Fortune 100 Secrets: Why Small Business Owners Fail (and how not to) With Stacey Bullman

Are you running your business on gut instinct instead of data?

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, host Michael D. Morrison sits down with Stacey Bullman, Founder & CEO of I’m Not Mad At You Consulting, to break down how small business owners can apply Fortune 100 systems, financial discipline, and decision-making frameworks without becoming corporate or losing agility.

With over 25 years inside Fortune 100 companies, Stacey brings real-world insight into why most small businesses struggle with forecasting, cash flow clarity, delegation, and scalable systems — and how CEOs can fix it fast.

You’ll hear why:
 • Math and financial acuity drive every successful decision
 • Systems beat hustle every time
 • Small business owners avoid asking for help — and why that hurts growth
 • CEOs must stop wearing every hat to scale
 • Discipline, delegation, and belief separate growth companies from stalled ones

Stacey also draws powerful parallels between marathon training and business leadership, showing how discipline, consistency, and coaching apply to both.

If you’re a small business owner who feels overwhelmed, stuck, or unsure how to scale — this conversation will change how you think about your business.

About the Guest:

Stacey Bullman is the Founder & CEO of I’m Not Mad At You Consulting, a leadership and business consulting firm helping CEOs and leadership teams improve decision-making, financial clarity, and operational discipline. 

 Timestamps (Short) 

00:00 — Meet Stacey Bullman & her consulting background
03:40 — From elite athlete to Fortune 100 executive
07:55 — Why marathon discipline mirrors business leadership
12:20 — The real difference between corporate & small business systems
18:10 — Why most small businesses don’t use math to make decisions
24:35 — Forecasting, inputs vs outputs, and financial discipline
31:50 — The 5 PL line items every CEO must understand
38:45 — Delegation, discipline, and why owners wear too many hats
45:30 — Why successful leaders always have coaches
52:10 — Why business owners avoid asking for help
59:00 — Belief, mindset, and the final takeaway for every CEO

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Stacy And The Mission
• 2:30 From Elite Athlete To CEO
• 6:10 Marathon Lessons For Leadership
• 9:40 Corporate Systems Small Firms Need
• 14:30 Forecasts, P&L, And Real Math
• 19:40 Inputs vs Outputs Reality Check
• 23:20 Monthly Reviews And Line Items
• 27:40 Dirt Before Foundation: Numbers First
• 31:20 Discipline, Delegation, And Time
• 36:40 Coaching Isn’t Optional At The Top
• 41:20 Ask For Help, Drop The Ego

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivot where we have special guests from around the world, different countries, across the pond, as they say. But you know that no one can introduce themselves and their business like the business owner. So I turn it over to you to tell us your name, your company, and just a little bit about you and where you're coming from.

SPEAKER_00: 0:21

Absolutely. I'm Stacy Bullman. I'm the founder and CEO of I'm Not Mad You Consulting, where we make people and companies better. We have been a practicing consulting firm for close to 10 years now. We have worked with companies in every single industry. So we are not industry specific. I came from the consumer packaging company companies for 25 years, working for lots of Fortune 100 companies and learning systems and processes that they use and that they have been quite successful over the past 100 years. And so I have taken what I learned in corporate America and started I'm not mad at you in 2017. And so we have been bringing information, education, guidance, counseling, console, all things you can imagine to support CEOs and leaders. Our most popular program is our CEO soundboarding program where we work with the CEO weekly. We talk to them every single week. We don't allow decisions to be made without our guidance or our input. We feel like if a leader goes too long without, you know, some discussion or decision making that they can make decisions that we can't correct or you know go back on. So we like to stay close and um we've been very successful thus far.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46

Well, I'm very excited to have you. I know our listeners are gonna benefit greatly from this. Let's introduce the show so we can get started. Let's do it. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, Michael Morrison, founder and CEO of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at BusinessOwnership Simplified.com. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. I'm excited to get going, but I know our listeners kind of like to be relatable to our guest. So do you have any background? I know we've talked before about college and we have we root for the same colors, if you will, completely. And so uh any any background information you can catch us up on so we kind of know who you are?

SPEAKER_00: 2:51

I mean, I I'd like to think I have a colorful background. I've done a lot of things in my life. I was an elite uh tennis player from the time I was eight years old through college. I played for the University of Oklahoma, singles and doubles, and quite successful, and transitioned from elite athlete into corporate America, as we said, and spent 25 years working in that environment, breaking glass ceilings and traveling all over the world. Um, as you said, learning every day, having an opportunity to learn with some really intelligent people, very good guider guidance, counseling. And um, I am an avid golfer. Well, I was an avid golfer before I moved to Mexico. I played every single Saturday for 15 years. I have a hole in one. Yeah, yeah. I've broken 80 from the men's and the women's tees. Wow. So I transitioned from tennis to golf and became an avid, avid golfer. And then when I turned 40, I started running marathons, and I've run three marathons and 10 half marathons. And I'm a world traveler. I've been to 26 countries, and I currently live in Mexico now. And the whole point of starting this company was actually with that goal in mind was to essentially be able to live anywhere in the country and run a successful consulting practice. And we really feel like with a phone and a computer, that's as much as we need to be accessible to our clients and to leaders that are looking for guidance and help for their companies. Woo!

SPEAKER_01: 4:21

You don't sit down very long, do you?

SPEAKER_00: 4:23

Let me tell you something. I'm gonna tell you something, Michael. This is uh a client of mine brought this to my attention. So he put in variables about his life and found out that he was one in eight billion in terms of the things that his parents had been married a certain amount of time, and he just put in different various variables about his life. And he said, I'm one in eight billion. I said, Look, so there's one of you in the world, right? There's eight billion people. So I decided I would put in those same variables for my life in in different things that I had done, the holes in one and the marathons and elite athlete. And I am one to the twenty third power. Essentially, I don't even understand that math. I'm not possible. According to Chat GPT and the statistics that I have accomplished in my life, someone like me does not exist. In fact, to the 23rd power, they don't exist. So I I kind of know that about myself. I believe that about myself. I have a tattoo that you can't see, but I believe a lot in myself and those around me. And if I set my mind to it, usually it's going to happen.

SPEAKER_01: 5:36

Well, I know our listeners want to hear business, but I have to say, you and I have got to talk about this marathon on another call because I just ran my first one. Our listeners know that they kind of followed some of my journey. I just ran my first marathon this year, so I'm running my second in 2026. So uh, but I know our listeners, I know I'm not gonna get off on the marathon thing. You've heard it before, so we're gonna get it. Yes, like business.

SPEAKER_00: 6:01

Listen though, running a marathon is one of the best things you can do mentally if you are a business leader or you are looking to start a business and you have something like a hobby or something that creates discipline or that you know demands discipline. I still think it's a good we can talk about running a marathon because any business owner that would be in the discipline of trying to run a marathon will feel the same way running their business.

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

Absolutely. I'm just south of 60 years old. People thought I was crazy for doing it, and here I am doing it again. And yes, you are correct. I mean, you've got to be adaptable, you gotta learn, you gotta train. Nothing's ever gonna go your way. I mean, it's just there's so many disciplines in that you're gonna want to quit.

SPEAKER_00: 6:46

You're going to want to quit often. I mean, no matter how much training you do, there's a moment in almost all of our marathons that we want to quit. And I can say a lot of business owners probably feel the same way at certain points when they're in the in the race. So yeah, there's a lot of um, I strongly recommend athletics and different um hobbies that do um pair well for business leaders and owners as something to have as a diversion at the very least, but something that also hones your skills. For instance, you working and training for a marathon is helping in training you to run your business. You have more discipline, you have more stamina. There are other things that it translates to for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 7:29

Yeah, and especially if things don't go your way. I know 10 days before the marathon day for me, all of a sudden runner's knee crept in. I was like, Are you? I've been training for nine months, and the race is a week. So I had to improvise, right? I had to also medical people, I had to go online, I had to find some like what do I do? What do I do? I am running, I am running this race. I did not spend nine months running in minus 10 degree weather and wind and everything else to miss this one day, and so I made it. And so, like you said, it's business. I want to get to the real quick the you you were in corporate America, right? And so for a lot of small business owners, we think, oh, how does Amazon do what they do? How does Walmart have all these systems? And I'm like, you can do the same thing. So can we talk about the difference between corporate and small business mindset when it comes to systems and processes?

SPEAKER_00: 8:26

Because that you mentioned I would love to because I've been able, yeah. Sorry, I think it cut out there for a second. But no, I would love to. I this is really something that I feel like in our consulting practice that I'm not mad at you. We bring corporate processes and practices to small businesses. The reason that is for first of all, is that we are not taught financial um acuity when we are raised. And we don't usually learn it in college or high school. And if we go off into whatever fields we go into, let's let's use, for instance, a construction individual who their father and their grandfather had a construction company, and in all likelihood they're going to go into construction, right? And say they do. What they didn't learn was finance, accounting, the math of their business, or the systems and processes that the Fortune 100 companies use. And I will tell you, it's very heavy on math. And that's not very sexy. In fact, I I did a survey and found out that people are seven times more likely to talk about sex than they're going to talk about financial acuity or their financial position or their financial situation, or math, or numbers, or data, or all the math that our businesses and personally our life tell us. And so what the corporations do is they use systems and processes based on forecasting, movement, uh expectations, new launches, you know, environmental concerns in terms of what's going on publicly. They use everything, and then they have a lot of systems and processes that you follow. For instance, working for the consumer product companies that made all the over-the-counter products that you guys can imagine, Advil, Tylenol, Robotus, and I sold all those products into companies like Walmart. And you had all the data. You were provided all of the data on the products, and this particular Advil 100 count turns two units per week. They're going to sell two of these a week. You looked at that math, and if that was not competitive, in all likelihood that product was going to get taken out of the Walmart set because they were using math. And the average item was moving five units per week. So all this math, especially for these big companies, gets bottled up and shown to you in ways that you make excellent forecast, decision-making prognosis, whatever you want to call it, to give that company the information for them to make accurate decisions with production, with so many different things, marketing decisions, PR decisions. So everything rolls into those numbers, into the math. And any decision that's made is a mathematical decision. That is the biggest difference that I see with small businesses. Very rarely do they use math to make a decision. First of all, they don't collect the math or don't do enough homework to know the math. Let's say you're a small business owner and you want to start a company and you happen to be in construction and you're in the Dallas Metroplex Market. You're going to look at if you are a residential construction person, you're going to look at how many houses are being built, how many are in the market area that I'm capable of and have the skill sets to build that house. And then it starts with, let's say there's a hundred thousand houses being built in Dallas in 2026. Okay, you know you're not going to get all 100,000 of them, right? What I tell people is mathematically you could expect maybe to get 0.05%. That doesn't excite people when they hear that either. No. So the first thing you're doing is you're figuring out, no, it's very you're going to be told no 99.9% of the time, typically. So you need a big enough number to start with to give yourself and your business a chance to even have success. Because the other part of numbers that's so critical, and this is really easy for people to understand, is you need more inputs than you have outputs. And so often people, you know, that sounds simple. And that applies not only to our businesses, it applies to our personal life, correct? Any situation that we are involved in, we need more inputs than outputs. So you have to be conscientious and looking at the inputs and the outputs to understand where you stand. So we spend a lot of time working in the numbers. So if we work with if we're working with a startup company, we demand that they provide a forecast or we work with them to create a forecast, usually for 18 months to two years. And I'm telling you, this is not the fun stuff. People are excited about I'm so excited to start my new company and they want to create logos. They wanna, they want to spend six weeks creating a logo because that's fun. They can see the, they can see their work there. They want to create an ad or you know, a slogan, different things like that. Whereas I tell people, don't worry so much about your logo. That's not gonna probably end up getting you any sales. What is gonna get you sales is a good story, a value proposition, a point of differentiation. So you have math that's really critical, and doing your homework in terms of if you're starting or if you're in business, you need to be looking at your numbers constantly. We look at the profit and loss statement every single month. Every single one of our owners' CEOs, they pull up that PL every month. We have to review that. We don't look at the whole thing. A lot of people say that's intimidating. Well, of course it is if you look at the entire document. But there's about five line items. If you go straight to those line items, you have a ton of information for each month. What is my net revenue? What did I do in sales? Was that more than last month? Was that less than last month? Was that more than one year ago? That's a big common mistake I see is that when business owners are looking at their business, they'll say, look, April was better than March, and they're excited, which of course that's something to celebrate. You know, let's say they sold more in April than they did March. So they say, wow, this is great. But that also could have been market conditions, right? So comparing April to March isn't really what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to compare April to April a year ago. April can only be compared to April, and March can only be compared to March. So these are common mistakes that business owners make all the time. And it's not because they're dumb, it's not because they're not savvy, it's because you're not taught. I didn't learn any of this in school. And I didn't learn any of this in you know, high school, no, college, no. I didn't learn it until it was part of my job. And I work for the Fortune 100 companies, so I already am a 1% person in the United States of America. Only 1% of the people are going to work for the Fortune 100 companies. So already I'm gonna be giving information that the majority of human beings are never ever going to be taught. That is why the Fortune 100 companies don't go out of business, too. They're not sharing that information with anybody, they're not sharing with you their systems and processes at all.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

No, and for good reason. And you mentioned construction. So I uh kind of want to mention, just to kind of put it into perspective for our listeners, when I ask people what's the most important part of a house, 99% of people will tell me the foundation. And I'm like, well, I have a family member that develops uh neighborhoods. And according to him and others I know, the foundation is important, but the non-sexy part is the dirt. If they don't get that dirt compacted and moved correctly, you're gonna have flooding issues and and the the foundation, the concrete foundation will fail if the dirt is not solid. So that's what we're kind of talking about is your math and your numbers. That's the dirt. It's but it's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_00: 16:08

It's exactly the most unsexy, the ugliest part of it. And yet I love that that analogy of it is the dirt. It is, you know, it has to be packed and it has to be moved around, and you have to constantly review it and look at it and understand where you stand. And and as I said, you know, for with my clients, once we get into it, they really appreciate it. And I do feel like it changes them dramatically. Back to obviously they're learning it in their businesses, but you clearly what you learn in your business, you can take into other areas of your life. And because I work with small to mid-sized business owners, they usually are small families, you know, growing families. You know, a lot of my clients are 30 to 40 years old, so they're starting young families. They're also, they don't just have goals for the business, they have goals for their families. And so a lot of the things that we're doing, it's like, look, we want to get you to sales and net income of this number, but I'm not just doing it for the business. I want it for them because they're gonna get a new house, they're gonna have another child, they're gonna, you know, add a pool, go on an extra vacation. There's a lot of reasons that, you know, once you gear and and shine the light this direction for your for your business leaders, it really can have a larger impact in their entire life. And that's I we try to consult from a bigger picture like that in in the sense of, of course, we're making their company better, but we say we make people and companies better because we feel like when we make the company better, we're making the person better or the people in that company better.

SPEAKER_01: 17:40

Yeah, it's it's uh uh I I don't call it work-life balance, I call it work-life integration, right? So it's they have to uh complement each other and in order for someone to be happy, right?

SPEAKER_00: 17:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 17:53

If not, we've we see burnout, we see people miserable and things. Well, let me um so all of the systems and processes are good, numbers are good, but the most common thing I'm sure you and I hear, I'm wearing so many hats. How do I even fit that stuff in? You know, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges for business owners is I know I need systems and processes, but I I how do we get those done? How do I find time carve out when I've got a fire over here I gotta put out and an angry customer or project that's behind? What are your suggestions uh coming from the corporate and then seeing that in the business world?

SPEAKER_00: 18:33

You have to just like we're talking about the marathon, discipline. It's discipline. And we understand that, you know, as it always is when since we were talking about construction, it's a lot more fun for the owner of the construction company to go on site and go check how the the operations of that project are going. That's easy for that person to go because they understand construction typically. But the discipline is no, you leave that for your project manager. You've delegated that task to another person that you pay a salary to, right? So you have to trust in your delegation process and you need to delegate correctly, obviously. So if you have a project manager that is responsible to you know to ensure that your project is going accurately, you can't go babysit that person. You need to be disciplined. And if it's time to work on payroll, and it's Thursday and it's payroll day, you gotta sit in that office and you've got to do payroll and hope that the person that you delegated to the other tasks that are necessary are are handling those. But I definitely think it's discipline and and as we talked about the marathon, it's it's you know, you have to carve out the time for the tasks you don't like. And as we just said, leaders generally lean towards tasks they like. So it is stamina, it's discipline, it's consistency, and it's it's a matter of setting the time aside for those other tasks because I alwa Always say this if you run a construction company or you're a photographer and you start a photo a photography company or photography business, you're probably only going to get to do photography 10 or 15% of the time. The rest of the time is going to be all those other tasks that you speak of: payroll and accounting and finance and marketing and sales and business development and lawyer and HR and manager and all the things that we just discussed. That's actually your role as a CEO because you represent the company, right? Like technically, as a CEO, you are an individual inside the organization, and then you have employees. The company is a standalone feature as well. I mean, it is an entity of itself. And so it's hard a lot of times for the owner to necessarily speak for the company because they're speaking for themselves because they're running around, as you just said, wearing a million hats. But somebody has to be the spokesperson for the company and make sure that the things that are necessary to be done get done. And that's where the CEO has to have that discipline and commitment to the task they don't appreciate. And if you don't, you have to delegate those tasks. People, you know, use people like myself to also help because a lot of time it is a time management situation of like, okay, this is a focus, this is a focus, delegate this, but keep yourself involved in these things. So it's it's a juggling act, but I do think anybody that's going to start a business needs to be prepared that you're not going to get to do the thing you like as much as you like to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 21:36

Absolutely. And you mentioned discipline and delegation. I remember in my journey of training for the marathon, had I tried to figure things out myself, I would have failed. So what do I do when I'm looking for the shoes? I go to an expert. I didn't just go to your local, I'm not going to call anybody under the bus, but you know, just a local shoe uh store that has everything. I went to a shoe running store, got their advice when I was looking for a belt. How am I going to carry all my electrolytes and my gels? And what's the best way? And all, you know, what do I and then people don't even see the 50 to 70 miles you run every single week, not all at once. For me, it wasn't all at once. It was in intervals, right? Of course. On the hills and the walking sprints, and people don't see that. And so I wouldn't have known to do that had I not gone to experts. And so kind of what you're saying is in business, go to the experts, quit. You will save yourself so much time and money if you quit trying to figure things out yourself, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:40

The the leaders and the CEOs of every one of those Fortune 100 companies we were talking about, they all have coaches. They all have consultants, they all have a board, they have 12 different members or six different members, they have advisory councils. They are coached probably more than anybody you can imagine. So it goes to say that the small businesses, in my opinion, sort of have this mentality of we're doing this, we've we've we're strong, we can do this, but they kind of miss out on that coaching aspect. The lower, the smaller businesses are not taking advantage of the greatest help. But you find that the greatest, whether it be the athletes, CEOs, leaders, presidents, whatever you want to call it, they all have help. They all have coaches, that many coaches in many cases, right? Many coaches. So I think it's a misnomer that the small to mid-sized business owner thinks that this, it's like a feather in the cap. We've actually done this in America. We've made this like they are, they can do it all, right? And they can wear all the hats. I don't agree with that. As an athlete, as someone who has run marathons, as someone who worked for the Fortune 100 companies, we always had help. We always had assistance. You had any type of you know, coaching you needed, you had available to you. Same thing with the marathon. I didn't go run a marathon. I ran 451 miles before I actually ran a marathon. Yeah. You know, in the nine months leading up to, or I forgot what it was. It was an extagering amount of miles. And I tell people, like, you guys think the 26 miles is a lot. We actually run 500 miles before we ever get to that marathon, right? And as you said, on Sunday mornings at you know, four o'clock in the morning, you're getting up, you know, you're going to the running groups, or however the different ones of us trained. It's the same thing for CEOs, athletes. It's the exact same thing. So I do think that small business owners should think more seriously about being coached. But there's that gung-ho, I can do it, I can do it, right? But I think that's where we're getting it wrong. I really do. And absolutely money in other areas, and they'll spend time and energy in other areas versus listen, we can save time and money most likely and get you on track really quickly. And that's one of the things I'm not Matthew is very proud of. We work 83% faster than other consulting companies. And for instance, when we come in and we review a company or we, you know, or we come on with a new company, we immediately go to that PL document that we talked about. That's the first thing I look at. I don't really have to have a lot of conversation with the business owner before looking at that profit and loss statement. And at that point, after about 20 minutes of looking at that statement, I have lots of questions and we're pretty much working on their business right then and there. And a lot of consulting companies come in and say, like, read this book, practice this, or do this quiz, or you know, take this test, or a lot of work before you get to the work. And with I'm not mad at you, we jump into the work of their company the first minute. I don't have processes to go teach them, like, go read my book or go study my process. No, no. Let's look at your business. Let's start talking about your business. Whatever I'm not mad at you's got going on is not really that relevant. We are now fully embedded in your company, in your business to help you and your company. And so we don't have other motives, we don't have other goals. We want to help the companies fast. That's a success story to us. And I'd rather have a client for a month or two and send them off on their way kicking ass than claim a client for six years and them do okay, but nothing to brag about.

SPEAKER_01: 26:28

Yeah, that that's important. And I and I know some of our listeners are kind of in the startup phase. So if you are and and literally you the revenue's not there yet to hire a consultant, I will say that when I started my business three decades ago, getting into the entrepreneur world, I didn't have money right up front. But I promise you, if you're in that position, at least go find a mentor. Go find another business owner that's successful. I promise you, if they say no, I'll say yes, come to me and and help you at no cost. But I will say, when I asked successful business owners, not one of them told me no. They were happily excited to help a newbie, right? In the field.

SPEAKER_00: 27:13

Right. Yes, of course. Of course. I mean, I enjoy what I do with or without the money. I uh you talked about work-life balance. I don't really feel like I'm ever working. I I I mean, I left corporate America 10 years ago, and honestly, I've probably worked harder in the last 10 years. That's not really true, but I mean, it just depends on what time of what time you kind of look at. But certainly, you know, in this kind of position, and same with you, you kind of work 24-7. I mean, I have my I have my phone right here. If an email comes to me, if a text comes to me, I leave myself available to my clients. So if they've got a situation and they need to text me, I'm available. If it's not like I don't look at my emails, you know, I can be sitting in my house and be checking emails. That's a lot more enjoyable doing it for myself. So I don't really mind working 24 hours a day if that was what was required. I like to think I'm pretty efficient and I have found a way that I don't have to work 24 hours a day because I think I'm fairly efficient. And and and if I'm not, like you said, I find out a way to be. And nowadays there's so many places we can go for help, right? You can you can hire someone, but you can go on YouTube, you can go, you know, to the internet, you can go to Chat GPT. To your point, it's I tell people any minute you spend in consternation is a wasted minute because there's so much help available to us today, whatever it is that we're trying to achieve. But it is hard to ask for help. It's probably one of the most difficult things, you know, people don't like to talk about money and people don't like to ask for help. And so if you're, you know, if you're in those, if you're in that state of mind, you're gonna have probably a more challenging time than others.

SPEAKER_01: 28:59

Why do you think that most business owners won't ask for help? And the follow-up question to that is Is there any encouragement you can give to them just to ask for? You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is produced by my company, Boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as twenty four to forty-eight hours at business ownership simplified.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. Why do you think that most business owners won't ask for help? And the follow-up question to that is Is there any encouragement you can give to them just to ask for help? So why don't they ask for help and what can you inspire them to ask for help?

SPEAKER_00: 30:01

I will speak to this. I probably have a 60 to 40 ratio, maybe 70-30 ratio with working with men to women. First of all, I'm gonna speak for the men. They're not great at asking for help in general. I'm not saying women are either, but if we looked at the statistics in the world or whatever, let's say America, probably 60-something percent of the businesses are owned by men, right? Maybe it's 70. I don't know what the split is today. But that being said, let's just speak to men first. They're not great at being vulnerable and they're not great at asking for help. And I'm not really suggesting that women are either. To be fair, this cuts across both sexes that asking for help and being vulnerable isn't all of our favorite thing. The second side of it is obviously if you are a business leader and you are trying to purvey confidence and that you have everything together, you're not running around telling people you don't have everything together. And so I say this with my consulting practice. I don't get as many referrals as I would like to, because I've done great work. But I say this if one of the business leaders that I've worked with is at a cocktail party or at a social event, he's not probably bragging about his consultant because he's probably not bragging about the fact that he needed help. So it's like a silent um crisis that no one wants to be like, oh, look, I've got a consultant that's kind of helping make these decisions because they want to look like they're the ones making the decisions. They want to look strong and confident. So it's first of all, in general, humans aren't specifically great at asking for help. I can speak to, like I said, I've probably worked with more men. And the the fascinating thing is the ones I work with clearly did not have a problem because they're working with a consultant. But it is hard. And and to say how to help people in that, I just said like if you're sitting around and you have consternation or you're having troubles making decisions, or you're struggling with whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, be it with your business or your life, you should be asking for help. And whatever method you want, right? It doesn't really matter. We have so many different ways that we can get help today that you don't necessarily have to hire a consultant. I am now of the belief I can ask, for instance, AI questions that are giving me, to be fair, I can ask it questions about business plans, sales planning, you know, things that I wouldn't have thought the resources would have been as easily and available a year ago, they're there. I'm asking really difficult questions of Chat GPT right now that I myself would know the answer to. And it's it's crafting it a little better than me. But I'd hope that that with the human touch, we're the bridge between like, okay, here's everything to do, but you also need support, you need encouragement, you need you know, some of the things that again on their own, they weren't able to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 32:55

So yeah, that's uh there's an emotional element that a human still offers that AI doesn't. And so people are thinking now. I know our younger generation probably can't relate to what I'm fixing to share at all. But back in the day, I want the men, because I'm I'm a man, so I want them to think about this. Think about if you're not gonna ask for help, think about the end in mind, keep the end in mind because when I was growing up and we would go on a family vacation, we didn't have GPS, we didn't have phones, and for some reason, dad always got lost, and mom would say, There's another gas station. Why don't you stop and ask for direct? Oh, I got this, I got this, oh, here's another gas station. Ask, I got this, and what maybe 30 minutes to an hour later, my dad was like, Yeah, I should have stopped.

SPEAKER_00: 33:50

And that's for I mean, for our generation, that was a joke. I mean, it was a it was a common joke that we all said out loud was you know, if if if if somebody got lost, and generally in this situation from our time frame, it was the guy got lost and he wasn't gonna ask. And meanwhile, you know, the woman, the first gas station, help, right? But I mean, really, so there is there is it's ego, it's pride. There's so many things that play, and it isn't just business, right? I mean, this is and it and back to I'm not gonna blame this only on men because I I see it in both the sexes. But you're right. I mean, you pull the car over and ask for directions. And running a business is the exact same way, playing on a basketball, you know, team is the same. You know, all these people have coaches, all of them have help. You know, so I do think that the small business, mid-sized business owner needs to be more comfortable with the idea that to run a successful business, I'm probably going to get help in exactly what you said. You don't have to pay for it. You know, get a good group of people that surround you that that can mentor you. But I will say this sometimes a consultant is better than that round table of friends you might have. Because oftentimes you're getting consult or you know, guidance from people who themselves haven't done it either. Also, usually with our circle of friends or even our outer circle friends that might be help there to help us, they're gonna support you. They're not there to shoot holes through your ideas. That's that as much as they're a good source of you know, uh camaraderie and and and to help, that group usually isn't going to be as honest with you as you might need them to be. So I I am I am encouraging if people to use their sort, you know, resources that they have, and and often they do. They're asking their social group about business questions and ideas and logos and things like that at the same time. Uh, and that doesn't hold water, and that's why the c one of the reasons the company's called I'm not mad, is we're real honest. We're gonna tell the truth. You may not like it, you might be mad at us, but at the end of the day, our goal is there for your company for it to be better, not for any other reason. So if we're saying it, we mean it.

SPEAKER_01: 36:08

Yeah, so so all business owners, regardless of of your gender, ask for help because I don't know if you witnessed this or not, but we we we're coaching also, and so almost every business owner at one point after they've worked with us always says something to this effect. I wish I would have hired a coach earlier or sooner. And so when I say keep the end in mind, know that you're gonna eventually wish you would have had guidance. So just get it now, get it over with, ask.

SPEAKER_00: 36:42

I mean, I'm with you. I'm with you, but I mean, I also think sometimes people have to hit their head against the wall. I mean, everybody comes to it at different places and spaces, and to be fair, some people will be successful despite themselves. There will be plenty of people that will never receive coaching and never receive help and do very well. So it's not that it's uh mandatory, it's not that every single person will need this. I do think the majority of people will be better for it if they have scenarios where it makes sense to bring in somebody to help you. But uh, you're right, keeping the end in mind is very important. You know, for us, the end in mind is always the sales goals, right? You know, and and the revenue goals that they have, because typically a small business owner is is running that business, and they also have a household to manage as well when they leave that building. And so at the end of the day, like we just said, they need the inputs to cover the outputs. And if you're a small business owner, you have two inputs and two outputs, right? You've got your household and you've got your business. And no matter what, whatever it is, all of the outputs have to be less than or I guess all the inputs need to be more than the outputs, right? So it's a simple concept, but back to if you ask the average person if they keep a budget, if they balance their checkbook, if they look at their, let's just say in the personal world, like are they looking at their balance each you know week, or do they balance their checkbook, or do they people have budgets, or they can tell you, you know, oh, I spend roughly XYZ dollars a month. I think I know what my outputs are. They're not usually right. They almost always underestimate, almost always. And it's the same thing for a business. It's the same thing. They, you know, if I ask a business owner, well, about how much does it cost you to run your business, you know, a month? Oh, I think it's about$100,000. And then you look at their PL, it's$140,000, you know, and you're sitting there going, that's$40,000 a month that you were guessing wrong. So it's the same concept. You can't make good decisions if you don't know the math of your business. You just can't. And then it then that starts playing into the more fun, sexy things. The math then plays into sales, marketing, your spend, your business development, how much money can I spend on XYZ marketing activity? And then I need to review that XYZ marketing activity to see if it did, in fact, give me a return on investment. And I can't look at that two years later. I need to look at that. If I ran an ad in February, I need to be evaluating it. If it was a two-week ad, the day the ad's over, look at the data. Maybe what nowadays we get such access to data that we can be looking at it the minute the ad starts, we we we're able to assess something.

SPEAKER_01: 39:29

Yeah, and that's in real time.

SPEAKER_00: 39:31

Those are the areas that so many people fail, not fail, they just don't. That's where they're not spending their time.

SPEAKER_01: 39:38

Yeah, yeah. I always say we don't know what we don't know. So hire an expert. Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 39:43

I know uh I want them all to hire an expert, but I also want to be able to offer information if they're just listening to this podcast that would actually be helpful to them, even if they didn't hire me, right? So ideally, listen more inputs than outputs, right? And know your inputs and know your outputs and understand. End, where could I change things? Where could I shift things? What could I do to positively impact these these numbers? And you know, constantly review, assess, redeploy, debrief, reassess. It's it never ends.

SPEAKER_01: 40:17

So important and never ends. And unfortunately, podcast episodes do end. But I do know, I do know our listeners are probably like, but I want to learn more. How can they find you, connect with you? All that. Do you have a podcast, blogs, all that stuff?

SPEAKER_00: 40:34

We have a website. It's I'm not madatyou.com. Sit pretty simple, www.imnotmadatyu.com. Uh, we are on the social, we're on YouTube, but uh really the podcast we're spending our time is with guest appearances like yourself. So, and we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and exposing your audience to I'm not mad at you, and hopefully they'll find something valuable in this conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 41:00

Well, I know I did, so I'm sure they did as well. So, is there a particular social platform that you're on where you interact with people or engage with people?

SPEAKER_00: 41:12

Not really. Not yet. I'm not not no, I mean, I'll be honest with you, social for us was what we were behind the curve. We really felt as a business consultant, we were gonna play in corporate America, we were gonna play in Google and in different places, referrals, word of mouth. So social was not a priority to us 10 years ago, which now it is, but as we have learned, nobody cares about hearing about consulting. It doesn't matter what I show them, spreadsheets, math, it's not sexy, it's not entertaining. But what is entertaining is on social media, on I'm not mad at you, we trespass into loom. And they love that. We get into buildings and properties that no one would see otherwise that they love. So it makes no sense with a consultant. But we are testing the market and checking to see what actually has traction.

SPEAKER_01: 42:03

So following your own advice.

SPEAKER_00: 42:06

Exactly. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. Like I said, we're a business consultant, we play in the traditional space. Social is fun, but I'm not mad at you.com will get you where you need. And if you want to follow our socials, we are I'm not mad at you on Instagram and Facebook, but that's just for fun.

SPEAKER_01: 42:24

Yeah, no, I I love it. Well, and you know, it's it's uh exactly what you consult, and that is know where your people are, know what works. Just because everybody else is doing a viral video or trying to get a viral video doesn't mean that that's the best use of your time. So inputs, outputs, understand those. I always end with one last question, and that is if you are in front of an audience of business owners, different industries, different years of existence, what is one thing that could be applicable to all of them? In other words, a quote, a book, just one last insight, anything like that?

SPEAKER_00: 43:02

Believe. You have to believe to succeed. I mean, no matter what, you gotta believe to succeed. And I really believe our mindset is extraordinarily powerful. And you get a room full of business leaders, you probably have a lot of ego, you probably a lot of confidence, but sometimes confidence and ego are not belief. So you really gotta believe in what you're doing. And I really believe if if you do, that will drive most people to success, is that belief, and that will.

SPEAKER_01: 43:33

Absolutely. Well, you've been a wealth of information and a blessing to many. I wish you continued success.

SPEAKER_00: 43:40

Michael, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01: 43:42

My pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, Boss. Our business is growing yours. Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at business ownership simplified.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at Michael at michaeldmorson.com. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.