Transforming Trades: How to Empower Your Business and Delegate Effectively

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. I hope you have your paper and pen or digital device with you, because there’s going to be a lot of really smart things being said today. Today’s guest is Joey Zoccali. He is an author, speaker, and business strategist with grow with coach. Joey, welcome to the show, man.

Joey Zoccali: Thank you Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Uh, let’s get started with. Just tell us a little bit about your coaching practice. How you serving folks?

Joey Zoccali: Okay, that’s a great one to start. I guess right now we, uh, have several different programs I’ve tried to align everything up with, you know, what would fit into a person’s schedule, especially when you get to the entrepreneurs who are busy. We have a 1 to 1 program, which is typically a six month commitment. We also run a 90 day, 1 to 1 program, and that’s probably what I’ll mention a little bit today here. We call it the fix and scale model, where we kind of dive into the one constraint. We blow it open and then we take scaling from that. That’s a 90 day program. We do that one inside of a group as well in a mastermind. So that’s kind of what the picture looks like as far as as far as the lineup goes.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in coaching?

Joey Zoccali: That’s a great question. I’ve actually been in business myself over 30 years. I actually have a financial services background. I was an investment banker. I took companies, participated in in distribution for IPOs like Outback and Checkers and all the golf clubs and blockbuster back in the day. Ran a private practice as well for for many years at the same time made a few investments, uh, into into some marketing companies that actually in order to in order to make those work, I had to actually grab the reins. So I was pretty busy there for, for quite a few years. I’ve taken, um, three companies above the seven figure mark, one of those above the eight figure mark during that time. And actually I was kind of winding everything down. I kind of kicked back here in Florida. Nice little house. I got sunsets, I got the beaches. But man, I’ll tell you, it’s, um, when I wound everything down, it cut pretty boring all of a sudden. And I decided, you know, I’ve been given advice my whole life and never got paid for it. So why don’t I go ahead and help some businesses out and see if I can’t make a couple bucks doing so? So, you know, that’s kind of that’s kind of how it all evolved. And I’m happy to say, you know, I work with some great companies, Some great guys, some great businesses. And it’s just at a point in my life where making money while giving back is pretty personally rewarding.

Lee Kantor: So do you have a niche or an industry that you specialize in, or is this kind of industry agnostic? This kind of work.

Joey Zoccali: You know, in a sense, it’s it’s agnostic. Businesses have the same issues business to business to business. I do, however, lean towards the trades guys, the the the the plumber, the HVAC, the electrician, the chimney sweep. You know, these guys are hard workers. They’re out in the sun. They’re hard. It’s it’s these businesses are really hard to get up and over the hump. These guys, you know, really bust their tail a lot. And I find that just by helping, you know, put a little organization in a few great strategies that their businesses turn around so quickly. And it’s so rewarding that I find, you know, working with, with those guys to to be to, to be easy on easier on me as well as very productive. When we engage.

Lee Kantor: You mentioned the fix and scale framework. Uh, do you mind kind of digging in a little on that framework? What does it mean? And how does that help folks?

Joey Zoccali: Well, sure, I’d love to. The fix and scale is is the name. You know, you talk to businesses and most of these guys are are women. When they start, they break from another company doing the same thing because they feel they can do it better. And, you know, you take the case of you take the case of a baker, uh, in who, who, who bakes cakes and she decides, everybody tells her her her cakes are so wonderful. She should she should start her own business. Well, she says okay, and she does that and then realizes she can bake great cakes. But there’s a lot of other aspects of the business that she didn’t realize were there. It’s the same thing with some of these, uh, trades businesses. We had great, great skilled craftsmen, great guys who can who can just, you know, work miracles when it comes to the fixing and the fixing up and correcting and building and etc. but they do, however, often miss some tools that would make their life easier. The 90 day fix and scale framework is very, very simple. What we do is through an assessment we call the hierarchy Business Success assessment. We ask about 15 to 20 questions. We look at several areas of the business five total. And we determine where their biggest bottleneck, where that biggest constraint, what is holding this company back from blowing the doors off. And what we do is we hone in with that with the owner, and we go ahead and we put all the strategies, all the tools, all the horsepower behind blowing that constraint and in fixing it so that it doesn’t come back to haunt him. If there’s a few more behind that, we’ll fix those too. But once we normally pull the plug on that bottleneck, the doors open up and allows us to start scaling or growing the business the way they wanted to.

Lee Kantor: Now is that is their kind of usual suspects when it comes to that bottleneck? Are they usually in a couple of areas?

Joey Zoccali: Yeah. You’ll often find those in probably one of three areas. You know, a lot of these guys are making good money. They’re they’re they’re grossing. I was talking with the with the guy today. He’s he’s at 1.9 million a year right now. He’s having his best year ever. Yet he’s his his expenses are about 1.6 or 7. Just they don’t he’s profiting, but he doesn’t see the profit because the margins aren’t there and because the setup isn’t there. So profiting that’s that’s the first thing. You know, a lot of people talk about scale. They talk about that top line revenue. That’s wonderful. But without the profit. You know, it’s it’s it’s it’s all smoke and mirrors. Now behind that profit obviously is pricing. It’s it’s SLAs. It’s what are they. You know the structure of the business the overhead they’re carrying. But also it’s you know and this takes you to the to the second big one is how are they running their sales. Do they have a top end of their funnel. Do they have a strategy with which to close business? Do they have a way of delivering that efficiently? Is there is there a backlog? Are they carrying receivables? Uh, you know, is the marketing that they have efficient? Do they need more clients? Are they overbooked in some cases and unable to deliver? Are they’re skilled? Are their skills good enough to do that? Once you see those once those two things are kind of under control. The third thing and not always the case, but can we get this business owner running this ship without being in the field, without being on a truck, without looking at reports day in and day out. And can we teach him and can we help him set up a delegation system with the right ways to delegate so that he can get what he needs to get done by putting attention on growing and scaling while the other things take care of themselves. Now there’s a few other points, but those are the main ones which we would focus on.

Lee Kantor: Now, with your background in finance and the number side of the businesses, does that give you kind of almost an unfair advantage when you. You can probably at a glance see some of these problems just by looking through their books a little bit.

Joey Zoccali: I’ve read a lot of red herrings in my day and plenty of prospectuses, and I’ve seen leverage. I’ve seen no leverage. And and I’ll tell you, um, you know, compared to some of the companies going public, this is a little simpler. But there is one line that I always look for on a balance sheet, and that is there’s a line called retained earnings. And I always almost go there first. Um, because if I see retained earnings, uh, that tells me that the owner isn’t taking every penny out of the business for their for their yachts, for their fast cars, for their house payment or whatever the case may be. They’re treating the business like an entity. If that’s in place, I know I’m kind of dealing with the with the guy. That would be easy to easier to scale. So with that in mind, when you have retained earnings in and you have a profitable balance sheet, you know, these guys are going to sell someday in putting the balance sheet, the cash flow statement, the PNL all in place allows them to be able to go to market with their business much easier than if you had to just walk in and and do it from scratch. So yeah, I think there’s probably a little bit of an advantage.

Lee Kantor: Now is, um, that are most of your clients working towards some sort of an exit? Is that or do you do you tell them, hey, build this as if there is an exit like you have to have the end in mind. Is that part of your coaching also?

Joey Zoccali: A lot of these guys. Have. Let me put it to you this way. There’s always an end to the business. There always is. Okay. Eventually it’s going to end. Just like you and me, Lee. Okay. But there is an end. So whether they’re actively building to it, passively building toward it, looking forward to it or avoiding it, um, it’s it’s they’re on the path to moving out of their business. So there’s only a few things that a few ways you can get out of your business. One is, is you can just close the doors. And unfortunately, a lot of these guys get into business with the idea that I’ll work this for 15, 20, 30 years and then I’ll sell the business and have money to retire. It’s not always the case. Only about 15 or 16% of businesses that go to a business broker to help for sale are actually set up to sell. Most get turned away, which then you have to ask, okay, what are the other things? I mean, the owner can sell it to his employees, but that takes a lot of prep and a lot of planning. Typically at least 2025 employees to pull an Esop off the second. Another way is that he can just scale it and then sell it on the open market. If he’s lucky enough for asset value and maybe a little goodwill. It’s not a huge cash out, but it’s it is something. And then finally he can look at transitioning by giving the business or selling the business to his children.

Joey Zoccali: One way or another, it’s going to happen. The cleaner the balance sheet, the cleaner the operation, the cleaner the sales. If we’re seeing quarter over quarter growth 20, 30, 40 quarters in a row, we know we have a business that has value if the owner is not even in it and he’s he’s, you know, running it 90% absentee. That’s a very viable business. And then the last one is, you know, is is is is the guy have a strong enough program? Is he is he good enough at execution and operations in order to possibly roll up. So you have a plumber in a particular area and there’s a few smaller plumbers, you know, keep in mind a lot of these guys are boomers, and they’re getting out of business and they’re looking for ways to get out. Well, that makes it ripe for some younger guys who who have a business to be able to go out and acquire that business. A book, a cash flow. Um, uh, you know, uh, assets, trucks, equipment, whatever the case may be, which gives them the roll up concept where, you know, in essence, you could roll up two, three, 4 or 5 of those over a period of a couple years and you’d be primed for a private equity sale. Now, those are rare. Most guys don’t look that far ahead. But I mean, that is very, very doable. It’s a great strategy if it’s the right owner with the right consistency and the right expectations.

Lee Kantor: Now one of the things that you use with your clients are inversion thinking. Can you talk about what that is and um, and how it works.

Joey Zoccali: Okay. Inversion thinking it’s um, it’s it’s not a new concept. It’s actually was developed by, uh, one of the Stoics. I believe Marcus Aurelius could have been Epictetus, but, um, it’s an interesting twist. Whether you’re running a department, let’s say a sales department or or a customer service department, whether you’re running a $10 million, $20 million business, whether you’re starting up and just getting going. What inversion thinking does is it changes the way we might strategize. So you could take a program or a pilot. We’re going to increase the sales by X amount in in six months or a year, whatever the case, or I’m going to start a new business and roll it out. One of the first things using inversion. Inversion thinking would be to ask, let’s project ourselves 12 months into the future. It’s now, you know, nine over 11 of 2026. In looking back, how did we fail to pull this off? What did we do or not do which caused this whole thing to fail financially? We have we’re embarrassed. Our reviews are bad. We’ve lost money. We’ve lost faith. What happened? How did we fail so badly? And now you brainstorm that list and you brainstorm with your people. And if that’s the case, now we start looking at this and we go, oh. Oh, well, what happens is we expose what the owners and the employees might be thinking but aren’t saying, and we bring all that to the surface. So now we can categorize all of these issues, and then strategically, we can go ahead and implement strategies so that those things don’t happen. So that by using the inverse of what we want to happen, we all want to succeed. But how would we fail? We now get the list of things that we need to make sure we cover, so that in 12 months we’re we’re not failed and we’re successful. Very powerful. Very, very powerful. And if any, you know, if anybody loved to try that, it’s a great it’s a great, great exercise. And we we do it all the time.

Lee Kantor: So when you play out kind of this worst case scenario and explore all the possible kind of points of failure and what that looks like and what it feels like. And so you can, um, prepare in advance and maybe eliminate some of those things from happening. Uh, I’m sure that your clients are, like, this is a little uncomfortable.

Joey Zoccali: Of course it’s very uncomfortable. Lee. I mean, you know, we could we could play patty cake, or we could dig in and get real, and, you know, I don’t know. Um. I was born in the northeast. I’m pretty much all Italian. Uh, I come from a strict background. Um, and, you know, sugar coating is nice. Don’t get me wrong. There is a place and a time to sugar coat and, you know, press the flesh and. But but, you know, if we’re going to get real and we’re talking about your business, we’re talking about your family, we’re talking about your employees, your vendors, your customers, and your your your commitment to the community to build jobs. I mean, really, that’s what a business. As a business owner, your job is just to build more, uh, jobs. I mean, that’s one of your jobs is to create more jobs for for those around you and improve, improve their lives while you improve yours as well as your customers. We can’t we can’t we can’t skate the issues. I mean, I think that’s one of the first things that happened. You know, sometimes when people have really no idea what is it like to work with a strategist one on one. I’m your best friend and at the same time, your harshest critic. Because, you know, I’m looking at your you and your business from a 40 foot view. And sometimes, you know, it’s it’s not so pretty. And this even goes for businesses that are doing really well. Okay. Some of the owners and you wouldn’t believe their, their, you know, 30, 40, 50 million a year in business. Yet they still bring in a strategist, a coach because there are things that they don’t always see. And the strategic ones do this much better. But there are things that they don’t see. But you got to be real. And I think being real is the issue.

Lee Kantor: Right? I think it’s so important that coaches remember you’re there to be a trusted advisor. You’re there, uh, you know, for some tough love. You’re there for support and accountability. You’re not there to be their best friend. And sure, there might be times where you can hang out and have a beer, but that’s not the goal isn’t to just be their buddy and that they like hanging out with me. Your job is to help them get to a new level. That’s that’s why they’re hiring you.

Joey Zoccali: Correct? Yep.

Lee Kantor: And I think some coaches miss that in the training that they think that they want to be their friend. And then so everything’s about being their friend. And then it’s kind of sometimes they’re not willing to go out on the line to challenge them and to and to, you know, ask them to defend choices and to hold them accountable.

Joey Zoccali: Yes. You’re You. You’re hitting the nail right on the head. From from, you know, from being in this space, I can just tell you that there’s guys who are good coaches, and there are guys who are good consultants, and they’re guys who are good strategists, and there’s guys who are good fractional CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, and and they all have a place. But it’s hard for me to go, okay, you’re profiting 4.5% in an industry which the average is 23%. Why are we so far off? And to ask that question, just go, well, you know, why do you think you might not be hitting your goals? Is is is is it’s it’s almost like being a dilettante. It’s, you know, to try to bring them to some idea of why this might be happening, when you can look and go, okay, your overhead is too high, your compensation plan is terrible. You don’t have enough money coming in. You haven’t established a, uh, an income stream or revenue, uh, on a on a regular basis. Your margins are tight, and and you’re you’re you’re in debt at at 25%. Well, you know, why do you think we’re at this number? We got to clean this up.

Lee Kantor: Right? And and then when you go to them with a solution, go. Let’s pick one. Let’s pick the biggest one and let’s work on it and make that go away. And if you do that relentlessly you’re not going to have these problems.

Joey Zoccali: Yep. And that’s where we come in with the 90 day fix and scale. We blow that out of the water. We put in a little bit of delegation. We teach them a little bit of how to think, how to avoid the pitfalls. We give them some tools that that they can use to make better decisions, uh, and better strategies and then give help them develop a roadmap so they can see the next six months, the next 12 months, the next 24 months. And that’s what we do in the 90 day fix and scale. Really excited about the program.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And I think it’s a powerful way to attack these things. You know, you’re not biting off too much, but you’re biting off enough where you can make a difference in a short period of time.

Joey Zoccali: Yep.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your clients, um. How are they? How are they doing when it comes to creating that balance that they that they want to have in their lives for the short term and for the long term? You know, they’re trying to in the I’m sure in their head they’re trying to build this life and they’re trying to make a living for themselves. But what are some things that they could be doing to, um, you know, maybe get that short and long term, uh, ball moving in the right direction.

Joey Zoccali: Good question. The one thing that you’ll typically find, especially in in the trades guys and home services guys, they work hard. They’re not afraid to work. They’re not afraid to get dirty. They’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves. They’re not afraid of 12 hour days. The the problem is, is that the industry has conditioned the industry that that is the way to succeed. You know, the only way you can do is to grind and grind and grind. I’ve grinded and I’m not a believer of grinding. I think very strongly that given the owner the right tools to learn how to delegate a little bit, to learn how to put in the the sequences and the checklists of how things get done, to be able to help him get rid of some of this stuff. So he so he has a little more time to think, and he can reduce that overall stress that he’s feeling by having enough income come up so that he can replace Place, not himself, but some of the duties and tasks and functions. So one of the things that we always do is we go heavy on time blocking, especially for the owner. These guys will work on their business. And I’m going to tell you, and this is really one of the critical things that that I see. Listen, coach, I don’t have time right now for, for for coaching. I got so much work to do. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t I don’t have time for coaching. I’d love to, but that’s a luxury I can’t I can’t do right now. Lee, that is the exact person that needs help more than anything. Because with the few simple tools, okay, the Eisenhower matrix, the calendar blocking, uh, these simple tools could help them so tremendously. Now find time to work on their business, not just in it.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you find that a lot of times people get hung up on tasks that they’re doing because they’ve always done them, and they’re not kind of opening their mind to that. Somebody else can do this. Just because you you’ve done it and you’re the best one to do it. Um, you can find somebody to delegate this to, and maybe they’ll be at 80% and will work towards a higher percent of, of competency. But you got to let it go. I mean, there has to be I’m sure that when they you say to them, well, show me your calendar. I’m sure it’s not that hard to find time for a coach in that week.

Joey Zoccali: No, you’re you’re you’re correct. Um, I will tell you, there are great tools out there that sometimes will use, especially in that case. Um, and I don’t want to plug any of them here, but a tool like Activtrak, which monitors everything that happens for the business owner and his employees. You can actually start finding where they’re spending time. You know, they were scrolling Facebook a little bit. Oh, they’re on Instagram. Oh, you know, they’re taking an hour and a half lunch with some buddies at the bar. Oh, oh. And there’s always a good reason for it. Okay. That’s the one thing. There’s always a good reason to push the necessity, the work that you need to do, you know, into the future. And and you know, when there’s accountability that accountability changes. And they either they either level up or they say this isn’t for me. And, um, I think that’s that’s, um, you know, that’s the way it is now.

Lee Kantor: Is there a story you can share that maybe illustrates how the coaching with you can work? What is, uh, share an example. Maybe the challenge the the company or the person came to you with and how you were able to help them get to a new level. Obviously, you don’t have to name names, but just what was the problem they had when they contact you, and how were you able to help them?

Joey Zoccali: Okay, so I have a business that, um, I’m I’m working with. They are they are an HVAC company, and they, they, they were doing about two, 2.6, 2.8 mil in the HVAC space. And then they got the idea, um, from, um, a relationship. It was he he knew that a guy was selling his plumbing service. His plumbing service was small, probably seven, 800,000 a year. Not really big, but but they put a deal together, and the guy with the successful plumbing business sucked in this. This, um. I’m sorry the HVAC business sucked in this plumbing business all of a sudden. Pure chaos. So, you know, you call, what can we do? What can we do? Well, I’ll just tell you that sorting that out, you know, keeping it all separate. The agreements they had was more than a handshake. I had to help them go get attorneys to to bind this thing. Um, you know, the reformatting of the the the combining the office phones, the the everything that had to happen, the social, the, the, you know, press releases, the branding, all of that was almost all had to be redone. Now they’ve come out of it, there are over 5 million. But but it took it took 18. It took 18 to 24 months for that to happen. But it was um, you know, the owner put some serious hours in because he wasn’t prepared to take that on, but he thought he was because his one business ran so well.

Lee Kantor: Right. It the unintended consequences.

Joey Zoccali: Yep. Exactly. Remember I talked to you earlier a little bit about about inversion thinking. Well that goes to that would have been a great time to really do that model. Doing great. I mean, you know, um, uh, I see him about once a month now. We were a lot closer, but, uh, about once a month, and and, you know, it’s for accountability. It’s it’s for, you know, sometimes, Lee, some of these guys have no one to talk to. You know, they they’re running businesses, they’re stressed. They got payroll to make. They got client complaints. They got social media that needs taking care of. They got people calling them, selling them stuff. They’re vendors they’re out of, you know, there’s they they run their lives almost by interruption, by interruption as a, as a way of, uh, you know, their business strategy, which, which isn’t healthy.

Lee Kantor: Right. Like they’re running it like an emergency room. They’re just triaging whatever’s in front of them.

Joey Zoccali: Yeah. And what we try to do is we try to put that all. We try to bring order to that chaos. And it’s a little bit you can’t go in and just whack it over the head and have a good day. It’s it’s a growing process and, you know, um, now, the more capable, the more determined, the more energy, the more, um, drive and ambition and the ability to execute, the easier this whole thing goes.

Lee Kantor: So now, is there anything that our listeners right now could be doing to, um, to make a difference? Is there kind of a low hanging fruit that pretty much everybody, if they did this, they would benefit from that? You could share.

Joey Zoccali: I could share dozens. But I’ll share. I’ll share one, maybe two with you. Okay. Yeah. One of the things that that I always, almost always have to correct. Now, keep in mind I have a marketing background. Okay. Uh, as well as the finance background. But one of the things I always have to correct is the sales cycle. And when I say that, I mean the client journey. How does one start and how does one what is the client journey look like from acquisition all the way through referral. And in each step, broken down as cleanly and as clearly as you have. Is there scripting that addresses that? Part of that cycle and oftentimes everything is they just wing it. They don’t answer the phone correctly. They missed calls. They they they don’t ask good questions. They they fail to close the customer. They don’t know how to give a bid. They, you know, they don’t know whether to go face to face or email quotes out. That’s a whole other nightmare. But you know that that client journey needs to be really drawn out in a circle at each one with what you say from answering the phone all the way for asking a referral. And then when you do that, you’ll see whether it’s your delivery, whether it’s, you know, the amount of time it takes, whether it’s satisfied customers, you know, where where is that bottleneck, where, where is the bottleneck in your client journey? Because that’s going to relate to when we spoke about earlier, some of the things like the profit, the sales and the delegation that all comes into play in overlays on that client journey. Because if we can’t deliver a wonderful experience for the client, we’re going to have trouble in business. So when you overlay those two things, you can actually get a really good idea of at least kind of where we should start.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. That’s great. Uh, great advice. And I think that, uh, you can tell in a short period of time you probably make a big difference in these organizations. I would imagine it probably. What what’s your process like? Do you start with a discovery call, like how does someone begin an engagement with you?

Joey Zoccali: Um, we can start with the discovery call. Uh, we also send out the, uh, the the assessment, the the business hierarchy assessment, which I spoke about earlier. Then you would actually do the assessment comes to me, a copy comes to you, then we we have a free training set up where you actually go on, and we’ll show you exactly how to take that report and apply it to your business. And there’s, you know, no charge on any of that. We you know, this is you know, we want you to succeed. So then we always offer the opportunity to do that discovery call once. Once they see that, see that this is something they’d be interested in. We do a discovery call, and then we all often follow that up with, with a, with a coaching call, um, to, to to kind of hone in on exactly what we would do with them. And then we leave that up to them, whether they’d like to go one on one, whether they’d like to go into our next available group or just join the mastermind.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you. What is the coordinates to connect?

Joey Zoccali: You can connect with me at, uh, email right now would be, uh, J is a colleague at Focal Point Coaching.com. Yes. I’m certified. Um. Or you can, uh, get me on my socials at grow with Coach Joey.

Lee Kantor: So if they went into LinkedIn and typed grow Coach Joey, they’d be able to find you.

Joey Zoccali: They’d type Joey Zikhali.

Lee Kantor: Joey Zikhali on LinkedIn or, like, on Facebook or Twitter.

Joey Zoccali: Facebook. Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, Joey, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Joey Zoccali: Lee, I appreciate you taking the time, and I hope I was, um, a good subject for you today. Okay.

Lee Kantor: Great advice. Man, I appreciate you. Yup. All right. This Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.