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[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water treatise by water treaters where
we’re scaling up on water treatment knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems hello everybody in the scaling
up nation I am proud to be here my name is tres Blackmore bringing scaling up to
you folks I want to thank you for making this show a success not only are you
going to my website scaling up h2o calm and letting me know who to interview and
what you want me to answer or talk about you are also helping me spread the word
to other water traders that there is a podcast out there and I know this
because our subscribers are so much more that I thought that we would ever get to
at this point in time especially when I started the show I would be happy if my
family would just listen to this show but at the time of this recording we
have well over 3,000 subscribers and that is just tremendous to me so let’s
see if we can get that number up even higher so if you will spread the word the more people we have listening to it
I think the better this show is going to get because that’s more people that are funneling their questions to me and it’s
relevant for every water treat are out there so today’s show I’m going to go
ahead and get straight to our guests because I am super excited to have this
guest on scaling up he’s actually one of the reasons that I even considered doing
the podcast his name is Tim Fulton and he is my Vistage coach and he’s going to
talk about what Vistage is but the short of it is in business were really good
water treaters but we really don’t know what we don’t know about business and it
was with that that I went looking for somebody like Tim and I went ahead and I
through a friend of mine actually he was on the show Charlie cicchetti I actually met Charlie cicchetti were
King with him on Lee projects and water treatment and we started talking one day and he said you know what race you are
gonna be a great candidate for this program called grow smart and I know tens of em talk a little bit outgrow
smart now grow smarts here in Georgia and I can’t remember the organization that puts it on but I’ll asked him and
he’ll tell us all about that but I’m sure there’s something like that near you and Tim was the facilitator of that
and every week he just gave us so much information about all the areas around
business we were talking about HR we were talking about how to read all the
different financial sheets that we have and how to keep score on all of that what to do as far as marketing and how
to do sales I mean it was every aspect of business and a lot of that you know I knew how I did it but I didn’t know how
other businesses do it and I definitely didn’t know what the metrics were surrounding that so it was just a wealth
of information so a little bit more about Tim and and and why he’s on the
show tim is is is my business coach so he’s somebody that I talked to on a
regular basis and we talked about blackboard enterprises we talked about doing this podcast and how that was
going to either be good or bad for Blackmoor enterprises so he was somebody
other than somebody that was in my company or directly connected with me
that I can throw ideas off of and it’s not that he knows the answer but I tell
you he definitely knows the questions I am blown away with the questions that he
asks and how he gets me to think about problems that I’ve been dealing with for
a long time I just haven’t thought about them in the way that he poses the question and normally that’s the missing
ingredient in order for me to make that decision and make something work and
then after we had that conversation he holds me accountable to do
what it is that I said that I was going to do so I think I’m telling you all the
things that Tim is going to tell you about what he does so why don’t we just get straight to the interview and and
truly one of my good friends definitely my business hero please enjoy this
interview with Tim Fulton well I am truly excited today my lab partner is my
personal business coach Tim Fulton and and Tim you’re one of my business heroes
I’ve learned so much about business being working with you and being with you for the last couple years so thank
you so much for coming on scaling up and letting the scaling up nation though some of the myths about small business
and running a territory and how we can do that a little bit better how are you doing today Tim trace I’m doing great
and thank you for for inviting me to be on scaling-up it’s my pleasure to be with you today and I’m looking forward
to the time that we spend absolutely we’ve got a lot of ground to cover so let’s just get right into it so I
introduced you as a small business coach and I of course know what that means but
a lot of people in the scaling-up nation do not know what that means so how would you explain to them what it is that you
do sure Tracy I have the pleasure of working with about 40 50 different
clients that are all either owners and operators of businesses or they work for
owners and operators with businesses and some of them I meet with on a 1:1 basis
and coached them some of them meet in groups executive groups Vistage groups
and I work with those groups and I think I’m the luckiest guy in the world that I
get to work with really smart business owners and executives and what
little-known secret is I learn as much from them as they might possibly learn from am constantly learning from my
clients and other members well our journey started with the Small Business Administration is that the
group the Small Business Development Center and a program that I’ve been involved in now for almost 14 years
called grow smart it’s a 40 hour training program that’s offered by the SBDC a small business
development center all over the state of Georgia we’ve had about 2,000 business
owners like yourself go through that program well the neat thing about that was you don’t know what you don’t know and that
was wasn’t an eight week course and every week was a new topic and and you
learn something new and then it was over and I said I wasn’t ready for it to be over and you and I started talking and
you invited me into Vistage so do you mind talking a little bit about what Vistage is happy happy to Vistage is a
worldwide membership organization for CEOs and key executives it’s been around
for about 60 years we’ve got 27,000 members worldwide here in the US a
majority the members I’ve been fortunate enough to be a business chair a
facilitator for about the last now going on 14 years and majority of my work is
through those Vistage groups and those Vistage members well I know when I facilitate small groups and I always
have a good idea where I do some sort of role play or something it always comes from you I have stolen so much material
from you over the years well we will tell anybody sure great so lots of territory managers out there
lots of business owners out there so let’s talk about that what are some of the myths that surround small business
and entrepreneurship it’s a great question I’ve given a lot of thought to that because I have found over time I
was a small business owner myself when I first got started in my career at first about 15 years I owned and operated a
variety of small retail companies and made every mistake possible every
mistake possible and I tried to learn from those mistakes and over time I found that there were a number of
principles number of things that I had read or heard that I thought were true and they weren’t necessarily as true as
I thought they were myths about entrepreneurship and give you example one one of my favorite books early on
was a book written called the e-myth written by Michael Gerber written back in the early 1980s and
I just assumed that most small businesses were started by entrepreneurs you know someone who had a business idea
of vision of a picture of success and they started a business as a result of that well what Gerber writes about the
e-myth is that that’s totally false and that most small businesses are not started by entrepreneurs they’re started
by technicians is the word that he uses ‘m and tres the technician is the is the
doctor who starts up medical practices the plumber who starts a plumbing businesses or the best example is the
chef who starts a restaurant most restaurants are started by chefs and so it’s the chef who has worked for other
restaurants through his or her career at some point says that’s it I’ve had it I’m gonna start my own restaurant until
they do so and and that in part might explain why there’s such a high failure rate for restaurants may be the highest
failure rate of any small businesses restaurants and it’s because so many of them are started not by someone who’s
well trained in business or someone who has a dream a plan and entrepreneur but
instead it says technician whose only experience has been working in the kitchen of a restaurant and then decides
to start their own restaurant well I think that’s true a lot with water treaters as well we’re we’re very good
technicians we’re working for maybe a larger company they do something with their territory we decide that we want
to start our own business and we’re really good water traders but what about this business stuff and like I said
before you don’t know what you don’t know and gerber refers to that funny as entrepreneurial seizure it’s you know at
some point you know the employee says that’s it I’ve had it I’m tired of working for trace
too many hours too much stress I’m certainly not making enough money I’ll start my own water treatment business
right you know I’ll work fewer hours less stress and I’ll make a lot more money well we know that’s certainly not the
case not the case with all companies and and they they find that out sooner than
later and they also make what what gerber refers to as a fatal assumption and then that fatal assumption he writes
with about in a book is that if they understand the workings of a business if I understand
how to prepare food then I must understand how a restaurant operates and
yet what we find out once we get into the business is there’s a lot more to be successful in a restaurant then then
knowing how to prepare food it’s all that all that financial stuff right the
hiring and firing of the people and and leadership and management and planning
all the things that were not taught in the kitchen but are certainly integral to the success of my business well and
then would bring to bring water treatment back up we have owners that own water treatment companies but then
we have technicians in the field that are pretty much running their own companies within those companies so my
question for you around that is does it ever get easier that’s a great question and I remember
asking myself that question many times when I was in business thinking it’s got to get easier you know the first year
was so hard the second years got to be easier and it was and then the third year third year must be easier and it
wasn’t and interesting now that I’m on the other side you’re working with business owners I found that in most
cases it doesn’t get easier and and there’s actually a term for it it’s called the growth paradox and the growth
paradox is the assumption that as the company grows it’s going to get easier and the easiest way tres to think about
this is in just the terms of relationships you know if if I’m a one-man business or one-person business
and I’ve got one customer then there’s two of us and they’re two lines of communication but that’s pretty simple
well now let’s say that I add a second employee or I had a second customer now
there’s three of us well three of us now that means there’s six lines of communication well now things have got
much complicated well now at a fourth client a fourth employee or whatever the case might be you see what happens now
is 12 months of communication is 24 lines of communication all of a sudden I have a very complicated business just in
terms of the communication to and from my boys myself or my customers than
myself so as the business it’s just inherently more complex well
the good news is that over time you’ll get more comfortable managing the business we’re managing the territory if
that’s the case more comfortable with clients more comfortable with employees and and then we get more skilled so it
doesn’t get too complicated or too difficult but it never gets easier never
gets easier and I’ll never forget a reading a book that was written by a gentleman by the name of Doug Taylor
here in Atlanta it’s called no man’s land and based on his research what he found is that every business businesses
grow you know through different stages and he found every business at some
point grows to a point where it’s almost impossible to make money and that sounds kind of crazy that does that grow the
business you would think I would be making more money and more money but the reality is there at some point in the
lifecycle of a business where it’s almost impossible to make money maybe it’s because I’ve got too many employees
and I’ve haven’t grown sales enough or I’ve had to buy a new facility I’ve got
more space it’s just whatever the case my expenses have now creeped past whatever revenue was coming to the
business and I can’t make money and to escape that I either have to accelerate my growth or I have to go back to where
maybe I was before there’s a revenue where I was making money but where I am today it’s practically impossible make
money that’s referred to as no-man’s land and a funny because I find businesses grow their way into this this
no-man’s land it’s terribly frustrating and certainly if not only if I’m the owner of the business but if if I’m
running a territory I’m running a you know a second store I’m gonna be an audience to this as well and wonder why
is it that we’re not making more money like we should are there any warning signs that you’re approaching something
like that it can be it can be that we have over staffed it can be that we’ve taken on more office space than maybe we
need it where we are now it could be that there’s we were experiencing creep
in our overhead creep meaning you know the certain expenses are just growing faster than we can we can pay for them
noticing that maybe the debt of the with borrowed too much money for the size company that we’re in or could be
on a personal side it could be the other boat that I purchased or the second home those tend to creep as well as a
business grows and all of a sudden I’m carrying way too much not only business overhead but too much personal overhead
as well well I know you have said to me on several occasions that what gets measured just simply gets better because
you’re looking at it and you’re constantly after me to keep score so can
we talk a little bit about how important it is to keep score and what are some of the things that we should be keeping
score on yeah this one this was a tough lesson for me as a business owner I felt
comfortable long in the marketing side of the business I felt like I could sell I felt pretty good
making staffing decisions but I never really learned the financial side I just figured that was for accountants and
bookkeepers and such and I remember working with my dad one of the lessons I got early on I was in school working for
my dad was the idea that think of your business as a game and any good game we’re going to keep score particularly
if you’re as competitive as I am as competitive as you are right it’s all about is it are we winning or are we
losing and the only way to be certain of that is if we’re keeping score and so
what I suggest is is within the business we need to identify certain key performance indicators KPIs they
communicate to us how the business is performing these are typically financial indicators and it could be top-line
revenue it could be gross margin it couldn’t be net profit it could be how long it’s taking for us to collect our
money from our customers it could be return on investment as an owner of the business what return am I getting on
that but key performance indicators and the lesson I got from my dad I remember was there were three numbers that he
tracked all the time and and to me that’s a reasonable lesson that every business and any executive within a
business there should be at least three numbers that we’re tracking on a regular basis that are pertinent to the business
that we’re in the size of our business the industry that we’re in and even going and beyond that I feel and what I
suggest in my clients is that every employee within a business should have
at least one number that they’re responsible for soham in sales clearly I’m responsible for revenue if
I’m in customer service is how well we taking care of our customers if I’m in
finance it could be how quickly we’re collecting our money here or how much
cash were keeping them in the business but to me that makes it pretty simple as every employee should have one number
that they’re responsible for and that’s not only good for the business but I find that the best employees
want to be held accountable to something and why shouldn’t it be a number that
they can see that they could manage to they can chart a contract over time so I think it’s important again not only for
the owner of the business but for anyone who’s working in operations who’s Manning the territory is to ask
themselves what is the best number that I should be held accountable to what am i performing to so talking about key
metrics so where we are and where we’re heading but I know we also talk a lot about where we ultimately want to end up
and specifically vision so normally that rests with the business owner but in our
conversations you say it’s not only the business owner so let’s talk about that for a second yeah you know that’s again
was it an early learning for me because I felt like along with my title of owner and president I was also the chief
visionary officer I was responsible for determining the direction of my company
and the ultimate destination where we’re going to end up in five years in ten years and I frankly I didn’t know what
times or times I thought maybe we needed to shift our direction and then I read one of my favorite books good – great
written by Jim Collins where he looked at about it doesn’t great companies and one of the things he found that these
great companies had in common was that they had what he referred to as a shared vision meaning it wasn’t up to the CEO
the owner the company to determine the ultimate destination the company it was up to the entire company the employees
the frontline employees the frontline management the lieutenants in the
company to collectively decide if we’re going to be successful what does that look like what is what is success look
like for this company so then the the president is CEO is is essentially the bus driver so the
passengers get to decide where they like the bus to go and then the the president
is the bus driver he or she directs the company in that direction understanding that there there will be course corrections along the way and to
me that that is is so powerful because it does say that everyone has a voice in terms of where this company’s going it’s
not a top-down approach it’s more of a bottom-up approach and for the right employees I think that’s exactly what
they’re looking for because then they want to align their own personal vision with that of the company and to me
that’s that’s a powerful equation for success so for somebody who’s a better water treater than they are a business
owner how do they begin to have a conversation like that well I would hope that it would come up in the in the
interview they you know when they first are looking at joining a company and just asking that question is what is the
direction of this company what is the vision for this company and if there is not a stated vision of that by itself
might be a yellow flag of sort but then if the vision is to become the biggest
the fastest the best is then asking oneself okay is that what I want in
terms of the company that I work for do I want to be with a 10 million a 50 million dollar company versus a 1
million or 2 million dollar company that maybe there’s more of an opportunity for growth for myself more of an opportunity
to learn the business so it’s aligning my own personal vision with that of the company and it also
gives me something to look forward to and to say ok there may not be you know a management position yet in my area the
company but there will be and that gives me as an employee something to grow into and that could be very exciting for many
employees and I think in the book good to great he refers to that as the the right seat so I might be the right
person but there might even be a better seat on that bus that the the visionary is driving yeah so I know you talked to
me a lot about business plans and before you and I met each other I thought the business plan was something that you
wrote when you were just thinking about starting the business and you needed to go to the bank to get them to give you money you take it to an entirely higher
level than that so why is a business plan so important it’s interesting that you know failure
rate for small businesses is very high and anywhere from fifty to seventy-five
percent of all small businesses fail and three to five years depending on whose numbers you look at but it’s a high rate
of failure and why is that why does so many small businesses fail and would studies have been done research
indicates a variety of things its its lack of capital a bad business idea the
wrong industry the wrong market and yet underneath that I think is a bigger issue and I think it’s a lack of
planning fewer than 20% of all small businesses have any type of business plan whether it’s a formal you know a
strategy strategic plan a financial plan a marketing plan an operational plan fewer than 20% and you equate that with
a failure rate and I while there’s certainly a correlation between the two I think it’s more than that I think it’s
more of a causal effect that if there’s not a plan in place businesses are more likely to fail than not in you’re right
when a business first get started very important to have a document of a book essentially about how this business will
operate but then once a business is in business and is operating I don’t think it needs to be as exhaustive is that
what I suggest my clients is something as simple as a one-page business plan
one page where we communicate our vision our mission our core values or our
long-term plan in today’s world that used to be five to ten years today is
three to five years it’s got harder to look further out so three to five year plan for the business and then one year
plans this year 2017 what do we hope to accomplish what our goals what our
objectives and what are the strategies and I think if we can incorporate that all into one page we’ve got something
that we can then share it’s almost like a road map think about whenever you’re I
go on a trip sometimes I’m guilty of not taking a map and ultimately I get lost
sometimes terribly lost and yet when I have a map I’m far less likely to get
lost I know I’m the point hey I want to get to point B and same thing with business I’m at a million
and sales now in ten employees I want to get to five million dollars and 30 employees that business plan lays now
what needs to happen for me to accomplish that and it’s a tool not only for the owner/operator of the business
but I think it’s equally important to the the number two person the number three person the area manager is even
the people in the field something they can look at and get some sense of direction where are we headed how are we
gonna get there how often should you revisit that to make sure it’s still the direction you want to go I would say
that the plan should be written once a year and then updated quarterly basis
and looked at at least once a month alright and you mentioned before you know a lot of businesses fail that’s
especially true with multi-generational businesses and the water treatment
industry has I don’t know it has more than most but I believe it does I think there’s a there’s a lot of people that
are retiring now that either their kids or their kids kids are actually getting the business and there was an article in
eat magazine about a year ago and I don’t remember the failure rates but it was something like 50 or higher percent
for a second generation on 90 something for a third generational so since we have so many of those businesses out
there in the scaling up nation what have you learned since you work with a lot of them and what advice can you give to our
listeners yeah attorneys unfortunate that I work with a number of family-owned businesses and I have had
my own family-owned business I worked with my father early on of my career my wife and I worked together and
miraculously survived work with my mom won points I’ve been involved in a
variety of family-owned businesses and they’re very tough because you’re mixing you know family dynamics which by
themselves can be very complicated with that of a business that we’ve already talked about how difficult that can be
so now we’re entangling those two entities and expecting expecting success
and you’re right the failure rate on family business is going from first generation of second second or third are
very high just for those reasons so several things come to mind I think are
helpful for one is not that one that I work with specifically that they meet as a family
once a quarter they have family meetings about the business is I find this very hard within the business to have those
types of conversations and to talk about okay how is the family doing related to
the business so that we never want to have a regularly scheduled family meetings outside of the business family
members talking about the businesses so the other thing I would suggest is to have a transitional plan how will we go
from first generation a second generation and have that all laid out and there are family business experts
who who are in a strong position to help family businesses do that your locally
Kennesaw State has a very good family business program and they help family businesses right those transitional
plans who’s going to take over is it the first son is it the daughter is it the uncle who’s going to take over the
business what’s gonna be the responsibility how will they be prepared for this I think something else that I
found helpful was before I joined my own family business I was put into a non
family business to learn the business itself so my father was an entire business and he wanted me to go into the
tire business but before we did that I worked for it for a different type of business so that I could learn the
business under someone other than a family member and I found that to be extremely helpful to see it through
someone else’s eyes before I went to work in the family business I’m a strong proponent of let the family member go
work somewhere else first get get experience make mistakes and then come
back and work work for the family business then the third thing that I find that is oftentimes missing in
family businesses is accountability if you think about in a typical family
there’s not always a lot of accountability right our sons and daughters we hope they hopefully raise
them right we educate them but we don’t always hold them to a certain level of accountability well business it’s very
different we hold our employees oftentimes we hold them accountable we hold accountable for achieving certain
objectives certain goals and yet with family businesses I don’t see a lot of evidence of that again because of that
family dynamic there’s not the level of accountability that I’ve seen regular businesses which is unfortunate because
I think there should even be a higher level of accountability in family businesses than we might see in true
Dutch traditional businesses and so putting on the paper what is it that you expect of the son the daughter the
spouse and I don’t put it in a writing create a job description this is very specific as to what they’re going to be
held responsible for so those three things I think a really important great advice well something that we talk about
a lot and I’m loathe to bring it up because it’s difficult for me to even think about and it’s one of the issues
that we have when when we’re meeting but you say I have to have an exit plan and it’s just very difficult I’m just
getting this thing started I can’t think about leaving it but you say it’s very important and we’ve been working together to try to figure out what that
is so do you mind explain it to our audience what an exit plan is and why it’s so important even for a young
business so Trace you may recall some point I’m sure you heard me say that you will exit this business whether you’re
whether you open or not you will it’s not a question of if it’s a question of one and it’s interesting that you know
there’s so much thought that goes into starting the business and relatively little thought as to how I might get out
of the business I suggest my clients that it should be opposites for day one I should be thinking about how will I exit the
business will I sell it well I transition into a family member will it be an esop an employee stock
ownership program maybe I’ll just shut it down maybe it’s just me and at some point I’ll just I’ll
stop answering the phone that’s my exit strategy but we need to be again thinking of that from day one for two
reasons one as I stated because at some point you will exit the business secondly what I found is it by thinking
about it and beginning to position the business or exit the business almost automatically becomes a better run
business because now I’m preparing this business to operate without me without the owner the president the company and
so then my have to begin taking on additional responsibilities because they understand
at some point this business will I will exit so the business has to be better run as a result of that so it’s a
win-win if even if I never exit near-term the business is going to run more efficiently because I’ve prepared
it for that and then at some point when I when I do on exit the business it’s going to be valued at a higher number
than if I hadn’t planned for it the the typical exit requires though as a
process three to five years has been my experience from the time I begin thinking about at the time that it’s
ready to exit and most business owners frankly just are not prepared for that they’re caught by surprise and as a
result they don’t end up receiving as much value as they should and that’s
that’s very unfortunate so how does somebody get started even thinking about that well is there are several identify here
what are the options am I going to transition this to a family member am I going to sell a business to a competitor
to a what’s referred to as a financial by a private equity group of a venture
capitalist am i just what’s called a squeezer I’m a squeezer am I just going
to keep working in time tired of working and then I’m just going to quit working that’s a shut the phone’s off shut the phones off that’s essentially a squeezer
so what is the most appropriate exit strategy and then from that point engage
professionals engage your your CPA or accountant engage your banker your
lender engage your attorney your insurance agent your your wealth manager put together an exit strategy team let
them know what the plan is five years ten years I want to exit here’s what it looks like how are we going to get there
and maybe most importantly are your your key executives your team members the
people working for you for whatever reason many business owners want to keep this a secret as if they were never
going to exit the business why not do the opposite why not share with your employees here’s my plan here’s here’s your role this here’s how
you’re going to bet from this exit now I’ll help me get there now it’s a win-win versus trying to keep it a secret then all of a sudden
the spring that on your employees of the day of exit that never goes well well if
that brings up an interesting points I know when you and I were just meeting each other in that gross smart series
one of the first pieces of advice you gave me in the entire group was to share
all your financials with your employees and pretty much everybody in that room we’re like are you nuts and I took your
advice and I don’t want to steal your thunder but can you talk a little bit around how awesome that process can be
yeah it’s back to thinking of your business as a game and I’ll never forget going both of my sons there’s fairly
grown down but they both played baseball growing up and I remember always going are there games and there was always
there was a scoreboard thankfully for the spectators we always knew what the
score was who was after that coming outs what inning but for the players as well maybe more important at any given point they
could look up at the scoreboard and see how many runs there were how many outs there were what inning they were in and
I was remember going to my oldest son Taylor was playing high school baseball and we went to a game and there was a
big electronic scoreboard but it was out of commission it wasn’t working and so the entire game we went without having a
scoreboard and it was the most frustrating sporting event I’ve ever been to because constantly I was looking
up at the scoreboard expecting to see the score and all I saw were blanks and all the parents were all the same like
very bright and the players from the same way constantly players looking over their shoulder looking up at the scoreboard and not knowing what the
score was well fortunately there’s always a official scorekeeper on the home team bench with a book and so every
inning they could they could check and see what the score was but the players were as frustrated as the spectators
were and I think that’s true in business that often times employees if they don’t know they guess in fact there was a
study that was done by Sherm the number of years ago Society for Human Resource Management they found that 50% of all employees
believe that their company you’re generating a 50% net profit well
you know this 50% net profit is is you don’t hear that it doesn’t happen no
company has 50% net profit 10% net profit is considered good and yet most
employees because they don’t know any better just assume that the company they’re working for is wildly profitable
in the owners taking all that money and doing something with it who knows what putting in an offshore banks made me and
so employees left of their own they’re gonna guess and they’re gonna guess wrong they’re either gonna get too high
or are they gonna get too low pick your poison which would be worse for you as a business owner and I know as a business
owner I was that way I was hesitant to share numbers because I was worried what would they do if I told them how much
money we’re making her how much money we were losing how would that impact you know their mindset you know they’re
they’re they’re you know police about my company so I shared very little and I found my voice guessed and as a result I
found they were then making bad decisions outside of work decisions like buying houses sending kids to college
going on vacation they were making budget decisions family budget decisions
based on bad information for me I thought how how unfair is that so I
began sharing information I began sharing top-line sales information I began sharing expenses expenses that
employees had some impact on you know wages overhead the utility bills
insurance and then something traced something very strange happened my
employees started asking me questions about those expenses like Tim why do we
leave the lights on during the weekend when no one’s here couldn’t we save money if we shut the lights off or do we really need to hire
that a new employee what if we all rallied together and took on that additional work ourselves would that help save money it started asking me
questions that I would time-to-time asking myself but no one had ever has my employees that never asked me those
questions before so not only were they making now better personal financial decisions they were making the business
stronger as well so as uncomfortable as it is I think too shir business financials think back to
that that sporting event that you’ve attended the football game the baseball game whatever it might be imagine sitting through that those couple hours
of a sporting event without having any idea what the score is and now you know what it’s like to be an employee of one
of those companies that’s a great analogy and I can’t think of better advice the the questions that my
employees ask and in fact they’re not employees anymore they’re part of the team because we’re all making these
decisions together so that was you’ve given me a lot of great advice so I don’t want to say that was the best but
that was definitely up there so we started off this interview by saying we
don’t know what we don’t know how do you know how do you begin to know what you don’t know so you can start to know it
wow that’s a very good question you begin I think there are signs and we may
not always be visible to the sides or aware of the signs when we begin making
better hires when ill reused oh good hire here bad hire there and I’ll suddenly start getting a few people that
are good hires and they’re staying with us when we begin to see loyal customers
customers who stay with us more than one or two transactions who begin referring
their friends and their neighbors to do business with us when we begin to hear
you know positive things about our company from from people in the community the Chamber of Commerce our banker our CPA third-hand our brand
begins to become more established it’s the some people refer goes the flywheel
effect and though the flywheel is a big heavy piece of rock we’re trying to push and it takes an immense amount of effort
to get that thing just to turn an inch two inches a foot and then over time it
gets a little easier and a little easier and we notice at some point there is
motion to itself but at some point it begins to turn by itself again called the flywheel effect I think we see that
in business that at some point when it’s not required as much effort and we’re
getting better results it’s a beautiful thing well well Tim I’ve really enjoyed
this interview and it’s not quite over yet because we still have the lightning round we have all right so what were the last three
books that you’ve read uh almost finished reading a book right now called everyone lies so the fascinating book
written by a behavioral economist who used uses google data to predict what’s
gonna happen to society what’s going to happen to individuals and it’s just a very interesting book before that a book
called oh it’s a book on exit strategy the title I should have written it down I’ll
come back to it I’ll come back to that one and then the third book is about
habits it’s called the power of habits variation book you may recall because I had a number of members read this book
about the role that habits play not only in our personal lives but in business as
well very interesting book for fun do you want to share the chocolate-chip cookie excerpt from the from that book
right well the author of the book had a habit and he he thought it wasn’t such a good habit then about three o’clock
every afternoon he would get out of his seat out of his office and walk down in
the company cafeteria to get a chocolate-chip cookie and as a result of that he was probably little heavier than
he wanted to be and it just didn’t jog with his diet too well so he decided he wanted to change that habit so he
examined at least okay why is it why is a target chip cookie at three o’clock every day and what he realized is that
with any habit there is a there’s a cue something that triggers the habit and then there’s the the habit itself and I
forget the term and it use for you may recall and then there’s the result of the habit well the cue was three o’clock
just a little bell went off his head it’s three o’clock I gotta get out of my seat and there’s also maybe a little bit
of hunger involved three o’clock mid-afternoon and a desire to switch gears do something different than he’d
been doing during the course of the afternoon so there was the cue so he’d get out his chair to go to the cafeteria to buy a chocolate chip cookie but then
he would also there’d be other people in cafeteria and he’d sit down and have a conversation with one person and have a
conversation with a set person any found this was really fun just being able to see other people and strike up
conversations about football about kids whatever then he and then so then the execution was buying the
chocolate-chip cookie and then spending some time away from his desk and then the result was he’s he’ll go back to his
work he was a little more productive for the remainder of the day he felt good so then he thought well you know is it
possible that I could come up with a different cue than that chocolate chip cookie and getting up at 3 o’clock so he
tried he went down and 3 o’clock and instead of getting the chocolate chip cookie he got something healthier to eat
and he realized it wasn’t about the chocolate chip cookie because they still saw the people he joined spending time
with he still got the break he needed mid-afternoon so he got all the benefit without that chocolate chip cookie so
then he tried one more things he decided instead of going to the cafeteria it’s just a three o’clock get up and go
outside and go for a walk and what he found the reward was just about the same he got the break from work he got a
little bit of exercise he would bump into someone he knew and he went for the walk so we got the social aspect of it so the idea was just to break these
habits down into what is the cue what happens you know as resulted to you what’s the have itself and what’s the
reward and it’s a really interesting and powerful way to look at the things that
we just take for granted every single day I tell you also have one of the most
extensive business book reading lists that I’ve ever seen and I’ve actually
been privileged to see it and I’ve I haven’t written all of them but the ones
that I have read have been tremendous to my business what are the top three
business books people need to read the book I remember is called finish big and
it’s written by both growing Tennant he’s an editor with a magazine how to exit your business so 3 that’s
why I’ve mentioned two up one is the e-myth that’s an all-time favorite written by Michael Gerber I read that very early in my house given
to me very early in my career had changed my whole mindset about the design of a business and I never forget
one things Gerber says is you know when you’re planning for your businesses we talked about earlier think of your
business as the first of 10,000 locations and I’ve never looked at business that way this could be the
first of 10,000 locations so Emeth was one good to great I mentioned written by Jim
Collins all-time favorite what is it that great companies do that good companies don’t do as well or not enough
oh and then he had several books that followed they did great that were equally good reads as well and then one
group that certainly knows a favorite of yours the seven Habits of Highly successful people written by Stephen
Covey Covey that I might have even read that before the e-myth right out of
college I remember reading that book and it was it was just an eye-opener for me what what was going to be needed of me
to be successful not only in my career but in my personal life as well you know I had a listener write in they know I
was very involved with seven Habits and I still AM they asked if I would do a show on that I don’t know if that would
play well what do you think oh I think you could do multiple shows about that book alright we’ll have to see what the
listeners think I want to make sure that I don’t get tuned out but I think of us so let’s not get off the book subject
quite yet because I know you say that there’s a book in everybody and you’ve been on me for years to finish the book
that I’ve been trying to write and it’s still not finished but you finished several so tell us a little bit about
yours yes I would tell all my clients that each of them has a book in them and
they would look at me and say well where’s your book I said okay I gotta go first so I’ve been writing articles for
my newsletter small business matters for almost 20 years now and I thought why don’t I just put those articles together
those essays together into a book and that’s what I did five years ago the first book was called small business
matters and very fortunate the book you know for my own purposes I thought if I
could get you know one reader one one sole book I was doing pretty well and a couple thousand books have been sold and
as a result of that I wrote a second book a year ago same format essays
articles that I’ve written and that book is called small business matters and all that jazz as a tribute to my my time in
New Orleans where I went to school at Tulane and the time that I spent in the French Quarter sometimes too much time in the French
class but a tribute to New Orleans one of my favorite cities and those two
books I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been able to share you know with many of my clients and such and feel very lucky
well speaking of jazz I know you do a business gathering every year except for
this past year unfortunately called small business matters and the last one the theme had a jazz theme to it do you
mind talking a little bit about that is one of my favorite marketing gurus he
does a great daily blog you wrote a book called tribes and in the book he suggests that all of us no matter where
we are what we do we all have a tribe we have a group of people that were a part of and to some degree lead and I
recognize that that I have clients I have strategic partners participants of
the grow smart program and I’ve always wanted to connect those people and try to find a way how do I connect trace
with charlie and Charlie with Cindy how can I put these people together and the ID came why not have it why not have a
party for all of the members of my tribe as the chief of that tribe so to speak
the mayor of my village why not have a party and so I decided if I couldn’t call it party because I didn’t even want
people get the wrong impression so I called it a conference and started five years ago the small business matters
conference and I was hoping that we would have 50 or 75 people that would show up for a one-day conference here in
Atlanta the format was essentially it’s a TED format TED Talks 15-minute talks and we had over 100
people show up that first year and that reinforced for me not only the the importance to me of holding the event
but how others enjoy being able to meet people and hear interesting presenters
so then this a year ago was the fourth year we had over 200 people that showed
up for the for the conference and I’m looking forward to all goes well the hosting the fifth conference in May of
2018 I hope you’ll join us absolutely I missed the one in 2017 so I’m glad to
hear there’s gonna be a 2018 so obviously with all the things that you’ve done in your life they’re going
to make a movie so when they do who plays temple yeah I’m used to that’s actually you were the
one I got that question from so again another thing I’ve stolen from you so
the short answer is David Letterman David Letterman because on occasion when I’m doing a class or speaking I’ll have
someone come up to me afterwards and say you know who you remind me out then I’ll say I have no idea and they’ll say you
look like and sound like David Letterman and I take that as a huge compliment because David Letterman I watched him
when he had his first daytime talk show back in the 1980s and always been a been
a huge fan of his and maybe that’s where some of the the commonality comes from so you know David Letterman would play
me in the movie I think I was one of the people that came up to him and said that so you know obviously David Letterman so
but also you’re very big in the comedy and you’ve done stand-up before so how
did that go and I took a sign up for
register for a night class at Emory on writing comedy humor how to eject more
humor into your writing which that’s I knew there was a need for that in my writing so I signed up for this class
and I showed up for the first class and the instructor said the final exam is
you will get on stage at Eddie’s attic here and then land and you will perform
like eight minutes of comedy you’re gonna have to write it and perform it and right away about a third of the
class Walker they said that is not what I signed up for well I had written too
far that night and make too much of a commitment to do that and I thought about how bad could it be how bad could
you know eight minutes of stand-up date well the reality it was the most terrible and so I wrote you know over
the course of the class wrote the bit so to speak and practice and practiced it and finally the night came and it made
the mistake of inviting not only family members but several my clients were there as well the place was packed with
people which was very unfortunate I’ll never forget getting up there and it went about very quickly and and I
guess it went pretty well and one indication of that is I had a young guy come up to me afterwards and he said
right after I finish he came to me he said you know what would you got up there I thought you were gonna stink I
thought it was gonna be really bad and he said you know what you weren’t bad and I took that as a compliment what
they’re gonna go that was that was my first and only stint as a stand-up
comedy well I know you recommended that we do that as our Vistage group and I don’t think anybody took you up on it
no however that being said I know Jeffrey Gitomer a big sales coach he says that’s one of the best things that
you can do to help you in the sales community is to do some improv and do
some stand-up so that there’s also evidence just for leaders in business to to be able to engage in humor and
whether it’s poking fun at yourself or something else going on just tends to
lighten the mood around you and your business good way to start a meeting you want to be very careful of course any
time using humor but if used effectively it can boost you your currency your
effectiveness as a leader great advice so and maybe our group will change their mind I doubt it but but
maybe we’ll all be doing stand-up soon all right so our final question and this
has been a lot of fun I really appreciate you coming on so you can talk to anybody
throughout history who would it be and why so the one that comes to mind first
is Ben Franklin and I know that’s a as a popular choice that is a popular scaling-up choice but a good choice
choice I remember reading Franklin’s autobiography and I was fascinated that
he had so many different interests it is very successful printing business in Philadelphia with the largest of its
kind he was also a scientist a mathematician he was an inventor he was
involved in education of course he was involved in government but maybe what struck me the most was that he was the
first person that we know of to come up with this idea in this country of
businesspeople getting together to talk about their businesses and he
heard of these groups as juntos Ju and TLS hundos and his groups his juntos
would get together once a week and I love the format because so many of my groups get together during the day they
get together for breakfast they get together for lunch Franklin’s group got together in the evening and my groups get together in a
boardroom they get together and I would tell Franklin’s group got together in a bar
in a tavern and they would have dinner they would have beer and wine and they would go into the early morning these
business owners and operators talking about their business what’s working what’s not working what have you heard
lately what do you know just asking questions so Franklin would use the Socratic approach to getting these
business owners to talk to each other and share information to what we now know as chambers of commerce and
industry groups you know the hotels were the originals of that so Franklin gets
due credit for that I had the opportunity to sit down with him over beer how interesting would that be well
attempt the fun thing throughout the years you and I have interviewed or you’ve interviewed me and you always say
that’s the last question but you always have one more you throw at so I’ve got I said it was the last question but I’ve
got one more I’m throwing it so the one thing that you want people to take away
from this as a business coach as people that are running successful territory successful businesses what’s the one
thing you want them to take away so one thing is I love it that my question
stumped you because all of your questions always don’t mean one thing that I suggest repetitively to many of
my clients is to listen to that little voice in the back of our head whether
it’s a decision within the business maybe it’s a decision to open a business
maybe it’s a decision to spend more time with our kids but to not only listen to
but act on that little voice that we hear because it’s usually based on reason and base
not experience and more often than not it’s it’s it’s correct and to offer we
don’t listen to that little voice and and we listen to other voices or we don’t make any decision you know we do
nothing and so it’s to trust our instincts and whether again it’s to start a business or to grow a business
or maybe to exit of business but just to trust your instincts because they’ve been honed over time and more often than
not they’re there they’re accurate I think that’s a great one thing last thing I know you do a newsletter so if
somebody wants to get your newsletter how would they do that sure it’s a monthly newsletter it’s called small business matters you
can email me at Templeton at small business matters online.com or just
visit the website small business matters online.com there’s information about the
newsletter the books by the way any any listeners de scaling up a privileged
group I might say 20% discount on the book Wow mention scaling up 20% that
includes shipping Freight everything also information about the conference there are there’s a resource center on
the website so I encourage your listeners and take advantage of everything that’s on the website
excellent and I’ll be sure a lot of my listeners are driving right now so they don’t have to take notes this will be on
my show know their hands don’t know exactly you know Tim thanks so much for coming on this was so much fun
Tracy was a pleasure thank you I can’t tell you how exciting and fun that was
for me I could not think more of the man who you just heard he has helped me in
so many different ways of just learning about my business now mind you he didn’t
know a thing about water treatment Tim Fulton you are a lousy water treater but he does know business and he has
again the magic is in two questions that he asks and how he holds me accountable and what I say that I’m going to do so
it was it was truly an honor to have him on the show so I’m doing a little bit of hero worship here so just bear with me
folks but I just think it’s really cool that I’ve got a plat that that he came on alright so he
mentioned a couple of things he said that books that we should all be reading
were the e-myth by Michael Gerber good to great built to last and then I’ve my
favorite book of all time this is number one on my list the seven Habits of
Highly Effective People by dr. stephen r.covey so I’m gonna have links to those so you don’t have to worry about writing
them down on my website but again in the interview and I’ve received not a lot of
questions but a couple of questions because at the training I allude to some
of the things that I learn and I’m talking about the AWT training of course I allude to a couple of things that I
learned through the seven Habits of Highly Effective People and people have asked me would I do a show on
specifically how to keep a schedule how the seven Habits of Highly Effective
People or how that system actually trains you so I’m curious so let me know
if you will you guys were great when I’ve asked you questions in the past and should I do this or shouldn’t I do it so
this is the question I have should we do a show on on seven habits and maybe you
guys read the book along with me I’m not gonna read it on the air but maybe we can talk about it so let me know what
you think about that and give me some ideas on that I will tell you that I cannot think of a better book to
personally help your own development than the seven Habits of Highly Effective People so if you haven’t
noticed I am a fan of the book so let me know what you think about that and we
will move forward with that again go to my show notes page all the notes from
today will be up there if you wanted to subscribe to Tim’s newsletter lots of good information on that
I’ll have that on there and again I want to thank you for listening to the show I
want to thank you for doing that because I wouldn’t be able to do this if you guys were not listening so thank you for
that keep those questions coming and remember try to be a better water treater tomorrow than you were today
have a great week folks [Music]
you [Music]