Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Total Profit podcast. This is the place where profit is not an accident. It is a strategy. I am your host, T2, and I'm back again with the master of margin, the sultan of streamlining. Tommy Pull.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: AI is giving you these nicknames?
The sultan of streamlining.
I'll take that one.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Well, you've earned it. And today we are proving that cutting costs doesn't necessarily mean cutting corners.
We are going to be diving into financial efficiency, how to run a really lean business without sacrificing quality, or most importantly, your customer experience.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Okay, let's get real. When people hear cutting costs, they picture panic mode, slashing headcounts, buying cheap supplies, cutting marketing, and usually cutting quality.
That's not financial efficiency, that's desperation.
Truly, efficiency is about eliminating waste without compromising what actually creates value for your customer. And that all comes with knowing your costs of your business.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: I had a client once that thought being lean meant canceling their CRM programming to save money. Right? Guess what? They lost all of their ability to follow up.
They missed a lot of their client renewals and they ended up spending way more money to fix that mess. It was awful.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Oh, exactly. And meanwhile, I worked with a small firm that replaced a $3,000 a month admin role with $150 a month automation tool. Turnaround time, improved team morale, improved clients note zero difference except faster response times. So it's, it's. We're here to expose you to, to new opportunities to try and to engage, but also just really getting down to the core of what is your business value? What were you best making your money and your time is worth money.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: All right, I love that. Well, let's talk some smart strategies for streamlining your expenses without hurting your brand or your results. Okay, that's, that's critical. We want it to be, we want to want it to be business as usual, just more efficient.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So we're going to turn it tactical right out of the gate. So outsource non core tasks. What does that mean? Things like bookkeeping, graphic design, or one off tech work. There's some great resources out there that are so talented and very affordable.
It's truly. I keep going back to this. Your time has a dollar per hour value.
And how is that, how does that compare to the value of work you're doing?
Maybe not hire full time if part time or freelance can get it done faster and cheaper. There's a lot of people out there that are in business for themselves that just want to come in, help A business get out of a little pothole and move on and move on to the next client and just they enjoy that inertia, that changing pace from day to day.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: So and so many people these days are going freelance. I mean that's the nature of our relationship. We're not working exactly within the same company and I get benefits from my husband. I don't need you to pay a loaded labor rate to hire somebody like me. So that freelance relationship can be really ideal if it's done well and it's.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Turning into more common because people are enjoying that entrepreneurship and liking their own security blankets.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: The other thing is automate repetitive tasks, use tools like CRMs, project management software, even AI. I know you're a huge, huge AI fan and it's, it's fun to watch everything that, that develops as you go and in the outcomes and it truly is a pretty interesting learning curve and it's so powerful.
It's like you, you shouldn't be manually sending invoices or chasing follow ups anymore. This, this is a tool that an agen help you with and it's a lot of times there's no cost to it.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: You shouldn't be manually sending invoices anymore either or chasing any follow ups. Those types of things can be automated.
And you know, if you're still typing the same email every week, please save a template. Just save a template. You should negotiate with the vendors that you're using. Ask for bulk discounts. This requires a little bit of courage, satisfaction sometimes to ask somebody to deliver something for you for less money, but do it, lock in a longer contract if you have to in order to get better rates or something like that. You're just, you're never going to get what you don't ask for. And back to the team review some of those team roles. Do you have any overlaps on your team? Are people really working within their zone of genius or are they stuck doing something that somebody else could do better?
[00:05:28] Speaker B: And remember, don't do this all at once. These are just bullet points that we're offering, opportunities for you to investigate, engage in at your own pace and comfort level and see how they work. It's, it's a penny at a time, it's not a hundred dollars at a time. And it may, it may surprise you on what, what you reap when you sow these, these seeds out there and what, what your return is. So there's so much stuff and it's again, everybody has a different comfort level change and these are changes but this wasn't broke overnight. It's not going to fix itself overnight. So we're here, we're here for the marathon, not the sprint, right?
[00:06:09] Speaker A: So last week we asked you to sit with your expenses and your processes for about 30 minutes. And this week what we want you to do is to find three areas in your business where you can streamline without cutting quality.
It could be the tools that you're using, tasks that you're doing on any kind of a repetitive basis, roles on your team, or maybe the relationship or the understanding that you have with your vendors. And so keep the things that add value and have some courage and cut the things that don't.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Efficiency isn't about doing less, it's about doing better with what you've got.
And every opportunity hopefully comes with a feeling of success, of crossing that finish line until the next task and to the next change.
And it's truly just pulling within the white lines to make sure we're on a successful path for profit.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Absolutely. And while you are thinking about how to run leaner, we do want to give a shout out to our sponsor. Performance Margin. It is the software that shows you in real time what's profitable, what is waste, where to focus, and if you're serious about efficiency, Performance Margin is one of the greatest tools that we know of to make it happen.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Exactly. It connects your pricing, job, costing, financials, your budgeting.
It allows you to forecast and predict what those margins should be. And it's with a 25 year proven track record that this tool works. Bubba and the team over at have been doing this for 25 years in their own businesses and now they're willing to share that with us. So we're so fortunate to have them as our sponsor, as T2 said. So look forward to working with them and sharing their products with our viewers.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: That's right. It's not just.
It's a very clean running software. We don't just recommend it, we use it. All right, friends, go sharpen those systems, tighten up your spot, spend, and don't forget, subscribe to the podcast, Leave us a review, if you would, and share this episode with a business buddy who might need a little financial tuneup.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Exactly. The more the merrier. So until next week, take her. Cool.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: No stress. It's all under control.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: It's gonna be fine.
