growth and if you take that attitude, it’s just more revenue is going to even out your expenses. What ends up happening is you just create more complexity, more headaches. And so yes, you’re growing, but you don’t necessarily end up profitable.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:42] Now are the clients you’re working with now. Are they kind of entrepreneurs that have reached a plateau and are frustrated? Or are they people kind of starting from scratch? And they’re have an emerging business and they just want to build foundationally strong structures so that. That they don’t have to go through that, you know, have that scar tissue that you have.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:03:04] Yeah, well, the answer is both because, you know, unfortunately, as you kind of identified a lot of times, we figure this out a little too late or like you said, you’re looking for profit at the end of the month or an entrepreneur like starts a business with no exit strategy. So if you’re smart enough to realize that that you need to shift this focus at the beginning of your business, that’s great. But yes, a lot of I’d say it’s more a little more common that it’s an entrepreneur who’s plateaued is frustrated kind of with where they’re at. And my sweet spot is typically businesses doing between like a million and 10 million in sales. Not that I wouldn’t work with a smaller business if if they’ve got a good growth trajectory. But you know, that’s the reason that’s kind of my sweet spot is that’s the arena that I’ve played in as an entrepreneur. Those are the size of businesses that that I’ve, you know, run and grown.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] Now when you’re working with them? Walk me through what that engagement looks like so they come to you. They’re frustrated in some manner. They’re either not making money or they were working too hard and they’re stressed and their life’s kind of upside down and they want to get more control over it. They contact you and your team what’s kind of the first thing you do to kind of triage the situation?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:04:22] Yeah. So obviously, we start with an assessment, and part of that assessment is just walking through. You know, we have up to 40 different areas of a business that will look at in terms of where can we make some significant profit impact with the least amount of cost and effort? So what we do? We’re not going to do this an initial meeting, but but over the initial course of a few meetings, we, you know, eventually work through all 40 areas of those business and look at those to say, Are we, you know, are we good there? You might be able to make some incremental increases, but it’s going to take, you know, X amount of cost or effort. So let’s prioritize these areas and typically will come up with six or eight to start with and say, let’s prioritize these six or eight things that are going to have the most impact on your profit, on your bottom line with the least amount of cost and effort. Not, you know, without a total disruption to your business. Like, you know, there’s there’s programs out there where you can bring a system in, so to speak, an operating system for your business. But it really is a disruption because it takes about six months to implement that operating system and change your practices, processes and culture. So what we do is say, Look, let’s focus this, prioritize these six to eight things and just knock them off the list one by one and start working through them. And that’s, you know, it’s just to me, it’s a common sense approach, and that

Lee Kantor: [00:05:52] Is the the items you find to work on. Are they to you? There are obvious and they’re right there in front of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur isn’t seeing them or they haven’t prioritized them. Or is it stuff that you really haven’t to dig deep and be creative and really modify things?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:06:11] Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s really both. Sometimes there are things right in front of the entrepreneur that they’re not even, you know, look at or they may have heard about, but they’ve never implemented. And other things do take, you know, more sort of a deeper dove to to say, you know, what can we do here? What kind of creativity can we do? So I would say that especially typically when when we prioritize that list out of the 40 and knock it down to six or eight, those six or eight things are typically sales and marketing related, meaning changes to your marketing, messaging, changes to your marketing plan and then changes to your sales, messaging and sales process as well. You know of over the eight nine businesses I’ve owned. I’ve always had the core, you know, as an entrepreneur, you wear all the hats. But my core strength has always been sales and marketing, so I gravitate to those areas first anyway and just start to work through some of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:17] Now are the people that you work with. Are there problems when it comes to sales and marketing? Is it kind of top of the funnel problem or is it bottom of the funnel problem? Do they have a hard time prospecting or do they have a hard time closing? Where or is a, you know, a mixed bag?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:07:33] Yeah, yeah, you’re going to start thinking. Every answer I say is going to be both. But but it is both because so you know, you mentioned bottom of the funnel, which which I love. Most people don’t even bring that into the conversation because most businesses are only focused on top of the funnel, right? Get more leads into the funnel. Get fancier marketing, you know, paradigm fancier sales funnel. And what a lot of people ignore is what’s leaking out at the bottom of the funnel, and that’s sales. You know, that’s you. You put all that money into getting them into your funnel and working them through the funnel to the bottom. And then often, you know, you’re not paying attention to how many people you’re not converting. So that that’s definitely an area almost always focus on. I’ve never run across a business. I can’t help them in some way improve their sales, messaging and sales strategy.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:29] Now, why do you think that is, that a lot of people focus in on that top of the funnel and getting more new fresh leads in rather than kind of nurture and love on, you know, the the people that already know who you are? A little bit.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:08:47] Yeah. I don’t know. Can I blame the internet?

Lee Kantor: [00:08:50] It’s the ad of of the world.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:08:52] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you think about it as as a business owner, right? Whether you’re a coach or an entrepreneur or, you know, we’re all bombarded with marketing messages via the internet, LinkedIn and Facebook, all the social media channels that you know, it’s it’s all about your digital marketing, right? It’s your social media. It’s your it’s all about generating leads and traffic. And you know what? And that’s all great like that. There’s nothing you know you want to. You need to have leads and traffic, but you know, there’s so many businesses that I run into and it’s like, you know, look, do you really need, you know, 10000 people that that you’re trying to nurture in your sales funnel? Aren’t you really just looking for, you know, whether it’s 10 or 100 people at the bottom that are the right targets and the ideal clients and that kind of thing? And and there’s a perfect example. Like I know when I first started my business, my first business. You know, we took any client, you know, even though we had a niche, you know, any client that was willing to pay us and walk in the door. We took the money because, you know, we’re building a company. You’re covering your overhead. And you know, as you go down the road, you start to figure out like, OK, well, we’ve got to start getting rid of some of these certain types of clients that don’t fit what we’re really good at. And a lot of entrepreneurs go through this, this learning curve of, you know, look, it’s not just about any client. Let’s focus on attracting the right clients and then making sure that those are the ones that we’re giving all of our attention to.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:27] Yeah, I find that when I started in business, like ABC was always be closing. But now, as I’ve matured and have done this for a minute, ABC is always be curating and always be connecting. It’s not about closing, it’s just finding that perfect fit that you can serve and be the go to resource for. And just being super selective rather than just, you know, try to sell it. Anybody anything?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:10:54] And absolutely, I agree 100 percent, and part of that equation leads back to that profit conversation because a lot of times as a business owner and I look this at my own experience with this, it was like I really liked working with this client. They were fun. They challenged me. But when I really then, you know, separated my, my personality and my, I guess, separated my ego out of it, you know, it came down to, well, yeah, they were a lot of fun to work with, but I really didn’t make any money from them. And here’s this client over here that maybe not as fun to work with. Still challenging, but look at how much money we’re making. Maybe we ought to focus there, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:11:32] And those are the hard kind of choices that you’re at least working your clients through to help them make decisions. Because for some people, it’s like, Look, I’ll make less money, but I’ll have more rewarding relationships here. And then some people want more money and have kind of a business that that kind of runs itself like everybody has different goals and objectives.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:11:53] And that’s why one of the first things that I always do with a client is, you know, thanks to Simon Sinek, we all know to answer the question What’s our why? Right business, right? Well, what I do is take that a step further and say, What’s your profit? Why? And the reason that I do that is because first of all, a lot of us have hang ups around money, right? For some people, profit is a dirty word. You know, it kind of takes that we’re being greedy or we’re taking advantage of people or we’re charging too much or, you know, those kinds of things. And so, you know, entrepreneurs often struggle with fear of success, often more than fear of failure. And so what I do is is say, look, let’s look at why you want to make money. Is it because you want to take that fancy vacation finally? Is it because you know you want to buy the $20000 watch? Is it because you just want to reinvest that profit to make your company stronger and more stable? Do you have an exit strategy? Do you ever want to sell your company because you’re not going to sell your company without profits? So it’s important to to sort of go through that exercise, first of all, to see if there are blocks and help try to remove those blocks around why you’re making money because, you know, for some people, that profit. The answer might be I’m just going to donate it all because I want to make the world a better place or I just want to serve more people. The point is, there’s no right answer to the profit wide question, but it’s important that you understand what your why is, and that helps you then create goals to go after it.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:36] And it creates that true north, because once you have that true north, then decisions become a lot easier. Like, is this helping me on my road to my true north? Or is this not helping me like things become very clear if you can really be tight when it comes to your why?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:13:53] You’re absolutely right. I talk a lot about values based decision making, because if if as as a company, you’re really clear on your values, decision making becomes so much easier, like even those decisions we just talked about, of which clients to to go after and bring on, it’s if you have clearly articulated values, you can look at those against any almost any decision that comes up in business and say, Does this fit my values? Does this fit my true north? Yeah, then we’re moving forward. If it doesn’t, it might be hard, but we’re walking away now.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:29] Can you share with the listeners? Is there anything they could be doing now? Is there some low hanging fruit that’s maybe in front of them that they could be working on today to help increase their profits?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:14:41] The lowest hanging fruit, especially in this market right now, is pricing, you know, almost every business on the planet has raised prices at some point in the last two years, most of it COVID or supply chain related. And you know, that’s a discussion that that a lot of businesses, you know, there’s many businesses that underpriced themselves in the first place, especially service businesses. And there’s things that you can do to increase your profit around pricing that are, you know, aren’t around discounting and might be around. You know, let’s increase the price, but also offer this additional value so that it’s easier for our customers to stomach and that kind of thing. That’s one thing. And then the other low hanging fruit. I think that a lot of people entrepreneurs miss is JV partners and strategic relationships are are there businesses in your industry that serve the same clients but do not compete with you that you can connect with and form, you know, not a like, Oh hey, you know, if you run into somebody, I’ll refer them to you. And if I run into somebody, you’ll refer them to me. That almost never works. But if you put together a formal strategic partnership relationship that says, Here’s what I’ll do for you and you send me a client, here’s what you can do for me. If, if you know, vice versa, it’s often easy to develop those kind of partnerships. And a lot of entrepreneurs don’t even think to look there.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:10] Well, let’s dove into that a little bit like if if you were helping somebody kind of form those type of partnerships say they’ve never done it before. What is an exercise that that entrepreneur or coach can do to kind of at least get started on identifying the right partner and then kind of working through what the parameters of a relationship would look like?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:16:34] So let me try to give you a simplified example. If I have a flower shop, you know, I’ve got my base of customers, but what I would want to think about is as people are buying flowers. What are other types of businesses that serve the exact same clientele that I might be able to form a strategic partnership with? So with flowers, obviously weddings are huge. So there’s a whole slew of everybody whose services the wedding industry, from the wedding planner to the caterer to the linen people to, you know, just any the the the dresses and tuxedos. All of those are potential strategic partners for you, especially if you’re in a local market and you want to help other local businesses. There’s nothing better than a customer walking in and you referring them to another local business that you recommend and know and have a relationship with to say, You know, Hey, here’s wanted to take this card and there’s there’s lots of ways you can structure that again. I’m always because I’m focused on profits. I’m not a big discount guy, so I’m not a big like here. Here’s a discount to go get a cheaper price at this local business. What I’d rather look at is, is there something we can do as a value add to say, Hey, if if you take this card that I gave you to this local business, they’re going to give you an extra blank right that hopefully has no cost. That just adds value to that relationship.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:10] And then so it’s just a matter of being creative and collaborative.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:18:15] Yes, and then and then trying to formalize it, so that the reason JV and strategic partnerships don’t work usually is because you go through the exercise of agreeing on it and then it just kind of gets forgotten. You just, oh, I forgot to give that card out because either there’s there’s no reward back and forth or you’re sending clients to them and they’re not sending clients to you. So it’s important to just formalize the relationship and say, Here’s what I’ll do for you. Here’s what you do for me. Great. This is a win win. Let’s stay in touch and develop this and nurture it

Lee Kantor: [00:18:50] And then create like, like you said, that formality, whether it’s check ins or make sure that you’re staying top of mind. So it isn’t just on a pile of stuff. Yeah, I work with these people, but I never think of them.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:19:03] Exactly top of mind is the critical phrase there. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:06] Now let’s talk a little bit about your $100000 profit program. How does that work?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:19:11] So this is a new thing we’re doing in twenty two, and basically, we’re going to work with up to 10 entrepreneurs as business advisors, business coaches, and we’re going to guarantee that they, as a result of our help, create an additional minimum of $100000 in profit, not revenue, but profit. So basically, what we’re saying is over the time you work with us, we’ll guarantee, you know, above and beyond anything we charge for, for our help, we’re going to guarantee you at least $100000 in additional profit.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:50] Now, if somebody signs up for that, is this something that they’ve got to wait till the end of the year to see the profit? Or are they going to be you think they’re going to be able to see kind of substantial gains fairly quickly?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:20:04] Yeah. Again, good question, hard to answer, I mean, you know, every business is different, right? Some businesses have the the capability and ability to immediately add profit. So in some cases it doesn’t. It doesn’t necessarily take that long to add that kind of profit. In other cases, it might take a year, and that just depends on what’s their current revenues at this point, what’s their cost of goods and current net profits. So, you know, that’s what we looked at before we accept anybody into that program.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:36] So how are they going to know that it’s going to work?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:20:42] So the so the process for that is just for us to get on a call and talk through some of the basic issues and what kind of challenges they have and what kind of struggles. And at that point, we, you know, make a determination whether we think they’re good for that program. Basically, what we try to do is on any of our coaching services. We offer an ROI guarantee that that if the very least, you don’t make back in profit what you paid us, you know, we’ll continue working with you until you do. But the $100000 program is, you know, we’re a little more selective and who gets in there.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:19] So that’s a pretty strong guarantee. So your your team is able to really kind of move people to at least get them out of the rut they might be in, but to take them to new levels?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:21:32] Yeah, that’s the whole idea, right, is is, you know, we’re not looking to reinvent your business, we’re not looking to, you know, disrupt it and that kind of thing. We, you know, we go after the low hanging fruit first, which you picked up on right away. And you know, the longer we work with somebody, the deeper we dove into areas where they can make a difference, you know? And sometimes that’s cost cutting. You know, another you know, current example right now is because of the effects of COVID. A lot of people can renegotiate their rents, and they haven’t even thought of going down that road. But you know, again, it’s a timing thing. You know, in normal times, that’s that’s, you know, your percentage of success on that kind of strategy is very low, but right now it’s much higher

Lee Kantor: [00:22:18] Now for you. Can you share kind of a most rewarding story in terms of the back story of what the pain and what the challenge was and how you were able to inject yourself and your team in to help get a client to a new level? Obviously, don’t name the name of the client, but maybe just kind of explain the situation.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:22:38] Well, I guess one of the most recent clients that I’ve worked with, it’s very niche business. I was brought in as a turnaround consultant because the company was losing money. They had family members involved. So this was a pretty significant engagement on our part. This wasn’t, you know, just a sort of nominal coaching arrangement. But we came in and, you know, the first thing we did is it identified the three different areas that the business functioned in and we kind of separated those areas and created a P&L and budgets and goals for each of the areas separately so that they could be judged independently. Then we came in and did some difficult staff recommendations for changes. And then we helped build them a sales force. So this was over, you know, a several year period. But we completely turn the company around in this case, you know, from losing money to making money. And then in this case, we quadrupled the size of the company over a few years. Wow.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:47] And before we wrap, I’d like to talk a little bit about your relationship with the Global Leaders organization. Can you educate our listeners about that group and why it’s something they may want to consider getting involved with?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:24:00] Absolutely, I appreciate you asking. So global leaders organization we call it GLOW is modeled after a few very successful other entrepreneurial communities EO, the entrepreneurs organization YPO, young presidents and WIPO women president. So we’ve modeled glow after those organizations, which are very successful. And basically, it’s an entrepreneurial community where we formed chapters in cities all over the world and at the chapter level, there are monthly events with very prominent business speakers and obviously networking with other entrepreneurs, as well as we form forum peer groups, which I’m a huge proponent of being in a peer learning environment so that that’s at the chapter level. But then Glow also offers a global digital platform for that as a member marketplace and a field network for people looking for strategic partners and and we also offer a full capital platforms. We have over one hundred and fifty funders looking to work with small businesses on a debt or equity basis. So Glow is is less than two years old. We offer some of the most amazing business content that’s out there. We’ve had in the past speakers like Mark Cuban, Kevin Harrington, Molly Bloom, Akon, Pit Bull, Mark McDonald or some of our past speakers. And we do this all at a price point, which is significantly less than these other organizations that I mentioned. So it’s a great community to get involved in. I run the Pittsburgh chapter where I’m based, but I’m also executive VP for GLOW, and my job is to find recruit and train chairs to start chapters all over the world.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:46] And then what? What is a good candidate for a chair look like?

Jay Fairbrother: [00:25:51] Chair would be an entrepreneur, obviously who who’s who would benefit from instantly becoming a leader in their local entrepreneurial community. So from the, you know, business contacts and networking that’s created by you building a local chapter, if that’s going to benefit you as a business owner in the long term, then that’s a great person to to be a candidate and there and there is financial compensation for these chairs. Based on what you do with your chapter, you can kind of set up your chapter as a separate business unit and run it as a business.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:29] Well, amazing story, Jay, and I appreciate you sharing it with us today. If somebody wants to connect with you and maybe learn more about your practice and or glow. What is the best way to get on your calendar or to learn more about what you’re up to

Jay Fairbrother: [00:26:44] So you can check out my consulting coach website, which is the profit architect scheme, and you can also just email me. It’s very simple. It’s JJ y at Fairbrother.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:59] Good stuff. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jay Fairbrother: [00:27:03] Thanks, Leigh. I appreciate being here.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:05] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll next time on Coach the Coach radio.