EP 13: Dan Lacy - The Prophet of Profit talks Increasing Business Value

Ed Mysogland  1:39  
I'm your host Ed Mysogland. I teach business owners how to build value and identify and remove risks in their business so that one day they can sell their business at maximum value when they want, how they want and to whom they want. On today's show, I am really excited to welcome my friend Dan lacy from Dynasty consulting, den coaches business owners to help them build value by improving cash flow and revenue, he developed a proprietary system that enables business owners to get the results they want in their business and make money how they want to do his one on one monthly coaching has enabled his clients to increase revenue listen to this by $100 million. He's improved profits by $6.2 million, and entity value by 52 million over the last 15 years, his clients consistently receive on average at 35% Return on Investment annually. Dan's authored five books and co authored two, all of which I'll have links in the show notes. And lastly, and probably most important, Dan's been married for 40 years has three children and five grandchildren. So Dan, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. And well, I'm glad you're here. And I gave everyone kind of a high level overview of you and your consulting practice. But can you talk a little bit more about what you do and how you do it? Well, the My only practice revolves around helping business owners get to where they want to go. And the first the first step is identifying what it is you want to accomplish in your business. And we'll talk about that further in the broadcast. Then, once we establish the goal, then how do we what how do we get there, you know, what road do we take to achieve a goal then in that process, we have to identify the landmines that are going to be on the road when you go down the road. And the last thing is, is that we have to have some way of ensuring that we stay on the road on an ongoing basis, and some kind of accountability format. And I've been doing this for nearly 20 years. And it nearly works 100% of the time on this show. I mean we focus on business value and you have four areas that affect value, its cash flow, your exit strategies, capital and personnel. What have you found to be most important to the business owner and the contribution to their business value and why? Okay, I can tell this is a trick question already.

Dan Lacy  4:01  
Okay, they're all important. I mean, I mean, the business owner has got to balance so many balls in the air keep him in the air all the good times and and the higher he throws in, the more the more he's gonna get so capital is approved. The financial structure of the company is important. The right people, probably the most important thing, you know,

cashflow credit, you can't have you know, if you don't have cashflow, you know, you don't have a business. I mean, they all tie together. And what I love about helping business owners is that you know, you got to step back and take a 35,000 foot view of your business and see what's working because you've got sales and marketing you have you have your product or service, you have the the financial side and you have management. Okay, so if you look at all those functions in the business, which ones were working with was not working because typically, if one or two or three of those functions are working, the business is not working. So the key for the business owner is the Manage thing. Is that they're not comfortable with don't have a whole lot of background with. And they only learned through the school of hard knocks. So it's, it's all these things are important.

Ed Mysogland  5:09  
No, I hear you and and I guess when when I look at a particular business and trying to assess value, I'm trying to look at where did they get the greatest bang for the buck? And out of those four, I mean, I don't know, which which you you perceive as the most important. I know, they're all important. But there's got to be one that, that you know, what, it's kind of the old 8020 rule. You know, if you address this, you know, the rest of it is almost like a domino, do you see that? Or no, you know,

Dan Lacy  5:39  
I don't know if I 100% agree with that. Because the people are the most important thing, if you if you've got a great sales manager, you're gonna have good sales, if you have a good CFO, you're gonna have, you know, good financial records to tell you where you're going, you know, if the owner is a good leader, if the owner is, is mentoring the people underneath him, if he's bringing up people, I mean, they're all really important. If I had to choose one, I'd say it'd be people, because people drive all the functions. And if you have, if, you know, from an exit strategy standpoint, if you've got a strong management team, if you can walk away from those for a week, two weeks, three weeks, three months, and the thing runs, like a clock, is it that is that is really an indication of great management, good leadership, good mentoring, and a good business,

Ed Mysogland  6:31  
I hear you what and the funny thing is that, in some, just about every one of these podcasts that I that I've conducted is, it's the same thing that you know, the people, the people are creating the value. And that's probably one of the biggest challenges that certainly the people that we're working with are facing that, you know, it's hard to get good people these days. So, I mean, how do you how are you seeing your clients that are that are getting such a great return on their investment? How where are they finding these people? Or? Or what are they doing? Are they grooming them? Or are they are they sourcing them from other other places? How is that happening?

Dan Lacy  7:09  
It's a combination, it's a combination of both, I think the most of them, there are people that have come up through the organization. And, you know, they have a, they have, the employee has a desire to be there, they have a desire to do a good job, you know, the, the, the metal, metal position may not be the right word, but, but the employee really has a desire to grow, to learn, to be better, to be accountable to, you know, to deal with functions that you'd want all your kid, you know, your kids to do. So, and then the owner is always on the lookout for people that are, are in the organization that are doing a great job, because they know the importance of growing a person growing the person to grow the organization and the, the employee. You know, it's just, it's, in today's market, it's great, it's great to be employed, because the opportunities are unlimited. But the business owner is really, they really like to hire within. So they'd rather not go outside the organization. So they're looking at them, but but the business owner has to have a strategy for growing the people, even if it's through him, or through outsiders, you know, to to, to work with them, you know, to prove their sales skills to become a better production manager to do their function. And as the argument and so from as organization grows, is that the business owners really got to invest in some key people. So choosing the right people, initially is really important, because those are the people who got to grow, okay? If you find people that can't grow, maybe you have to go outside the organization, hire somebody, but you want people that will grow with you that are committed to the company there. They really like what they're doing. And it's, that's how I see it working. And as the organization grows, it can financially afford better people. Either paying the people more than you've got in the key functions that are growing, or you or if they're not performing at the level you wanted to do, and you gotta go outside, you got the ability to do it. So it all works together. Yeah, I

Ed Mysogland  9:37  
hear you. And one of the challenges that that every business owner that I that I talked to has is is do I make that investment and what's the likelihood that I'm going to get get my investment back and a return on it? I mean, you have any any tips on on how to I know you said you know, you bring people, you groom them from within or you hire within? I mean, is there you got any tips or tricks that, that you can identify those people that that are? That number one would be good. And number two that are not flight risks?

Dan Lacy  10:12  
Well, you know, they say that the reason an employee leaves a job is not it's more of the problem of the manager than it is the employee. Okay, so do you have good managers, manager? People? I think that's, that's number one. I mean, this, it's, this is a vast quagmire of questions. Because if the business owner if the business owners go i The most important thing is what is the business owner want to take the business? To is a lifestyle business is is a is a business that he wants to grow to leave to his kids? I mean, he wants it on the market. I mean, what's the reason for doing it? So first of all, the business owner has got to have an objective as to what he wants to accomplish, then the second thing is okay, then what's the strategy to accomplish the objective? Then the third thing is how do I how do I manage the organization to get the get the performance I need for the people I need? Then what's the financial accountability to each one of those primary functions? You know, then if you have a plan, as long as you're, it's a lot easier to go someplace if you have a plan, than if you're if you're going someplace without a plan?

Ed Mysogland  11:21  
Yeah, I hear you. And you had asked me, you know, what's the goal? I think any business owner, regardless of size is at some point they want to, you know, make they want to create loot liquidity, they how do I how do I get, get rid of this when I want to? And, and certainly there is, you know, merit to having personnel. But But again, I think the background is, and the basis of this podcast is alright, how do you position your company, so at all times, you have the flexibility to pivot regardless of what happens. And, and again, I agree with you that, you know, having that having personnel in place that that affords you to take off anytime you want, is a great position to be in, but unfortunately, just most businesses don't have that and, and

Dan Lacy  12:11  
good. But they don't have it. Because they haven't thought about what the end game is. Sure. Okay, so okay, I started, I started my business, because I didn't like working for my boss. And I was just as good technically, as he was, therefore, why should Why should I work for my boss, because I can make all the money myself. Okay, that's how they start out. So they start out with a with a strong technical sales knowledge. But But then, if they if the objective is to grow the business and create liquidity, which this I tell you what business ownership is, by far, the best way to build equity, liquidity and riches than any other option A person can do. I mean, my brother in law, owns a plumbing company. And his dad was a plumber, he became a plumber. Okay, so he's technically he was, he was sound. And he had 80 Plumbers working for him before he sold his business. And, but, you know, something, he really invested in his foreman in the people that, you know, that made the difference that people that are on the job, and, and he cashed out at 55. And he worked for 28 years in his business, and cash out and hasn't worked since, you know, go to college. I mean, is that he had an he has expertise, but he had a desire to grow a business that he could sell sometime down the road I got the first step is, what's your objective is your objective is you want to do everything yourself, because you feel happy about doing everything yourself, you're not going to create a younger credit, business of value, because everything is built around yourself. So the objective has got to be, what's my end game? You got to think about what your endgame is. 20 years before you're thinking about exiting,

Ed Mysogland  14:04  
and we're seeing statistics that I mean, you know, I've been I've been preaching this for a while about, you know, the whole pre planning process, but but, you know, as you know, with all these business owners that we talked to planning, the sale of the business is right, before planning, pre planning, funeral services. There's, there's such a, you know, an attraction and that's the businesses the identity of that they have and, and it's an it's a challenge, but I hear you in and unfortunately, the people that we talked to, it's they just haven't gotten that at that point. And the you know, they can't see that if they can just go through this dip of, of getting the people in the right places, that that the they can then turn and scale the business and and create ate more of an investment as opposed to a lifestyle? Yeah, yeah, here.

Dan Lacy  15:05  
Yeah, no, no, that's absolutely right. So, so I have a client right now, that's fairly these $25 million in revenue. And he wants to transition the business transition, I was in business. And I said, you don't have a business you can transition out, because you have a lifestyle business. He says, Well, what is a lifestyle business? So he's so he went down that road, but he said, shoot, I that's not what I wanted. Nobody really told me. Nobody really, this made the distinction between what kind of business I should have, when I was growing this business, I just did everything I thought I thought it was the right thing to do. I, you know, I just didn't move forward. And now, yeah, the time comes where he wants to transition out, and he's got an email, he says, Okay, I've got three to four years that I'm going to make, I'm going to do the things I need to do to be able to transition out, okay. So it'd be better if he did it 15 years ago, but now that he's got, you know, a few years to go, he's investing in his people to be able to transition out of it. Okay, so the business. Yeah. And you you're at you hit the nail on the head is that the business is the identity of the person. And that is the big holdup, because they don't, because they don't know what to do after they sell their business. But you know, the key thing is, is that if you have a good business, we can talk about what what defines a good business. But if you have a decent business, the person that buys it wants to keep that owner around for a while for a whole bunch of different reasons. So it's not like he's going to be kicked out on the street. You know, typically, because there's value in contacts, he has an allergy has, you know, all the things that he's learned as the business grows, he's got that in his head. And that's highly valuable to a buyer. So it's not like they're going to lose their identity, you know, when they make a transition, but you've got to plan for when that's going to happen. And it's like anything else, you know, people sell life insurance, you never, when you get new, you never know when you're going to die. You never know when you're going to sell your business, you know, there's, you can exit it anytime. There's all kinds of reasons how, why businesses or go through exit through the course, this illusion of partnerships, there's all kinds of things that cause a person to exit. But the key is, is if you have a business, that's if if you said I want to create a business that will operate without me. Okay, that's a that's a huge step. Okay, then what does that look like? Then how do I, how do I get there? But the deal, what's my plan? What's my plan for the next 12 months? What's my plan for the next 18 months? 24 months, 36 months? What's my objective? What am I trying to accomplish? And it does a number of things. Number one, it helps you think about what the endgame is number two, it helps you communicate to the people underneath you what you want to accomplish. So so they know what their goals are. I mean, the planning process is really, really important for anybody that owns a business, the problem is, based on my surveys is about 85% of business owners don't do it.

Ed Mysogland  18:16  
And do you think that it's because of time or? or lack of urgency? Or? Or what causes them not to do that? I know from from our end, it's, it's always I shouldn't say always, it's always, once again, I think it's a situation where life circumstances all of a sudden show up and they have to move. And unfortunately, they they get struck with reality of you know, that your company is substantially more has more risk than you perceive. And as a result, it suppresses value. And, you know, that's a tough spot to be in when when, you know, when you're forced to consider exiting.

Dan Lacy  19:00  
Oh, no, I agree. 100%. I mean, you never want to be forced to have to exit your business because you never get any value out of it. But it goes back to you know, is that you you open put it another way is that if your business if you had even if you don't thinking about exiting your business, and you know, you're 45 years old, you're 52 years old, you're not you're not thinking about exiting your business, but your business is consistently improving that I think then that is a lot easier to make a transition than one that is just a lifestyle business and your revenues flat and you're taking all the money out of the business. I mean, you know, is that there's go back to this. It goes back to the plan, what do you want to accomplish? You know, then if, if you don't have time to think about what you know, what you want out of the business, should you retire or should you exit the business someplace down the road, then you deserve what you To get because there's a lot of people out there the money that will take your business, I think a lot better than you're doing it. But you know, is that your right is that the business, the business owner that is afraid to plan because you know, you're like, like, you're you're afraid to buy your funeral plan, because then that may mean you're going to die. Well, if you plan your exit strategy, that means maybe you're going to accident but you know, something, if your business because it's consistently improving, and revenue, consistently improving profitability, you're growing your and if that's happening, your man, you're typically your management's get stronger, because you've got the resources to to invest in your people or hire people outside our organization, is that as long as your business is consistently improving, okay, how do you make your business consistently improve? That goes back to what's my objective? You know, if I think I may sell someplace in the next three to five to 10, to 15 to 20 years? What is my What do I have to do tomorrow to make it to make it improve my business to improve in value? Okay, well, if the key indicators are all going in the right direction, the value of your business is going up, okay? Key indicators, revenue is going up, EBIT is going up, profitability is going up, you know, your deaths going down, and your employees, key management team is getting stronger. I mean, those are all really positive things. But you gotta say, I gotta have a plan for that, I got to have an organizational plan, I've got to have a, a training plan, I, you know, what, where are my, my key guys weak, you know, then then it goes back to the owner, what do I have to do as the owner to improve the value of my business? Well, I gotta improve myself. Because, you know, I may not know everything I need to know. So what do I do to do that? So it's just, it's, it's awareness, this stuff is like these podcasts are making people aware of what's what they need to do. Because, you know, like I said before, the book, The Millionaire, Millionaire Next Door, is that the biggest segment of wealth creation is through small business ownership. And it is hugely valuable. I was talking to a client last week. And he said, You know, I've been approached this company I work with for about five years, they went from eight to $20 million in revenue. They're doing 10%. Bottom line, then he says, I was approached by foreign company, to buy my business. And he said, You know, I talked to him, he's not really interested selling, but you know, I kind of want to know what's going on. He said that I had another guy call me from another from another country. And he said, he started asking questions, he says, What do you think the value of it is? So you know, he got a feel for where the value was for both these different companies. And he says, you know, something, I really need to think about this. But, you know, 10 years ago, he wouldn't have gotten anything for his business. So, you know, it's, it's about the business owner has got to think about how do I consistently improve my business, therefore, my value is gonna go up, my revenue is gonna go up, market share is gonna go up, all these key indicators are gonna go up. And those things are going up the business value, and IHS out of Towner is gonna go,

Ed Mysogland  23:20  
yeah, and the funny thing is that when when I'm talking to business owners out there, and we broach those topics, at some point, you're going to have to carve out some time, and you're going to have to plan it, and they're like, you know, what, I just don't have, I just don't have the time to do it. So So what do you what do you do with that? I mean, for me, I say, you know, what, why don't we start with just carve out 30 minutes during the month? Certainly, you've got 30 minutes and just sit without your phone and figure out what is, what are next steps for you, on the planning of your business, regardless of sale? Just, you know, what are you going to do? So do you when you consult? And I know you I know a number of people that you've you've you've coached along the way, but what what do you do to help them find the time to do such an important undertaking?

Dan Lacy  24:14  
Well, you know, it's an issue of priorities. Is that Is it important for your family to have liquidity? Someplace down the road? You know, is it or isn't it? Well, if you don't be extremely wealthy already, you maybe and maybe you don't care? Maybe this business, just a hobby. But if if the goal of the of the of the, of the owner in the family is that you know, I'm going to create $2 million in value by the time I'm 65 or $5 million dollars in value, what kind of knot do I have to create in the future for me to be able to do the things I want to do? Number one, number two is that I think that's the first thing you got to do is you got to figure out what what do you have to accomplish, then, then will you spend a couple hours a month achieving that goal? You know, then if they want that, I'm just saying, you know, something, then you're not gonna get your objective. But you know, is that you can't, you can't force them to plan. But what the really cool thing about it is that once they do start planning, is that all these other things open up, all these opportunities open up, the communication opens up, the people understand better. You know, it's, and the company improves, well, the company improves because you got to plan it, everybody understands, and you know, where you're going, you know, that our Google raise gotta prove our Yelp Braves want to prove they want to prove it, and they'll prove because we're doing things, right, you know, is that I just kind of my approach is, what what do you want to accomplish in your life in this business life? And what does it look like in monetary terms? And where are you today? And let's say the company's let's say, the company's doing a million dollars, you're making $50,000 of profit and you want $2 million in the next 15 years? What does that come to have to do to do that? Well, you know, it's the $2 million, and he's got to make half a million dollars in EBIT da, and you're at 5000. Now, you got quite a ways to go. But so what's if that's the goal, then what what plan do you have to put in place to do it? You know, you can, you know, you see this all the time, but, you know, you, you can't have a business work really hard 1416 hours a day for 30 years, and not look up and say, I don't have any I don't have my business isn't worth it. Yeah, that is that is complete waste of time to have a waste and time?

Ed Mysogland  27:01  
Well, well, at the same time, I mean, it My My advice to, to the business owners, look, I don't care if you want, there's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business, nor is there there something wrong with with developing an, an asset that is, you know, passive income from you, and it runs by itself, either either path is fine, the issue I have is that you go you don't understand what you have. And that's, that's what we've been been working so hard on is, you know, when you go to sell your company, you know, you just need to understand where the risks are, are and and again, you can, we just don't want people showing up into the market, not knowing, you know, thinking that they have something that's some great investment, when in fact, someone's simply buying a job. And again, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just a it's a it's a real challenge to get the benefit of an investment, when, in actuality someone's buying the job.

Dan Lacy  28:09  
Right. Yeah, no, yeah. So, you know, it just goes back to what do you want to accomplish? You know, is that do, you know, I have, I have a client that I've been working with, I don't know, 14 years. And he said, I want to own the market from a, you know, I want to be the number one person people call when they have this issue. And I want to create a legacy for my kids, I have six kids, I want them to be able to come in the business if they want to. You know, and, and I met with them last week, and he's at nearly $16 million in revenue. He's got an 80 or 90 employees. You know, and but he said he set the goal on initially, then, every month, okay, what are we doing to improve the power of the organization, every, you know, and he's upgraded all of his key people. You know, a lot of them within, he's hired a few without rule of law, they are outside the organization. But he's, he's doing things that will enable him to, you know, him his wife take all kinds of vacations, because he's got a he's got a business that operates without him, he still got to be there to make key decisions. But the business the day to day operations of the business will function without either one of them there. So, okay, but that was, oh, 15 years ago.

Ed Mysogland  29:36  
Yeah. So so what were, you know, that right, but when you started working with them, I mean, what were the what were the habits that that business owner needed to do to take in order to to diversify their reliance on that person because I'm assuming that when when you started 15 years ago with this person, they they were the business and then gradually over time they started diversifying and stop being the hub in the middle.

Dan Lacy  30:05  
Right? No, that's absolutely true. So, number one, they, they looked for and found really good people. And they brought him in the organization, and they do and they work. And he's done send to these kids, his kids are doing the grunt work, you know, they're not coming in and sit in an office, they're out there, you know, with a shovel, you know, and a blowtorch doing the grunt work, you know, because, and he's taken them all to the same process is that they, they've, they've all learned the basics of what the business is, you know, they're working their way up, then some will work in the sale, some will work into manual, some will work in the county, but you know, it's, he's led them through there, and he just invest, he invest in the people, and he lets them run their divisions, and he lets them make mistakes. And he just cares for him. And he spends a lot of time with them, helping them learn their job, you know, he will work side by side with him. I think he's got Heike six, six or seven profit centers right now. And he'll take he'll take a guy in a profit center, he worked with him for a couple of years, three years that he'll slowly back out of that job, then they'll go the next little detail by something else and, and work with that person while and slowly back out of it. So so the people have the confidence to to operate, and they know how he runs a business. But you know, it's it overall is what's the plan? How do we implement the plan? How to communicate the plan? How do we how do we know that we're doing the right things on an ongoing basis. And if you, if a business owner says they don't have the time to grow the value of their business, and they don't want that, that big payout at the end of their term of their business, that's what they're missing. That's the missed opportunity. Because the value, you know, this, the value of cashflow is like four to six times what it's worth on a on an annualized basis. So if you're doing $100,000 a year in cash flow, do your business worth four to 46,000 or $46,000? You know, if you can do that cash flow $500,000 The value that businesses have five times why not work on improving the value of that cash flow? Well, to get adapted to gain, cash flow, or even increase even on capital and kind of symptomology if you work on growth. If you say you know something, we want to improve, okay, well, revenue, why we want our sales guys to make more money we want we want to we want to help more customers, we want to do we want to do more things, okay, sales are gonna go up, okay, we need to do a better job produce our product. You know, we want we want the customer to feel really good about the things that we're doing. When all that happens, then the whole organization goes up. Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful, I mean, it is a beautiful, beautiful thing is stressful. But if a company grows at a, you know, 1015 20% annualized rate, you know, they can manage it, we had a company that grew from three to $30 million in six years. And everything, everything with the pot, I mean, organizational structure, facilities, people, the CEO was fired, I mean, crud, everything, everything went wrong. And, but at the end of the game, we went from negative cash flow to a million dollars a year in cash flow, and we got a huge, huge bonus on our EBITA because we're growing so fast. So, you know, I love small business. I think it is a phenomenal, phenomenal opportunity for for guys to make good money, you know, that they retire? It is in the construction trades are just amazing. But nobody goes back and thinks about what's the most important thing to do. And how is it? How's it impacting what I want to accomplish long term? You know, that's, that's the that's the that's a major problem. Most small business owners face I'm too busy to think about making more money. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Well,

Ed Mysogland  34:23  
no, I mean, it actually does make a lot of sense because they don't have any margin to they're running their business. And it's hard. I mean, I hear I hear them and I'm sympathetic to him. Well, swinging back to your, your, your client with with all the family members, so So are they gonna go third party are is this going to be a generational transfer? And how's that? How does that look and do consult but with that, but to

Dan Lacy  34:50  
generalize the generational transfer, and the kids are in there? I don't even think they have a child already? Yeah, somebody a few years. Yeah, I mean, the owner is still in his 50s. So it'll probably be another 10 years before they, they transition out of it. But I mean, he's doing doing so well, that we're buying other companies. You know, if you, if you invest in your people, and you're thinking about where you're going, and you're in, you're planning your process, and you're evaluating your, you're evaluating your performance on an ongoing basis, you're going to see dramatic results. And this company has dramatic results. You know, they're at a place now, where every business owner wants to be, they've got a company that's worth probably six $7 million, they have no doubt, they have all kinds of cash, they can do whatever they want to do. And but it took him, you know, 1520 years to get there. But you but you know, it's like, once they say, if you're a smoker, and you your your possibility of getting lung cancer is x, if you quit smoking with three months, or six months, you know, your life expectancy dramatically improves, if you don't smoke for a year and dramatically improve the same is the same with business ownership. Businesses, just spend a little bit of time thinking about where do I want to go? How do I want to want to get there? What obviously is going to my face? And how do I hold myself accountable? They can achieve phenomenal things?

Ed Mysogland  36:25  
No, I hear you so. So I want to be sensitive to your time. But couple more questions I have. So just can you describe like, what's it like working for you? I'm the process behind working with you, I shouldn't say for you with you. i

Dan Lacy  36:45  
My key thing is that I've got clients that do a million dollars in revenue up to nearly $30 million. Okay, but but the revenue is not as important. It is somewhat important. It's not as important as does the business owner really have a desire to grow to improve, to make a mark to, you know, help his employees help the community help his customers? You know, what's, what's the motivation? You know? And do they really, do they have a really desire to do that. That's number one, then number two, is it? Will they take outside input? And if they will take outside input, then I love to sit down, talk with them and say, Okay, what is it the the four questions? What do you want to accomplish? What what do we have to do to get there? You know, we want to go from a million dollars to $50 million or a million dollars in revenue to $10 million in revenue. You know, what does the market look like? What is your product look like? And it was all to say look like, Is that realistic? What's What's the game plan? Then? What obstacles are in the way? You know, we got people obstacles, we have financing obstacle, we have cashflow obstacles, we have market, we have competitors, we have all these things that could be an issue. How do we how do we play into that? Then? The fourth thing is that what process do we put in place to ensure that we're on the road that gets us to where we want to go. And if if I have a a business owner who says, you know, that's me, that's what I want to do, then we can work out something that will help him accomplish what he wants to accomplish. And it's, I you know, and, you know, the, I classify myself as a business coach, not really a consultant, because I'm not really project oriented, and I'm not really a focus on a problem is that my job is to come come alongside the business owner and make them better than they would be on their own. And I want to build on his strengths. I want to build on the strengths of his team. I want them to help them identify and attain their goals. I want to help them grow. And, and what I found is that it been a growing business, things change all the time. So there's always opportunities, there's always risks, there's always there's always the landmines that are in the way. And it's it's about consistency. You know, John Wooden said, you know, it's about practicing the fundamentals. And he was very, very successful as a college coach, because he always focus on the fundamentals. Mikey is, you know, let's just be consistent in what we do. If I if a business owner will take two or three hours a month to sit down and think through, sit back and look at the 35,000 foot view and evaluate where the business is going. I tell you why the business operates smoother, they'll make more money, they have less stress, I'll sleep better at night. They have better cash flow, everything improves because they're working on their business, not in their business. You know, Michael Gerber brought that up when I wrote the email is that you've got to, you got to give away the tool belt and start thinking about what to do. I've got a, the contractor I'm working on right now. And he was struggling, struggling from a financial standpoint. And I said, You got to start staying out of the jobs, you've got to really manage the company. And, you know, I've worked with him for six months. And he's had tremendous turnaround, because he's doing the things that actually count. You know, the other side of story is, is that one really good way to look at if you're a business owner, you say, I'm a business owner and said, what this job I'm doing right now, what's it worth on an hourly basis? If I hire somebody to do it? Is it $10 or $15? an hour, $100 an hour, 50 bucks an hour? What's it worth? If you step back and say I'm doing the $10 an hour job rather than the $15 an hour job, you shouldn't be doing that job, somebody else should be doing it. Because the business owners is has huge value in the key things he does, but he has no value things that he can farm off to somebody else. Totally agree.

Ed Mysogland  41:13  
So, so So Dan, what's the what's the best way we can connect with you?

Dan Lacy  41:18  
email, call me, you know, my email, Dan at dynasty business consulting.com, or phone is 317-678-6310. And I'll happily talk to anybody that has a desire to improve their business, I want to help small business owners be better. You know, and if I can, if I can, if I can help them, you know, I've read all these books, you know, written on a book on cashflow book on profitability, my book on six stages of business growth, I've got what personality got to do with it. And that has a lot to do with the type of people you hire. The seven business factors, rock solid business, profit loss, I've got all kinds of stuff on my website that people can download for nothing, go to your podcasts, and you just know where to get it. I've written stuff, I write a newsletter every week, you know, and we talk about issues that business owners should be aware of should know about should learn about and if they want to learn, I want to help them. Because it is a huge economic engine, just say that every business owner in the state of India can make 10% Bottom line, this place would be amazing

Ed Mysogland  42:31  
telegram. Yeah, I'll have a I'll have links to all of all of the things that you mentioned in in the show notes. So you know what I want. Like I said, I want to be sensitive to your time. But I do want you to know how much I appreciate your, how generous you are with your time and sharing the experiences with our audience. So Dan, I again, I want to thank you for being a defender of business value, and I look forward to continuing to get your newsletter and seeing all the good you're doing in the entrepreneurial world.

Dan Lacy  43:05  
Okay, well, I appreciate that. I mean, you guys do a great job to you guys. You guys are educating you're making people aware of what's going on in the business world. You guys are at the end of the end of the sword. I mean, well thank you is that we all need to work together accountants, bankers, brokers can you know the coaches consulted with all all of us can help business owners be more aware and become wealthy?

Ed Mysogland  43:32  
Well, I'm I'm gonna do I'm gonna do my part and I certainly know you're doing your so we'll we'll see. We'll see you out on the battlefield.

Dan Lacy  43:40  
Okay, sounds great. Hey, thanks a million.

Ed Mysogland  43:42  
Likewise. Thank you.