April 10, 2025 • 45 mins
Most folks go where the puck is. Visionaries? They go where the puck is gonna be.
In this episode, we dig into what it really means to think ahead in business—and how that mindset can drive long-term growth. Dennis and Chris unpack how to build a five-year plan, recognize your weak spots, and surround yourself with the right people (hint: not yes-men).
We hear the story of Marjorie Merriweather Post—a 27-year-old who turned breakfast into big business—and how her instincts reshaped American kitchens. We also talk Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys, marketing wins (and flops), and why hitting every goal might mean your goals aren't ambitious enough.
This one’s packed with stories, strategy, quotes, and a reminder: your vision doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to keep you moving forward.
So grab your coffee, sit back, and welcome to Monkey Business Radio.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:02):
Hello everyone, welcome to Episode 9, Visionary.
Today, we're diving into whatit really means to think ahead
in business and why the peoplewho do are often the ones who
change the game, and that's whatthe visionary is all about
going to where the puck is goingto be when he or she gets there
.
We're talking about vision, notthe crystal ball kind, but the
kind that grows businesses,builds teams and sees
(00:24):
opportunities where others don'tFrom Marjorie Post
revolutionizing how America eats, to entrepreneurs who pivot
when their original plans fallflat.
We're breaking down how toanticipate, adapt and aim higher
.
We'll talk about how to build afive-year plan, how to
recognize the weak spots in youroperation and why disagreements
inside your leadership team canactually be a good thing.
(00:46):
Dennis shares stories from thefield, including lessons from
Cape Cod gutter monkeys and whathappens when a friend called
them out for not chasing thehardest and the most valuable
goals.
We have a great show for youtoday, so grab a cup of coffee,
sit back, relax and welcome toMonkey Business Radio.
Hello everyone, welcome toMonkey Business Radio, episode 8
(01:11):
, the Visionary.
As always, I'm joined by myco-host, the one and only Dennis
Siggins of the Gutter Monkeys.
Hello, dennis.
Thanks, chris, how are youdoing?
Dennis (01:19):
Good good.
How are you Good good?
One of my favorite topics, theVisionary.
Yeah, I like this.
Chris (01:25):
You got some good quotes for us.
I guess today One of the onesyou're always kicking around
here, or I should say slappingaround here- yeah, most folks go
to where the puck is.
Dennis (01:35):
But, chris, we want to go to where the puck is going to
be when we get there.
And that's the mantra of thevisionary, the person that has
somehow trained himselforganically to see beyond what
most people see, to see a littlebit into the future, a little
bit ahead of what the rest of uscan see.
And that's what the visionaryis all about Going to where the
(01:56):
puck is going to be when he orshe gets there.
You know, there's the ElonMusks and the Bill Gates of the
world, the Warren Buffett howabout Jimmy Buffett?
Even Jimmy Buffett?
Maybe the first person whobecame a billionaire with a
guitar, shorts and flip-flops.
True visionaries, but let'sbring it down a notch, because
the rest of us are mere mortalsand we want to become visionary
(02:18):
in our businesses and in ourlives so that we can accomplish
things that maybe we couldn'thave otherwise.
Chris (02:28):
Okay.
So yeah, on today's episode.
So we're going to break downhow to develop business vision,
sort of analyzing your weakspots.
Set some real measurable goalsthat can push you forward.
Yeah, when do we start withthis?
I guess, before you know whereyou're going, you got to figure
out where you are.
I guess.
Dennis (02:39):
I was approached by an acquaintance at a barbecue and
he was recently retiring by anacquaintance at a barbecue and
he was recently retiring, justabout to retire, and he kind of
threw it out to me.
He said, hey, can you help meout?
I'm thinking about going intothe landscape business when I
retire.
And I said, sure, sure, and wewere just having a burger and a
beer.
And you know, when he retiredhe wanted to go into the
(03:00):
landscaping business.
He wanted to buy a pickup truckand a lawnmower and a string
trimmer.
And I said, well, let's talkfive years down the road, you
know.
And he said, no, no, I justjust that's all I want, just me,
just enough to keep myself busy.
And I said you don't need me.
I live on Cape Cod.
Look, if you are proactiveabout your business and all you
(03:21):
want to be is a one man operatorwith a lawnmower and a string
trimmer, all you need is 35 to40 customers and you're going to
get there organically within ayear or two and you'll be fine.
But what about the rest of us?
What about the rest of us thatwant to start a business for a
reasonable amount of money?
We don't want to go into debtto do it.
(03:42):
But we want to grow thatbusiness to be very big.
The question that I would ask isand I do this all the time
whether I'm interviewing a newpotential employee for work
within one of my companies orwhether I'm working with a
franchisee.
And the question is where doyou want to be in five years?
Because if you don't know whereyou want to be in five years,
(04:04):
how do we take that first step?
This gentleman that I met at abarbecue, his first step has
already been taken.
He just wants to be a one-manoperator.
He's going to be fine.
He doesn't want 25 employeesand 15 trucks.
But to the rest of us I askthat question where do you want
to be in five years?
And once we have thatdiscussion, we can start taking
(04:27):
that first step.
And maybe that first step ispurchasing that pickup truck,
the lawnmower and the stringtrimmer, or, in the contractor
world, a pickup truck and a toolbelt and a couple of chop saws
and table saws, that type ofthing.
But if you don't know where youwant to be in five years, then
how do you know how to get there?
And so I think that's ourstarting point is, I have a
(04:51):
business growth chart that I usefor one of my companies and
we'll talk about that a littlebit later and anyone can step in
at any time.
If you're a one-man operationand you want to grow to 30
employees and $6 million a year,it's built into the growth
chart.
If you're a seven to 10 personcompany and you've kind of hit a
ceiling, well that growth chartwe can plug you in at any step
(05:15):
along that way and show you howto expand to get where you want
to go.
Chris (05:20):
So I'm not familiar with the growth chart.
Is this something that you cameup with?
Dennis (05:23):
It's something I wish I had when I was 22.
But I began to build it overthe years and then tailor it to
whatever business that we'rediscussing.
So in my case I use it a lotfor my franchisees in the home
service business the guttermonkeys.
It's a home service guttercleaning, repair, maintenance
(05:44):
and new gutter installationbusiness.
That's the one I use on a dailybasis, but I also tailor it.
I'm working with a client nowthat he's kind of hit a ceiling
at four employees and about500,000 to 600,000 a year.
He's kind of been leveling offin this area and we're working
on a growth plan for him.
(06:04):
So we'll talk about that alittle bit later in this year.
He's kind of been leveling offin this area and we're working
on a growth plan for him, sowe'll talk about that a little
bit later in this podcast.
But in general, we want to lookat our strengths.
We want to look at ourweaknesses and where we want to
be in five years.
And the biggest thing is not tolook at your strengths, because
they're obvious.
Let's look at our weaknesses.
Do we have limitations in ourmarketing and our brand building
?
Are we a three to five personcompany and we need more trucks,
(06:29):
more revenue generating people,more office staff.
Are we limited in the size ofour capacity?
We talk about the restaurantowner.
He has only so many tables,only so many seats, and he needs
to turn those lunch tables overtwice.
And the restaurant owner wantsto turn those dinner tables over
three times.
(06:49):
And then does he want to createmore revenue by having live
entertainment till 11 at night?
Keep that last set of dinersaround for another two to three
hours ordering an after dinnercocktail or something like that.
What else can we do within thelimitations of our physical
capacity Number of employees,the skill set of the employees,
(07:11):
and then the big one, ourlimitations, the self-imposed
limitations that we all put uponourselves at some time in our
lives.
It's caused by fear, complacency, arrogance, ignorance, apathy.
It's caused by fear,complacency, arrogance,
ignorance, apathy.
What personality traits do wehave that limit our growth?
The average business owner isnot a true visionary.
(07:34):
Like I say, we're not talkingabout Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
You know, look at1-800-GOT-JUNK.
Weren't they out ahead of thecurve?
Yeah Right, their telephonenumber is the name of the
company and now that's theirdomain name.
I mean, it's just a stroke ofgenius.
I don't know who the founder ofthat company is, but they're
great.
They really hit a home run withthat one.
(07:55):
How about bottled water?
Yeah, bottled water from thestart.
Right, Remember Bac Perrier orsomething like that?
Yeah, Bac Perrier or somethinglike that.
Yeah, Back Perrier.
Who the hell is going to buywater when the alternative is
free?
Right, right, you turn on yourfaucet and it's free, yeah
there's a great Jim Gaffigan.
Chris (08:10):
I don't know if you're familiar with Jim Gaffigan, but
there's a great yeah the comic.
Oh my God there's a great oneabout bottled water.
It is really funny.
If you haven't seen it go.
Dennis (08:20):
The alternative is free.
Think about the brand buildingand the marketing to that.
40 years ago they were sellingPerrier water because it's from
France and they played upon theAmerican belief that anything
from Europe must be better thanAmerica or something like that.
I don't know, but bottled wateris a staple in our culture.
(08:42):
Now we have this fear of ourown water that comes out of our
tap, and I personally don't buybottled water.
Now my company does and we putit in the refrigerator out in
the break room, but I still goto the tap.
This water here, this comesright out of the tap.
This does not.
It was never in a bottle.
But what about your friendMarjorie Post at Post Cereals?
Chris (09:05):
Yeah, it was an amazing story about Marjorie Post.
Dennis (09:08):
You brought that up before the podcast.
Chris (09:10):
Yeah, Enlighten us.
Yeah, she was actually heiressto Postum Cereal Company.
So if you're familiar with PostCereals, back in the 30s there
was a huge battle going on overcereal, and cereal was a
radically new product forAmericans.
It was the idea of, in earlydays, that a woman would have to
get up and prepare breakfast,and it was a ton of work.
When cereals came out and theycould just pour something in a
(09:30):
bowl, it was a massive, massivewin, and so her father created
Postum Cereal Company and whenhe died, marjorie took over and
she was only 27 years old at thetime and because she had spent
her early years in the kitchen,she knew what went on in these
kitchens in the 30s and it was aton of work to do just about
anything and particularlydessert.
So one of the first things shewent after was this company
(09:52):
called Jell-O.
They made Jell-O in a box andprior to that, the only people
that would eat Jell-O is very,very rich people, because you'd
have to spend all day cookingdown ox hoofs to create gelatin
and no one did that other thanthe rich.
So she provided this box ofjello where you could make a
dessert that only the rich ate,and she sold it to the
housewives and they loved it andit became a huge, huge hit and
(10:15):
it's such a visionary thing thatshe had that she realized you
know what was the market thatshe was selling to?
She was selling to the woman inthe kitchen that was trying to
free up some more time to doother things, and it was just a
massive hit.
So that was a great example, Ithink, of the sort of visionary.
Talk about the guys on the boardof directors and the board of
directors right, this is 1914, Ithink.
When her father died it was allmen of course Some of them are
(10:38):
uncles and they didn't want awoman on the board.
The way she got around that,she never actually got on the
board.
Interestingly enough, she putin a friend of hers, a guy that
was one of her businessconsultants, him on the board
and he did the work for her.
But it was all her ideas, theseideas Jell-O, maxwell House,
(10:59):
and we're going to talk a littlebit about in the future, a
little bit about Bird's EyeFrozen Foods these were all her
ideas.
She recognized them as beingjust completely visionary in
terms of getting it to the womanwho was actually purchasing
these things and not marketingto men.
We talked a little bit aboutthat last week as well.
Know your market.
Dennis (11:13):
So the men on the board of director probably didn't have
to make pancakes from scratchin 1914.
Probably had no idea how Jell-Owas made.
They probably were unaware ofthe amount, just the physical
amount of time that it wouldtake a woman with five kids to
prep breakfast.
Yeah.
Chris (11:32):
It's just incredible.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactlyright.
Same thing with coffee, right?
Most people at that time wouldbuy their own coffee.
They would roast it and grindit.
When she purchased MaxwellHouse, and again, the housewives
immediately recognized you know, that's a huge time saver for
them.
They just open the can, pour itin and boil it.
So yeah, it was a huge, hugewin.
And not only that, but marketedit.
(11:52):
There's always this great, youknow, there's always time for
Jell-O Good to the last drop.
Maxwell House good to the lastdrop.
That's still around today.
Those were all her creations.
So yeah, it's pretty amazing.
She's an amazing woman.
Dennis (12:02):
You know I have three breakfasts I will either have
bacon and eggs, or sausage andeggs, or smoothies, or today I
had a bowl of Cheerios.
Those are my three Now.
Every Saturday and every SundayI go big.
You know we do bacon and eggsand grits.
Chris (12:18):
I love grits.
Dennis (12:20):
Now it doesn't take that long.
But you know, grits are 20minutes, according to my cousin
Vinny, and myself too, and it'sa 20-minute prep.
You got your grits, you gotyour bacon, you got your eggs,
that's 20 minutes.
I don't really want to create20 to 25 minutes because it's
going to take five to 10 minutesto eat breakfast.
That's a 30-minute event.
(12:41):
This morning I was up early.
Actually I was talking to mydaughter, who is a hippie.
They have chickens, theyproduce their own eggs, she has
gardens and a small farm thatproduces berries and garlic and
other.
She's a hippie and they havethree kids.
She makes homemade breakfastalmost every day and this
(13:01):
morning she called me it wasabout 5.15.
We're both early risers so wecan do that.
And I heard all the kids in thebackground as she was prepping
breakfast and I said Katie,you're starting a little early
today.
It's 5.15.
You're already having breakfast.
She goes no, no, I'm justmaking it and she was making a
special something or other.
I forget the process, rather, Iforget the process and she puts
(13:22):
the eggs, the maple syrup andone other thing.
I forget the other ingredient.
She scrambles it and she putsit in the oven and then it's all
going to be ready in 20 minutes.
So that's what they do, andwhat you're describing with
Marjorie Post is a situationwhere the mom doesn't have to
spend 30 minutes makingbreakfast every morning.
A cereal would allow her to dothis in five minutes.
(13:46):
Right, and the men didn't seethat.
Chris (13:48):
No, they would never see that.
Never see it because they neverstepped in a kitchen, you know
as being the woman of the house.
Even when she came into moneyshe was still responsible for
the kitchen.
So she was, you know, veryfamiliar with what was going
down there and how much time ittook again to make something
like a Jell-O.
It would take you all day tomake Jell-O without the actual
mix that she created.
So it's really kind of animpressive vision that she had
(14:08):
when she kind of rolled outthese different products and
pushed it through this board.
Eventually the company becameGeneral Foods, which is a huge
conglomerate to this day, andactually one of my favorite
cereals and it's a greatcommercial is the Post's Honey
Bunches of Oats.
Dennis (14:22):
I know the cereal.
I don't have it I believethat's Post.
Chris (14:24):
It's one of my favorites, so anyway.
Dennis (14:27):
Well, marjorie Post is a brilliant visionary, as is the
Elon Musks and the Mark Cubansand the people of the world like
that, and for the rest of us,mere mortals, we have to create
that vision because we don'tcome by that naturally, the
Marjorie Post, she's a one in amillion, you know, and I think
(14:48):
I'm a little bit of a visionary,maybe I'm a one in a hundred or
one in 50, but we have to workat it, you know, and one of the
things that I've done is Icreate a growth model chart and
I can adapt this growth model toalmost any business.
It would take a half an hour toan hour.
So if I have a client and, likeone of my clients that I'm
(15:09):
working with right now, he'ssort of bumping his head on this
four employees, a half amillion to 600.
He's kind of been stuck in thatarea and, listen, he makes
significantly good money but hewants to grow the company.
So we're talking about twostrategies right now and one of
them is business growth.
How do you go from fouremployees to eight?
(15:32):
Because in his world, if hegoes from four to eight, he
won't double his gross revenue,he'll quadruple it because of
the synergistic component ofwhat he does and what we're
going to create the businessgrowth chart that I have for my
franchisees.
Basically it takes a franchiseein my world from a one to two
(15:53):
person company and itorganically grows him to four to
to eight to 12 employees, fromtwo to four to six trucks, and
across the top we have thenumber of support staff, the
number of revenue generatingemployees in the field and then
the square footage of warehousespace that you'll need, the
(16:15):
number of trucks and the numberof parking spaces.
Chris (16:19):
It takes all of these into account and we'll pop this
up on the podcast and we'll popit up on the clips that we put
up on the internet, Sure.
So you can take a look at this.
Dennis (16:29):
And one of the key components is your marketing
budget, because that is going todictate how often the phone
rings, how many hits you get onyour website.
The marketing budget is thesteering wheel to this whole
whole business growth processand what I do.
So we had a meeting, amarketing meeting, with several
of my franchisees plus myself,plus I bring in one of my
(16:51):
consultants in the marketingfield, and we had a nice, really
good meeting yesterday.
And what I take I have a brandnew franchisee hasn't even
opened his doors yet.
He's going to open this spring.
He's at step zero.
I've got a couple otherfranchisees are at step two, at
step four and each one is at adifferent place.
(17:12):
But if we all take out the samechart and we're looking at the
same chart, we can each plugourselves in where we are on
that chart and my brand newrookie franchisee can look and
he can say, okay, I am one ownerwith one employee and one truck
.
I need to have one moreemployee come mid-April and
(17:33):
we've set his marketing budget.
Life is good.
I've got one of my mid-level.
He's a four-year franchiseowner.
You know he's looking toprobably increase his sales by
$300,000 to $400,000 this year.
So he looks at the chart and heknows all right, I'm going to
have to buy one more truck andI'm going to need two more
employees by mid-summer so thatwe can hit this next goal for
(17:57):
this year.
It's good, it's solid, it'seasy to read and it's based on
theory, but it's also based onour work history.
Chris (18:07):
Cape Cod gutter monkeys.
10 years with Cape Cod guttermonkeys.
You've grown it from two of youto now again About 30 people in
the corporate office?
Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot ofexperience goes into this chart
.
Dennis (18:17):
And while the chart is not based on trial and error,
the numbers within the chart arebased on trial and error.
Like I said, I wish I hadsomething like this when I was
22.
I could have seen the future alittle bigger, a little brighter
, but when you're 22 and I was ahard working young guy I had a
lot of experience cutting lawnsas a kid.
(18:38):
I knew how to build and operatea small team of people, but I
didn't know how to grow acompany, and that was where my
journey began.
Chris (18:48):
Yeah, just to get a small plug in, I guess, for American
Cutter Monkeys.
But this chart, this is kind ofone of the advantages of being
a franchise.
Franchises sometimes get a badrap, maybe deservedly so, but
this is one of the advantages.
When you're coming into thisfranchise, I mean, you're
getting this chart.
This chart has been.
You know the blood, sweat andtears that went into creating
this chart and the numbers in it.
This is what you get when youkind of join our franchise.
Dennis (19:10):
Well, you know, in getting back to this client that
I'm working with, we've beenworking on this for about a
month and what we're going to dois we're going to sit down.
We talk probably three days aweek.
We're going to sit down, thisclient and I.
He's in the consulting space,he's a consultant in the
Business consultant A little bitof business, a little bit of
(19:31):
politics, sort of a conservativeside to the clientele.
So the owner and I we're goingto probably meet this weekend
and we're going to build thischart and design it for his
industry.
I have to pick up a lot ofinformation along the way to see
what are the strike points,what are the key components, and
then we're going to make adecision whether 2025, 26 is
(19:54):
going to be a stay, with thesame number of people, the same
individuals, and let's justtighten our belts.
We're going to grow a little,with the same number of people,
the same individuals, and let'sjust tighten our belts.
We're going to grow a littlebit, but we're going to become
extremely more efficient.
So the top line won't changemuch, but the bottom line will,
or we're going to take somedrastic steps go to a bigger
office, have all of theemployees in-house every day as
(20:16):
opposed to working remotely.
You know major changes likethat, so we're going to make
some decisions in the next monthor two to see how that goes.
But, as I say, this is a modelthat I've built that's very
flexible.
You can use it for restaurants.
You can use it for landscapers,contractors, consultants,
almost anything and I love therestaurant industry.
(20:37):
I was in that industry for 10years and I get it.
I know the value of the numberof seats in the dining room.
I know the value of a team ofwaiters and waitresses and
bartenders that can turn thosetables over and if you can turn
them over one more time, insteadof having two seatings for
dinner, turn it for three.
It's dynamic because youroverhead is the same right and
(21:04):
you're just using the sameoverhead one more time each
night.
I've seen it in practice when Iwas an employee and I've also
seen it from the side of theownership when Babs and I owned
the inn for 10 years.
We learned a lot.
Chris, everybody needs an innercircle.
I want to sort of throw thisout there you and me and
everybody on this planet we arethe average of the five people
we most associate with andrelate to.
(21:26):
Okay, think about that for aminute.
You know, I had a great meetinghere yesterday and I brought in
one of my consultants.
Two of my partners were in theroom.
It's a good group of peoplethat set the stage for this
marketing meeting that we set upyesterday.
You're the average of the fivepeople that you most closely
relate to, you know, so surroundyourself with good people.
(21:48):
I'm going to talk about the yesman.
Marjorie Post was not a yes man.
Actually, she wasn't even a manIn a world of men.
She was not only not a yes manor a yes person, she flat out
disagreed.
She went the opposite directionthat they wanted her to go,
because she saw stuff that theydidn't see.
Chris (22:08):
Yeah, just to give you an idea, she was married to EF
Hutton.
Remember him, yep, what?
Dennis (22:13):
was I saying when Hutton ?
Chris (22:14):
talks, people listen.
This was his tagline and sheand he had a complete
disagreement in terms ofpolitics and almost everything.
And they got into it overbird's eye frozen foods.
Marjorie was on a boat off thecoast of Gloucester and they had
a duck one night for dinner andit was out of season.
She wanted to know how to havethis delicious duck.
It was fabulous.
And they said, well, it camefrozen from this guy in
(22:36):
Gloucester.
And so immediately hervisionary thing kicked in and
said I can see how his wife'sreally taking this.
So she went and found this guy.
Wait, this is not breakfastanymore.
That's not breakfast anymore.
She's moved on.
This is dinner now, right?
Frozen food, frozen food.
Imagine that.
So she got on a boat, went off,went to Gloucester and met this
guy it was Clarence Birdseye,and he had gone and worked with
(22:58):
the Inuit up in Alaska and hadnoticed the way they were eating
their food.
It was flash frozen and it wasdelicious.
They had frozen fish and allkinds of different things, but
it was all flash frozen.
So he brought it back and hedeveloped the equipment to do it
and created, basically, afactory in Gloucester area.
His problem was, though, hisrange that he could actually
sell the fish was about as faras it would thaw out, because at
(23:21):
the time people didn't havefreezers it was refrigerated.
Marjorie saw this and knewinstantly it was going to be a
massive hit.
So for the next 10 years, Ithink, or five years, she fought
with EF Hutton over purchasingthat company and he would not
allow her because there was noinfrastructure.
Finally she wins out and shebuilt the infrastructure.
She built the distributioncenters that had refrigerators
in them.
(23:41):
She built refrigerated traincars.
She put freezers into storesand she pushed the refrigeration
industry to start addingfreezers to refrigerators.
And not only did she not, youknow, let men get in their way
she fought one of the mostpowerful people in America,
probably one of the richestpeople in America, to get her
away when it came to frozenfoods and particularly bird's
eye.
(24:01):
Incredible story.
I'm a big Marjorie Post fan, incase you couldn't tell.
Dennis (24:05):
Well, I was about to talk about yes men.
The yes men.
They agree with everything yousay.
They agree with everything youbelieve.
The yes men they're not goingto get you to where you want to
be, they're just going to agreewith you.
Yes men, they won't challengeyou, they will not challenge
your team, they just go alongwith what you say.
(24:25):
And yesterday in my marketingmeeting one of my consultants
flatly disagreed with somethingthat I've believed in for quite
some time and he brought that upand we had to talk about it.
In the end he kind of leanedour direction and said, yeah, I
can see that, I can see that.
But I'm glad he brought it upbecause it prompted a discussion
.
I now know that Warren Pallyfrom Pally Advertising he's not.
(24:46):
I've known Warren for years.
He's not a yes man.
He was here to do his jobyesterday and he brought some
additional data and informationinto the meeting and that's why
we like him.
Chris (24:57):
And we were talking about this early on and it started to
make me think about WarrenBuffett and Charles Munger, how
they work together.
But they're very different.
They're very different guys.
Warren's more of a visionarysort of looking forward in the
future and Charlie's more of anuts and bolts sort of guy.
But he had a great quote.
Charlie had a great quote.
He said if we agreed oneverything, one of us would be
unnecessary, which is perfect,which is amazingly true.
Dennis (25:20):
My next comment here is if two people are thinking
exactly the same thing, you canbe sure that only one of them is
doing the thinking Right, right, exactly, very similar.
I've adhered to that for yearsand I'm glad that my inner
circle doesn't always agree withme.
Andy, one of my partners.
He brought something up at themeeting and I said Andy, I got
(25:40):
to disagree with you on that one.
Here's how I see it, and youknow, this is how our meetings
go.
We don't want to all sit aroundand if we're patting ourselves
on the back all the time, we'regoing to get all full of
ourselves and we're going tofind a leveling off point, yeah.
Chris (25:53):
Yeah, Just to touch on.
Yes, Men, one more time.
I always imagine when we'rereading this.
I was kind of doing a littlebit of research and I can
imagine the meeting where therewas a meeting at Colgate.
One afternoon.
They made toothpaste and,hugely successful in toothpaste,
they decided to do frozendinners.
So Colgate produced a frozendinner.
Now, immediately when it hitthe market, no one's going to
(26:14):
eat a frozen dinner from Colgate.
That makes toothpaste.
It's disgusting or whatever.
But I'll guarantee you therewas a meeting there where a
bunch of people were standingaround and the boss said I got a
great idea and everyone wentsounds good to us.
And out the door went frozenfood from Colgate which
completely belly flopped.
Dennis (26:30):
So I can imagine that meeting was probably filled with
yes, men, it's the only way aproduct would get made.
You remember Hag from highschool, old high school friend
of ours.
Well, his younger brother,Robbie Harrington, is a friend
of mine from Framingham.
He's a good egg, known Robbie,since we were young, young kids
and Robbie is a brilliantentrepreneur.
The term entrepreneur hasbecome so overused in our
(26:52):
culture today and really Robbieis an entrepreneur among
business owners.
He's a giant.
I remember we were about threeyears into our current operation
when we were still a singlecompany, the Cape Cod Gutter
Monkeys, and I was talking toRobbie one day and Robbie was
kind of keeping an eye on us.
In the very beginning he talkedabout getting involved
(27:12):
financially as a silent partner.
We didn't need money, we didn'tneed a partner.
It wouldn't have been a goodmatch.
But we're still friends and westill hang out and we still talk
.
About three years in he said tome how are things going?
You know how has business?
Business is going good.
I said we're doing A, B, C andD and yeah, we're really doing
great.
And he said, geez, Dan, back inthe beginning, before you even
(27:35):
kicked it into gear, we had ameeting and you would mention
these two other things.
And how are they going.
And I said, wow, we reallyhaven't moved in that direction
at all, because, boy, we'redoing great over here.
And he actually said you'rereally dropping the ball.
He said, because I think thoseare the two areas that that
number one are the mostdifficult and number two present
(27:57):
the most potential for growth.
He said so I really think yougot to clean up your act and
don't be so lazy.
Wow, Okay, Now I'm in the midstof maybe my third career of
building multi-million dollarbusinesses and this guy told me
exactly what I probably didn'twant to hear, but I needed to
hear, and it kind of woke me up.
(28:17):
And the next day I was didn'twant to hear, but I needed to
hear, and it kind of woke me up.
And the next day I was talkingto Andy about it and we kind of
took a look in the mirror andsaid, yeah, we've been patting
ourselves on the back a littletoo much here, and a person that
I know and I've known sincechildhood, who's a very, very
dynamic guy and a good, honestman, but he's not a yes man, he
kind of woke us up and westarted moving in those
directions.
(28:37):
One of them was real estate,purchasing the proper piece of
real estate, and that really gotus going and it led us to the
building we're in right noweventually, which is exactly
what we needed.
That's the thing is.
Don't surround yourself withyes men.
If you want to be a truevisionary, a true entrepreneur,
look past the yes men, Surroundyourself with honest people.
(29:00):
As I say, we were in a teammeeting yesterday and it was
very interesting because I wasprepping for this podcast here
today.
I made a special effort to seehow people agree, disagree, how
things are brought up and youknow what?
We had a lot of agreement andwe had a lot of disagreement in
that meeting and in the end Ithink we came up with a really
(29:20):
good solution.
We're 10 years into ownershipand operations of this company
that has now grown into sixalmost seven locations now and I
think we're doing well.
But we've completely revampedour marketing program.
And the thing is, our marketingprogram has actually been an
award-winning marketing program.
We've been recognizedrepeatedly over the years via
(29:43):
the Massachusetts BroadcastersAssociation, and several other
legitimate organizations haveawarded us some of their top
awards in marketing.
And yet we're revamping itbecause we know we're growing
bigger and in a differentdirection than we used to be,
and that's the benefit of notsurrounding yourself with yes
(30:05):
men.
You know we have some goodconsultants that we work with.
We have a lot of radio peoplethat we work with, and that's
who was in at this meetingyesterday and it went well.
So I think what we're doing iswe're positioning our company
for a bigger growth and a largercurve than we've ever had, and
you can't do that with yes men.
Being a visionary is one thing,but bringing other people who
(30:27):
have visionary skills into theteam is also very important.
Chris (30:32):
Do you want to touch a little bit on being a visionary.
So what about the idea that notall visions come to fruition?
So at some point you mightrealize it was a great vision,
it was a great try, but it's notquite working out for you.
So you had that experience.
I'm sure you've had thatexperience at Cape Cod.
Dennis (30:45):
I would say I've had that.
If you accomplish all of yourgoals, you're not setting the
bar high enough right?
Haven't we all had goals thatfell short or just fell flat?
It doesn't mean you failed.
I remember one marketingattempt at some printed material
.
It seemed to be good on paper,it seemed to hit our target
(31:05):
market and it didn't.
We ran it for six months.
We weren't getting the results.
You know what?
You scrap it.
Okay, we set goals for ourmarketing program and we want to
generate X amount of revenue orX amount of phone calls or hits
on the website, whatever it is,and you can't tell in the first
month.
You know, branding takes yearsand years and it comes out of
(31:29):
repeated marketing efforts.
And that one in particular thatI can think about it just fell
flat and after six months I wasspending, I think, $2,500 a
month on this.
I pulled it back in and I putit into additional at that time,
I think was radio advertising,because we were killing it on
our radio advertising.
Anybody that has owned and builta company and grown a company
(31:53):
that is continuing to grow, atleast to some degree, is a bit
of a visionary, because youalmost have to be to break
through that first $1 millionceiling.
Only 7% of all businesses everbreak $1 million for a year, and
I think it's 5% of allbusinesses 1 in 20, ever has
(32:14):
back-to-back million-dollaryears.
So the first time you break amillion, you do it again the
next year.
You are now in the 5% ofbusiness ownership, you are a 95
percenter.
And then but those are the onesthat now say all right, I want
to get to 1.5.
I want to get to 2 million.
How do I continue to grow whenall of my competitors are, let's
(32:36):
say, running $300,000 to$600,000 a year operations and I
just broke the million-dollarmark?
And now you're on that road toreally become an entrepreneur,
because now you've got to figureout how we get to $2 million.
You already broke the rules.
Nine out of 10 of yourcompetitors are smaller shops
(32:56):
and you're the big dog.
How do I get to that next level?
How do I get to 2 million?
And then that's when you hitthis business growth model,
because no one's ever been therebefore, nobody in your region
has ever built a $5 million ayear home service company in
your field.
And you don't know.
Like how many trucks do I need?
How many?
How much square footage do Ineed of warehouse?
(33:18):
You know you're in therestaurant business and you're't
know like how many trucks do Ineed how many?
How much square footage do Ineed of warehouse?
You know you're in therestaurant business and you're
killing it.
You know, especially duringCOVID, things got kind of tough.
And yet you know, one of mycustomers down here on the Cape
Cod is Seafood Sam's and theyabsolutely blew the lid off it
during COVID because they had aplan that no one else had True
visionaries, these guys I don'tknow if you've ever been to
(33:39):
Seafood Sam's, but the food isgood.
The owners are brilliant,hardworking blue collar guys,
but they've found the secret andthey've done really well.
Covid was a growth year forthem.
Chris (33:51):
These guys did really well, yeah, there's some
interesting COVID stories likethat.
There's one story actually fromWrigley Gum.
I don't know if you knew howWrigley Gum Company, now that we
know today, comes from thisbaking powder company, and this
(34:23):
enormous pivot that he made andin a single year turned the
company around went in acompletely different direction.
Dennis (34:29):
So when you asked about failures and goals that were
missed and how do you rebound, Ithink I have, on any given day,
about 10 metrics in my world.
You know some of them is saleswithin this company, some of his
gross sales in this company,that there's so many metrics.
You know, every month there'smetrics and I would say if I can
(34:52):
hit five of those metrics,that's good.
If I fall short on two and thenthree just don't occur or don't
change at all, that's a goodmonth.
You're never going to hit ahome run every single time.
But how about a goal without atimeline?
A goal without a metric is adream.
A goal without a timeline or ametric is nothing more than a
(35:13):
dream.
So set realistic goals, setchallenging goals and listen if
you miss.
You miss it just means maybeyou set the goal too high or
maybe you hit a bump in the roador a wrench got thrown in the
way and it slowed you down alittle bit.
But reestablish your goals.
We had a rough year duringCOVID year 2020.
We still grew, but it was asmall, small amount and I was
(35:37):
kind of disappointed.
We had a shutdown for threeweeks, from March 23rd to like
April 15th we opened back upagain.
We were having a good year.
Then one of my coworkers gotCOVID and the CDC protocol back
then was shut it down for twoweeks.
So we shut it down and we losttwo more weeks.
In the end we had a growth year, but only by a small, small
(35:58):
amount, like two to 3%, realsmall.
The following year we boomedbecause we reestablished that we
are still a growing company andwe kind of grew almost for two
years because we almostflatlined for that one year.
So we had a big, big year andthen we just went back to our
normal growth pattern.
Covid was just one of thosehurdles that we didn't
(36:20):
anticipate at the beginning of2020.
And we dealt with it.
I think COVID helped us.
I remember in the verybeginning this is kind of
interesting I think In thebeginning of COVID around
mid-March, when the governor ofMassachusetts started shutting
things down and the economy wasjust going right down the tubes,
I was in a meeting with one ofmy radios, or three of my radio
(36:42):
stations.
They all operate out of the samebuilding.
It was a Codcom here on CapeCod and I advertised on three of
their four radio stations andas I was finishing up making a
couple of radio ads.
I was coming down out of thestudio and Tim, the general
manager, asked me to sit in on ameeting, which I did, and at
the end of the meeting I didn'treally say anything, but they
(37:04):
were talking about, I mean,restaurants were just pulling
their ads because restaurantswere closing.
The auto industry, whichprobably accounts for 20% of the
radio station's advertisingdollars.
They pulled the plug.
I mean they lost more than halfof their advertisers.
And when I got back to theoffice, my accountant, my banker
(37:25):
, all said these PPP loans.
Chris (37:27):
I think are available.
Dennis (37:29):
And my wife asked me about that and I said call the
bank, look into it.
We don't really need the money,but look into what it's all
about.
Because my accountant and mybanker each mentioned it and I
said if you have to spend morethan 30 minutes, we're not doing
it.
And we didn't do it.
What we did do, I probably wasadvertising on 10 radio stations
.
At the time I called all thestation owners and managers, all
(37:52):
my people that I knew, and Iknew they were going through
some tough times.
So what I did was I offered topurchase additional radio spots
and I asked them what can yougive me for a rate on these
radio spots?
And they actually gave me.
I was already dropping X amountin the radio and they gave me
(38:14):
almost the same amount for 15%.
So I actually doubled my radiofootprint for only 15% more
money.
And we signed like three-yearcontracts.
So as COVID was ongoing, we hada bigger footprint out there
and the following year they heldthe same price for the same
(38:35):
amount.
Now we're done with COVID.
It's behind us.
But I got a massive, massivemarketing footprint out there
and I'm paying about 55% 60% ofwhat the going rate was, and it
carried me into the followingyear.
So COVID we were able to turnCOVID into a bonus for us
(38:55):
because a lot of my competitorsthey couldn't get aluminum, they
were in the gutter business.
They could not get aluminum.
My wife was running ourinventory system at the time and
we were dealing with warehousesfrom all over New England to
Perth and by New Jersey toColony, new York.
We were driving all over.
We had to do the drivingbecause the trucking strike was
(39:17):
shutting down the trucks so wewere working twice as hard for
normal growth.
But we did it.
We built up our advertising andour marketing footprint.
We also went from probablywarehousing maybe $30,000,
$35,000 worth of inventory tomaybe $150,000.
(39:37):
Because whenever we could getit we just overbought.
It's aluminum.
It has no shelf life, itdoesn't go bad.
So again, looking ahead, lookingas far ahead as we could see,
my wife came to the conclusionthat we need to overstock on
inventory and we did.
We actually had a couple offranchises at the time and if
(39:58):
they're going to run short wewant to cover them, make sure
that they can still get theirwork done.
I had competitors calling me upasking to buy some of my stock
and I said I just can't sell itto you.
And they were offering anything, anything I'll pay whatever you
want.
And I just flat out and I knowthese guys, some of them are
friends and I said I can't do it.
I not only have my ownoperation, but I got two
(40:21):
franchisees that are dependingon me if they can't get their
inventory.
And you know, we established anew platform, raised the bar on
the amount of inventory, raisedthe bar on the amount of
marketing dollars and we'vestill adhered to what we learned
during COVID.
Chris (40:41):
Yeah, so it's kind of a reoccurring theme.
We're touching on this in thelast couple of podcasts as well.
There's periods of times whereeverything looks pretty bad.
Everybody else is panicking,but real visionaries they keep
their focus, keep their eye onthe ball and they can actually
do well in these times Not totouch on the Postum cereal
company again, but they were inthe cereal business and when the
wars hit World War I, world WarII the government took all the
wheat, all the sugar too, allthe sugar.
(41:03):
So they're out of sugar.
So how are they going to makemoney?
Wow, the way they made money isthey still realized that after
the wheat is harvested you stillhave to mill it.
So they bought all the millingcompanies.
So that's how Post andKellogg's and all these people
ended up milling their own wheatand things like that, and they
made a ton of money doing itduring the war, because now
they're milling grain for thegovernment and getting paid to
(41:25):
do that.
So these are the sort of thingswhen we keep touching on this
point.
Visionaries can make money inall sorts of different
environments because they justhave this view of.
They don't let a down economyor whatever get in their way.
Dennis (41:36):
Well, yeah, chris, I mentioned before I've got maybe
10 metrics every month that Icould look at Growth of this
profitability here, marketingbudget over here.
This is a lot of metrics that Ipersonally can use to measure
success within the walls of thebuilding that we're in right
here.
And as I look back at the crashof 08, remember Y2K, followed
(42:00):
by 9-11?
One thing after another, theyreally disrupted our lifestyles
and our economies.
Go back, to, chris, when wewere kids We've talked about it.
In the 70s, we impeached apresident.
There was double-digitinflation in the 70s.
The oil embargo oh you couldn'tget gas in 73 or 78.
Right, if you want to shut aneconomy down, take away the gas.
(42:23):
Then you get into the 80s,which was very good, very good
economy.
We got a little bit spoiled bythe early 90s.
Bank closures on homes werestarting to kick in.
There was the crash of 96.
Then we had 9-11.
We had Y2K, the crash of 08.
There's always always going tobe stuff out there.
There's always going to beinterruptions to the economic
(42:45):
process and you want to be readyfor these.
You want to be as prepared asyou can.
One thing we talk about a lothere, chris, is be low debt or
debt-free.
If you're debt-free and yourcompany's debt-free, you're a
little bit bulletproof.
You're kind of insulated fromsome of the things that can
knock some of your competitorsout.
And if you come into a thinglike COVID I know one of my
(43:09):
competitors and I have afriendly relationship with a lot
of my competitors.
I just called them up one dayand I said look, I want to thank
you for sending me a lot ofthis work.
I'm getting phone and they'reyounger than me by 20 years and
(43:39):
I've known the family and theysay we know you're going to take
good care.
We don't even want to be in thebusiness anymore.
We can't get aluminum.
We're pivoting and we're goingin this direction.
We're sending you our customers.
So when you get a COVID or acrash of 08, anything like that
occurs, there's a likelihoodthat if you survive and a lot of
(43:59):
your competitors don't, you'regoing to pick up their work.
It's an opportunity for you, asthe business owner, to take
advantage of.
Yeah, it's kind of areoccurring theme here.
So let's wrap this up, chris.
I want to just kind of throwthese couple of ideas we've
talked about.
Remember if two people arethinking exactly the same thing,
you can be sure that only oneof them is doing the thinking.
(44:22):
Next is a goal without atimeline.
A goal without a metric isnothing more than a dream.
And finally, if you'reaccomplishing all of your goals,
you're not setting the bar highenough.
Yeah, that's a good one.
And with that, thanks forlistening.
No, monkeys were harmed in themaking of this podcast.
All right, we'll see you nexttime.
Chris (44:44):
Thank you for tuning in to Monkey Business Radio.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please make sure to subscribe,
like and follow us wherever youget your podcasts.
It really helps us reach moreaspiring entrepreneurs like you,
and if you got a question ortopic you'd like us to cover,
leave a comment or reach out tous on social media.
We'd love to hear your thoughtsand keep the conversation going
.
Don't forget to leave us afive-star review if you found
(45:07):
the episode valuable, and makesure to share it with anyone who
might benefit from our tips andstories.
We'll see you next time.
This podcast is produced byAmerican Gutter Monkeys LLC.
Build real wealth throughbusiness ownership.
For details, visit us atAmericanGutterMonkeyscom.
Hello everyone, welcome to Episode 9, Visionary.
Today, we're diving into whatit really means to think ahead
in business and why the peoplewho do are often the ones who
change the game, and that's whatthe visionary is all about
going to where the puck is goingto be when he or she gets there
.
We're talking about vision, notthe crystal ball kind, but the
kind that grows businesses,builds teams and sees
(00:24):
opportunities where others don'tFrom Marjorie Post
revolutionizing how America eats, to entrepreneurs who pivot
when their original plans fallflat.
We're breaking down how toanticipate, adapt and aim higher
.
We'll talk about how to build afive-year plan, how to
recognize the weak spots in youroperation and why disagreements
inside your leadership team canactually be a good thing.
(00:46):
Dennis shares stories from thefield, including lessons from
Cape Cod gutter monkeys and whathappens when a friend called
them out for not chasing thehardest and the most valuable
goals.
We have a great show for youtoday, so grab a cup of coffee,
sit back, relax and welcome toMonkey Business Radio.
Hello everyone, welcome toMonkey Business Radio, episode 8
(01:11):
, the Visionary.
As always, I'm joined by myco-host, the one and only Dennis
Siggins of the Gutter Monkeys.
Hello, dennis.
Thanks, chris, how are youdoing?
Dennis (01:19):
Good good.
How are you Good good?
One of my favorite topics, theVisionary.
Yeah, I like this.
Chris (01:25):
You got some good quotes for us.
I guess today One of the onesyou're always kicking around
here, or I should say slappingaround here- yeah, most folks go
to where the puck is.
Dennis (01:35):
But, chris, we want to go to where the puck is going to
be when we get there.
And that's the mantra of thevisionary, the person that has
somehow trained himselforganically to see beyond what
most people see, to see a littlebit into the future, a little
bit ahead of what the rest of uscan see.
And that's what the visionaryis all about Going to where the
(01:56):
puck is going to be when he orshe gets there.
You know, there's the ElonMusks and the Bill Gates of the
world, the Warren Buffett howabout Jimmy Buffett?
Even Jimmy Buffett?
Maybe the first person whobecame a billionaire with a
guitar, shorts and flip-flops.
True visionaries, but let'sbring it down a notch, because
the rest of us are mere mortalsand we want to become visionary
(02:18):
in our businesses and in ourlives so that we can accomplish
things that maybe we couldn'thave otherwise.
Chris (02:28):
Okay.
So yeah, on today's episode.
So we're going to break downhow to develop business vision,
sort of analyzing your weakspots.
Set some real measurable goalsthat can push you forward.
Yeah, when do we start withthis?
I guess, before you know whereyou're going, you got to figure
out where you are.
I guess.
Dennis (02:39):
I was approached by an acquaintance at a barbecue and
he was recently retiring by anacquaintance at a barbecue and
he was recently retiring, justabout to retire, and he kind of
threw it out to me.
He said, hey, can you help meout?
I'm thinking about going intothe landscape business when I
retire.
And I said, sure, sure, and wewere just having a burger and a
beer.
And you know, when he retiredhe wanted to go into the
(03:00):
landscaping business.
He wanted to buy a pickup truckand a lawnmower and a string
trimmer.
And I said, well, let's talkfive years down the road, you
know.
And he said, no, no, I justjust that's all I want, just me,
just enough to keep myself busy.
And I said you don't need me.
I live on Cape Cod.
Look, if you are proactiveabout your business and all you
(03:21):
want to be is a one man operatorwith a lawnmower and a string
trimmer, all you need is 35 to40 customers and you're going to
get there organically within ayear or two and you'll be fine.
But what about the rest of us?
What about the rest of us thatwant to start a business for a
reasonable amount of money?
We don't want to go into debtto do it.
(03:42):
But we want to grow thatbusiness to be very big.
The question that I would ask isand I do this all the time
whether I'm interviewing a newpotential employee for work
within one of my companies orwhether I'm working with a
franchisee.
And the question is where doyou want to be in five years?
Because if you don't know whereyou want to be in five years,
(04:04):
how do we take that first step?
This gentleman that I met at abarbecue, his first step has
already been taken.
He just wants to be a one-manoperator.
He's going to be fine.
He doesn't want 25 employeesand 15 trucks.
But to the rest of us I askthat question where do you want
to be in five years?
And once we have thatdiscussion, we can start taking
(04:27):
that first step.
And maybe that first step ispurchasing that pickup truck,
the lawnmower and the stringtrimmer, or, in the contractor
world, a pickup truck and a toolbelt and a couple of chop saws
and table saws, that type ofthing.
But if you don't know where youwant to be in five years, then
how do you know how to get there?
And so I think that's ourstarting point is, I have a
(04:51):
business growth chart that I usefor one of my companies and
we'll talk about that a littlebit later and anyone can step in
at any time.
If you're a one-man operationand you want to grow to 30
employees and $6 million a year,it's built into the growth
chart.
If you're a seven to 10 personcompany and you've kind of hit a
ceiling, well that growth chartwe can plug you in at any step
(05:15):
along that way and show you howto expand to get where you want
to go.
Chris (05:20):
So I'm not familiar with the growth chart.
Is this something that you cameup with?
Dennis (05:23):
It's something I wish I had when I was 22.
But I began to build it overthe years and then tailor it to
whatever business that we'rediscussing.
So in my case I use it a lotfor my franchisees in the home
service business the guttermonkeys.
It's a home service guttercleaning, repair, maintenance
(05:44):
and new gutter installationbusiness.
That's the one I use on a dailybasis, but I also tailor it.
I'm working with a client nowthat he's kind of hit a ceiling
at four employees and about500,000 to 600,000 a year.
He's kind of been leveling offin this area and we're working
on a growth plan for him.
(06:04):
So we'll talk about that alittle bit later in this year.
He's kind of been leveling offin this area and we're working
on a growth plan for him, sowe'll talk about that a little
bit later in this podcast.
But in general, we want to lookat our strengths.
We want to look at ourweaknesses and where we want to
be in five years.
And the biggest thing is not tolook at your strengths, because
they're obvious.
Let's look at our weaknesses.
Do we have limitations in ourmarketing and our brand building
?
Are we a three to five personcompany and we need more trucks,
(06:29):
more revenue generating people,more office staff.
Are we limited in the size ofour capacity?
We talk about the restaurantowner.
He has only so many tables,only so many seats, and he needs
to turn those lunch tables overtwice.
And the restaurant owner wantsto turn those dinner tables over
three times.
(06:49):
And then does he want to createmore revenue by having live
entertainment till 11 at night?
Keep that last set of dinersaround for another two to three
hours ordering an after dinnercocktail or something like that.
What else can we do within thelimitations of our physical
capacity Number of employees,the skill set of the employees,
(07:11):
and then the big one, ourlimitations, the self-imposed
limitations that we all put uponourselves at some time in our
lives.
It's caused by fear, complacency, arrogance, ignorance, apathy.
It's caused by fear,complacency, arrogance,
ignorance, apathy.
What personality traits do wehave that limit our growth?
The average business owner isnot a true visionary.
(07:34):
Like I say, we're not talkingabout Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
You know, look at1-800-GOT-JUNK.
Weren't they out ahead of thecurve?
Yeah Right, their telephonenumber is the name of the
company and now that's theirdomain name.
I mean, it's just a stroke ofgenius.
I don't know who the founder ofthat company is, but they're
great.
They really hit a home run withthat one.
(07:55):
How about bottled water?
Yeah, bottled water from thestart.
Right, Remember Bac Perrier orsomething like that?
Yeah, Bac Perrier or somethinglike that.
Yeah, Back Perrier.
Who the hell is going to buywater when the alternative is
free?
Right, right, you turn on yourfaucet and it's free, yeah
there's a great Jim Gaffigan.
Chris (08:10):
I don't know if you're familiar with Jim Gaffigan, but
there's a great yeah the comic.
Oh my God there's a great oneabout bottled water.
It is really funny.
If you haven't seen it go.
Dennis (08:20):
The alternative is free.
Think about the brand buildingand the marketing to that.
40 years ago they were sellingPerrier water because it's from
France and they played upon theAmerican belief that anything
from Europe must be better thanAmerica or something like that.
I don't know, but bottled wateris a staple in our culture.
(08:42):
Now we have this fear of ourown water that comes out of our
tap, and I personally don't buybottled water.
Now my company does and we putit in the refrigerator out in
the break room, but I still goto the tap.
This water here, this comesright out of the tap.
This does not.
It was never in a bottle.
But what about your friendMarjorie Post at Post Cereals?
Chris (09:05):
Yeah, it was an amazing story about Marjorie Post.
Dennis (09:08):
You brought that up before the podcast.
Chris (09:10):
Yeah, Enlighten us.
Yeah, she was actually heiressto Postum Cereal Company.
So if you're familiar with PostCereals, back in the 30s there
was a huge battle going on overcereal, and cereal was a
radically new product forAmericans.
It was the idea of, in earlydays, that a woman would have to
get up and prepare breakfast,and it was a ton of work.
When cereals came out and theycould just pour something in a
(09:30):
bowl, it was a massive, massivewin, and so her father created
Postum Cereal Company and whenhe died, marjorie took over and
she was only 27 years old at thetime and because she had spent
her early years in the kitchen,she knew what went on in these
kitchens in the 30s and it was aton of work to do just about
anything and particularlydessert.
So one of the first things shewent after was this company
(09:52):
called Jell-O.
They made Jell-O in a box andprior to that, the only people
that would eat Jell-O is very,very rich people, because you'd
have to spend all day cookingdown ox hoofs to create gelatin
and no one did that other thanthe rich.
So she provided this box ofjello where you could make a
dessert that only the rich ate,and she sold it to the
housewives and they loved it andit became a huge, huge hit and
(10:15):
it's such a visionary thing thatshe had that she realized you
know what was the market thatshe was selling to?
She was selling to the woman inthe kitchen that was trying to
free up some more time to doother things, and it was just a
massive hit.
So that was a great example, Ithink, of the sort of visionary.
Talk about the guys on the boardof directors and the board of
directors right, this is 1914, Ithink.
When her father died it was allmen of course Some of them are
(10:38):
uncles and they didn't want awoman on the board.
The way she got around that,she never actually got on the
board.
Interestingly enough, she putin a friend of hers, a guy that
was one of her businessconsultants, him on the board
and he did the work for her.
But it was all her ideas, theseideas Jell-O, maxwell House,
(10:59):
and we're going to talk a littlebit about in the future, a
little bit about Bird's EyeFrozen Foods these were all her
ideas.
She recognized them as beingjust completely visionary in
terms of getting it to the womanwho was actually purchasing
these things and not marketingto men.
We talked a little bit aboutthat last week as well.
Know your market.
Dennis (11:13):
So the men on the board of director probably didn't have
to make pancakes from scratchin 1914.
Probably had no idea how Jell-Owas made.
They probably were unaware ofthe amount, just the physical
amount of time that it wouldtake a woman with five kids to
prep breakfast.
Yeah.
Chris (11:32):
It's just incredible.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactlyright.
Same thing with coffee, right?
Most people at that time wouldbuy their own coffee.
They would roast it and grindit.
When she purchased MaxwellHouse, and again, the housewives
immediately recognized you know, that's a huge time saver for
them.
They just open the can, pour itin and boil it.
So yeah, it was a huge, hugewin.
And not only that, but marketedit.
(11:52):
There's always this great, youknow, there's always time for
Jell-O Good to the last drop.
Maxwell House good to the lastdrop.
That's still around today.
Those were all her creations.
So yeah, it's pretty amazing.
She's an amazing woman.
Dennis (12:02):
You know I have three breakfasts I will either have
bacon and eggs, or sausage andeggs, or smoothies, or today I
had a bowl of Cheerios.
Those are my three Now.
Every Saturday and every SundayI go big.
You know we do bacon and eggsand grits.
Chris (12:18):
I love grits.
Dennis (12:20):
Now it doesn't take that long.
But you know, grits are 20minutes, according to my cousin
Vinny, and myself too, and it'sa 20-minute prep.
You got your grits, you gotyour bacon, you got your eggs,
that's 20 minutes.
I don't really want to create20 to 25 minutes because it's
going to take five to 10 minutesto eat breakfast.
That's a 30-minute event.
(12:41):
This morning I was up early.
Actually I was talking to mydaughter, who is a hippie.
They have chickens, theyproduce their own eggs, she has
gardens and a small farm thatproduces berries and garlic and
other.
She's a hippie and they havethree kids.
She makes homemade breakfastalmost every day and this
(13:01):
morning she called me it wasabout 5.15.
We're both early risers so wecan do that.
And I heard all the kids in thebackground as she was prepping
breakfast and I said Katie,you're starting a little early
today.
It's 5.15.
You're already having breakfast.
She goes no, no, I'm justmaking it and she was making a
special something or other.
I forget the process, rather, Iforget the process and she puts
(13:22):
the eggs, the maple syrup andone other thing.
I forget the other ingredient.
She scrambles it and she putsit in the oven and then it's all
going to be ready in 20 minutes.
So that's what they do, andwhat you're describing with
Marjorie Post is a situationwhere the mom doesn't have to
spend 30 minutes makingbreakfast every morning.
A cereal would allow her to dothis in five minutes.
(13:46):
Right, and the men didn't seethat.
Chris (13:48):
No, they would never see that.
Never see it because they neverstepped in a kitchen, you know
as being the woman of the house.
Even when she came into moneyshe was still responsible for
the kitchen.
So she was, you know, veryfamiliar with what was going
down there and how much time ittook again to make something
like a Jell-O.
It would take you all day tomake Jell-O without the actual
mix that she created.
So it's really kind of animpressive vision that she had
(14:08):
when she kind of rolled outthese different products and
pushed it through this board.
Eventually the company becameGeneral Foods, which is a huge
conglomerate to this day, andactually one of my favorite
cereals and it's a greatcommercial is the Post's Honey
Bunches of Oats.
Dennis (14:22):
I know the cereal.
I don't have it I believethat's Post.
Chris (14:24):
It's one of my favorites, so anyway.
Dennis (14:27):
Well, marjorie Post is a brilliant visionary, as is the
Elon Musks and the Mark Cubansand the people of the world like
that, and for the rest of us,mere mortals, we have to create
that vision because we don'tcome by that naturally, the
Marjorie Post, she's a one in amillion, you know, and I think
(14:48):
I'm a little bit of a visionary,maybe I'm a one in a hundred or
one in 50, but we have to workat it, you know, and one of the
things that I've done is Icreate a growth model chart and
I can adapt this growth model toalmost any business.
It would take a half an hour toan hour.
So if I have a client and, likeone of my clients that I'm
(15:09):
working with right now, he'ssort of bumping his head on this
four employees, a half amillion to 600.
He's kind of been stuck in thatarea and, listen, he makes
significantly good money but hewants to grow the company.
So we're talking about twostrategies right now and one of
them is business growth.
How do you go from fouremployees to eight?
(15:32):
Because in his world, if hegoes from four to eight, he
won't double his gross revenue,he'll quadruple it because of
the synergistic component ofwhat he does and what we're
going to create the businessgrowth chart that I have for my
franchisees.
Basically it takes a franchiseein my world from a one to two
(15:53):
person company and itorganically grows him to four to
to eight to 12 employees, fromtwo to four to six trucks, and
across the top we have thenumber of support staff, the
number of revenue generatingemployees in the field and then
the square footage of warehousespace that you'll need, the
(16:15):
number of trucks and the numberof parking spaces.
Chris (16:19):
It takes all of these into account and we'll pop this
up on the podcast and we'll popit up on the clips that we put
up on the internet, Sure.
So you can take a look at this.
Dennis (16:29):
And one of the key components is your marketing
budget, because that is going todictate how often the phone
rings, how many hits you get onyour website.
The marketing budget is thesteering wheel to this whole
whole business growth processand what I do.
So we had a meeting, amarketing meeting, with several
of my franchisees plus myself,plus I bring in one of my
(16:51):
consultants in the marketingfield, and we had a nice, really
good meeting yesterday.
And what I take I have a brandnew franchisee hasn't even
opened his doors yet.
He's going to open this spring.
He's at step zero.
I've got a couple otherfranchisees are at step two, at
step four and each one is at adifferent place.
(17:12):
But if we all take out the samechart and we're looking at the
same chart, we can each plugourselves in where we are on
that chart and my brand newrookie franchisee can look and
he can say, okay, I am one ownerwith one employee and one truck
.
I need to have one moreemployee come mid-April and
(17:33):
we've set his marketing budget.
Life is good.
I've got one of my mid-level.
He's a four-year franchiseowner.
You know he's looking toprobably increase his sales by
$300,000 to $400,000 this year.
So he looks at the chart and heknows all right, I'm going to
have to buy one more truck andI'm going to need two more
employees by mid-summer so thatwe can hit this next goal for
(17:57):
this year.
It's good, it's solid, it'seasy to read and it's based on
theory, but it's also based onour work history.
Chris (18:07):
Cape Cod gutter monkeys.
10 years with Cape Cod guttermonkeys.
You've grown it from two of youto now again About 30 people in
the corporate office?
Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot ofexperience goes into this chart
.
Dennis (18:17):
And while the chart is not based on trial and error,
the numbers within the chart arebased on trial and error.
Like I said, I wish I hadsomething like this when I was
22.
I could have seen the future alittle bigger, a little brighter
, but when you're 22 and I was ahard working young guy I had a
lot of experience cutting lawnsas a kid.
(18:38):
I knew how to build and operatea small team of people, but I
didn't know how to grow acompany, and that was where my
journey began.
Chris (18:48):
Yeah, just to get a small plug in, I guess, for American
Cutter Monkeys.
But this chart, this is kind ofone of the advantages of being
a franchise.
Franchises sometimes get a badrap, maybe deservedly so, but
this is one of the advantages.
When you're coming into thisfranchise, I mean, you're
getting this chart.
This chart has been.
You know the blood, sweat andtears that went into creating
this chart and the numbers in it.
This is what you get when youkind of join our franchise.
Dennis (19:10):
Well, you know, in getting back to this client that
I'm working with, we've beenworking on this for about a
month and what we're going to dois we're going to sit down.
We talk probably three days aweek.
We're going to sit down, thisclient and I.
He's in the consulting space,he's a consultant in the
Business consultant A little bitof business, a little bit of
(19:31):
politics, sort of a conservativeside to the clientele.
So the owner and I we're goingto probably meet this weekend
and we're going to build thischart and design it for his
industry.
I have to pick up a lot ofinformation along the way to see
what are the strike points,what are the key components, and
then we're going to make adecision whether 2025, 26 is
(19:54):
going to be a stay, with thesame number of people, the same
individuals, and let's justtighten our belts.
We're going to grow a little,with the same number of people,
the same individuals, and let'sjust tighten our belts.
We're going to grow a littlebit, but we're going to become
extremely more efficient.
So the top line won't changemuch, but the bottom line will,
or we're going to take somedrastic steps go to a bigger
office, have all of theemployees in-house every day as
(20:16):
opposed to working remotely.
You know major changes likethat, so we're going to make
some decisions in the next monthor two to see how that goes.
But, as I say, this is a modelthat I've built that's very
flexible.
You can use it for restaurants.
You can use it for landscapers,contractors, consultants,
almost anything and I love therestaurant industry.
(20:37):
I was in that industry for 10years and I get it.
I know the value of the numberof seats in the dining room.
I know the value of a team ofwaiters and waitresses and
bartenders that can turn thosetables over and if you can turn
them over one more time, insteadof having two seatings for
dinner, turn it for three.
It's dynamic because youroverhead is the same right and
(21:04):
you're just using the sameoverhead one more time each
night.
I've seen it in practice when Iwas an employee and I've also
seen it from the side of theownership when Babs and I owned
the inn for 10 years.
We learned a lot.
Chris, everybody needs an innercircle.
I want to sort of throw thisout there you and me and
everybody on this planet we arethe average of the five people
we most associate with andrelate to.
(21:26):
Okay, think about that for aminute.
You know, I had a great meetinghere yesterday and I brought in
one of my consultants.
Two of my partners were in theroom.
It's a good group of peoplethat set the stage for this
marketing meeting that we set upyesterday.
You're the average of the fivepeople that you most closely
relate to, you know, so surroundyourself with good people.
(21:48):
I'm going to talk about the yesman.
Marjorie Post was not a yes man.
Actually, she wasn't even a manIn a world of men.
She was not only not a yes manor a yes person, she flat out
disagreed.
She went the opposite directionthat they wanted her to go,
because she saw stuff that theydidn't see.
Chris (22:08):
Yeah, just to give you an idea, she was married to EF
Hutton.
Remember him, yep, what?
Dennis (22:13):
was I saying when Hutton ?
Chris (22:14):
talks, people listen.
This was his tagline and sheand he had a complete
disagreement in terms ofpolitics and almost everything.
And they got into it overbird's eye frozen foods.
Marjorie was on a boat off thecoast of Gloucester and they had
a duck one night for dinner andit was out of season.
She wanted to know how to havethis delicious duck.
It was fabulous.
And they said, well, it camefrozen from this guy in
(22:36):
Gloucester.
And so immediately hervisionary thing kicked in and
said I can see how his wife'sreally taking this.
So she went and found this guy.
Wait, this is not breakfastanymore.
That's not breakfast anymore.
She's moved on.
This is dinner now, right?
Frozen food, frozen food.
Imagine that.
So she got on a boat, went off,went to Gloucester and met this
guy it was Clarence Birdseye,and he had gone and worked with
(22:58):
the Inuit up in Alaska and hadnoticed the way they were eating
their food.
It was flash frozen and it wasdelicious.
They had frozen fish and allkinds of different things, but
it was all flash frozen.
So he brought it back and hedeveloped the equipment to do it
and created, basically, afactory in Gloucester area.
His problem was, though, hisrange that he could actually
sell the fish was about as faras it would thaw out, because at
(23:21):
the time people didn't havefreezers it was refrigerated.
Marjorie saw this and knewinstantly it was going to be a
massive hit.
So for the next 10 years, Ithink, or five years, she fought
with EF Hutton over purchasingthat company and he would not
allow her because there was noinfrastructure.
Finally she wins out and shebuilt the infrastructure.
She built the distributioncenters that had refrigerators
in them.
(23:41):
She built refrigerated traincars.
She put freezers into storesand she pushed the refrigeration
industry to start addingfreezers to refrigerators.
And not only did she not, youknow, let men get in their way
she fought one of the mostpowerful people in America,
probably one of the richestpeople in America, to get her
away when it came to frozenfoods and particularly bird's
eye.
(24:01):
Incredible story.
I'm a big Marjorie Post fan, incase you couldn't tell.
Dennis (24:05):
Well, I was about to talk about yes men.
The yes men.
They agree with everything yousay.
They agree with everything youbelieve.
The yes men they're not goingto get you to where you want to
be, they're just going to agreewith you.
Yes men, they won't challengeyou, they will not challenge
your team, they just go alongwith what you say.
(24:25):
And yesterday in my marketingmeeting one of my consultants
flatly disagreed with somethingthat I've believed in for quite
some time and he brought that upand we had to talk about it.
In the end he kind of leanedour direction and said, yeah, I
can see that, I can see that.
But I'm glad he brought it upbecause it prompted a discussion
.
I now know that Warren Pallyfrom Pally Advertising he's not.
(24:46):
I've known Warren for years.
He's not a yes man.
He was here to do his jobyesterday and he brought some
additional data and informationinto the meeting and that's why
we like him.
Chris (24:57):
And we were talking about this early on and it started to
make me think about WarrenBuffett and Charles Munger, how
they work together.
But they're very different.
They're very different guys.
Warren's more of a visionarysort of looking forward in the
future and Charlie's more of anuts and bolts sort of guy.
But he had a great quote.
Charlie had a great quote.
He said if we agreed oneverything, one of us would be
unnecessary, which is perfect,which is amazingly true.
Dennis (25:20):
My next comment here is if two people are thinking
exactly the same thing, you canbe sure that only one of them is
doing the thinking Right, right, exactly, very similar.
I've adhered to that for yearsand I'm glad that my inner
circle doesn't always agree withme.
Andy, one of my partners.
He brought something up at themeeting and I said Andy, I got
(25:40):
to disagree with you on that one.
Here's how I see it, and youknow, this is how our meetings
go.
We don't want to all sit aroundand if we're patting ourselves
on the back all the time, we'regoing to get all full of
ourselves and we're going tofind a leveling off point, yeah.
Chris (25:53):
Yeah, Just to touch on.
Yes, Men, one more time.
I always imagine when we'rereading this.
I was kind of doing a littlebit of research and I can
imagine the meeting where therewas a meeting at Colgate.
One afternoon.
They made toothpaste and,hugely successful in toothpaste,
they decided to do frozendinners.
So Colgate produced a frozendinner.
Now, immediately when it hitthe market, no one's going to
(26:14):
eat a frozen dinner from Colgate.
That makes toothpaste.
It's disgusting or whatever.
But I'll guarantee you therewas a meeting there where a
bunch of people were standingaround and the boss said I got a
great idea and everyone wentsounds good to us.
And out the door went frozenfood from Colgate which
completely belly flopped.
Dennis (26:30):
So I can imagine that meeting was probably filled with
yes, men, it's the only way aproduct would get made.
You remember Hag from highschool, old high school friend
of ours.
Well, his younger brother,Robbie Harrington, is a friend
of mine from Framingham.
He's a good egg, known Robbie,since we were young, young kids
and Robbie is a brilliantentrepreneur.
The term entrepreneur hasbecome so overused in our
(26:52):
culture today and really Robbieis an entrepreneur among
business owners.
He's a giant.
I remember we were about threeyears into our current operation
when we were still a singlecompany, the Cape Cod Gutter
Monkeys, and I was talking toRobbie one day and Robbie was
kind of keeping an eye on us.
In the very beginning he talkedabout getting involved
(27:12):
financially as a silent partner.
We didn't need money, we didn'tneed a partner.
It wouldn't have been a goodmatch.
But we're still friends and westill hang out and we still talk
.
About three years in he said tome how are things going?
You know how has business?
Business is going good.
I said we're doing A, B, C andD and yeah, we're really doing
great.
And he said, geez, Dan, back inthe beginning, before you even
(27:35):
kicked it into gear, we had ameeting and you would mention
these two other things.
And how are they going.
And I said, wow, we reallyhaven't moved in that direction
at all, because, boy, we'redoing great over here.
And he actually said you'rereally dropping the ball.
He said, because I think thoseare the two areas that that
number one are the mostdifficult and number two present
(27:57):
the most potential for growth.
He said so I really think yougot to clean up your act and
don't be so lazy.
Wow, Okay, Now I'm in the midstof maybe my third career of
building multi-million dollarbusinesses and this guy told me
exactly what I probably didn'twant to hear, but I needed to
hear, and it kind of woke me up.
(28:17):
And the next day I was didn'twant to hear, but I needed to
hear, and it kind of woke me up.
And the next day I was talkingto Andy about it and we kind of
took a look in the mirror andsaid, yeah, we've been patting
ourselves on the back a littletoo much here, and a person that
I know and I've known sincechildhood, who's a very, very
dynamic guy and a good, honestman, but he's not a yes man, he
kind of woke us up and westarted moving in those
directions.
(28:37):
One of them was real estate,purchasing the proper piece of
real estate, and that really gotus going and it led us to the
building we're in right noweventually, which is exactly
what we needed.
That's the thing is.
Don't surround yourself withyes men.
If you want to be a truevisionary, a true entrepreneur,
look past the yes men, Surroundyourself with honest people.
(29:00):
As I say, we were in a teammeeting yesterday and it was
very interesting because I wasprepping for this podcast here
today.
I made a special effort to seehow people agree, disagree, how
things are brought up and youknow what?
We had a lot of agreement andwe had a lot of disagreement in
that meeting and in the end Ithink we came up with a really
(29:20):
good solution.
We're 10 years into ownershipand operations of this company
that has now grown into sixalmost seven locations now and I
think we're doing well.
But we've completely revampedour marketing program.
And the thing is, our marketingprogram has actually been an
award-winning marketing program.
We've been recognizedrepeatedly over the years via
(29:43):
the Massachusetts BroadcastersAssociation, and several other
legitimate organizations haveawarded us some of their top
awards in marketing.
And yet we're revamping itbecause we know we're growing
bigger and in a differentdirection than we used to be,
and that's the benefit of notsurrounding yourself with yes
(30:05):
men.
You know we have some goodconsultants that we work with.
We have a lot of radio peoplethat we work with, and that's
who was in at this meetingyesterday and it went well.
So I think what we're doing iswe're positioning our company
for a bigger growth and a largercurve than we've ever had, and
you can't do that with yes men.
Being a visionary is one thing,but bringing other people who
(30:27):
have visionary skills into theteam is also very important.
Chris (30:32):
Do you want to touch a little bit on being a visionary.
So what about the idea that notall visions come to fruition?
So at some point you mightrealize it was a great vision,
it was a great try, but it's notquite working out for you.
So you had that experience.
I'm sure you've had thatexperience at Cape Cod.
Dennis (30:45):
I would say I've had that.
If you accomplish all of yourgoals, you're not setting the
bar high enough right?
Haven't we all had goals thatfell short or just fell flat?
It doesn't mean you failed.
I remember one marketingattempt at some printed material
.
It seemed to be good on paper,it seemed to hit our target
(31:05):
market and it didn't.
We ran it for six months.
We weren't getting the results.
You know what?
You scrap it.
Okay, we set goals for ourmarketing program and we want to
generate X amount of revenue orX amount of phone calls or hits
on the website, whatever it is,and you can't tell in the first
month.
You know, branding takes yearsand years and it comes out of
(31:29):
repeated marketing efforts.
And that one in particular thatI can think about it just fell
flat and after six months I wasspending, I think, $2,500 a
month on this.
I pulled it back in and I putit into additional at that time,
I think was radio advertising,because we were killing it on
our radio advertising.
Anybody that has owned and builta company and grown a company
(31:53):
that is continuing to grow, atleast to some degree, is a bit
of a visionary, because youalmost have to be to break
through that first $1 millionceiling.
Only 7% of all businesses everbreak $1 million for a year, and
I think it's 5% of allbusinesses 1 in 20, ever has
(32:14):
back-to-back million-dollaryears.
So the first time you break amillion, you do it again the
next year.
You are now in the 5% ofbusiness ownership, you are a 95
percenter.
And then but those are the onesthat now say all right, I want
to get to 1.5.
I want to get to 2 million.
How do I continue to grow whenall of my competitors are, let's
(32:36):
say, running $300,000 to$600,000 a year operations and I
just broke the million-dollarmark?
And now you're on that road toreally become an entrepreneur,
because now you've got to figureout how we get to $2 million.
You already broke the rules.
Nine out of 10 of yourcompetitors are smaller shops
(32:56):
and you're the big dog.
How do I get to that next level?
How do I get to 2 million?
And then that's when you hitthis business growth model,
because no one's ever been therebefore, nobody in your region
has ever built a $5 million ayear home service company in
your field.
And you don't know.
Like how many trucks do I need?
How many?
How much square footage do Ineed of warehouse?
(33:18):
You know you're in therestaurant business and you're't
know like how many trucks do Ineed how many?
How much square footage do Ineed of warehouse?
You know you're in therestaurant business and you're
killing it.
You know, especially duringCOVID, things got kind of tough.
And yet you know, one of mycustomers down here on the Cape
Cod is Seafood Sam's and theyabsolutely blew the lid off it
during COVID because they had aplan that no one else had True
visionaries, these guys I don'tknow if you've ever been to
(33:39):
Seafood Sam's, but the food isgood.
The owners are brilliant,hardworking blue collar guys,
but they've found the secret andthey've done really well.
Covid was a growth year forthem.
Chris (33:51):
These guys did really well, yeah, there's some
interesting COVID stories likethat.
There's one story actually fromWrigley Gum.
I don't know if you knew howWrigley Gum Company, now that we
know today, comes from thisbaking powder company, and this
(34:23):
enormous pivot that he made andin a single year turned the
company around went in acompletely different direction.
Dennis (34:29):
So when you asked about failures and goals that were
missed and how do you rebound, Ithink I have, on any given day,
about 10 metrics in my world.
You know some of them is saleswithin this company, some of his
gross sales in this company,that there's so many metrics.
You know, every month there'smetrics and I would say if I can
(34:52):
hit five of those metrics,that's good.
If I fall short on two and thenthree just don't occur or don't
change at all, that's a goodmonth.
You're never going to hit ahome run every single time.
But how about a goal without atimeline?
A goal without a metric is adream.
A goal without a timeline or ametric is nothing more than a
(35:13):
dream.
So set realistic goals, setchallenging goals and listen if
you miss.
You miss it just means maybeyou set the goal too high or
maybe you hit a bump in the roador a wrench got thrown in the
way and it slowed you down alittle bit.
But reestablish your goals.
We had a rough year duringCOVID year 2020.
We still grew, but it was asmall, small amount and I was
(35:37):
kind of disappointed.
We had a shutdown for threeweeks, from March 23rd to like
April 15th we opened back upagain.
We were having a good year.
Then one of my coworkers gotCOVID and the CDC protocol back
then was shut it down for twoweeks.
So we shut it down and we losttwo more weeks.
In the end we had a growth year, but only by a small, small
(35:58):
amount, like two to 3%, realsmall.
The following year we boomedbecause we reestablished that we
are still a growing company andwe kind of grew almost for two
years because we almostflatlined for that one year.
So we had a big, big year andthen we just went back to our
normal growth pattern.
Covid was just one of thosehurdles that we didn't
(36:20):
anticipate at the beginning of2020.
And we dealt with it.
I think COVID helped us.
I remember in the verybeginning this is kind of
interesting I think In thebeginning of COVID around
mid-March, when the governor ofMassachusetts started shutting
things down and the economy wasjust going right down the tubes,
I was in a meeting with one ofmy radios, or three of my radio
(36:42):
stations.
They all operate out of the samebuilding.
It was a Codcom here on CapeCod and I advertised on three of
their four radio stations andas I was finishing up making a
couple of radio ads.
I was coming down out of thestudio and Tim, the general
manager, asked me to sit in on ameeting, which I did, and at
the end of the meeting I didn'treally say anything, but they
(37:04):
were talking about, I mean,restaurants were just pulling
their ads because restaurantswere closing.
The auto industry, whichprobably accounts for 20% of the
radio station's advertisingdollars.
They pulled the plug.
I mean they lost more than halfof their advertisers.
And when I got back to theoffice, my accountant, my banker
(37:25):
, all said these PPP loans.
Chris (37:27):
I think are available.
Dennis (37:29):
And my wife asked me about that and I said call the
bank, look into it.
We don't really need the money,but look into what it's all
about.
Because my accountant and mybanker each mentioned it and I
said if you have to spend morethan 30 minutes, we're not doing
it.
And we didn't do it.
What we did do, I probably wasadvertising on 10 radio stations
.
At the time I called all thestation owners and managers, all
(37:52):
my people that I knew, and Iknew they were going through
some tough times.
So what I did was I offered topurchase additional radio spots
and I asked them what can yougive me for a rate on these
radio spots?
And they actually gave me.
I was already dropping X amountin the radio and they gave me
(38:14):
almost the same amount for 15%.
So I actually doubled my radiofootprint for only 15% more
money.
And we signed like three-yearcontracts.
So as COVID was ongoing, we hada bigger footprint out there
and the following year they heldthe same price for the same
(38:35):
amount.
Now we're done with COVID.
It's behind us.
But I got a massive, massivemarketing footprint out there
and I'm paying about 55% 60% ofwhat the going rate was, and it
carried me into the followingyear.
So COVID we were able to turnCOVID into a bonus for us
(38:55):
because a lot of my competitorsthey couldn't get aluminum, they
were in the gutter business.
They could not get aluminum.
My wife was running ourinventory system at the time and
we were dealing with warehousesfrom all over New England to
Perth and by New Jersey toColony, new York.
We were driving all over.
We had to do the drivingbecause the trucking strike was
(39:17):
shutting down the trucks so wewere working twice as hard for
normal growth.
But we did it.
We built up our advertising andour marketing footprint.
We also went from probablywarehousing maybe $30,000,
$35,000 worth of inventory tomaybe $150,000.
(39:37):
Because whenever we could getit we just overbought.
It's aluminum.
It has no shelf life, itdoesn't go bad.
So again, looking ahead, lookingas far ahead as we could see,
my wife came to the conclusionthat we need to overstock on
inventory and we did.
We actually had a couple offranchises at the time and if
(39:58):
they're going to run short wewant to cover them, make sure
that they can still get theirwork done.
I had competitors calling me upasking to buy some of my stock
and I said I just can't sell itto you.
And they were offering anything, anything I'll pay whatever you
want.
And I just flat out and I knowthese guys, some of them are
friends and I said I can't do it.
I not only have my ownoperation, but I got two
(40:21):
franchisees that are dependingon me if they can't get their
inventory.
And you know, we established anew platform, raised the bar on
the amount of inventory, raisedthe bar on the amount of
marketing dollars and we'vestill adhered to what we learned
during COVID.
Chris (40:41):
Yeah, so it's kind of a reoccurring theme.
We're touching on this in thelast couple of podcasts as well.
There's periods of times whereeverything looks pretty bad.
Everybody else is panicking,but real visionaries they keep
their focus, keep their eye onthe ball and they can actually
do well in these times Not totouch on the Postum cereal
company again, but they were inthe cereal business and when the
wars hit World War I, world WarII the government took all the
wheat, all the sugar too, allthe sugar.
(41:03):
So they're out of sugar.
So how are they going to makemoney?
Wow, the way they made money isthey still realized that after
the wheat is harvested you stillhave to mill it.
So they bought all the millingcompanies.
So that's how Post andKellogg's and all these people
ended up milling their own wheatand things like that, and they
made a ton of money doing itduring the war, because now
they're milling grain for thegovernment and getting paid to
(41:25):
do that.
So these are the sort of thingswhen we keep touching on this
point.
Visionaries can make money inall sorts of different
environments because they justhave this view of.
They don't let a down economyor whatever get in their way.
Dennis (41:36):
Well, yeah, chris, I mentioned before I've got maybe
10 metrics every month that Icould look at Growth of this
profitability here, marketingbudget over here.
This is a lot of metrics that Ipersonally can use to measure
success within the walls of thebuilding that we're in right
here.
And as I look back at the crashof 08, remember Y2K, followed
(42:00):
by 9-11?
One thing after another, theyreally disrupted our lifestyles
and our economies.
Go back, to, chris, when wewere kids We've talked about it.
In the 70s, we impeached apresident.
There was double-digitinflation in the 70s.
The oil embargo oh you couldn'tget gas in 73 or 78.
Right, if you want to shut aneconomy down, take away the gas.
(42:23):
Then you get into the 80s,which was very good, very good
economy.
We got a little bit spoiled bythe early 90s.
Bank closures on homes werestarting to kick in.
There was the crash of 96.
Then we had 9-11.
We had Y2K, the crash of 08.
There's always always going tobe stuff out there.
There's always going to beinterruptions to the economic
(42:45):
process and you want to be readyfor these.
You want to be as prepared asyou can.
One thing we talk about a lothere, chris, is be low debt or
debt-free.
If you're debt-free and yourcompany's debt-free, you're a
little bit bulletproof.
You're kind of insulated fromsome of the things that can
knock some of your competitorsout.
And if you come into a thinglike COVID I know one of my
(43:09):
competitors and I have afriendly relationship with a lot
of my competitors.
I just called them up one dayand I said look, I want to thank
you for sending me a lot ofthis work.
I'm getting phone and they'reyounger than me by 20 years and
(43:39):
I've known the family and theysay we know you're going to take
good care.
We don't even want to be in thebusiness anymore.
We can't get aluminum.
We're pivoting and we're goingin this direction.
We're sending you our customers.
So when you get a COVID or acrash of 08, anything like that
occurs, there's a likelihoodthat if you survive and a lot of
(43:59):
your competitors don't, you'regoing to pick up their work.
It's an opportunity for you, asthe business owner, to take
advantage of.
Yeah, it's kind of areoccurring theme here.
So let's wrap this up, chris.
I want to just kind of throwthese couple of ideas we've
talked about.
Remember if two people arethinking exactly the same thing,
you can be sure that only oneof them is doing the thinking.
(44:22):
Next is a goal without atimeline.
A goal without a metric isnothing more than a dream.
And finally, if you'reaccomplishing all of your goals,
you're not setting the bar highenough.
Yeah, that's a good one.
And with that, thanks forlistening.
No, monkeys were harmed in themaking of this podcast.
All right, we'll see you nexttime.
Chris (44:44):
Thank you for tuning in to Monkey Business Radio.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please make sure to subscribe,
like and follow us wherever youget your podcasts.
It really helps us reach moreaspiring entrepreneurs like you,
and if you got a question ortopic you'd like us to cover,
leave a comment or reach out tous on social media.
We'd love to hear your thoughtsand keep the conversation going
.
Don't forget to leave us afive-star review if you found
(45:07):
the episode valuable, and makesure to share it with anyone who
might benefit from our tips andstories.
We'll see you next time.
This podcast is produced byAmerican Gutter Monkeys LLC.
Build real wealth throughbusiness ownership.
For details, visit us atAmericanGutterMonkeyscom.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.