The Road Map To Success - Sharon Means - The Revenue Maze - Episode # 007

Sharon Means is the Fractional Integrator / COO at Entrepreneurial Advisory Institute. She is a Maestro with numbers and can see where a problem is just from looking at the data. Sharon joins host Valerie Cobb to share her expert tips on how to work your way out of the confusing maze of revenue and provide a growth in revenue to your company.

Takeaways

  • One way to increase your revenue is to have a plan and that plan is a budget. It needs to be a roadmap of what kind of revenue you are looking for and keep the company on track.
  • Don’t let perfectionism get in the way. Your budget or your revenue target don’t have to be perfect; you get better at it over time.
  • A lot of people don’t want to look too deep into the numbers for their company because they don’t fully understand it.
  • Budgeting isn’t something you do once a year; you need to make it a quarterly thing to do for your company.
  • If you want people to thrive in an organization, then they need to fit into the organization. It costs a lot of money to rehire and you spend a lot of time training people, so you want to mitigate mis-hiring someone or having someone leave.
  • Every company needs to have someone who shares the vision of the CEO but makes it work within the framework of the company and budget constraints.
  • Make quarterly objectives for yourself and the company, also known as rocks. This will help to give people clear directions for a project and promote creativity.

Quote of the Show:

1:47 “You need to really have a plan and that plan is a budget and you have to know where you’re going. It has to be a roadmap of what kind of revenue that you are looking for. Um, and from there, um, just a host of other things to keep yourself on track.

And so that the company knows where it’s going and everybody’s rowing all in the same direction

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The Road Map To Success – Sharon Means – The Revenue Maze

Welcome to the show. I have a super exciting guest. I’m excited about this one. She is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor and Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants or CPA. She has proven expertise in driving efficiency and productivity through the evaluation of financial management systems and the implementation of process improvements. She’s a Fractional Integrator/COO at Entrepreneurial Advisory Institute. Welcome, Sharon Means.

How are you?

I’m good. We always do this on the show. I always have to come out and ask before we get more into what you do and how you do it. I want to know one thing. What is one thing you can tell our audience that they can do to get out of the revenue maze?

I’m a CPA. My thought would be that you need to have a plan, and that plan is a budget. You have to know where you’re going. There has to be a roadmap of what kind of revenue that you are looking for. From there, you have to have a host of other things to keep yourself on track so that the company knows where it’s going, and everybody is rowing all in the same direction.

You’re preaching to the choir. What are some ways that they could maybe do that? That is so important.

You get yourself a good app. We use the QuickBooks budgeting tool in the app. As a company, either the fractional sales professional, the owner of the company or whoever, you decide, “What would our revenue goals be? What did we do last year? What do we need to do this year? What are the things that we’re planning on? What are the different leads that we might have? What are the different opportunities?” From there, it is crafting a good framework of what you want to do in the coming year.

I also work with companies that are implementing EOS or Entrepreneurial Operating Systems. From there, you chunk down to what you want to do. What does that mean for the year? What does that mean for each quarter? How are we going to track our progress on that so that we know that we’re hitting our goals and where we want to go?” Even extrapolating from that, you can do a one-year budget. In the OS, we also do something called a 3-year plan and a 10-year target. That can all be built upon the budget for this year and where we want to go. If you don’t know where you’re going and you don’t have any idea, it’s a recipe for disaster.

That is so true. I quote this quite a bit with a lot of people. I love Alice in Wonderland. I probably misquote it all the time, but I love it when Alice is asking the Cheshire Cat, “Where do I go?” He is like, “Where do you want to go?” She says, “I don’t know.” He goes, “Then it doesn’t matter.”

It takes a lot of work on the front end to find these things out, then you have an idea and a roadmap. Everything falls into place after that of what you want to do.

Don’t you think that sometimes it can be overwhelming for small businesses?

It is very overwhelming. You don’t want to let perfectionism get in the way. A lot of people think that it needs to be a perfect budget or a perfect revenue target. It doesn’t have to be. It has to be your best guess. Let’s put something down. Let’s see how we did last year. Let’s extrapolate that out for this year. You get better at it and it gets easier. It’s almost like when you workout and you build up muscle. It’s like muscle memory. You’ll get better at it as time goes on.

TRM 7 | Budgeting

Budgeting: A lot of people think that it needs to be a perfect budget or a perfect revenue target. It doesn’t have to be. It has to be your best guess.

Sometimes, it feels a bit like they need that roadmap. Especially small business owners are not sure exactly where to start with it. It gets easier but I think about those. I also work a lot in forecasting numbers and stuff. One of the biggest hurdles that I’ve heard is how to start, “I need to do it, but I don’t know how to start it. I don’t know what numbers. I don’t know what to track.” Do you know what I mean?

That’s a big part of it.

They get nervous even in front of a CPA, “Maybe I’m saying the wrong term or the wrong word.”

That’s why I’m saying it doesn’t have to be perfect. I do think it comes down to seeing what you’re comfortable with and what maybe you did last year. You have to put some logic behind it and try to make your best-educated guess. You start with the revenue, and then it flows all the way down the rest of the P&L to your different line items. That’s valuable because then, you can plan the rest of it.

If you think your revenue goal is going to be $1 million next year and you’re at $500,000 this year, then that also means, “I’ve got to hire people. Maybe we need to expand our offices. There’ll be more expenses in general for benefits and things like that.” In that way, you’re planning for it. You know, “We are going to need a new person in 3 to 6 months. When we hit this revenue number, we’re going to need to maybe outsource our marketing. We’re going to need to get an actual accountant, instead of what we’ve been cobbling together, and systems in place.” It goes down the line.

When you’re doing an EOS framework, not only do you do that, but then you chunk it down into a measurable scorecard. You’ve got a big number, and it’s maybe on a quarterly basis. What are we tracking so we know we’re getting to that number? Also, it’s not a theoretical number. If we want to get $100,000 for businesses, how many people do we need to talk to? Do we need to talk to ten people? Do we need to talk to twenty people? What’s our closing rate? I know those are all difficult to track, but if you can start tracking them, then you get a better sense of where you are if you’re going to hit your goals, and what you maybe need to tweak or change.

Another big thing I see is that people have different lines of business. I work a lot with different service industries. People will put a lot of stock in one side of their service plan and realize that they spend way too much money servicing those clients. The profit margin is so low. It’s non-existent. The other things that they think are not valuable are their money makers. When you budget out things and you say, “This person works on this client,” or whatever the case may be, you get an idea that maybe you don’t need that service line. $1 million in revenue doesn’t translate to the profit level that you’re looking for.

As a counterpart to some of the stuff that I do, what you do is so validating for a lot of reasons. There was a time in my life it felt so daunting. In revenue, I have to do their five-year. I’ve got to see where they need to go down to the human counts and the whole nine yards. One of the things that I struggled with a few years ago was feeling overwhelmed. I sold tax and accounting software. I knew what numbers were, but you felt so overwhelmed. At some point, it was like reading Greek.

I had a great mentor that was very much like you. That person could tell a story with numbers that no matter how much you verbally said it, will never make sense until someone saw those numbers. It doesn’t mean it solves the problem. What it does is it alerts you early on about what a problem might be. It helps you plan so much better. I used to call that person a maestro with numbers. He made music with numbers. My kids look at a spreadsheet and they’re like, “What does this all mean?” I’m like, “Can’t you see? There’s a problem right here.” They’re like, “What am I seeing?”

What you’re describing is something that I would think people should be super excited about. They always say something like, “We don’t want analysis by paralysis. I’ll use sales teams, for sure. I don’t want to analyze. I want to be out selling.” What you described to me is more of don’t over-analyze, get a plan, choose a couple of things that you’re marking to get your baseline or whatever, and then reset every quarter or whatever you need to do to see if you’re on the right track. That sounds bite-sizable to me.

That’s exactly what I like about it. It’s very daunting. You always get to the point where you get something that isn’t scalable or you’re not measuring it. At the end of the year, you’re like, “We didn’t hit the revenue numbers.” That is because nobody’s tracking it. Nobody knows where we are. Nobody’s asking the question, “Did we talk to this client again? Do they need help? Did they have help last year?” When you can chunk it down so that it’s quarterly, it’s easier to manage. You have real things that you’re tracking. You know, “We’re supposed to talk to five clients this week. Did you talk to them?” The 5 turns into 2 business deals. It’s a much better way to go. It’s not so overwhelming.

I quote Jed Lamb, but the 30/90 rule. The 30 days delay or good stuff in a pipeline means 90 days down the road, something either stalls or spits out. You know exactly when you can pivot on it. The other thing that you said was almost what I would call relief. In leadership, everybody’s touting you should have great visibility. As a leader, you should tell if there are problems. We came through COVID. There was a lot of talk of maybe we don’t tell people there’s a problem. Maybe we don’t do this.

With the visibility you are talking about, they can pivot better. They’re not waiting until the end of the year to see, “We didn’t make our goal. That’s great.” It’s first and present every single day. Most of them feel relief. If they don’t know, they wonder, and then anxiety happens. Everybody’s going, “Are we going to get fired? Are we going to lose our jobs?” On the flip side, “Are we doing okay? Do I have a good future? What’s going on?” A lot of small businesses hold that so close to the vest because they don’t want to disappoint. I find it empowers people to make better decisions.

Also, they can help. You never know. If they know that we need to pivot on something because it’s not going the way that we thought in a quarter, people have ideas. They can come to the leadership and say, “I’ve got an out-of-the-box idea. I’d like to help with something along these lines.” You want the full force of your company and all the brain power in it to help you. When they’re given that knowledge and those ideas, they can help you.

You want the full force of your company and all the brain power in it to help you.

I am reminded of the Jack Stack story of the nuns on the school bus. I use it all the time. I probably told you that. Do you know that story?

I don’t think so.

The Great Game of Business is a different operating system. I’ve been fortunate to work on a lot of full-time equivalent companies where that have different operating systems. EOS is one of them. It is a great system. He tells this story, and I don’t even remember if it’s from the ’60s or ’70s. Please don’t shoot me if I’ve got my facts completely wrong. The gist of the story is in Detroit, there was a lot of picketing for steel back in those days. Their entire plant was needing steel or they were going to miss deadlines.

They went to the company and said, “This is what the problem is.” Those were the leaders, the whole group, all the people on the line, and everything. They said, “This is what our problem is. We’re going to miss deadlines, and we’re going to be in trouble because of it. We’ve got fines if we don’t deliver on time.” The group came up with the idea of dressing someone as a nun in a school bus to haul steel in because the picketers wouldn’t stop a nun from driving a school bus.

It’s an incredible story because it isn’t a top-down story, “We’re all going to be in trouble. What should we do?” They figured it out and hit their targets. When you’re talking about having people own that budget and understand it, that’s so cool. Let’s talk a little bit more about how you got to this point of, “I need this budget.” At first, you were probably not, “All companies need all this stuff.” Tell us a little more about that.

I bring it back to EOS. At the beginning of your meetings or your quarterly meetings, you need to have revenue targets, profit targets, and measurables for obtaining those. If you don’t have a good budget at first, you’re at the mercy of the leadership team thinking, “This is what we should do for the year,” or “This is what we should track.”

TRM 7 | Budgeting

Budgeting: If you don’t have a good budget first, you’re at the mercy of the leadership team.

If we first start off with some good numbers and get the budget done, then you can say, “This is what we’ve budgeted for the quarter. The things that we need to track are X. We’re going to put them on a scorecard and meet weekly.” That is a light bulb that budgeting is not like you to do it at the beginning of the year and then forget about it. The way it rolls is that you’re looking at it quarterly. You’re trying to figure out where we need to pivot and where we need to shore up, or you’re like, “We’re doing great. What do we need to do about that as well?” It is not just the lean times. When things are going well, we also need to navigate for that.

It translates that you have either marketing service, sales, or a new product under the revenue arm. When they’re talking about quota, they all run. That is what they’re hired to do, but they run. What you described to me is more of a bottom-up or top-down squish-them-in-the-middle kind of thing. You get buy-in.

The buy-in is so key. It is not just somebody telling you, “This is what you need to do.” When you buy in, then you work hard at it. You’re like, “I see it and I want that to happen.”

I would think that then with all the visibility and all of the buy-in, the company is that whole cultural health that everybody’s after. Especially in this job market, people want to be happy in what they’re doing. They want to know what they’re doing. They’re not drones.

People should be happy with what they’re doing. If you’re not happy with what you’re doing, find something else because there are other places for you to be and be happy. That’s key. If the culture fit isn’t right for you, that’s a big deal. You’re not going to be able to force your way out of that. It either is a good fit or it isn’t. We have a phrase in EOS on you do an accountability chart, which is everybody in the company has a seat and what they’re responsible for. It is their top 3 to 5 items that they need to focus on.

If you’re not happy with what you’re doing, find something else because there are other places for you to be and be happy.

There’s a thing called right people, right seats. There are people that are the right people in the organization, but they’re in the wrong seat or they’re in the wrong position. There are people that don’t fit in your company. They could be doing a great job in their seat, but they’re toxic. They miss deadlines all the time and aren’t the right people. A great concept is that if you don’t have a good culture, then you’re not going to have people stay. Also, you want the people that fit with your culture so that everybody knows where we’re going, and we’re all rowing in the same direction.

I viewed that years ago when I read Traction. I remember how long ago it was. I blended the right seats on the bus. What you’re describing is intuitive versus counterintuitive. If you want people to thrive in an organization, they need to fit the organization as much as anything else. We added that cult behavioral interview guide so that it does fit into the culture because then you end up with the topic of the show, revenue. It costs a ton of money to rehire people.

TRM 7 | Budgeting

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

There is also the training. You spend so much time and investment with your employees to get them up to speed, and make sure that they are doing things the way you want them to do and in the right way. To mishire or have someone leave is a big deal. You want to mitigate that because it’s not going to help you get to where you need to go

On the sales side, it also costs the revenue that they could have been generating the whole time while you’re training them at that too. There’s not a stop-gap there. There is a whole other episode on that one. I’m not even going to get into that one. Let’s go back a little bit in time. You became an EOS integrator. What drove you to do all of what you do in life? People want to hear more about you, what makes you tick, and why you chose this path.

I have been working with small to medium-sized businesses my whole career. I got my CPA and became a controller for small and medium-sized businesses. About ten years ago, I took a position at an accounting firm. We do outsourced accounting. I was the controller for some of those smaller companies and became the COO at the accounting firm.

I went to an accounting conference. Someone was speaking about Traction by Gino Wickman and Rocket Fuel. It was not about EOS specifically, but about the books and how they integrated them into their organization. I got done with the conference and I brought it back to our leadership. I was like, “This is something.” As you do, you hear then, “So-and-so implemented this. I talked to so-and-so.”

One of my good friends had an accounting firm that he was a partner. He had self-implemented it for himself. He wanted to become an implementer. He helped us implement it at the accounting firm. What I realized after reading Traction is that I’ve been a natural integrator my whole life. An integrator is a person who gets things done. There’s the CEO of the company, which is the visionary. They’re the ones that have the big vision. They’ve got all these ideas. I’m the person that gets things done. I’m the COO. I’m the person that holds people accountable. I’m the person that everyone comes to and get the vision of the visionary in the company and makes it a reality by chunking it out into little quarterly pieces. I found that was a natural fit for me.

An integrator is a person who gets things done.

We offered fractional integration to a couple of our clients. I’m doing that for other companies as well that can’t afford or don’t have someone in the organization that wants to step up and does that kind of role. We say in the EOS, you either get it, want it, or have the capacity to do it. If you don’t have those three things, if you’re overwhelmed and you aren’t that natural integrator, then you need to look outside the company. That’s where I come in. I come in and help people and companies. I work with visionaries to make it a reality.

I remember it was a business coach at one point that said, “You should read Traction.” I remember taking nine pages of notes and going through them. I don’t know that they were so systematized that they were set up as an operating system at the time. Maybe they were. I wouldn’t have had knowledge of it. It makes a lot of common sense. It fits hand-in-hand with what you do as an accountant because you do need to know how to complete all those tasks. There are a lot of visionaries out there in small businesses, and they can’t figure out how to repeat what they do to their employees. As they try to scale, I can see completely the need in the industry for that kind of help. The great thing is it is economical. The return on investment is like, “Wow.”

It’s very helpful because visionaries have these big visions all the time. Part of my job is to say, “What we do is on a quarterly basis.” We set what are called rocks. Those are the things that the company has decided are important and we need to focus on. When the visionary comes and says, “I’ve got this great new shiny idea,” we say, “This is what we decided this quarter because these are the goals we want to get to. Can we park that? We can revisit it at a quarterly meeting to see if it’s right for the next quarter.” It seems to help.

You’ve been in organizations where the visionary takes everyone around. One week, we’re on this system, then the next week, you find something else. It’s hard and difficult to work in that environment with all that change and chaos. It’s good to hone it down. It doesn’t mean that we’re squelching the visionaries’ creativity or their vision of things. We just want to make sure that we focus. If 1,000 beams of light go into one thing, it’s much stronger than all of it individually. If you can decide, “This quarter, we’re going to work on getting a new HR director or something like that, then that’s what we’re going to do and work on. Next quarter, maybe we can work on something different or what you’ve brought to the table.” That’s helpful.

It’s centered on a little round-stage gate processing as well. With rocks, it was Dale Carnegie, and then Stephen Covey did it a lot too. We would talk about it. When they say rocks, they’re like, “What the heck is a rock?” A lot of people don’t even realize that psychologically, we lose steam every 90 days. The wave is so important. That’s why people do quarterly stuff. It’s like, “Ramp the sales team every quarter.” It makes sense. I love what you’re doing with that. It does help because shiny objects run all over the place.

Everybody loves them

I call it ADD for visionaries.

They all have it. I tell them straight up that there’s no pretending. It’s a trait that they all have.

It’s the yin to the yang. It helps to steer the ship and make sure it stays healthy. These are wonderful things. I have to ask you. You were telling me about your favorite football team. Tell me about your football team. Who’s your favorite one?

I live in Cleveland. It’s the Cleveland Browns. We’re big sports fanatics in my house. We’re watching the Cleveland Browns. We got through watching the Cleveland Cavaliers season. I went to 25 of the 41 home games. I love all of the team sports and getting out to watch a game.

I have to tease a little bit. Are you the reserve CPA, or are you standing up and shouting your head off at each of those?

I am 100% the second. I love it. It started with watching my girls play sports. It’s nothing negative, but always positive. I love to do that. It’s part of the game.

What did they play?

They played high school volleyball and softball. They were into everything. It was one of those. We tried everything as we went along. It was fun.

Did you grow up in a family that did all of that too?

Yes. I was more of an individual sport growing up, so I did tennis. I know you played tennis. My brother played baseball, so we went to a lot of games.

You were a tennis player. I have to ask this because I’m a tennis player. Who’s your favorite?

I go to Serena. It’s ridiculous what she can do every year. How about you?

The reason I like this person is that he is so amazing. I like Federer. To me, he’s a role model. If he doesn’t win because he is hurt or something, he has somebody else play a better game that day. He never throws a tantrum. He’s so good at his craft. I look at sports characters more as, “What would I want my kids to do?” I love to see when people don’t win how they behave. Other than that, his form is so amazing to me. It’s the fact that he got older and was still winning. There are a lot of underlying things. We could talk about tennis all day. You read Gino Wickman and all that stuff, but what else do you do for fun? Do you read more? What do you do?

I do like to read. I’m in a couple of different book clubs. I like to discuss books. It also keeps you on track. When you’re in a book club, you’re like, “I have to finish this.” You go on your Goodreads and you’ve got your goal for the year. You want to keep that up. I like to get out and about. Cleveland is breaking with the great weather. I like to go outside, take a walk, go on hikes, go to the parks and zoo, and all that good stuff.

That’s so fun. You’re in a book club. I want to know the book that you’re on right now.

It’s something about a unicorn. It’s a self-help book. It’s about how to be a unicorn. It’s about how to find what’s special about you and capitalize on that. That’s what I’m reading.

TRM 7 | Budgeting

Budgeting: Find what’s special about you and capitalize on that.

That’s fair. It would sound like you because it’s systematized. You’re like, “I got a goal. I’m going to hit it.”

That’s very true.

I loved this. I’m sure that the rest of the audience has loved learning about EOS and learning about making sure that they have budgets. Don’t procrastinate because it is a relief. They would love to know one place where they could contact you.

I’m at Sharon@EAI.vision. EAI is the company that we conglomerate some professionals on. You can go to the website, EAI.vision, to learn more about it. I’m on LinkedIn as well as everyone.

“As well as everyone,” that systematizes everything.

You can’t beat it.

That’s awesome. That’s it for this episode. If you liked it, please like us on the podcast, on LinkedIn, and on www.TheRevenueMaze.com. Share it and give us feedback. We love hearing all of the things that you guys are doing to help get out of the revenue maze. Thanks again, Sharon. Have a wonderful day.

Thank you, Valerie.

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About Sharon Means

Sharon Means

Sharon Means is the Fractional Integrator /COO at Entrepreneurial Advisory Institute. She is a Maestro with numbers and can see where a problem is just from looking at the data. Sharon joins host Valerie Cobb to share her expert tips on how to work your way out of the confusing maze of revenue and provide a growth in revenue to your company.

Here at Revenue NorthStar, we are passionate about sharing experiences and first-hand knowledge from the trenches. No fake gurus or consultants; we get into the execution of well-proven steps, strategies, and frameworks to help your business grow faster and more efficiently. Stay connected with us on social media for regular updates, tips, and insights:

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About The Author : Valerie Cobb

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