Cruz Gamboa, CFO, founder and chief strategist of Ascend Growth Ventures

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helena.

0:52 Thanks everybody for joining in today. I am Kevin Haleanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio. We're on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on Talk four that's the number four TV dot com in addition to Facebook, and that's at Winning Business Radio, and of course we're available after the live show on whatever platform your favorite is to watch and listen to podcast content that's YouTube by Heart Radio, Spotify, Apple and the list goes on the mission of winning business radio in TV. As regular viewers and listeners, no excuse me is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, right to learn best practices. Those are the how tos, the what tos, the what not toos, and I hope to be challenged and to be inspired by the successes of others. Who are those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person that I've had a chance to talk to has had some form of failure in their lives and careers. So I say it every week. While we all have to get our knee skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow, and that's from solopreneurs to small and medium sized businesses all the way up to the Fortune fifty. I've seen a lot of those companies win and to varying degrees. I've seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people around and with some of those that probably should have found other professions. So in my own businesses,

2:24 I've had lots of success, but some failures too, So I like to think I've learned a lot. So you're gonna hear from me, but mostly you're going to hear from those guests. And today I'm excited to have Cruiz Gamboa. He's founder and chief strategist and CFO of Ascend Growth Ventures. Here's his bio. Cruz Gamboa is an NYU MBA holds a bachelor's in Economics for the minor in Business from UT. Austin hookoem Horns is a former CEO, corporate executive, and a season scaling up business coach with a passion for helping ambitious CEOs and mid market companies increase profits, boost valuation, and drive me meaningful impact. With deep expertise in corporate finance, strategy and executive leadership, Cruise has served in pivotal roles, most notably as Regional CFO for ge Gas Power Latin America, where he led high growth initiatives that broke records and set new benchmarks. Today, Cruz combines the power of the scaling Up framework with exponential thinking in decades of CFO experience to help businesses scale with clarity and confidence. He's the author of Drive from Within, a guide for leaders seeking purposeful, sustainable success without the chaos. At the core of Cruise's approach is the scaling Up methodology by Verne Harness.

3:36 Some of you are familiar, many probably are, and that enables teams to streamline operations, align around strategy, improve cash flow, and eliminate roadblocks to growth. For visionary founders ready to think beyond incremental progress, Cruz also brings in the bold principles of Exponential Organizations EXO by Sealia Mismail excuse me empowered towering businesses to harness technology, automation and disruptive models to ten x their value and reach. Cruise is a committed not convicted committed We both should be convicted committed environmental advocate and renewable energy investor. He's a certified life coach and has been coaching and mentoring high performers for two decades. While in the corporate world, He's live in multiple companies and speaks three languages, Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

4:28 When not working, He's an enthusiastic reader, often drawn to leadership and personal development books. He's also a studio recording artist with songs on Spotify. He's passionate about tennis and snowboarding and enjoying an active and creative lifestyle. And of course he's a dedicated father of two and he resides in Framingham, Massachusetts. Cruise, Welcome to Winning Business Radio. Thank you so much, Cavin, and thank you for having me here. And I'm really excited to be here and have this conversation with you. Mite. Thanks you for that intro that was It always is always an opportunity to reflect on my I hear these things by, you know, from other people's mouths, so I appreciate that. All right, Just quickly, I want to talk a little bit about backward First, just tell us about your two children.

5:11 My two children, Maximo and Abrielle. So Maximo is seventeen. He is now a senior in high school. He's crushing it. He's doing really well in school and he wrestles, and yeah, he made the varsity team. Even though it was like his second year into the program. So he's doing really well in abrill. She's going to college at Bentley and she also crushes it. She showed me her report card and it was really good, and I was really. Proud of her because, you know, when she was in high school, we have we have a little questions on how good of a student she was going to be. But she turned out to be an amazing athlete.

5:51 So yeah, excellent. Good for her and good for you too. So tell us where you grew up. I grew up. Look, I grew up in Venezuela. I was more in Venezuela, and then I left when I was seventeen, came to college the US. Uh, and then after that, I you know, I joined first Unilever and then You're Electric, and I worked across Latin America here in the States, and yeah, it's been sort of my my sandbox between some places in Latin America and here in the in the US. Well, we're gonna touch on those. What were your early interests so high school, early college? Honestly, it was I was a computer nerd, to be honest and uh, and a musician, so that those are those were the two things that really inspired me.

6:38 I I played. I played golf a lot as well, at least three times a week. I got to be relatively good eleven handicaps, So I mean that's not great, but it was. It was good for me for now after you know, when in. My sort of my adolescent years, when I when I hit like sixteen, it's just it was not. So cool to play golf. I had other interests. Yeah, but yeah, for a while it kept me going. So my two sons, both of them had a little overlap and location, but they both had a chance to either caddy or one of them actually ran to help run a pro shop and they got the golf a lot too. So my golf game is not what you consider a game, you know. I can go by the role of you don't have to be good, just don't be slow.

7:26 That's right, And it's interesting. I played from time to time and I still have it a little bit. But yeah, I wouldn't trust myself to go in a tournament. So unless it's best ball, and you can't good for everybody, all right, So why did you choose Venezuelan kid? Why did you choose to go to U T Austin and We know you majored in economics and business. So why U T Austin and why that focus. Look, at the time, I had friends and family in Austin, and I figure that if I was already making a lead and uh, you know, leave my family behind, it would probably make sense to be out of place that I knew other people, and I had a little bit of a network, as you know, as you know me, and I'm big on family, so I figured it would be it would be best for me to be closer to family. And also, by the way, I visited U T the UT campus, and I just fell in love with it. I was just like, I'm gonna come here.

8:23 I already knew when I when I went to visit it, I knew that I was going to get in. So I was really determined to go there. City but small city, not New York, right, although you ended up in New York, but city small city offers a ton I mean you kept it weird, I'm assuming, yes, exactly, Okay, and you got to see. It's not that weird anymore. Actually, yeah, it's definitely grown. It's definitely grown. So Unilever was soon after college. It was just soon after college. Uh, yeah, I had I had a job. He was like I think he was like twenty four hour today. I was just working so much. I vaguely like, when I think about it, I vaguely remember those days. I was literally like from eight to like ten pm every day, just closing the books financial analysis, next year's plan, profitability analysis. I was they really got a lot from me during those times.

9:23 Well, good news is in your early twenties, you don't need a lot exactly. Yeah, yeah, you just go on films all the time, all right. When and what motivated When did you and what motivated you getting your MBA. It was kind of like I was already working at g Capital, and I I was had just left NBC because I worked at NBC Universal for a while in New York City, and I just felt that I needed to I needed a little plus in my sort of in my career, in my sort of in my in my education as well. Felt that I mean, I went, uh, I went to school for economics with a business minor, and I just felt that there were I need a little bit more. I needed to learn more about like private equity, about evaluation and stuff like that. And I I felt that n y U was probably one of the best schools. Actually, I was really lucky that I was there in New York City and I and I got to I got to apply and got in. It was the only the only school that I applied to for for.

10:26 An MBA, to be honest, and I got in. So it was it was really good, outstanding. So big question, and you can think about it, but what was your biggest takeaway from getting the NBA. Wow, maybe that's even plural. I know that's a big question. Yeah, it's a big question because back then, the sort of the biggest takeaway was just really getting. To know uh the professors. I meant, some really amazing professors, and I just I also made some friendships that I still i'm in touch with. And to be honest, I think now when I look in hindsight, I think it's probably more interesting to when you look at things in perspective, because at the moment, I was just really excited to begin an m b A.

11:11 It was all about how I fell. Now and now I have this title, right, But now I look, I look back in time, and I think I learned a ton for sure. But I think interestingly enough, I think it's really the experience. Of going through some real, real life business problems and and that that is to me, the best education that you can have, right just and I think General Electric was a great place for that. It was I was surrounded by really top notch leaders and peers and I and I learned a ton from them.

11:51 So it, yes, it helped me. It augmented my my skill sets, my expertise, if I have to put you know, sort of like so where I said, what is the one thing that it did for me was confidence? Oh good, that's good. Love that. All right? Tell us about the position at Unilever, and this is building kind of your backstory, right, how do you how do you get how you got. Excuse me to where you are? And when we get past the break here in another few minutes, not in a hurry, but people will understand better how you're able to do the work you do. Tell us what you learned, uh at well, describe the role and tell us what you learned at Unilever.

12:32 At Unilever, I was they called it a marketing accountant, which it sounds kind of like an oxymoron if you ask me. But basically what I did, I was just thinking the sort of financial analyst for product lines, and I had I think I had back then. I had Personal Care and detergents. So I was the guy with the most expertise and most knowledge on the financial aspects of all of the brands in those two categories. And and it seems like it's it wouldn't be a lot of work, but it's, man, it was. It was a lot of work because you know, we had to know basically.

13:16 All of the details of all of the ingredients, the cost of. Every ingredient, you know, aggregating the cost and like you know, looking at the pricing, looking at the competition, analyzing which squs. Were more profitable versus not. Looking at the different channels, you know, because I mean there were you know, there's a channel segmentation for when you're in the distribution industry, especially for personal care, so you know, if you have a tremendous amount of segmentation in the channels that you sell into. So understanding all of that and aggregating over. All the data and being able to provide management and and the and the sort of the product leaders with intelligence on how to position the brands was was uh, you know, quite an undertaking and that was my responsibility.

14:06 I I I started. I was very junior at the time. I had a couple of mentors that sort of like taught me what I needed to know, and then I kind of like took off on my own. But yeah, it was it was super interesting. I mean, I still a lot of the stuff that I applied today, especially when it comes to understanding profitability and just getting sort of just doing market analysis and decision making, decision making one distributions and all that. It comes from that from those days. All the stuff that I learned back then. Yeah, I'm sure you have. I've seen companies that are focused on an area and they don't realize it's one of their least profitable items. There's and then they look over, you know, with with guidance, they look at another product line and realize how profitable it is, but they're not focused on selling it. So yeah, that's that's important, all right. Now the ge how did you How did you land the position at g the first one? And you were in Latin America at the time playing golf.

15:05 There you go, that's an awesome Yeah, I was in the golf course, I you know, I I went to play on it by myself and they say, hey, do you wanna do you want to play with this guy? And I was just like sure. He was the CEO of GE Lighting at the time, and he you know, there was an operation there in my in my city in Venezuela back then, because I was there for a couple of years, and so we you know, we just started playing together and he told me what he did. I told him he didn't embarrass him that badly. Apparently, Uh no, no, he was okay. I still read him, but he was okay. Yeah.

15:45 So towards the end, he said, you know what, I think this was a great conversation and I think you'll be great for you will be an amazing talent for the f m P, which is a financial management program. And I was just like, sure, let's let's talk. So we exchanged information. That was on a Saturday here on Thursday. On Thursday next week, I was interviewing with him. Then the week after I interviewed with somebody else. And then I was in, all right, that's a good take. Time to take our first commercial break. That was your first stint at GE you went elsewhere. We're going to get to that story, amen, and ended up back so but everybody will be back in about one minute with Cruiz Gamble.

16:29 Thank you. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenett on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio, Well, now it's your chance. Be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free. Yes you heard it, free business advertising right here on W four cide dot com. Call five six one five zero six four zero three one now to get booked on one of our shows.

17:13 That's five six one five zero six four zero three to one. Geg you're free advertising now. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helene. All right, we are back with Cruz gamboa before I jump in, just so the audiences. No, we're going to be proud to re engage one of our key sponsors will be Best in Wealth Management in the week's coming.

17:55 So I'm excited about that, all right, So you had a two significant position manufacturing finance manager but also leading the digitation digitalization of order sales and all the back end, and you went through six sigma also. Yeah, So back then when GE was going through the whole six sigma campaign, right, it was like everybody had to be. A green belt or a black belt and all of that. And I had the opportunity to basically do this digitization project for all of the order sales and report and reporting for the g Industrial Systems business. And it was a huge undertaking because back then, I mean I'm talking this is a long time ago, two decades ago probably, and I you know, reports were not as automated. Everything was done to excel. It was just very manual, and it was very cumbersome, right, And the problem was that not only did we we back then industrial systems was a highly a very complicated business because he had I want to say, like sixty plans.

19:11 I don't recall the exact number, but it. Was a ton of plants and we needed to get like every day orders and sales numbers from sixty different plants across the globe every day so that we could actually deliver to the CEO of the company. So it was, it was it was quite an undertaking back then. Today those things would be easy, but back. Then it was. It was. It was a ton of work, and it was something that I personally, I think, I'm very proud because nobody believed that we were going to pull it off. And he turned out that over time all of that data, you know, became completely digitized with designed what we call the digital Cockpit, which was basically like a command center for orders and sales information. No only for the CEO, but now for the middle management and basically for anybody who wanted to see sort of the orders and sales information for the business. So that was that was a big project. And I was kind of like the the the project manager, not from the technical side, but from sort of the the SME, the subject matter esper exper side.

20:22 So yeah, well we'll get to this in a second. But them had to have been success and good visibility because you landed back at GE But tell us about NBC Universal for about two and a half years at Dirty Rock. Yes, so I so this is right around the time when the NBC NBC was acquiring Universal and and you know they were there, they had a shortage of finance leaders in the in the new business so I had an opportunity to work there in the business development group as a finance manager, and I thought that was very interesting and it was sort of aligned with what I wanted to do next.

21:06 I wanted to do. More transactional work and be working on you know, sort of the business development side of of GE. So it was it was a cool transition for me. I we incubated a couple of projects organically, we worked a lot on on some potential acquisitions, and I got to see a lot of you know, the new technologies, which are obviously they're not new anymore, yeah, obsolete. But back then, for example, one of the things that we were doing was to try to get the NBC sort of channel, a version of it on a cell phone. So this is I'm actually dating myself, So this is back then.

21:47 It used to this was oh four six yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a long time ago, so twenty years ago. So yeah. So but back then that that was a big undertaking. To be able to actually like watch television on your on your cell phone, that was unheard of. They were iPhones, yes, I mean I yes, they may have been, but they weren't what they are today. Right. Yeah, there's actually I have a funny story about that because it was two thousands, around two thousand and three, two thousand and four, and I was working with this guy, Salil Davis, I think it was his name, and uh, and I told him, you know what, I actually have an MP three player. Wouldn't it be cool to have an MP three player that was also your phone? And he's like, and he said he was ahead of technology development Business development group.

22:38 He's like, that will never work. Because every time you try to put two things that do different things into one component, it just doesn't from a technology standpoint that we don't do that. And like six. Steve jobs, you know, bounce the whole iPhone and I, you know, I never got to say gotcha. He might be listening, so you never know. We watched my wife and I watched this show called Murdoch Mysteries. It's a Canadian broadcast and it's set in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, and they do a lot of jokes like that it'll never fly. So it's like, imagine if we could all be connected by some they didn't use the word computer because you'll think about the time.

23:22 But they would bring in characters like Tesla and Edison and you know, inventors of the day. And this detective's way ahead of his time. He's like an inventor himself. But they they foretell things humorously and it's always yeah, never mind, it'll never work. All right, So you landed back at GE How did that happen? And then you've had some really progressive roles during that That was almost twenty I mean eight and a half and then another nine years, right, I counted the first eight and a half as in Connecticut and Latin America and then Gie Verona. I wait to talk about that. Vernova, Vernova. So yeah. So like after NBC, I went to G Capital and and I love G Capital. My experience in there was the best. I learned so much. I used to be an underwriter back then, so my responsibility was to just basically look at different credit applications and work with the UH the sales team, to just shepherd all of the different credit application processes, take them to the credit committees, get them approved, structure, close funded, and then monitored the credits after they were closed. So Yeah, so that was tremendous opportunity.

24:36 For context what at least then probably more now, But what what was the what were the revenues of G Capital that time? They were into everything metal. Oh my, they got anything. I don't recall, but I got to say it was like seventy billion dollars. It's like ridiculous. It was a huge amount of Yeah, it was. It was. I mean, I want. To say the G Capitals was one of the largest finkos. In the world then, I mean, I think so amazing. Yeah, so you came back as a VP structured finance on the writer middle market cash flow. Long that's that was my reste right, and then managing director actually that was Connecticut and then Latin America managing director of capital markets.

25:20 They want to bring you back. So so speaking of like one thing leads to another, right, So I you know, I was six years into G Capital and you know sort of Latin America was opening up again and she was making a huge bed to grow the Latin region, and they asked me, given my background, if I wanted to be redeployed back to Latin America to basically be in charge of developing the capital markets team, and you know, initially it was it was not the I mean I was reporting to smaller guy, but eventually I got you know, I became the sort. Of the league guy.

26:01 But the what we did was basically to secure capital, whether that was dead or equity for big projects where GE had its technology. And mostly what I ended up doing was helping the UH sort of the gas turbine into a gastourbine business because they were the ones that required the most capital. It was the biggest projects. And sort of my marquee deal in in that role was closing an eight hundred and fifty million dollar deal in Argentina which took a year and a half to from like start to finish to close, and it was one of the UH. It was one of the deals that actually got me promoted to executive because again one of those things where people were like that will never close, love it, love it, and it.

26:54 Did just tell Cruise what he can't do. Right, I think you know what, I'm starting to see the pattern. Kevin, Yeah, yeah, all right, I have an interesting question at least on the role decarbonization strategy that's a much more carbon footprint related environmental concern correctly. Well, so here's what happened. So this is more reason right, So fast forward till an hour twenty one. Yeah, four years ago. Yeah, I you know, I had the opportunity to basically help the g. GUS Power Systems business to develop the hydrogen and carbon capture business for the Americas, basically in North America and Latin America, but mostly to be honest between you and I, it was mostly the US at the time, and my responsibility was to take the existing technologies that we had and just put a commercial framework on how to sell them and find projects and clients that would be interested in in adopting those technologies so that we can decarbonize the fleet because the I guess I thought at the time was that we wanted to make the gas turbine fleet as green as possible so that they could continue to run in the long run, because you know, like like any other turbine manufacturing business, you have to waste

28:26 of making money. You make money by selling the actual turbine and by servicing it. Right, So so you had a best interest in in in staying sort of green and keeping the gas turbines out of the The site of. Environmentalists that's right, that's right, right. So so yeah, so so that I was doing that, I was. I did it for like a single a year, and then I then I went to I you know, I went to a startup and also in actually also in carbon capture. So it was very it was an technology that was very much in line with what I had been doing at General Electric.

29:06 All right, we're going to take our second break, and then we're going to get back into how you decided you wanted to move into coaching and developing others for their scalability. Okay, we'll be right back. Thank you. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. Well, it has great local coupons for all sorts. Of things in your area, no matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP Local Search can help you find it. So go to yp dot com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local.

30:12 And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helenett. That's my ten year old headshot. By the way, how did you so, there's a there's a question we ended with we'll start here. How did you know you wanted to start working with others? And you had been doing mentoring, I know, during gees as an executive, et cetera. But how did you know you wanted that to be your full time passion. Well, that's a great that's a great question.

30:52 So initially, like when I decided to start my own business, I was doing mostly just kind of like the same things that I was doing before, just the CFO work, and I was doing some M and A as well on the cell side. And so in the context of me working with small businesses, I realized that it was kind of like easy for me to sort of see what they were not seeing because you know, I've well, first of all, I worked on more mature businesses in a corporation, which is, you know, already has processes and everything kind of works to some extent, so I knew what a good process looked like, okay. And I also realized that all of my financial background that I kind of took for granted was just very very valuable and useful for founders in sort of the one to ten million dollars range. Really, the reason being is that a lot of founders just are really they have really great ideas.

32:05 They are probably good at sales, good at product, but maybe they're not good at you know, finance, and they don't have to be. Not everybody has to be a waste of finance, right, But I figured that there was a lot of value that I could add on the finance side to these founders. And then additionally, I started noticing something that even caught my attention even more is that a lot of the problems that most of most founders are facing between one and ten million dollars in revenue are really mindset related. And this was actually fascinated, fascinating to me because I had been I've been investing a lot of time, and I've done a lot of like coaching and programs on personal development, and I figured there was an opportunity to actually help founders by bringing these three things together, finance, mindset, and strategy. And typically when you actually when you talk to certain coaches, some coaches are more on the sort of the mindset side, you know, others are more like maybe on the strategic side or maybe on the tactical side. I'll coach you on how to be a better sales leader, for example, if you know anybody like that. But but but what I've noticed, and I know it to be absolutely the truth, is that most business problems are mindset problems.

33:38 I mean, you can call it which air way you want. But if you're if you're facing. A business problem and you think there's no other solution and you think that you are risked, you know, constrained by these things that you you know, identified as problems in your mind, the minute you change the way that you look at the problem, the problem that you're looking at change and you find a solution. So if that is not mindset, then I don't know what is mindset. But that's basically that was my observation. So I was going to add, if you think the problem is unsolvable, you're right at first, right of right, so you look at it. Yeah. Yeah, So I figured there was a there was an opportunity to bring those three things together and h and make it more powerful and uh, And that's basically I mean, I think we've talked, we've spoken about this before. I developed my sort of my IP on top of the scaling up harsh pology. Yeah, that's sort of my my core framework. But I figured that that framework also needed additional things like mindset and and sort of the the financial sort of the financial insights to basically scaling a company.

34:53 And that's and specifically, I mean I would say that this is more specifically for smaller companies because if you're talk talking about scaling a three hundred million dollar company, you a CUFO, you probably have good, good financial systems, So the finance is no longer as important. Maybe there are all aspects, but I'm talking specifically about my sort of my ideal client profile, which is from one to ten that is definitely a product in a way of going to market that works for them. So in addition to mindset, well cover those three areas. But I've heard you say that most founders get stuck right when they reach between three and seven. Why is that a tipping point three? Constrained theory? Okay, so constraint theory.

35:41 So basically, constraint theory says that process or in this case, a business will grow until it reaches a constraint, and then it will grow no further. Okay, it's the same thing. When you are starting your business. You're in a you're sort of in survival stage, right, You're a startup and you're just trying to get to product market fit. You're trying to just basically make gain client profitable. Yeah, become profitable. It leads all of the things that you know, maybe attract people, hire people, build partnerships, build partnerships, all of those things. You're focused on that, and then at some point you have been you are the business, right, you have.

36:24 Kind of like helpers around you that are helping you. But eventually you reach a point where that play is no longer viable because why because you went from maybe having ten clients to now you have one hundred and fifty clients, and the processes that you came up when you only had ten clients. They don't really scale when you are like one hundred and fifty or two hundred clients, and maybe they delivery right. It was easy to deliver to ten clients, but if you have one hundred clients that you need to delivering in different locations or different products with different specifications, that's when things get stuck and problems happen, and then most of your time then goes from thinking about the strategy and the growth of the future.

37:10 You spend most of your time now in the weeks trying to fix problems, and then because you're tied into fixing the problems, you have no time to think about how you know, who are the new talents that you need to recruit or or who like, what is the next thing for your company? What are the areas where you need to improve because you're so into the details. And this is where you know. With my mentalology, what we do is basically try to identify how to free you up in the first ninety days. So that's my mission in the. First ninety Dainty, Yeah, I want to make sure that we create the space for you to be able to take a step back so that we can actually start thinking about the growth of your company, because if we don't do that, then even if we do the work, what's going to happen is that you're not going to have time, you're not going to have the conviction, and you're you know, we're not going to be able to successfully implement all the things that we need to do in order to get the company moving into the next level.

38:08 So it really requires a sort of a mindset shift of going from what I call being a firefighter, okay, and I don't mean that anotherrogatory fashion. It's just a tag from firefighter to architect, okay. So that's that's where we reactive to proactive, reactive to proactive. So when you're an architect, you're you're creating systems. You know, the systems kind of like run the processes. You have metrics, You have a team that has a clear objective. They have KPIs that they know they're being measured on. You have execution rhythms, so that you know every week, every month and requorder, you're revisiting the results, making changes, improving things.

38:55 You have a way to measure whether people are being effective or not in their job and maybe have a way to help them. So they can get to the next level. All of those things is basically just putting processes. Is the structure for running your company more smoothly and in a way that requires less intervention from you, which is that's what we. Want beyond the beyond the founder, right. Beyond the founder, because in the end, it doesn't mean that you're like removing yourself from the business. What you want to be is you want to be free to be able to say, you know what, now my business needs me here, you know, and like I need to basically help the sales leader do whatever it is that we need to do to double our sales, or now it's I need to spend more time on the delivery because if we fix that constraint on the delivery side, we're going to be able to serve twice in the number of the amount of clients. So these are the kinds of things where you need to have that flexibility and that sort of availability to be able to choose what are the next steps and how do you best allocate your time and uh and and also have planning time for yourself for the business.

40:12 So it's the. Headspace and the time to be for example, creative. What else could the company do. What are the soot products and or services we could be offering that we're not. Now, all right, you've identified six top areas of concern. Touch on these briefly. Cash flow chaos you. Call it, oh Man cash floos. So you know how a lot of companies, well you probably have listened to some of your clients in the past where they are you know, they're running somewhat successful companies, maybe two three million dollars, and they feel like they're always cash strapped. Gosh is you know it's just died, okay? And then sometimes they say, well, you know, clients are not paying as well, you know they're not playing, you know, not paying on time, or I'm having issues because of the competition and all of those things. And I happen to pin all of those excuses in the mindset sort of a bin okay, because they are really mindset. Because the minutage you change the offer or the way that you deliver the business, or maybe the kind of clients that you have, all of these issues can be solved.

41:22 Obviously not immediately, but with the intention to finding a solution to a problem, you can create the conditions to be able to have a business that generates better cash flow. And I mean there's plenty of stories about businesses that were like burning cash and they were like cash strapped. And then they make a change and then they became you know, cash positive. So it is possible to do that, but it it requires time and dedication, right, you need to go into it and like put some thought into well, is these kinds of clients or these kinds of products or these types of products that are generating the issue And for that you need to have the time and the uh and the patients.

42:05 To be able to go to the process of identifying. How where where are the areas that can be improved, and then what are the things that you can do to continue to retain the clients but in a different capacity where they're you know, they they are worth much more to you because they pay better outstanding. You touched on the CEO bottleneck. You want to touch more on that the CEO bottleneck. Wow. So this is where we we. Have the belief. Sometimes some founders have the belief that their team is not good enough, that if they don't fix the the issues in their in their company, nobody will, and that they are the only individual that can that can do so, and they have this what I call kind of like this hero complex, Okay, And and when that happens, it's really it's really easy to convince yourself that that is that feels very true and that's the only reality that makes sense. But the reality is that if you really want to scale your company, you can be in the center of every decision. It's just I mean, if you want to put a name to it, that's just physics, right, I mean, if you're in the middle of everything, the system can only grow or can only scale as you have the capacity to give yourself your time, et cetera. And we all know that we are still humans for now, right, and we have a limited capacity in our time, in our brain power, and so it

43:40 becomes you can become the constrained for growth in your own company. I watched my dad, as smart as he was, as educated as he was, never take vacations. There was a period of time where he just felt like he couldn't step away from his company. He didn't equip anybody execution overload. Execution overload. So I would say for this one, it's when you basically, when you have a team of people that are doing processes that are broken, okay, And they are trying to do the best they can with the processes that they have, and eventually they start to break over and over again to the point that it becomes a major point of tension in the organization. And then nobody really knows sometimes or sometimes you do know, but you don't know how to fix it, okay, because again, to fix something, it requires time. And if you don't have time, and if you don't have enough capacity to be able to understand process, map the process and make the changes, retrain the people, give them a better install a better system, and do the thing that you need to do in order to make get better, then your execution continues to be capped for as long as you don't fix this problem.

45:08 All right, Hiring feels like a gamble. Hiring feels like a gamble that happens, but you don't have a system for hiring. And a lot of I don't know if you've heard or you've experienced this, but I've seen. A couple of client, former clients of mine. They were just dep They just wanted people, warm bodies, the warm bodies, right and uh, And there was no. Reflection about whether those individuals were aligned with their values that the job, that they had all the capabilities required to do the job at hand, and that that they and also more importantly, like even if they brought them into the organization, they didn't have a good onboarding system to make sure that they were teed up or success because when you hire somebody, it's not just getting them into the company, it's just getting it's just also onboarding them and getting them through the process so that they know exactly what their job is. They have all the right tools, and they have the authority to make the decisions that they need to make in order to be successful in their job. And if you don't equip equip them with that, then then it's just it's I mean, they're not going to be successful.

46:28 That's really what it is. All right, sales and marketing plateau, and we have one more we are almost out of time. Sales and marketing plateau is it's typically driven by what we just discussed, the theory of constraints. Right, you know, the play that you were running, the product that you were selling. You know, eventually you you run out of people to sell it to, or the market changes, or the market changes, and uh, I mean, but it's it's really it comes down to theory of constraint at the end of the day. And uh, and once you figure. Out what about, what feature of what about the way that you're going to market needs to change, and you make the changes, then that's when you unlock the growth again.

47:09 Last financial blind spot. Wow, I'll tell you something, and I'm sure you're going to appreciate what I'm about to say, but I can assure you that any business that you put in front of me, or anybody. For that matter, if you really really. Dig deep, you're going to find that is leaking cash somewhere. It is almost an impossibility to find a financial a business that is one hundred percent financially optimized. There's always an opportunity to find either more cash or more profits. For those who are committed to finding more cash and more profits.

47:52 Think about that, it's almost. Like, yeah, it's alarming. Almost rights, it's alarming because you're you're always we're constantly leaving money on the table and and the and it's just a lot of money or less money. But there's always something that is being that can be done differently, something that can be sold differently, something that can be delivered differently, something that is being charged incorrectly in a place, so we don't we can't see it. And what happens is a lot of founders are looking at revenue, perhaps gross profit and maybe overhead because they want to know that they're not spending more than they're bringing in. Okay, and that's it, and they just want to know that they managed to a budget. But many times they don't have the financial expertise to go deep to do product analysis to understand so if there are optimizations on the act side. You know, there's all these things, all these different aspects of evaluating financials that most people miss. And that's why I'm saying that most founders, I would say, are flying blind.

49:12 Well, I wish we had more time. In fact, I will get you back the next probably after the first of the year. But for now, who in the viewing and listening audiences should reach out to you? And why. So? If you have revenues between one in ten million dollars and you are a growth driven founder who want to scale your company and are looking to partner with somebody who can bring sort of expertise not only on financials, but on strategy and also the energy of growth, which is something that is cool to have around in your company. That is the kind of founders that I want to work with. And you know, if you want to look me up, and I am on LinkedIn, a pretty active on LinkedIn again, cruise Gomboa and you can check me out there.

50:00 And I'm you know, we can connect. On LinkedIn or through my website which is at Sandgrowth Ventures dot com, so you can check me out there as well. Great, this has been fun for me. I'm looking forward to having you back. Thank you for your time and I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much, Karen. I love it. I love this conversation. Thank you. Thank you me too, and thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business and business challenges and business successes. If you've got concerns about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team is you or small or large, feel free to reach out to me that's on LinkedIn or Facebook at Winning Business Radio. One of my many email addresses, as I often say, is Kevin at Winning Business radio dot com. Our company develops sales teams at the high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors, and you can probably see the partnership with Cruz there. We're not a fit for everybody, but we maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you one for another great job. Be sure to join us next week Monday, September fifteenth.

51:00 We'll do it all again. Until then, this is Kevin helen In. You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host Kevin Helenin. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin helen In and Winning Business Radio