Make Decisions with Imperfect Information

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Make Decisions with Imperfect Information

Make Decisions with Imperfect Information

Facing uncertainty can be challenging – being a business owner facing uncertainty is tougher.

Red Direction helps you [fast track and] grow your business – authentically, pragmatically, and resiliently.

Start your journey HERE!

Fast Track Your Business

Starting the conversation:

You make all decisions with imperfect information, which can lead to any number of scenarios: walking right into a blind spot, missing a key point of view, or maybe even downplaying risk. Geneve Huxley, Founder and CEO at Huxley CPA Consulting, talks about the challenges companies face and how to use your finance intel to face them.

Growth can mean so many things, with more possibilities than anyone could ever think up. Make sure you have a peer group — from a mastermind to a board of directors — whom you can both talk with in general, and are confident in consulting when an expert may be useful to navigate part of your growth path. The clarity of and commitment to your initiatives determines success.

In this program you will hear about keeping track of what is most important, the three levers you can use to maximize the impact of your decisions, and making decisions about what you want from your business. Remember that your business strategy is about the long game — growing and thriving profitably — as you face each new challenge and opportunity. Jess Dewell talks with Geneve Huxley, Founder and CEO, Huxley CPA Consulting, about the benefits of leveraging financial performance to make good decisions.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Geneve Huxley

What You Will Hear:

Three financial levers of business that you can use to make decisions: cash flow, net income, and product-line margin.

Signs that change is necessary now.

You may be in the way of your business growth.

The challenges you face in business as you grow can hold you back and limit growth.

Use your numbers and leading indicators to learn what might be right … or not!
Your numbers can help you discover the right questions to ask. It is important to ask the questions!

Keep track of what’s most important.

The challenges your company faces will be faced by your culture, clarity of current objectives, and the way you solve problems.

The importance of knowing your numbers to make decisions and remain competitive as an employer, and as a brand with market share.

Additionally, for the Fast Track Your Business Today Uncut conversation:

Evaluate your products and the lifecycle of them — what you may be spending on money and time could be sunk costs!

What is the opportunity cost you face by setting that goal? Taking that risk? Choosing to let something go?

Know what makes your company successful to you and your leadership team. Your decisions must include that perspective in the information gathered.

Set your priorities and then confirm that your decisions support the longer-term plan.

Design your goals so that you can be supported on the journey executing them.

Know the non-negotiables for yourself and your company – such items define and tell you how strong your culture is.

Insights on working ON your business.

Make the time to do a monthly business check-in.

It is BOLD to know your numbers and incorporate them into your business decisions.

Find out more about how to Fast Track Your Business.

Make Decisions with Imperfect Information - Geneve Huxley

Resources

Transcript

Geneve Huxley 00:00
Be ready to know what your super upper limit is. And if you’re willing to have a hiring bonus, or doing retention bonuses, maybe a hiring bonus, if you really want to snag this person, and then having a retention bonus, that’s only paid out after they stay for six months, 12 months, something like that.

ANNOUNCER 00:21
Welcome. This is the Bold Business Podcast. Your business has many directions it can travel. The one true direction of your company creates the journey for you to move toward a new, exciting level. We call this the Red Direction. In today’s program, we delve into one idea. The idea will support you as you work on ever-present situations, including how to stay competitive in a changing market, how to break through the business plateau, and how to anticipate the changing expectations of your stakeholders. Jess Dewell is your guide. Jess brings you a 20-year track record of business excellence, where strategy and operations overlap. Your Path comes from consistently working from the special place. Your unique True North. Now, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell 01:09
Welcome back to the Bold Business Podcast. And guess what? This is season six, can you believe we’re here? I never thought we’d get here. I thought I was going to do this for a few seasons. And then Scott and I were going to come up with another great idea and be on to the next thing. But no, no, no, no, no, no, we’re still here. And do you know why we’re still here? We’re still here because we all have to take Bigger Bolder steps in our business. And that means thinking about things from our peers that they have gone through. That means taking the expertise of people in very specific areas that can help us grow our business by listening by reaching out after our programs, to have the conversations and get answers to your most pressing questions. That’s what the Bold Business Podcast is all about. So welcome back. Can’t believe we’re finally here. And here’s the deal. The deal is, as we begin our sixth season, what we always overlook, we just assumed to be true. We forget to shine the light on I shouldn’t say we all do this. There are many of us who do this is making sure that what is going on behind the scenes in our business is just as forefront and has as big of a seat and takes up as much space at the table as other data points as other voices and points of view when we are making decisions in our business about growth. And so you know, this is a really exciting conversation for me today because Geneve Huxley, who is the founder and CEO of Huxley CPA Consulting, brings 20 years of experience decoding an unraveling complicated financial mysteries. Remember that seat at the table, I said, it’s got to take up a lot of space, we tend to avoid it or downplay it, or we overthink it and we give it too much weight. And here’s the thing, Janine superpowers to help the companies that she works with not only get clarity in their business financials, not only improve their bottom line, but to make good decisions, and make adjustments to those decisions as each thing shows up after that initial decision is made. So whether it’s profit margin, forecasting, budgeting, overseeing the financial processes, it doesn’t really matter. It matters that there’s a big space at that table for this role. And for many of you, your CPA role, your financial role, your CFO role is wrapped up into somebody else’s hat. So take a closer listen, if this is you because you will enjoy this conversation immensely. And if you don’t enjoy it, you’re gonna go back with more to dues that will actually improve your business. So either way, it’s a win, right, Geneve?

Geneve Huxley 03:55
That’s right.

Jess Dewell 03:57
So, welcome to the Bold Business Podcast. We have to tell people how we go back because one of the things that is very common in my podcasts is that I laugh a lot, right? I laugh a lot, and I fill the space and things like that. But you and I, we know each other in real life people. And so when we get together, there is nothing but laughter and quirkiness and fun and then some serious business too. Fair?

Geneve Huxley 04:23
Yes, I would say that would be an accurate assessment.

Jess Dewell 04:27
So we’re working from this place. And one of the things that I really appreciated hearing Geneve talk about is the first time that we met is that she immediately was like, Well, this is why this is all important. I’m like, Well, I know that. And then she said something, no offense, I can’t remember what it was, but here was the outcome of it. Whatever she said was powerful enough. I said, Oh, I need to look at that a little closer. We all have what’s unique to our business. And then we have these business metrics that are there. So what are the things Geneve that we really need to keep in mind the thing things that are core to every business? And then what are the things that are specialized to us that help us make sure we’re on our growth track?

Geneve Huxley 05:08
It varies by business on which industry that you’re in everybody, though, I would say everybody needs to keep an eye on their cash balances, and their cash flow forecast, at least for the next few months, few months from any given time period, because cash isn’t everything, but it is a whole lot of things. If you end up running out of cash, you will go out of business and of story, one of the biggest metrics to watch is what your cash balance is, you need to layer on top of that, though your profitability, your net income, you should know that number on a month to month basis, have a really good closing process have good your records kept very well and clean and correct, which I’ll get to in a minute. Those are probably the top two things, I would say.

Jess Dewell 05:53
Cash is the king or the queen, we need a new phrase for that. It’s true, though, isn’t it?

Geneve Huxley 05:58
It’s very important. It drives a lot of things. But profitability needs to drive things as well. But knowing your gross margin on your products, if you’re selling products or services, that is a really key thing to know as well, how much does it cost you to create those products or provide that service to people? How much does that cost you? That’s really critical.

Jess Dewell 06:17
So we’re talking about the levers with which we have to pull when decisions are made. If I know I have a certain amount of cash, because I am and I’m totally making this up for right now, I have a risk tolerance. So I know how much cash I have, we have this great opportunity. And if I want to dip into that cash maybe be a little more risky than I like, at least I haven’t to get the ball rolling. Another scenario is my profit lever is what I hear you saying, when I know my gross margins, and my net margins, what that allows me to do is make decisions to understand what resources I actually have available to keep what’s going working while I start something new. Another example.

Geneve Huxley 06:58
The important thing about gross margin is to do it by product line or line of service, the way most businesses end up doing this is all that activity is dumped onto their p&l, their income statement. So they can look at overall and say, Gosh, I’m making a profit overall. But if they actually have 10 different lines of business, or 10, different services that they offer, if they don’t have it broken down by each service line and know what each service line costs them to provide, they could be making a profit on six of those and losing money on the other four, and having a loss and you don’t generally want to have a loss on individual product lines. If it’s a conscious decision to have a loss leader as they say, then that’s fine. But usually, most businesses didn’t make that as a conscious decision. They just kind of said, you know, I think it should be this and set their prices that way, as opposed to other ways. And so what they end up with is having a loss on a few of their product lines that they’re unaware of.

Jess Dewell 07:55
And it’s hard to make decisions, has it run its course, where do we put the priorities to make improvements? Because if we don’t know, we could be throwing good money after bad if you will.

Geneve Huxley 08:07
If you have four service lines that are losing money, you can either raise those prices, and then all going to go to your bottom line, basically, it’s going to write out your bottom line, you may decide to discontinue some of those services. But that’s a double-edged sword from the standpoint of if some of those are significant enough product lines, then you have a smaller base with which to spread your general administrative expenses over. And so sometimes you end up farther behind, if you just cut them out entirely. So there’s more to factor into that decision. And there’s more levers to pull there than just stop doing those pieces.

Jess Dewell 08:44
We’re talking very generally right now. And I think it’s really important to acknowledge it because each company with those base numbers is also going to be looking at another set of numbers that is unique to them, that is based off of whatever their initiatives are for the next 12 to 24 months, right that one to two years in the future that are going to allow small adjustments or small pivots to occur. So big ones don’t have to happen. When we think about that. What are some of the big initiatives that you see, over time companies get to a certain level and they’re like, I’ve got to start thinking about this. What are those things?

Geneve Huxley 09:22
I feel like that’s a really hard question to answer. Because I can’t give a general question to every business. What I see is businesses that are operating with revenues under about a million dollars or so usually have situations where the business owner is still doing a lot of the detail work. They’re starting to become a big bottleneck for the company to move forward. Usually, the biggest thing is figuring out what needs to be offloaded from that business owner to other people hiring other people or other people they currently employ such that it frees up the business owner and they don’t become the bottleneck for the company moving forward. And I think really to get that try In addition to go from 750,000, in revenue and cross over that million dollar mark, a lot of times relates to how well that business owner can start to extract themselves from the day to day and focus on what they do best. Maybe it’s sales that they do best, and they connect with new customers really well, maybe it’s managing the marketing is something that they do really, really well. So finding out where the happy place is for the business owner, and what they can do best serving the business so that everything else can be offloaded from their plate.

Jess Dewell 10:30
Well, let’s go to that next level, that 10 to $15 million. Mark. Now you have somebody who found their lane, and they’re really good at it. And then they got to get out of that too, don’t they?

Geneve Huxley 10:40
Really, it has to do with the business owner constantly rising above where the business is, and extracting themselves out more and more to, to really enable it. To get out of the business’s way. I guess you could say.

Jess Dewell 10:52
We are our own worst enemies sometimes are we not Geneve?

Geneve Huxley 10:56
We are, I think it can definitely happen because it started as your baby, it started where you were doing everything. And so it takes a big change to be able to really extract yourselves out. And it can be hard to do. If you get on a rocket ship, or you find out that you’re on a rocket ship, you gotta hand controls to the experts sometimes to make sure you come back down to earth, okay?

Jess Dewell 11:20
When you’re at that 15 to 20 million 50 million 100 million are things that need to change become different, it more what it comes down to supply chain, it comes down to inventory management, it comes down to personnel, I know that those are all challenges right now, are those challenges that you’ve been seeing, like stay even over the turbulence of the last few years? Even they feel like they’re very prevalent? Maybe they’re getting a little more attention right now, all of us realizing we should have been paying more attention all along. Right now I could be putting words in the whole world’s math, let’s just be real about that. What do you think?

Geneve Huxley 12:03
You know, the last few years have been really tough on a lot of businesses, for sure. It changes what needs to happen to grow to that 50 million 100 million, even down to things like you know the pandemic cause a lot of businesses to figure out how are we going to be able to do business, you know, the old way that we did business with not wanting to change things, but in a world that has drastically changed. Since pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic, they need to start thinking more outside the box, when you get to the 50 million 100 million dollar mark, things have to change again, significantly, because bigger is very different. And I actually have a colleague that I know that just wrote a great white paper on this, I started on my LinkedIn profile, you know, you get into something where you can’t just run into people in the hallways anymore. Oh, I had this quick question. You don’t you can’t quickly gather people for a meeting. Last minute meeting in person. People overhearing things in the lunch room saying, oh, I need to know about that particular situation, that stops happening when companies get to be a lot bigger. And there’s a different shift that needs to happen. And each stage that you kind of either add a digit to your business top line revenues, or a half a digital say to going from the 10 million to 50 million even. It’s tough. And it all depends upon how well your leadership that you’ve surrounded yourself with, can navigate that and help you navigate that.

Jess Dewell 13:28
So our numbers help us pick our leadership team. Is that what I just heard you say?

Geneve Huxley 13:33
That becomes a chicken and egg, which thing comes first, right?

Jess Dewell 13:36
Whatever way you’ve gotten. It sounds like it’s an a key ingredient to make it happen again.

Geneve Huxley 13:41
So those leading indicators need to be helpful to the business leaders to know what’s going right, what’s not going right. And those leading indicators are not necessarily financial statements. If you’re trying to project where things are going in the future. Its financial statements are very much after the fact after that activity has happened. Budgeting forecasting that’s forward-looking, he indicators, leading indicators, things like number of hits on your website, maybe if you are more of a retail company, you will notice increased activity on your website before you start to get more leads and more phone calls coming in the door. If you’ve got salespeople, and you have a lot of outbound sales, phone calls, how many phone calls do they need to make every day, which is like the top of that sales funnel to get down to close sales. At the end of the day, if you measure just the revenue number and that’s all you look at. By the time that comes out. You’ve lost your chance to make an effect on that number. Tracking outgoing sales phone calls, however, is something on the front end the top end of that funnel that’s going to have a direct impact on that ending revenue number.

Jess Dewell 14:45
Did you always want to be a numbers person? Since you were a little kid?

Geneve Huxley 14:49
I think my parents saw it before I did.

Jess Dewell 14:52
Okay, okay. Tell me more. Tell me more.

Geneve Huxley 14:55
Oh gosh, nerdy things about me when I was a little so I grew up crying did a long time ago, I grew up in the 1980s. That was back when waiters and waitresses frequently didn’t even use a calculator, add up the ticket. And so the handwritten ticket would come to the table for the end of the meal. And my parents would hand it to me to check the math. Wow, this adult did. And so I would sometimes find errors. And then my parents wanted me to point it out to the waiter or waitress.

Jess Dewell 15:24
Of course, they did.

Geneve Huxley 15:28
As now as an adult, I’m horrified at that thought because I have done waitressing when I was in college, I would have been horrified if a child said, Oh, you did your math wrong here. And I brought that up to my parents sometime after I was an adult. And they said, Well, we’re horrified that as adults, they can’t add right? So they shouldn’t be told by a child.

Jess Dewell 15:46
Like, oh, okay, way to make that point to the whole world, Mom and Dad, I’m sure it went exactly the way you thought, oh, that’s hilarious. Good for your parents, though. I like that there was always that kind of a thing. Yeah. So data-driven, you’ve always recognized the importance of accuracy. In data, is that a better way to say it versus I’m not necessarily a numbers person I care about the accuracy of the information in general? Or is that am I, am I like extrapolating too far out?

Geneve Huxley 16:15
I would say I am a numbers person, and I care about the accuracy of the data. Something else to keep in mind is in the accounting and finance terms, we have a term we use called materiality, which means if it’s really small, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to make a difference. If so, say you were going to buy stock in Google, which is this multi-billion dollar company. And you found out that they were off on recording one of their transactions by $1,000. Is that going to change your mind about investing in Google or not investing in Google because they were off by $1,000? Probably not. In fact, if you look at their financial statements at the SEC, that are public, you’ll probably see they round to the nearest million dollars. So $1 million, is an immaterial amount to Google, everybody gets to have a company that large, if they want it, if they want it, if they want it true. You know, don’t sweat the small stuff. If it’s really small, don’t have your accountant or your bookkeeper spend a half an hour at their hourly rate trying to chase down 50 cents. That’s not worth the time.

Jess Dewell 17:16
But there are things that are worth the time. I mean, I can just speak to my own personal experience. Without going into details that I’m sure just fine to share. But I won’t I am not a numbers person. How would you describe me Geneve when it comes in terms of my data and accuracy? Now I’m curious, that’ll be great.

Geneve Huxley 17:37
I don’t think that I’ve ever really had a data and accuracy conversation with I don’t think we have either. So I can’t really comment on that you feel much more like a free spirit, you’re much stronger on the creative side of things, free spirit kind of things, thinking out of the box, and bringing other ideas to that are not going to be as apparent to somebody that’s more numbers and data-driven, like me.

Jess Dewell 17:59
People didn’t listen to me when I noticed these things. Because I see trends, even though I can’t necessarily articulate them or go into the equations, there was a time where I was noticing it was just off enough. I’m like, It’s too small to matter. But the fact that it’s happening every single month, it’s adding up and I don’t understand what this is. And I couldn’t get anybody in the finance department of this company to help me understand what was going on. Because I was not doing any of that. Now there was my team anymore. It had been gobbled up in a different way. And I asked and I asked and I asked and I really stuck after it, it probably took six months. Turns out, it turned into over a million dollars worth of needing to find the error to add it up. Now this was a very large business, right? It’s $10 million business. But to find that and to be able to make that shift, and to be able to go, oh, the point is this, even if we don’t know how the numbers are made, and some of you will be like I don’t even care what the numbers are, I just care that I see them. And some of you were like, I care and I want to understand that immateriality all of those things in mind, your way that you see data over time and the trends you’ve seen matter. And you’ve got to believe in those. And that’s the thing that I think is really important is that if nothing else, we have something that we’re looking at, because then we know when it’s not right. And we can ask better questions. So to your point, I think that goes back to would you say that that’s like that’s the leading indicator. When something starts to look wrong, sound wrong, feel wrong. Our numbers can typically help us find the right question to ask.

Geneve Huxley 19:33
So something tips you off like this doesn’t feel right. That’s the leading indicator to start looking for an a potential error or fraud. Frankly, it could be a fraud indicator and somebody is embezzling money and you don’t know it and little things like that sometimes really start to add up and stick out and you’ve got to chase it down until you’ve figured out what the issue is.

Jess Dewell 19:55
And sometimes it’s nefarious, and sometimes it’s not but to know that it’s off, it can make a difference. It can make a difference. If you’re trying to prepare to sell, it can make a difference. If you’re going after a capital raise, it can make a difference in so many scenarios have, I got to go get a loan for the next piece of equipment I want to buy, whatever that is, that’s where those numbers really important. And we can use that as that trend. So I think that that’s a key piece there too.

ANNOUNCER 20:24
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. We will return to the show soon. But first, I want to take a moment and give you a peek into what additional services and solutions you could access to Fast Track Your Business. This program was created to develop your capacity on demand by sharing insights, tips, as well as lessons learned by business leaders, unedited and uncut. And we don’t just stop there. There are three additional benefits to help you reach your growth goals. You will also have unlimited access to one, hearing tips and insights to develop yourself as a leader to get better results more often. Two, experiencing viewpoints from many different business leaders. Three, receiving frameworks to build core competencies and to more effectively focus on business growth and leadership. Altogether, The Fast Track Your Business program will allow you to face uncertainty, anytime, anywhere. You can access what will become your most versatile tool in your toolkit by going to FastTrackYou BusinessToday.com. Now back to Jess.

Jess Dewell 21:28
To your point about free spirit, why yes. And I can still spot a trip. Yes, absolutely. But I think that’s important, though, because one of the things that I find with the company. And you might find this too, when you have somebody who’s wearing a finance hat, in addition to another hat in the small or medium-sized organization, there’s a little bit I don’t even know if it’s imposter syndrome, there’s a that’s just not my strength. And so they shy away. And I think that that’s something that I really want to talk about. Because even if it’s not our strength, we all have the ability to know what’s going on and lean into that.

Geneve Huxley 22:04
You should always ask questions about numbers that don’t quite seem right or something seems off, especially if it’s your business. Or if you’re a volunteer on a board of directors, and you have fiduciary responsibility to watch over the business, you should always ask questions. Asking a lot of questions is a key thing that I think helps businesses root out the problems and find them and create solutions for them. Because if you don’t follow it, it’s something really big could go unnoticed. And as in your example, ended up being 10% of revenues, adding up over time, that can really make a big difference. It’s the lobster boil, right, the lobster doesn’t know that they’re getting boiled. So don’t ever shy away from asking questions. If something doesn’t make sense, it’s fine. Start to ask those questions so that finance does become something stronger for you. And that you are more educated in, that’s really important. They’re your numbers, it’s your business, you should know and understand all of them.

Jess Dewell 23:02
Right? Let’s talk about those back to those base numbers. Then when we say here’s what we want to do in the next two years, what are the kinds of questions we need to ask? How would we measure that? What can a current financials tell us? What could we project based off of what’s already happened? How does that projection change with potential changes in the market or ability to get a particular ingredient? So speaking of all of those things, it’s so great that we can sit here not actually making decisions about this and talking about it, can I just be real? Everyone is probably like, Who are your people? Well, we know what it’s like to be in the room in the middle of it. And so we’re kind of setting the stage. So you can work with this. Because when we’re in the middle of it, it’s always very different, isn’t it, Geneve?

Geneve Huxley 23:44
Everything feels material. I think when you’re in the middle of it, everything feels like a really big decision, you making decisions on a regular basis of what’s the most important goal. So looking forward a couple of years, what do you want to be when you grow up? In two years, when your business is older? Where do you want to be? Is there a new threshold? You should definitely always have those goals set out so that you have something to work towards. A lot of times what I say when it comes to this is, if you want to drive from San Francisco to New York City, and you don’t have a map, you don’t have any way to get there, how likely is it that you’re going to get there in the most efficient way possible?

Jess Dewell 24:19
My gut just kicked in Geneva, I’m like, Oh, this sounds like a really good challenge.

Geneve Huxley 24:23
The biggest point of that is, is that when you’re starting in San Francisco, you know that you want to go to New York City. If you just say I’m gonna start driving, you may end up in neighborhoods you don’t want to be in you may end up in the middle of the desert with an empty gas tank too. So you have to know where you’re going in order to be able to actually achieve that and had your business somewhere. If you don’t have any direction you’re pointing to then you’ll end up in Houston or something.

Jess Dewell 24:47
Two years is a long time. And that takes two years to solve a problem. Sometimes we’re setting initiatives so big because it takes time to grow and cultivate whatever we are desiring. And it’s hard, hard, it’s hard to get started with something that big. And even when we break it down, it can be that hard. And I know there are challenges that come up along the way because so much can happen in even one year. I’m guessing the companies that you were working with have had unexpected foreseen things show up, regardless of what their growth goals, where are their infrastructure goals have been? What are some of those challenges? And how are they approaching, looking at the problems that they’re finding

Geneve Huxley 25:29
The last couple of years have definitely had a lot of new challenges that businesses hadn’t ever faced before. You know, the most important thing is having a group of either peers or business advisors that you can talk things through with, if you don’t have a leadership team around you, as a business owner, if you’re not quite to that stage, yet, finding a place where you have a mastermind group to work out your problems with to stay focused and get some of those out of the box ideas are pulling you farther away outside of the issue at hand to be able to see it. So I think that can be really critical is having a peer group, that peer group may help you to recognize when you need to bring in experts to, to help with that you don’t have to sail the whole ship on your own, you can have help in the areas that you need expertise in. When I started my consulting business, I had no expertise in sales or marketing, had never touched it my entire career. And now I had to do it for my business. So I started asking, and I started educating myself and eventually hired some experts to help with that. Because I knew it was not my strong suit. And so I think that can be a really critical piece is talk to other people, talk to experts and see where else you can get some help with those things.

Jess Dewell 26:42
So I’m thinking about a problem that I know a lot of the companies that I’m talking to are facing, sometimes it’s just finding people. And then it’s keeping the people that you find that you really want, how does the work that you do, and the information that we can get help us retain, find and retain good people, key people, superstar people, and every kind of people. We don’t need a whole business of superstars be real about that. That’d be a great firework show, and then everybody would burn out. So yes, whatever our goals are around that, well, the way you keep them as you shackle them to their desk. Ball and Chain no more.

Geneve Huxley 27:24
The team may stick around a little bit.

Jess Dewell 27:26
Oh, that’s so funny. Yes, I know you’re teasing.

Geneve Huxley 27:30
I am teasing. Yes, for the record, I am teasing about that. That is a difficult situation. And I see a lot of my clients struggling to hire people and then struggling with turnover, either a new hires or in longtime people a lot changed with a pandemic, don’t have an expertise in human resources. The biggest thing I can think of is be sure that your salaries that you’re offering for those positions are market-level salaries, be ready to know what your super upper limit is. And if you’re willing to have a hiring bonus, or doing retention bonuses, maybe a hiring bonus, if you really want to snag this person, and then having a retention bonus that’s only paid out after they stay for six months, 12 months, something like that, to keep them in that those are some options that you can have there for those hiring when it comes to retention. Now the other thing I want to mention is not everybody’s motivated by money, I think that’s always the first thing we think of right now I think it probably has more weight than usual, if we were to look over time because inflation has been such a big problem lately, lately, meaning in the last 12 months or so. So I think it’s more so but some people really, really thrive on taking ownership of projects. Some people really thrive on good feedback, positive affirmations and praise during company meeting, some people really thrive on that. And having that kind of a good situation, it helps to keep them around as well. So you really have to know your employees and ask them if you don’t know, ask them what it is, that’s their main driving force, probably everybody’s going to rank pay number one, just because they’re worried that you’re going to not pay them enough if you don’t rank at number one. But take a look at some of the other things and maybe have some examples of what those might be once-a-month lunch for everybody in the office. Maybe it’s getting together with their co-workers on more of a social basis to build that camaraderie that can make a big difference too. So people feel part of the team and part of the group and being sure that you kind of bring into the fold those new people when they start so that you don’t end up with a company feeling cliquish, for those that have been here for a while and then new people coming in be sure people really feel welcomed into the group. As human beings, I think we always want to be welcomed into the group. And so that can be a critical thing too. But I do want to say this is a little bit of outside of my depth from a human resource perspective.

Jess Dewell 29:47
Everything that you just shared ties back to those three levers that we talked about at the beginning, that cash is important. Our net income and being able to have a good closing process month to month and Understanding our profit by product line are all levers that we can use to be creative that way. But if we don’t know those things, we don’t really know if we even have capacity to do those things.

Geneve Huxley 30:12
That’s correct. That’s a really good point. You want to be able to know your cash and your profitability numbers. So you know, if you can help hire somebody else new, do you have the capacity to do that? How soon can they start making a difference on your top-line revenue? or reducing your expenses? If they are if they’re a salary coming in? That’s an addition to your expenses. So how are they going to help offset that? How soon can you get them into a profit-making person instead of just an expense line?

Jess Dewell 30:42
See, people this is what the Bold Business Podcast is all about. I’m telling you, not only does Geneve live and work in Colorado, which is where we met, actually, even though we didn’t meet in person until right before I left Colorado for watching. That’s right. Regardless of all of that, she works nationally in her consulting firm. And these are the things that are on your mind. But maybe you didn’t know we’re fully related to understanding what your cashflow is, understanding what those levers are understanding what the numbers are in your business so that you can be making strong decisions so that you don’t get tired out and really be frustrated about every decision that’s coming your way because there’s more knowledge to be had. So this is the key right here. Come back, listen for more. And most importantly, don’t forget to check out the show notes because that white paper that Janine mentioned, we’re going to try and find and get it into our show notes. And you will also find all of her contact information so you can start asking Janine this because this is what she loves to do. If you can’t tell she’s funny, and she likes to do this. Good compliments to everything that you might be trying to do to find the right question to ask right now to achieve your most important goals.

ANNOUNCER 32:04
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