September 8, 2025 • 51 mins
Cruz Gamboa, MBA is a former GE Corporate Executive and a seasoned Scaling Up business coach with a passion for helping ambitious founders, CEOs and mid-market companies, who are ready to think beyond incremental progress, increase profits, boost valuation, and drive meaningful impact to 10x their value and reach.
Cruz has lived in multiple countries and speaks 3 languages: Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
He is the author of Drive From Within.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
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Cruz has lived in multiple countries and speaks 3 languages: Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
He is the author of Drive From Within.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thanks everybody for joining in today. I am Kevin Haleanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio. We're
on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on
Talk four that's the number four TV dot com in
addition to Facebook, and that's at Winning Business Radio, and
of course we're available after the live show on whatever
platform your favorite is to watch and listen to podcast
(01:15):
content that's YouTube by Heart Radio, Spotify, Apple and the
list goes on the mission of winning business radio in TV.
As regular viewers and listeners, no excuse me is to
offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes
of others, right to learn best practices. Those are the
how tos, the what tos, the what not toos, and
(01:35):
I hope to be challenged and to be inspired by
the successes of others. Who are those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know,
virtually every successful person that I've had a chance to
talk to has had some form of failure in their
lives and careers. So I say it every week. While
we all have to get our knee skinned once in
(01:56):
a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing
major surgery. Endeavor to learn from history so we don't
repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career
equipping businesses to grow, and that's from solopreneurs to small
and medium sized businesses all the way up to the
Fortune fifty. I've seen a lot of those companies win
and to varying degrees. I've seen some fail I've had
the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest
(02:17):
performing people around and with some of those that probably
should have found other professions. So in my own businesses,
I've had lots of success, but some failures too, So
I like to think I've learned a lot. So you're
gonna hear from me, but mostly you're going to hear
from those guests. And today I'm excited to have Cruiz Gamboa.
He's founder and chief strategist and CFO of Ascend Growth Ventures.
(02:39):
Here's his bio. Cruz Gamboa is an NYU MBA holds
a bachelor's in Economics for the minor in Business from UT.
Austin hookoem Horns is a former CEO, corporate executive, and
a season scaling up business coach with a passion for
helping ambitious CEOs and mid market companies increase profits, boost valuation,
and drive me meaningful impact. With deep expertise in corporate finance,
(03:03):
strategy and executive leadership, Cruise has served in pivotal roles,
most notably as Regional CFO for ge Gas Power Latin America,
where he led high growth initiatives that broke records and
set new benchmarks. Today, Cruz combines the power of the
scaling Up framework with exponential thinking in decades of CFO
experience to help businesses scale with clarity and confidence. He's
(03:26):
the author of Drive from Within, a guide for leaders
seeking purposeful, sustainable success without the chaos. At the core
of Cruise's approach is the scaling Up methodology by Verne Harness.
Some of you are familiar, many probably are, and that
enables teams to streamline operations, align around strategy, improve cash flow,
and eliminate roadblocks to growth. For visionary founders ready to
(03:49):
think beyond incremental progress, Cruz also brings in the bold
principles of Exponential Organizations EXO by Sealia Mismail excuse me
empowered towering businesses to harness technology, automation and disruptive models
to ten x their value and reach. Cruise is a
committed not convicted committed We both should be convicted committed
(04:14):
environmental advocate and renewable energy investor. He's a certified life
coach and has been coaching and mentoring high performers for
two decades. While in the corporate world, He's live in
multiple companies and speaks three languages, Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
When not working, He's an enthusiastic reader, often drawn to
leadership and personal development books. He's also a studio recording
(04:34):
artist with songs on Spotify. He's passionate about tennis and
snowboarding and enjoying an active and creative lifestyle. And of
course he's a dedicated father of two and he resides
in Framingham, Massachusetts. Cruise, Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Thank you so much, Cavin, and thank you for having
me here. And I'm really excited to be here and
have this conversation with you.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Mite.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Thanks you for that intro that was It always is
always an opportunity to reflect on my I hear these
things by, you know, from other people's mouths, so I
appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
All right, Just quickly, I want to talk a little
bit about backward First, just tell us about your two children.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
My two children, Maximo and Abrielle. So Maximo is seventeen.
He is now a senior in high school.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
He's crushing it.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
He's doing really well in school and he wrestles, and yeah,
he made the varsity team. Even though it was like
his second year into the program. So he's doing really
well in abrill. She's going to college at Bentley and
she also crushes it.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
She showed me her report card and it was really good,
and I was really.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Proud of her because, you know, when she was in
high school, we have we have a little questions on
how good of a student she was going to be.
But she turned out to be an amazing athlete.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
So yeah, excellent. Good for her and good for you too.
So tell us where you grew up.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
I grew up. Look, I grew up in Venezuela. I
was more in Venezuela, and then I left when I
was seventeen, came to college the US. Uh, and then
after that, I you know, I joined first Unilever and
then You're Electric, and I worked across Latin America here
in the States, and yeah, it's been sort of my
my sandbox between some places in Latin America and here
(06:20):
in the in the US.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Well, we're gonna touch on those. What were your early
interests so high school, early college?
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Honestly, it was I was a computer nerd, to be
honest and uh, and a musician, so that those are
those were the two things that really inspired me.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
I I played.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
I played golf a lot as well, at least three
times a week. I got to be relatively good eleven handicaps,
So I mean that's not great, but it was.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
It was good for me for now after you know,
when in.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
My sort of my adolescent years, when I when I
hit like sixteen, it's just it was not.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
So cool to play golf. I had other interests. Yeah,
but yeah, for a while it kept me going.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
So my two sons, both of them had a little
overlap and location, but they both had a chance to
either caddy or one of them actually ran to help
run a pro shop and they got the golf a
lot too. So my golf game is not what you
consider a game, you know. I can go by the
role of you don't have to be good, just don't
be slow.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
That's right, And it's interesting. I played from time to
time and I still have it a little bit. But yeah,
I wouldn't trust myself to go in a tournament.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
So unless it's best ball, and you can't good for everybody,
all right, So why did you choose Venezuelan kid? Why
did you choose to go to U T Austin and
We know you majored in economics and business.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
So why U T Austin and why that focus.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Look, at the time, I had friends and family in Austin,
and I figure that if I was already making a
lead and uh, you know, leave my family behind, it
would probably make sense to be out of place that
I knew other people, and I had a little bit
of a network, as you know, as you know me,
and I'm big on family, so I figured it would
(08:13):
be it would be best for me to be closer
to family. And also, by the way, I visited U
T the UT campus, and I just fell in love
with it. I was just like, I'm gonna come here.
I already knew when I when I went to visit it,
I knew that I was going to get in. So
I was really determined to go there.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
City but small city, not New York, right, although you
ended up in New York, but city small city offers
a ton I mean you kept it weird, I'm assuming, yes, exactly, Okay,
and you got to see.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
It's not that weird anymore.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Actually, yeah, it's definitely grown. It's definitely grown. So Unilever
was soon after college.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
It was just soon after college. Uh, yeah, I had
I had a job. He was like I think he
was like twenty four hour today.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
I was just working so much.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I vaguely like, when I think about it, I vaguely
remember those days. I was literally like from eight to
like ten pm every day, just closing the books financial analysis,
next year's plan, profitability analysis. I was they really got
a lot from me during those times.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Well, good news is in your early twenties, you don't
need a lot exactly. Yeah, yeah, you just go on
films all the time, all right. When and what motivated
When did you and what motivated you getting your MBA.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
It was kind of like I was already working at
g Capital, and I I was had just left NBC
because I worked at NBC Universal for a while in
New York City, and I just felt that I needed
to I needed a little plus in my sort of
in my career, in my sort of in my in
(09:58):
my education as well. Felt that I mean, I went, uh,
I went to school for economics with a business minor,
and I just felt that there were I need a
little bit more. I needed to learn more about like
private equity, about evaluation and stuff like that. And I
I felt that n y U was probably one of
the best schools. Actually, I was really lucky that I
was there in New York City and I and I
(10:20):
got to I got to apply and got in. It
was the only the only school that I applied to
for for.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
An MBA, to be honest, and I got in. So
it was it was really good, outstanding. So big question,
and you can think about it, but what was your
biggest takeaway from getting the NBA. Wow, maybe that's even plural.
I know that's a big question.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Yeah, it's a big question because back then, the sort
of the biggest takeaway was just really getting.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
To know uh the professors.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
I meant, some really amazing professors, and I just I
also made some friendships that I still i'm in touch with.
And to be honest, I think now when I look
in hindsight, I think it's probably more interesting to when
you look at things in perspective, because at the moment,
I was just really excited to begin an m b A.
(11:11):
It was all about how I fell. Now and now
I have this title, right, But now I look, I
look back in time, and I think I learned a
ton for sure.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
But I think interestingly enough, I think it's really the experience.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Of going through some real, real life business problems and
and that that is to me, the best education that
you can have, right just and I think General Electric
was a great place for that. It was I was
surrounded by really top notch leaders and peers and I
(11:50):
and I learned a ton from them.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
So it, yes, it helped me.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
It augmented my my skill sets, my expertise, if I
have to put you know, sort of like so where
I said, what is the one thing that it did
for me was confidence?
Speaker 6 (12:03):
Oh good, that's good. Love that.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
All right?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Tell us about the position at Unilever, and this is
building kind of your backstory, right, how do you how
do you get how you got.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
Excuse me to where you are?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
And when we get past the break here in another
few minutes, not in a hurry, but people will understand
better how you're able to do the work you do.
Tell us what you learned, uh at well, describe the
role and tell us what you learned at Unilever.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
At Unilever, I was they called it a marketing accountant,
which it sounds kind of like an oxymoron if you
ask me. But basically what I did, I was just
thinking the sort of financial analyst for product lines, and
I had I think I had back then.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
I had Personal Care and detergents.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
So I was the guy with the most expertise and
most knowledge on the financial aspects of all of the
brands in those two categories. And and it seems like
it's it wouldn't be a lot of work, but it's, man,
it was. It was a lot of work because you know,
we had to know basically.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
All of the details of all of the ingredients, the
cost of.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Every ingredient, you know, aggregating the cost and like you know,
looking at the pricing, looking at the competition, analyzing which squs.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Were more profitable versus not.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Looking at the different channels, you know, because I mean
there were you know, there's a channel segmentation for when
you're in the distribution industry, especially for personal care, so
you know, if you have a tremendous amount of segmentation
in the channels that you sell into.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
So understanding all of that and aggregating over.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
All the data and being able to provide management and
and the and the sort of the product leaders with
intelligence on how to position the brands was was uh,
you know, quite an undertaking and that was my responsibility.
I I I started. I was very junior at the time.
(14:11):
I had a couple of mentors that sort of like
taught me what I needed to know, and then I
kind of like took off on my own.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
But yeah, it was it was super interesting.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
I mean, I still a lot of the stuff that
I applied today, especially when it comes to understanding profitability
and just getting sort of just doing market analysis and
decision making, decision making one distributions and all that. It
comes from that from those days. All the stuff that
I learned back then. Yeah, I'm sure you have.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
I've seen companies that are focused on an area and
they don't realize it's one of their least profitable items.
There's and then they look over, you know, with with guidance,
they look at another product line and realize how profitable
it is, but they're not focused on selling it. So yeah,
that's that's important, all right. Now the ge how did
you How did you land the position at g the
first one? And you were in Latin America at the
(15:01):
time playing golf.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
There you go, that's an awesome Yeah, I was in
the golf course, I you know, I I went to
play on it by myself and they say, hey, do
you wanna do you want to play with this guy?
Speaker 5 (15:14):
And I was just like sure.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
He was the CEO of GE Lighting at the time,
and he you know, there was an operation there in
my in my city in Venezuela back then, because I
was there for a couple of years, and so we
you know, we just started playing together and he told
(15:36):
me what he did.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I told him he didn't embarrass him that badly. Apparently,
Uh no, no, he was okay.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
I still read him, but he was okay. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
So towards the end, he said, you know what, I
think this was a great conversation and I think you'll
be great for you will be an amazing talent for
the f m P, which is a financial management program.
And I was just like, sure, let's let's talk. So
we exchanged information. That was on a Saturday here on Thursday.
(16:07):
On Thursday next week, I was interviewing with him. Then
the week after I interviewed with somebody else.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And then I was in, all right, that's a good take.
Time to take our first commercial break. That was your
first stint at GE you went elsewhere. We're going to
get to that story, amen, and ended up back so
but everybody will be back in about one minute with
Cruiz Gamble.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
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Speaker 3 (17:42):
All right, we are back with Cruz gamboa before I
jump in, just so the audiences. No, we're going to
be proud to re engage one of our key sponsors
will be Best in Wealth Management in the week's coming.
So I'm excited about that, all right, So you had
a two significant position manufacturing finance manager but also leading
(18:03):
the digitation digitalization of order sales and all the back end,
and you went through six sigma also.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah, So back then when GE was going through the
whole six sigma campaign, right, it was like everybody had
to be.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
A green belt or a black belt and all of that.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
And I had the opportunity to basically do this digitization
project for all of the order sales and report and
reporting for the g Industrial Systems business. And it was
a huge undertaking because back then, I mean I'm talking
this is a long time ago, two decades ago probably,
(18:48):
and I you know, reports were not as automated. Everything
was done to excel. It was just very manual, and
it was very cumbersome, right, And the problem was that
not only did we we back then industrial systems was
a highly a very complicated business because he had I
(19:09):
want to say, like sixty plans.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
I don't recall the exact number, but it.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Was a ton of plants and we needed to get
like every day orders and sales numbers from sixty different
plants across the globe every day so that we could
actually deliver to the CEO of the company. So it was,
it was it was quite an undertaking back then. Today
(19:33):
those things would be easy, but back.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
Then it was. It was.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
It was a ton of work, and it was something
that I personally, I think, I'm very proud because nobody
believed that we were going to pull it off. And
he turned out that over time all of that data,
you know, became completely digitized with designed what we call
the digital Cockpit, which was basically like a command center
(19:57):
for orders and sales information. No only for the CEO,
but now for the middle management and basically for anybody
who wanted to see sort of the orders and sales
information for the business. So that was that was a
big project. And I was kind of like the the
the project manager, not from the technical side, but from
(20:19):
sort of the the SME, the subject matter esper exper side.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So yeah, well we'll get to this in a second.
But them had to have been success and good visibility
because you landed back at GE But tell us about
NBC Universal for about two and a half years at
Dirty Rock.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Yes, so I so this is right around the time
when the NBC NBC was acquiring Universal and and you
know they were there, they had a shortage of finance
leaders in the in the new business so I had
(20:55):
an opportunity to work there in the business development group
as a finance manager, and I thought that was very
interesting and it was sort of aligned with what I
wanted to do next.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
I wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
More transactional work and be working on you know, sort
of the business development side of of GE. So it
was it was a cool transition for me. I we
incubated a couple of projects organically, we worked a lot
on on some potential acquisitions, and I got to see
a lot of you know, the new technologies, which are
(21:28):
obviously they're not new anymore, yeah, obsolete. But back then,
for example, one of the things that we were doing
was to try to get the NBC sort of channel,
a version of it on a cell phone. So this
is I'm actually dating myself, So this is back then.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
It used to this was oh four six yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
It was a long time ago, so twenty years ago.
So yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
So but back then that that was a big undertaking.
To be able to actually like watch television on your
on your cell phone, that was unheard of. They were iPhones, yes,
I mean I yes, they may have been, but they
weren't what they are today.
Speaker 8 (22:12):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, there's actually I have a funny story about that
because it was two thousands, around two thousand and three,
two thousand and four, and I was working with this guy,
Salil Davis, I think it was his name, and uh,
and I told him, you know what, I actually have
an MP three player. Wouldn't it be cool to have
an MP three player that was also your phone? And
(22:33):
he's like, and he said he was ahead of technology
development Business development group.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
He's like, that will never work.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Because every time you try to put two things that
do different things into one component, it just doesn't from
a technology standpoint that we don't do that.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
And like six.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Steve jobs, you know, bounce the whole iPhone and I,
you know, I never got to say gotcha.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
He might be listening, so you never know. We watched
my wife and I watched this show called Murdoch Mysteries.
It's a Canadian broadcast and it's set in the late
eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, and they do a
lot of jokes like that it'll never fly. So it's like,
imagine if we could all be connected by some they
didn't use the word computer because you'll think about the time.
(23:22):
But they would bring in characters like Tesla and Edison
and you know, inventors of the day. And this detective's
way ahead of his time. He's like an inventor himself.
But they they foretell things humorously and it's always yeah,
never mind, it'll never work. All right, So you landed
back at GE How did that happen? And then you've
had some really progressive roles during that That was almost
(23:47):
twenty I mean eight and a half and then another
nine years, right, I counted the first eight and a
half as in Connecticut and Latin America and then Gie Verona.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
I wait to talk about that.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Vernova, Vernova. So yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
So like after NBC, I went to G Capital and
and I love G Capital. My experience in there was
the best. I learned so much. I used to be
an underwriter back then, so my responsibility was to just
basically look at different credit applications and work with the
UH the sales team, to just shepherd all of the
(24:20):
different credit application processes, take them to the credit committees,
get them approved, structure, close funded, and then monitored the
credits after they were closed. So Yeah, so that was
tremendous opportunity.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
For context what at least then probably more now, But
what what was the what were the revenues of G
Capital that time? They were into everything metal. Oh my,
they got anything.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
I don't recall, but I got to say it was
like seventy billion dollars. It's like ridiculous. It was a
huge amount of Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
It was. I mean, I want.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
To say the G Capitals was one of the largest finkos.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
In the world then, I mean, I think so amazing. Yeah,
so you came back as a VP structured finance on
the writer middle market cash flow. Long that's that was
my reste right, and then managing director actually that was
Connecticut and then Latin America managing director of capital markets.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
They want to bring you back.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
So so speaking of like one thing leads to another, right,
So I you know, I was six years into G
Capital and you know sort of Latin America was opening
up again and she was making a huge bed to
grow the Latin region, and they asked me, given my background,
(25:42):
if I wanted to be redeployed back to Latin America
to basically be in charge of developing the capital markets team,
and you know, initially it was it was not the
I mean I was reporting to smaller guy, but eventually
I got you know, I became the sort.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Of the league guy.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
But the what we did was basically to secure capital,
whether that was dead or equity for big projects where
GE had its technology. And mostly what I ended up
doing was helping the UH sort of the gas turbine
into a gastourbine business because they were the ones that
required the most capital.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
It was the biggest projects.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
And sort of my marquee deal in in that role
was closing an eight hundred and fifty million dollar deal
in Argentina which took a year and a half to
from like start to finish to close, and it was
one of the UH. It was one of the deals
that actually got me promoted to executive because again one
(26:47):
of those things where people were like that will never close,
love it, love it, and it.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
Did just tell Cruise what he can't do.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
Right, I think you know what, I'm starting to see
the pattern.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Kevin, Yeah, yeah, all right, I have an interesting question
at least on the role decarbonization strategy that's a much
more carbon footprint related environmental concern correctly.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
Well, so here's what happened.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
So this is more reason right, So fast forward till
an hour twenty one.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Yeah, four years ago. Yeah, I you know, I had
the opportunity to basically help the g.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
GUS Power Systems business to develop the hydrogen and carbon
capture business for the Americas, basically in North America and
Latin America, but mostly to be honest between you and I,
it was mostly the US at the time, and my
responsibility was to take the existing technologies that we had
(27:55):
and just put a commercial framework on how to sell
them and find projects and clients that would be interested
in in adopting those technologies so that we can decarbonize
the fleet because the I guess I thought at the
time was that we wanted to make the gas turbine
fleet as green as possible so that they could continue
(28:17):
to run in the long run, because you know, like
like any other turbine manufacturing business, you have to waste
of making money. You make money by selling the actual
turbine and by servicing it. Right, So so you had
a best interest in in in staying sort of green
and keeping the gas turbines out of the The site of.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Environmentalists that's right, that's right, right.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
So so yeah, so so that I was doing that,
I was. I did it for like a single a year,
and then I then I went to I you know,
I went to a startup and also in actually also
in carbon capture. So it was very it was an
technology that was very much in line with what I
had been doing at General Electric.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
All right, we're going to take our second break, and
then we're going to get back into how you decided
you wanted to move into coaching and developing others for
their scalability.
Speaker 6 (29:15):
Okay, we'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 8 (29:38):
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Speaker 2 (30:12):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helenett.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
That's my ten year old headshot.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
By the way, how did you so, there's a there's
a question we ended with we'll start here. How did
you know you wanted to start working with others? And
you had been doing mentoring, I know, during gees as
an executive, et cetera. But how did you know you
wanted that to be your full time passion.
Speaker 5 (30:50):
Well, that's a great that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
So initially, like when I decided to start my own business,
I was doing mostly just kind of like the same
things that I was doing before, just the CFO work,
and I was doing some M and A as well
on the cell side. And so in the context of
(31:15):
me working with small businesses, I realized that it was
kind of like easy for me to sort of see
what they were not seeing because you know, I've well,
first of all, I worked on more mature businesses in
a corporation, which is, you know, already has processes and
(31:36):
everything kind of works to some extent, so I knew
what a good process looked like, okay. And I also
realized that all of my financial background that I kind
of took for granted was just very very valuable and
useful for founders in sort of the one to ten
(31:57):
million dollars range. Really, the reason being is that a
lot of founders just are really they have really great ideas.
They are probably good at sales, good at product, but
maybe they're not good at you know, finance, and they
don't have to be. Not everybody has to be a
waste of finance, right, But I figured that there was
(32:19):
a lot of value that I could add on the
finance side to these founders. And then additionally, I started
noticing something that even caught my attention even more is
that a lot of the problems that most of most
founders are facing between one and ten million dollars in
revenue are really mindset related. And this was actually fascinated,
(32:43):
fascinating to me because I had been I've been investing
a lot of time, and I've done a lot of
like coaching and programs on personal development, and I figured
there was an opportunity to actually help founders by bringing
these three things together, finance, mindset, and strategy. And typically
(33:09):
when you actually when you talk to certain coaches, some
coaches are more on the sort of the mindset side,
you know, others are more like maybe on the strategic
side or maybe on the tactical side. I'll coach you
on how to be a better sales leader, for example,
if you know anybody like that. But but but what
(33:30):
I've noticed, and I know it to be absolutely the truth,
is that most business problems are mindset problems.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
I mean, you can call it which air way you want.
But if you're if you're facing.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
A business problem and you think there's no other solution
and you think that you are risked, you know, constrained
by these things that you you know, identified as problems
in your mind, the minute you change the way that
you look at the problem, the problem that you're looking
at change and you find a solution. So if that
(34:02):
is not mindset, then I don't know what is mindset.
But that's basically that was my observation.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
So I was going to add, if you think the
problem is unsolvable, you're right at first, right of right,
so you look at it.
Speaker 5 (34:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, So I figured there was a there was an
opportunity to bring those three things together and h and
make it more powerful and uh, And that's basically I mean,
I think we've talked, we've spoken about this before. I
developed my sort of my IP on top of the
scaling up harsh pology. Yeah, that's sort of my my
(34:37):
core framework. But I figured that that framework also needed
additional things like mindset and and sort of the the
financial sort of the financial insights to basically scaling a company.
And that's and specifically, I mean I would say that
this is more specifically for smaller companies because if you're
(34:59):
talk talking about scaling a three hundred million dollar company,
you a CUFO, you probably have good, good financial systems,
So the finance is no longer as important. Maybe there
are all aspects, but I'm talking specifically about my sort
of my ideal client profile, which is from one to
ten that is definitely a product in a way of
(35:23):
going to market that works for them.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
So in addition to mindset, well cover those three areas.
But I've heard you say that most founders get stuck
right when they reach between three and seven. Why is
that a tipping point three? Constrained theory? Okay, so constraint theory.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So basically, constraint theory says that process or in this case,
a business will grow until it reaches a constraint, and
then it will grow no further. Okay, it's the same thing.
When you are starting your business. You're in a you're
sort of in survival stage, right, You're a startup and
you're just trying to get to product market fit. You're
(36:03):
trying to just basically make gain client profitable.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
Yeah, become profitable.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
It leads all of the things that you know, maybe
attract people, hire people, build partnerships, build partnerships, all of
those things. You're focused on that, and then at some
point you have been you are the business, right, you have.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
Kind of like helpers around you that are helping you.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
But eventually you reach a point where that play is
no longer viable because why because you went from maybe
having ten clients to now you have one hundred and
fifty clients, and the processes that you came up when
you only had ten clients. They don't really scale when
you are like one hundred and fifty or two hundred clients,
(36:48):
and maybe they delivery right. It was easy to deliver
to ten clients, but if you have one hundred clients
that you need to delivering in different locations or different
products with different specifications, that's when things get stuck and
problems happen, and then most of your time then goes
from thinking about the strategy and the growth of the future.
(37:10):
You spend most of your time now in the weeks
trying to fix problems, and then because you're tied into
fixing the problems, you have no time to think about
how you know, who are the new talents that you
need to recruit or or who like, what is the
next thing for your company? What are the areas where
you need to improve because you're so into the details.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
And this is where you know.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
With my mentalology, what we do is basically try to
identify how to free you up in the first ninety days.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
So that's my mission in the.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
First ninety Dainty, Yeah, I want to make sure that
we create the space for you to be able to
take a step back so that we can actually start
thinking about the growth of your company, because if we
don't do that, then even if we do the work,
what's going to happen is that you're not going to
have time, you're not going to have the conviction, and
you're you know, we're not going to be able to
successfully implement all the things that we need to do
(38:05):
in order to get the company moving into the next level.
So it really requires a sort of a mindset shift
of going from what I call being a firefighter, okay,
and I don't mean that anotherrogatory fashion.
Speaker 5 (38:19):
It's just a tag from firefighter to architect, okay.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
So that's that's where we reactive to proactive, reactive to proactive.
So when you're an architect, you're you're creating systems. You know,
the systems kind of like run the processes. You have metrics,
You have a team that has a clear objective. They
have KPIs that they know they're being measured on. You
(38:46):
have execution rhythms, so that you know every week, every
month and requorder, you're revisiting the results, making changes, improving things.
You have a way to measure whether people are being
effective or not in their job and maybe have a
way to help them. So they can get to the
next level. All of those things is basically just putting processes.
(39:11):
Is the structure for running your company more smoothly and
in a way that requires less intervention from you, which
is that's what we.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
Want beyond the beyond the founder, right.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
Beyond the founder, because in the end, it doesn't mean
that you're like removing yourself from the business. What you
want to be is you want to be free to
be able to say, you know what, now my business
needs me here, you know, and like I need to
basically help the sales leader do whatever it is that
we need to do to double our sales, or now
it's I need to spend more time on the delivery
(39:46):
because if we fix that constraint on the delivery side,
we're going to be able to serve twice in the
number of the amount of clients. So these are the
kinds of things where you need to have that flexibility
and that sort of availability to be able to choose
what are the next steps and how do you best
allocate your time and uh and and also have planning
(40:10):
time for yourself for the business.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
So it's the.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Headspace and the time to be for example, creative. What
else could the company do. What are the soot products
and or services we could be offering that we're not. Now,
all right, you've identified six top areas of concern. Touch
on these briefly. Cash flow chaos you.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
Call it, oh Man cash floos.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
So you know how a lot of companies, well you
probably have listened to some of your clients in the
past where they are you know, they're running somewhat successful companies,
maybe two three million dollars, and they feel like they're
always cash strapped. Gosh is you know it's just died, okay?
And then sometimes they say, well, you know, clients are
(40:52):
not paying as well, you know they're not playing, you know,
not paying on time, or I'm having issues because of
the competition and all of those things. And I happen
to pin all of those excuses in the mindset sort
of a bin okay, because they are really mindset. Because
(41:13):
the minutage you change the offer or the way that
you deliver the business, or maybe the kind of clients
that you have, all of these issues can be solved.
Obviously not immediately, but with the intention to finding a
solution to a problem, you can create the conditions to
be able to have a business that generates better cash flow.
(41:34):
And I mean there's plenty of stories about businesses that
were like burning cash and they were like cash strapped.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
And then they make a change and then they became
you know, cash positive.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
So it is possible to do that, but it it
requires time and dedication, right, you need to go into
it and like put some thought into well, is these
kinds of clients or these kinds of products or these
types of products that are generating the issue And for
that you need to have the time and the uh
and the patients.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
To be able to go to the process of identifying.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
How where where are the areas that can be improved,
and then what are the things that you can do
to continue to retain the clients but in a different
capacity where they're you know, they they are worth much
more to you because they pay better outstanding.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
You touched on the CEO bottleneck. You want to touch
more on that the CEO bottleneck. Wow.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
So this is where we we.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Have the belief. Sometimes some founders have the belief that
their team is not good enough, that if they don't
fix the the issues in their in their company, nobody will,
and that they are the only individual that can that
can do so, and they have this what I call
(42:52):
kind of like this hero complex, Okay, And and when
that happens, it's really it's really easy to convince yourself
that that is that feels very true and that's the
only reality that makes sense. But the reality is that
if you really want to scale your company, you can
be in the center of every decision. It's just I mean,
(43:16):
if you want to put a name to it, that's
just physics, right, I mean, if you're in the middle
of everything, the system can only grow or can only
scale as you have the capacity to give yourself your time,
et cetera. And we all know that we are still
humans for now, right, and we have a limited capacity
in our time, in our brain power, and so it
(43:40):
becomes you can become the constrained for growth in your
own company.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
I watched my dad, as smart as he was, as
educated as he was, never take vacations. There was a
period of time where he just felt like he couldn't
step away from his company. He didn't equip anybody execution overload.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
Execution overload.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
So I would say for this one, it's when you basically,
when you have a team of people that are doing
processes that are broken, okay, And they are trying to
do the best they can with the processes that they have,
(44:23):
and eventually they start to break over and over again
to the point that it becomes a major point of
tension in the organization. And then nobody really knows sometimes
or sometimes you do know, but you don't know how
to fix it, okay, because again, to fix something, it
(44:43):
requires time. And if you don't have time, and if
you don't have enough capacity to be able to understand process,
map the process and make the changes, retrain the people,
give them a better install a better system, and do
the thing that you need to do in order to
make get better, then your execution continues to be capped
(45:05):
for as long as you don't fix this problem.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
All right, Hiring feels like a gamble.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Hiring feels like a gamble that happens, but you don't
have a system for hiring. And a lot of I
don't know if you've heard or you've experienced this, but
I've seen.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
A couple of client, former clients of mine. They were
just dep They just wanted people, warm bodies, the warm bodies,
right and uh, And there was no.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
Reflection about whether those individuals were aligned with their values
that the job, that they had all the capabilities required
to do the job at hand, and that that they
and also more importantly, like even if they brought them
into the organization, they didn't have a good onboarding system
(45:57):
to make sure that they were teed up or success
because when you hire somebody, it's not just getting them
into the company, it's just getting it's just also onboarding
them and getting them through the process so that they
know exactly what their job is. They have all the
right tools, and they have the authority to make the
decisions that they need to make in order to be
(46:18):
successful in their job. And if you don't equip equip
them with that, then then it's just it's I mean,
they're not going to be successful.
Speaker 5 (46:28):
That's really what it is.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
All right, sales and marketing plateau, and we have one
more we are almost out of time.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
Sales and marketing plateau is it's typically driven by what
we just discussed, the theory of constraints. Right, you know,
the play that you were running, the product that you
were selling. You know, eventually you you run out of
people to sell it to, or the market changes, or
the market changes, and uh, I mean, but it's it's
really it comes down to theory of constraint at the
(46:57):
end of the day.
Speaker 5 (46:58):
And uh, and once you figure.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
Out what about, what feature of what about the way
that you're going to market needs to change, and you
make the changes, then that's when you unlock the growth again.
Speaker 6 (47:09):
Last financial blind spot.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
Wow, I'll tell you something, and I'm sure you're going
to appreciate what I'm about to say, but I can
assure you that any business that you put in front
of me, or anybody.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
For that matter, if you really really.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Dig deep, you're going to find that is leaking cash somewhere.
It is almost an impossibility to find a financial a
business that is one hundred percent financially optimized. There's always
an opportunity to find either more cash or more profits.
For those who are committed to finding more cash and
(47:50):
more profits.
Speaker 5 (47:52):
Think about that, it's almost.
Speaker 6 (47:54):
Like, yeah, it's alarming.
Speaker 4 (47:56):
Almost rights, it's alarming because you're you're always we're constantly
leaving money on the table and and the and it's
just a lot of money or less money. But there's
always something that is being that can be done differently,
something that can be sold differently, something that can be
delivered differently, something that is being charged incorrectly in a place,
(48:20):
so we don't we can't see it. And what happens
is a lot of founders are looking at revenue, perhaps
gross profit and maybe overhead because they want to know
that they're not spending more than they're bringing in. Okay,
and that's it, and they just want to know that
they managed to a budget. But many times they don't
(48:43):
have the financial expertise to go deep to do product
analysis to understand so if there are optimizations on the
act side. You know, there's all these things, all these
different aspects of evaluating financials that most people miss. And
(49:05):
that's why I'm saying that most founders, I would say,
are flying blind.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
Well, I wish we had more time. In fact, I
will get you back the next probably after the first
of the year. But for now, who in the viewing
and listening audiences should reach out to you?
Speaker 6 (49:21):
And why.
Speaker 5 (49:23):
So?
Speaker 4 (49:24):
If you have revenues between one in ten million dollars
and you are a growth driven founder who want to
scale your company and are looking to partner with somebody
who can bring sort of expertise not only on financials,
but on strategy and also the energy of growth, which
(49:44):
is something that is cool to have around in your company.
That is the kind of founders that I want to
work with. And you know, if you want to look
me up, and I am on LinkedIn, a pretty active
on LinkedIn again, cruise Gomboa and you can check me
out there.
Speaker 5 (50:00):
And I'm you know, we can connect.
Speaker 4 (50:03):
On LinkedIn or through my website which is at Sandgrowth
Ventures dot com, so you can check me out there
as well.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Great, this has been fun for me. I'm looking forward
to having you back. Thank you for your time and
I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 5 (50:16):
Thank you so much, Karen. I love it. I love
this conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Thank you me too, and thanks everybody for watching and listening.
This is a show about business and business challenges and
business successes. If you've got concerns about the sales effectiveness
of your company, whether your sales team is you or
small or large, feel free to reach out to me
that's on LinkedIn or Facebook at Winning Business Radio. One
of my many email addresses, as I often say, is
(50:40):
Kevin at Winning Business radio dot com. Our company develops
sales teams at the high achievers and sales leaders into
true coaches and mentors, and you can probably see the
partnership with Cruz there. We're not a fit for everybody,
but we maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you
one for another great job. Be sure to join us
next week Monday, September fifteenth.
Speaker 6 (51:00):
We'll do it all again. Until then, this is Kevin
helen In.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your
host Kevin Helenin. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(51:28):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin helen In and Winning Business Radio
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thanks everybody for joining in today. I am Kevin Haleanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio. We're
on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on
Talk four that's the number four TV dot com in
addition to Facebook, and that's at Winning Business Radio, and
of course we're available after the live show on whatever
platform your favorite is to watch and listen to podcast
(01:15):
content that's YouTube by Heart Radio, Spotify, Apple and the
list goes on the mission of winning business radio in TV.
As regular viewers and listeners, no excuse me is to
offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes
of others, right to learn best practices. Those are the
how tos, the what tos, the what not toos, and
(01:35):
I hope to be challenged and to be inspired by
the successes of others. Who are those others. They're consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know,
virtually every successful person that I've had a chance to
talk to has had some form of failure in their
lives and careers. So I say it every week. While
we all have to get our knee skinned once in
(01:56):
a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing
major surgery. Endeavor to learn from history so we don't
repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career
equipping businesses to grow, and that's from solopreneurs to small
and medium sized businesses all the way up to the
Fortune fifty. I've seen a lot of those companies win
and to varying degrees. I've seen some fail I've had
the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest
(02:17):
performing people around and with some of those that probably
should have found other professions. So in my own businesses,
I've had lots of success, but some failures too, So
I like to think I've learned a lot. So you're
gonna hear from me, but mostly you're going to hear
from those guests. And today I'm excited to have Cruiz Gamboa.
He's founder and chief strategist and CFO of Ascend Growth Ventures.
(02:39):
Here's his bio. Cruz Gamboa is an NYU MBA holds
a bachelor's in Economics for the minor in Business from UT.
Austin hookoem Horns is a former CEO, corporate executive, and
a season scaling up business coach with a passion for
helping ambitious CEOs and mid market companies increase profits, boost valuation,
and drive me meaningful impact. With deep expertise in corporate finance,
(03:03):
strategy and executive leadership, Cruise has served in pivotal roles,
most notably as Regional CFO for ge Gas Power Latin America,
where he led high growth initiatives that broke records and
set new benchmarks. Today, Cruz combines the power of the
scaling Up framework with exponential thinking in decades of CFO
experience to help businesses scale with clarity and confidence. He's
(03:26):
the author of Drive from Within, a guide for leaders
seeking purposeful, sustainable success without the chaos. At the core
of Cruise's approach is the scaling Up methodology by Verne Harness.
Some of you are familiar, many probably are, and that
enables teams to streamline operations, align around strategy, improve cash flow,
and eliminate roadblocks to growth. For visionary founders ready to
(03:49):
think beyond incremental progress, Cruz also brings in the bold
principles of Exponential Organizations EXO by Sealia Mismail excuse me
empowered towering businesses to harness technology, automation and disruptive models
to ten x their value and reach. Cruise is a
committed not convicted committed We both should be convicted committed
(04:14):
environmental advocate and renewable energy investor. He's a certified life
coach and has been coaching and mentoring high performers for
two decades. While in the corporate world, He's live in
multiple companies and speaks three languages, Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
When not working, He's an enthusiastic reader, often drawn to
leadership and personal development books. He's also a studio recording
(04:34):
artist with songs on Spotify. He's passionate about tennis and
snowboarding and enjoying an active and creative lifestyle. And of
course he's a dedicated father of two and he resides
in Framingham, Massachusetts. Cruise, Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Thank you so much, Cavin, and thank you for having
me here. And I'm really excited to be here and
have this conversation with you.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Mite.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Thanks you for that intro that was It always is
always an opportunity to reflect on my I hear these
things by, you know, from other people's mouths, so I
appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
All right, Just quickly, I want to talk a little
bit about backward First, just tell us about your two children.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
My two children, Maximo and Abrielle. So Maximo is seventeen.
He is now a senior in high school.
Speaker 5 (05:19):
He's crushing it.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
He's doing really well in school and he wrestles, and yeah,
he made the varsity team. Even though it was like
his second year into the program. So he's doing really
well in abrill. She's going to college at Bentley and
she also crushes it.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
She showed me her report card and it was really good,
and I was really.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Proud of her because, you know, when she was in
high school, we have we have a little questions on
how good of a student she was going to be.
But she turned out to be an amazing athlete.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
So yeah, excellent. Good for her and good for you too.
So tell us where you grew up.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
I grew up. Look, I grew up in Venezuela. I
was more in Venezuela, and then I left when I
was seventeen, came to college the US. Uh, and then
after that, I you know, I joined first Unilever and
then You're Electric, and I worked across Latin America here
in the States, and yeah, it's been sort of my
my sandbox between some places in Latin America and here
(06:20):
in the in the US.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Well, we're gonna touch on those. What were your early
interests so high school, early college?
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Honestly, it was I was a computer nerd, to be
honest and uh, and a musician, so that those are
those were the two things that really inspired me.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
I I played.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
I played golf a lot as well, at least three
times a week. I got to be relatively good eleven handicaps,
So I mean that's not great, but it was.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
It was good for me for now after you know,
when in.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
My sort of my adolescent years, when I when I
hit like sixteen, it's just it was not.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
So cool to play golf. I had other interests. Yeah,
but yeah, for a while it kept me going.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
So my two sons, both of them had a little
overlap and location, but they both had a chance to
either caddy or one of them actually ran to help
run a pro shop and they got the golf a
lot too. So my golf game is not what you
consider a game, you know. I can go by the
role of you don't have to be good, just don't
be slow.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
That's right, And it's interesting. I played from time to
time and I still have it a little bit. But yeah,
I wouldn't trust myself to go in a tournament.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
So unless it's best ball, and you can't good for everybody,
all right, So why did you choose Venezuelan kid? Why
did you choose to go to U T Austin and
We know you majored in economics and business.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
So why U T Austin and why that focus.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Look, at the time, I had friends and family in Austin,
and I figure that if I was already making a
lead and uh, you know, leave my family behind, it
would probably make sense to be out of place that
I knew other people, and I had a little bit
of a network, as you know, as you know me,
and I'm big on family, so I figured it would
(08:13):
be it would be best for me to be closer
to family. And also, by the way, I visited U
T the UT campus, and I just fell in love
with it. I was just like, I'm gonna come here.
I already knew when I when I went to visit it,
I knew that I was going to get in. So
I was really determined to go there.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
City but small city, not New York, right, although you
ended up in New York, but city small city offers
a ton I mean you kept it weird, I'm assuming, yes, exactly, Okay,
and you got to see.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
It's not that weird anymore.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Actually, yeah, it's definitely grown. It's definitely grown. So Unilever
was soon after college.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
It was just soon after college. Uh, yeah, I had
I had a job. He was like I think he
was like twenty four hour today.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
I was just working so much.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I vaguely like, when I think about it, I vaguely
remember those days. I was literally like from eight to
like ten pm every day, just closing the books financial analysis,
next year's plan, profitability analysis. I was they really got
a lot from me during those times.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Well, good news is in your early twenties, you don't
need a lot exactly. Yeah, yeah, you just go on
films all the time, all right. When and what motivated
When did you and what motivated you getting your MBA.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
It was kind of like I was already working at
g Capital, and I I was had just left NBC
because I worked at NBC Universal for a while in
New York City, and I just felt that I needed
to I needed a little plus in my sort of
in my career, in my sort of in my in
(09:58):
my education as well. Felt that I mean, I went, uh,
I went to school for economics with a business minor,
and I just felt that there were I need a
little bit more. I needed to learn more about like
private equity, about evaluation and stuff like that. And I
I felt that n y U was probably one of
the best schools. Actually, I was really lucky that I
was there in New York City and I and I
(10:20):
got to I got to apply and got in. It
was the only the only school that I applied to
for for.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
An MBA, to be honest, and I got in. So
it was it was really good, outstanding. So big question,
and you can think about it, but what was your
biggest takeaway from getting the NBA. Wow, maybe that's even plural.
I know that's a big question.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
Yeah, it's a big question because back then, the sort
of the biggest takeaway was just really getting.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
To know uh the professors.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
I meant, some really amazing professors, and I just I
also made some friendships that I still i'm in touch with.
And to be honest, I think now when I look
in hindsight, I think it's probably more interesting to when
you look at things in perspective, because at the moment,
I was just really excited to begin an m b A.
(11:11):
It was all about how I fell. Now and now
I have this title, right, But now I look, I
look back in time, and I think I learned a
ton for sure.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
But I think interestingly enough, I think it's really the experience.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Of going through some real, real life business problems and
and that that is to me, the best education that
you can have, right just and I think General Electric
was a great place for that. It was I was
surrounded by really top notch leaders and peers and I
(11:50):
and I learned a ton from them.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
So it, yes, it helped me.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
It augmented my my skill sets, my expertise, if I
have to put you know, sort of like so where
I said, what is the one thing that it did
for me was confidence?
Speaker 6 (12:03):
Oh good, that's good. Love that.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
All right?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Tell us about the position at Unilever, and this is
building kind of your backstory, right, how do you how
do you get how you got.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
Excuse me to where you are?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
And when we get past the break here in another
few minutes, not in a hurry, but people will understand
better how you're able to do the work you do.
Tell us what you learned, uh at well, describe the
role and tell us what you learned at Unilever.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
At Unilever, I was they called it a marketing accountant,
which it sounds kind of like an oxymoron if you
ask me. But basically what I did, I was just
thinking the sort of financial analyst for product lines, and
I had I think I had back then.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
I had Personal Care and detergents.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
So I was the guy with the most expertise and
most knowledge on the financial aspects of all of the
brands in those two categories. And and it seems like
it's it wouldn't be a lot of work, but it's, man,
it was. It was a lot of work because you know,
we had to know basically.
Speaker 5 (13:16):
All of the details of all of the ingredients, the
cost of.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Every ingredient, you know, aggregating the cost and like you know,
looking at the pricing, looking at the competition, analyzing which squs.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Were more profitable versus not.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Looking at the different channels, you know, because I mean
there were you know, there's a channel segmentation for when
you're in the distribution industry, especially for personal care, so
you know, if you have a tremendous amount of segmentation
in the channels that you sell into.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
So understanding all of that and aggregating over.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
All the data and being able to provide management and
and the and the sort of the product leaders with
intelligence on how to position the brands was was uh,
you know, quite an undertaking and that was my responsibility.
I I I started. I was very junior at the time.
(14:11):
I had a couple of mentors that sort of like
taught me what I needed to know, and then I
kind of like took off on my own.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
But yeah, it was it was super interesting.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
I mean, I still a lot of the stuff that
I applied today, especially when it comes to understanding profitability
and just getting sort of just doing market analysis and
decision making, decision making one distributions and all that. It
comes from that from those days. All the stuff that
I learned back then. Yeah, I'm sure you have.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
I've seen companies that are focused on an area and
they don't realize it's one of their least profitable items.
There's and then they look over, you know, with with guidance,
they look at another product line and realize how profitable
it is, but they're not focused on selling it. So yeah,
that's that's important, all right. Now the ge how did
you How did you land the position at g the
first one? And you were in Latin America at the
(15:01):
time playing golf.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
There you go, that's an awesome Yeah, I was in
the golf course, I you know, I I went to
play on it by myself and they say, hey, do
you wanna do you want to play with this guy?
Speaker 5 (15:14):
And I was just like sure.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
He was the CEO of GE Lighting at the time,
and he you know, there was an operation there in
my in my city in Venezuela back then, because I
was there for a couple of years, and so we
you know, we just started playing together and he told
(15:36):
me what he did.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I told him he didn't embarrass him that badly. Apparently,
Uh no, no, he was okay.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
I still read him, but he was okay. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
So towards the end, he said, you know what, I
think this was a great conversation and I think you'll
be great for you will be an amazing talent for
the f m P, which is a financial management program.
And I was just like, sure, let's let's talk. So
we exchanged information. That was on a Saturday here on Thursday.
(16:07):
On Thursday next week, I was interviewing with him. Then
the week after I interviewed with somebody else.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And then I was in, all right, that's a good take.
Time to take our first commercial break. That was your
first stint at GE you went elsewhere. We're going to
get to that story, amen, and ended up back so
but everybody will be back in about one minute with
Cruiz Gamble.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenett on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 7 (16:51):
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(17:13):
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Speaker 2 (17:23):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
All right, we are back with Cruz gamboa before I
jump in, just so the audiences. No, we're going to
be proud to re engage one of our key sponsors
will be Best in Wealth Management in the week's coming.
So I'm excited about that, all right, So you had
a two significant position manufacturing finance manager but also leading
(18:03):
the digitation digitalization of order sales and all the back end,
and you went through six sigma also.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah, So back then when GE was going through the
whole six sigma campaign, right, it was like everybody had
to be.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
A green belt or a black belt and all of that.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
And I had the opportunity to basically do this digitization
project for all of the order sales and report and
reporting for the g Industrial Systems business. And it was
a huge undertaking because back then, I mean I'm talking
this is a long time ago, two decades ago probably,
(18:48):
and I you know, reports were not as automated. Everything
was done to excel. It was just very manual, and
it was very cumbersome, right, And the problem was that
not only did we we back then industrial systems was
a highly a very complicated business because he had I
(19:09):
want to say, like sixty plans.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
I don't recall the exact number, but it.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Was a ton of plants and we needed to get
like every day orders and sales numbers from sixty different
plants across the globe every day so that we could
actually deliver to the CEO of the company. So it was,
it was it was quite an undertaking back then. Today
(19:33):
those things would be easy, but back.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
Then it was. It was.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
It was a ton of work, and it was something
that I personally, I think, I'm very proud because nobody
believed that we were going to pull it off. And
he turned out that over time all of that data,
you know, became completely digitized with designed what we call
the digital Cockpit, which was basically like a command center
(19:57):
for orders and sales information. No only for the CEO,
but now for the middle management and basically for anybody
who wanted to see sort of the orders and sales
information for the business. So that was that was a
big project. And I was kind of like the the
the project manager, not from the technical side, but from
(20:19):
sort of the the SME, the subject matter esper exper side.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So yeah, well we'll get to this in a second.
But them had to have been success and good visibility
because you landed back at GE But tell us about
NBC Universal for about two and a half years at
Dirty Rock.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Yes, so I so this is right around the time
when the NBC NBC was acquiring Universal and and you
know they were there, they had a shortage of finance
leaders in the in the new business so I had
(20:55):
an opportunity to work there in the business development group
as a finance manager, and I thought that was very
interesting and it was sort of aligned with what I
wanted to do next.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
I wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
More transactional work and be working on you know, sort
of the business development side of of GE. So it
was it was a cool transition for me. I we
incubated a couple of projects organically, we worked a lot
on on some potential acquisitions, and I got to see
a lot of you know, the new technologies, which are
(21:28):
obviously they're not new anymore, yeah, obsolete. But back then,
for example, one of the things that we were doing
was to try to get the NBC sort of channel,
a version of it on a cell phone. So this
is I'm actually dating myself, So this is back then.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
It used to this was oh four six yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
It was a long time ago, so twenty years ago.
So yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
So but back then that that was a big undertaking.
To be able to actually like watch television on your
on your cell phone, that was unheard of. They were iPhones, yes,
I mean I yes, they may have been, but they
weren't what they are today.
Speaker 8 (22:12):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, there's actually I have a funny story about that
because it was two thousands, around two thousand and three,
two thousand and four, and I was working with this guy,
Salil Davis, I think it was his name, and uh,
and I told him, you know what, I actually have
an MP three player. Wouldn't it be cool to have
an MP three player that was also your phone? And
(22:33):
he's like, and he said he was ahead of technology
development Business development group.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
He's like, that will never work.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Because every time you try to put two things that
do different things into one component, it just doesn't from
a technology standpoint that we don't do that.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
And like six.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
Steve jobs, you know, bounce the whole iPhone and I,
you know, I never got to say gotcha.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
He might be listening, so you never know. We watched
my wife and I watched this show called Murdoch Mysteries.
It's a Canadian broadcast and it's set in the late
eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, and they do a
lot of jokes like that it'll never fly. So it's like,
imagine if we could all be connected by some they
didn't use the word computer because you'll think about the time.
(23:22):
But they would bring in characters like Tesla and Edison
and you know, inventors of the day. And this detective's
way ahead of his time. He's like an inventor himself.
But they they foretell things humorously and it's always yeah,
never mind, it'll never work. All right, So you landed
back at GE How did that happen? And then you've
had some really progressive roles during that That was almost
(23:47):
twenty I mean eight and a half and then another
nine years, right, I counted the first eight and a
half as in Connecticut and Latin America and then Gie Verona.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
I wait to talk about that.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Vernova, Vernova. So yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
So like after NBC, I went to G Capital and
and I love G Capital. My experience in there was
the best. I learned so much. I used to be
an underwriter back then, so my responsibility was to just
basically look at different credit applications and work with the
UH the sales team, to just shepherd all of the
(24:20):
different credit application processes, take them to the credit committees,
get them approved, structure, close funded, and then monitored the
credits after they were closed. So Yeah, so that was
tremendous opportunity.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
For context what at least then probably more now, But
what what was the what were the revenues of G
Capital that time? They were into everything metal. Oh my,
they got anything.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
I don't recall, but I got to say it was
like seventy billion dollars. It's like ridiculous. It was a
huge amount of Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
It was. I mean, I want.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
To say the G Capitals was one of the largest finkos.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
In the world then, I mean, I think so amazing. Yeah,
so you came back as a VP structured finance on
the writer middle market cash flow. Long that's that was
my reste right, and then managing director actually that was
Connecticut and then Latin America managing director of capital markets.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
They want to bring you back.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
So so speaking of like one thing leads to another, right,
So I you know, I was six years into G
Capital and you know sort of Latin America was opening
up again and she was making a huge bed to
grow the Latin region, and they asked me, given my background,
(25:42):
if I wanted to be redeployed back to Latin America
to basically be in charge of developing the capital markets team,
and you know, initially it was it was not the
I mean I was reporting to smaller guy, but eventually
I got you know, I became the sort.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Of the league guy.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
But the what we did was basically to secure capital,
whether that was dead or equity for big projects where
GE had its technology. And mostly what I ended up
doing was helping the UH sort of the gas turbine
into a gastourbine business because they were the ones that
required the most capital.
Speaker 5 (26:23):
It was the biggest projects.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
And sort of my marquee deal in in that role
was closing an eight hundred and fifty million dollar deal
in Argentina which took a year and a half to
from like start to finish to close, and it was
one of the UH. It was one of the deals
that actually got me promoted to executive because again one
(26:47):
of those things where people were like that will never close,
love it, love it, and it.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
Did just tell Cruise what he can't do.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
Right, I think you know what, I'm starting to see
the pattern.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Kevin, Yeah, yeah, all right, I have an interesting question
at least on the role decarbonization strategy that's a much
more carbon footprint related environmental concern correctly.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
Well, so here's what happened.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
So this is more reason right, So fast forward till
an hour twenty one.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
Yeah, four years ago. Yeah, I you know, I had
the opportunity to basically help the g.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
GUS Power Systems business to develop the hydrogen and carbon
capture business for the Americas, basically in North America and
Latin America, but mostly to be honest between you and I,
it was mostly the US at the time, and my
responsibility was to take the existing technologies that we had
(27:55):
and just put a commercial framework on how to sell
them and find projects and clients that would be interested
in in adopting those technologies so that we can decarbonize
the fleet because the I guess I thought at the
time was that we wanted to make the gas turbine
fleet as green as possible so that they could continue
(28:17):
to run in the long run, because you know, like
like any other turbine manufacturing business, you have to waste
of making money. You make money by selling the actual
turbine and by servicing it. Right, So so you had
a best interest in in in staying sort of green
and keeping the gas turbines out of the The site of.
Speaker 5 (28:42):
Environmentalists that's right, that's right, right.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
So so yeah, so so that I was doing that,
I was. I did it for like a single a year,
and then I then I went to I you know,
I went to a startup and also in actually also
in carbon capture. So it was very it was an
technology that was very much in line with what I
had been doing at General Electric.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
All right, we're going to take our second break, and
then we're going to get back into how you decided
you wanted to move into coaching and developing others for
their scalability.
Speaker 6 (29:15):
Okay, we'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 8 (29:38):
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Speaker 2 (30:12):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helenett.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
That's my ten year old headshot.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
By the way, how did you so, there's a there's
a question we ended with we'll start here. How did
you know you wanted to start working with others? And
you had been doing mentoring, I know, during gees as
an executive, et cetera. But how did you know you
wanted that to be your full time passion.
Speaker 5 (30:50):
Well, that's a great that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
So initially, like when I decided to start my own business,
I was doing mostly just kind of like the same
things that I was doing before, just the CFO work,
and I was doing some M and A as well
on the cell side. And so in the context of
(31:15):
me working with small businesses, I realized that it was
kind of like easy for me to sort of see
what they were not seeing because you know, I've well,
first of all, I worked on more mature businesses in
a corporation, which is, you know, already has processes and
(31:36):
everything kind of works to some extent, so I knew
what a good process looked like, okay. And I also
realized that all of my financial background that I kind
of took for granted was just very very valuable and
useful for founders in sort of the one to ten
(31:57):
million dollars range. Really, the reason being is that a
lot of founders just are really they have really great ideas.
They are probably good at sales, good at product, but
maybe they're not good at you know, finance, and they
don't have to be. Not everybody has to be a
waste of finance, right, But I figured that there was
(32:19):
a lot of value that I could add on the
finance side to these founders. And then additionally, I started
noticing something that even caught my attention even more is
that a lot of the problems that most of most
founders are facing between one and ten million dollars in
revenue are really mindset related. And this was actually fascinated,
(32:43):
fascinating to me because I had been I've been investing
a lot of time, and I've done a lot of
like coaching and programs on personal development, and I figured
there was an opportunity to actually help founders by bringing
these three things together, finance, mindset, and strategy. And typically
(33:09):
when you actually when you talk to certain coaches, some
coaches are more on the sort of the mindset side,
you know, others are more like maybe on the strategic
side or maybe on the tactical side. I'll coach you
on how to be a better sales leader, for example,
if you know anybody like that. But but but what
(33:30):
I've noticed, and I know it to be absolutely the truth,
is that most business problems are mindset problems.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
I mean, you can call it which air way you want.
But if you're if you're facing.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
A business problem and you think there's no other solution
and you think that you are risked, you know, constrained
by these things that you you know, identified as problems
in your mind, the minute you change the way that
you look at the problem, the problem that you're looking
at change and you find a solution. So if that
(34:02):
is not mindset, then I don't know what is mindset.
But that's basically that was my observation.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
So I was going to add, if you think the
problem is unsolvable, you're right at first, right of right,
so you look at it.
Speaker 5 (34:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, So I figured there was a there was an
opportunity to bring those three things together and h and
make it more powerful and uh, And that's basically I mean,
I think we've talked, we've spoken about this before. I
developed my sort of my IP on top of the
scaling up harsh pology. Yeah, that's sort of my my
(34:37):
core framework. But I figured that that framework also needed
additional things like mindset and and sort of the the
financial sort of the financial insights to basically scaling a company.
And that's and specifically, I mean I would say that
this is more specifically for smaller companies because if you're
(34:59):
talk talking about scaling a three hundred million dollar company,
you a CUFO, you probably have good, good financial systems,
So the finance is no longer as important. Maybe there
are all aspects, but I'm talking specifically about my sort
of my ideal client profile, which is from one to
ten that is definitely a product in a way of
(35:23):
going to market that works for them.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
So in addition to mindset, well cover those three areas.
But I've heard you say that most founders get stuck
right when they reach between three and seven. Why is
that a tipping point three? Constrained theory? Okay, so constraint theory.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So basically, constraint theory says that process or in this case,
a business will grow until it reaches a constraint, and
then it will grow no further. Okay, it's the same thing.
When you are starting your business. You're in a you're
sort of in survival stage, right, You're a startup and
you're just trying to get to product market fit. You're
(36:03):
trying to just basically make gain client profitable.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
Yeah, become profitable.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
It leads all of the things that you know, maybe
attract people, hire people, build partnerships, build partnerships, all of
those things. You're focused on that, and then at some
point you have been you are the business, right, you have.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
Kind of like helpers around you that are helping you.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
But eventually you reach a point where that play is
no longer viable because why because you went from maybe
having ten clients to now you have one hundred and
fifty clients, and the processes that you came up when
you only had ten clients. They don't really scale when
you are like one hundred and fifty or two hundred clients,
(36:48):
and maybe they delivery right. It was easy to deliver
to ten clients, but if you have one hundred clients
that you need to delivering in different locations or different
products with different specifications, that's when things get stuck and
problems happen, and then most of your time then goes
from thinking about the strategy and the growth of the future.
(37:10):
You spend most of your time now in the weeks
trying to fix problems, and then because you're tied into
fixing the problems, you have no time to think about
how you know, who are the new talents that you
need to recruit or or who like, what is the
next thing for your company? What are the areas where
you need to improve because you're so into the details.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
And this is where you know.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
With my mentalology, what we do is basically try to
identify how to free you up in the first ninety days.
Speaker 5 (37:42):
So that's my mission in the.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
First ninety Dainty, Yeah, I want to make sure that
we create the space for you to be able to
take a step back so that we can actually start
thinking about the growth of your company, because if we
don't do that, then even if we do the work,
what's going to happen is that you're not going to
have time, you're not going to have the conviction, and
you're you know, we're not going to be able to
successfully implement all the things that we need to do
(38:05):
in order to get the company moving into the next level.
So it really requires a sort of a mindset shift
of going from what I call being a firefighter, okay,
and I don't mean that anotherrogatory fashion.
Speaker 5 (38:19):
It's just a tag from firefighter to architect, okay.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
So that's that's where we reactive to proactive, reactive to proactive.
So when you're an architect, you're you're creating systems. You know,
the systems kind of like run the processes. You have metrics,
You have a team that has a clear objective. They
have KPIs that they know they're being measured on. You
(38:46):
have execution rhythms, so that you know every week, every
month and requorder, you're revisiting the results, making changes, improving things.
You have a way to measure whether people are being
effective or not in their job and maybe have a
way to help them. So they can get to the
next level. All of those things is basically just putting processes.
(39:11):
Is the structure for running your company more smoothly and
in a way that requires less intervention from you, which
is that's what we.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
Want beyond the beyond the founder, right.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
Beyond the founder, because in the end, it doesn't mean
that you're like removing yourself from the business. What you
want to be is you want to be free to
be able to say, you know what, now my business
needs me here, you know, and like I need to
basically help the sales leader do whatever it is that
we need to do to double our sales, or now
it's I need to spend more time on the delivery
(39:46):
because if we fix that constraint on the delivery side,
we're going to be able to serve twice in the
number of the amount of clients. So these are the
kinds of things where you need to have that flexibility
and that sort of availability to be able to choose
what are the next steps and how do you best
allocate your time and uh and and also have planning
(40:10):
time for yourself for the business.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
So it's the.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Headspace and the time to be for example, creative. What
else could the company do. What are the soot products
and or services we could be offering that we're not. Now,
all right, you've identified six top areas of concern. Touch
on these briefly. Cash flow chaos you.
Speaker 5 (40:29):
Call it, oh Man cash floos.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
So you know how a lot of companies, well you
probably have listened to some of your clients in the
past where they are you know, they're running somewhat successful companies,
maybe two three million dollars, and they feel like they're
always cash strapped. Gosh is you know it's just died, okay?
And then sometimes they say, well, you know, clients are
(40:52):
not paying as well, you know they're not playing, you know,
not paying on time, or I'm having issues because of
the competition and all of those things. And I happen
to pin all of those excuses in the mindset sort
of a bin okay, because they are really mindset. Because
(41:13):
the minutage you change the offer or the way that
you deliver the business, or maybe the kind of clients
that you have, all of these issues can be solved.
Obviously not immediately, but with the intention to finding a
solution to a problem, you can create the conditions to
be able to have a business that generates better cash flow.
(41:34):
And I mean there's plenty of stories about businesses that
were like burning cash and they were like cash strapped.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
And then they make a change and then they became
you know, cash positive.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
So it is possible to do that, but it it
requires time and dedication, right, you need to go into
it and like put some thought into well, is these
kinds of clients or these kinds of products or these
types of products that are generating the issue And for
that you need to have the time and the uh
and the patients.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
To be able to go to the process of identifying.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
How where where are the areas that can be improved,
and then what are the things that you can do
to continue to retain the clients but in a different
capacity where they're you know, they they are worth much
more to you because they pay better outstanding.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
You touched on the CEO bottleneck. You want to touch
more on that the CEO bottleneck. Wow.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
So this is where we we.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Have the belief. Sometimes some founders have the belief that
their team is not good enough, that if they don't
fix the the issues in their in their company, nobody will,
and that they are the only individual that can that
can do so, and they have this what I call
(42:52):
kind of like this hero complex, Okay, And and when
that happens, it's really it's really easy to convince yourself
that that is that feels very true and that's the
only reality that makes sense. But the reality is that
if you really want to scale your company, you can
be in the center of every decision. It's just I mean,
(43:16):
if you want to put a name to it, that's
just physics, right, I mean, if you're in the middle
of everything, the system can only grow or can only
scale as you have the capacity to give yourself your time,
et cetera. And we all know that we are still
humans for now, right, and we have a limited capacity
in our time, in our brain power, and so it
(43:40):
becomes you can become the constrained for growth in your
own company.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
I watched my dad, as smart as he was, as
educated as he was, never take vacations. There was a
period of time where he just felt like he couldn't
step away from his company. He didn't equip anybody execution overload.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
Execution overload.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
So I would say for this one, it's when you basically,
when you have a team of people that are doing
processes that are broken, okay, And they are trying to
do the best they can with the processes that they have,
(44:23):
and eventually they start to break over and over again
to the point that it becomes a major point of
tension in the organization. And then nobody really knows sometimes
or sometimes you do know, but you don't know how
to fix it, okay, because again, to fix something, it
(44:43):
requires time. And if you don't have time, and if
you don't have enough capacity to be able to understand process,
map the process and make the changes, retrain the people,
give them a better install a better system, and do
the thing that you need to do in order to
make get better, then your execution continues to be capped
(45:05):
for as long as you don't fix this problem.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
All right, Hiring feels like a gamble.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Hiring feels like a gamble that happens, but you don't
have a system for hiring. And a lot of I
don't know if you've heard or you've experienced this, but
I've seen.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
A couple of client, former clients of mine. They were
just dep They just wanted people, warm bodies, the warm bodies,
right and uh, And there was no.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
Reflection about whether those individuals were aligned with their values
that the job, that they had all the capabilities required
to do the job at hand, and that that they
and also more importantly, like even if they brought them
into the organization, they didn't have a good onboarding system
(45:57):
to make sure that they were teed up or success
because when you hire somebody, it's not just getting them
into the company, it's just getting it's just also onboarding
them and getting them through the process so that they
know exactly what their job is. They have all the
right tools, and they have the authority to make the
decisions that they need to make in order to be
(46:18):
successful in their job. And if you don't equip equip
them with that, then then it's just it's I mean,
they're not going to be successful.
Speaker 5 (46:28):
That's really what it is.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
All right, sales and marketing plateau, and we have one
more we are almost out of time.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
Sales and marketing plateau is it's typically driven by what
we just discussed, the theory of constraints. Right, you know,
the play that you were running, the product that you
were selling. You know, eventually you you run out of
people to sell it to, or the market changes, or
the market changes, and uh, I mean, but it's it's
really it comes down to theory of constraint at the
(46:57):
end of the day.
Speaker 5 (46:58):
And uh, and once you figure.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
Out what about, what feature of what about the way
that you're going to market needs to change, and you
make the changes, then that's when you unlock the growth again.
Speaker 6 (47:09):
Last financial blind spot.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
Wow, I'll tell you something, and I'm sure you're going
to appreciate what I'm about to say, but I can
assure you that any business that you put in front
of me, or anybody.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
For that matter, if you really really.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Dig deep, you're going to find that is leaking cash somewhere.
It is almost an impossibility to find a financial a
business that is one hundred percent financially optimized. There's always
an opportunity to find either more cash or more profits.
For those who are committed to finding more cash and
(47:50):
more profits.
Speaker 5 (47:52):
Think about that, it's almost.
Speaker 6 (47:54):
Like, yeah, it's alarming.
Speaker 4 (47:56):
Almost rights, it's alarming because you're you're always we're constantly
leaving money on the table and and the and it's
just a lot of money or less money. But there's
always something that is being that can be done differently,
something that can be sold differently, something that can be
delivered differently, something that is being charged incorrectly in a place,
(48:20):
so we don't we can't see it. And what happens
is a lot of founders are looking at revenue, perhaps
gross profit and maybe overhead because they want to know
that they're not spending more than they're bringing in. Okay,
and that's it, and they just want to know that
they managed to a budget. But many times they don't
(48:43):
have the financial expertise to go deep to do product
analysis to understand so if there are optimizations on the
act side. You know, there's all these things, all these
different aspects of evaluating financials that most people miss. And
(49:05):
that's why I'm saying that most founders, I would say,
are flying blind.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
Well, I wish we had more time. In fact, I
will get you back the next probably after the first
of the year. But for now, who in the viewing
and listening audiences should reach out to you?
Speaker 6 (49:21):
And why.
Speaker 5 (49:23):
So?
Speaker 4 (49:24):
If you have revenues between one in ten million dollars
and you are a growth driven founder who want to
scale your company and are looking to partner with somebody
who can bring sort of expertise not only on financials,
but on strategy and also the energy of growth, which
(49:44):
is something that is cool to have around in your company.
That is the kind of founders that I want to
work with. And you know, if you want to look
me up, and I am on LinkedIn, a pretty active
on LinkedIn again, cruise Gomboa and you can check me
out there.
Speaker 5 (50:00):
And I'm you know, we can connect.
Speaker 4 (50:03):
On LinkedIn or through my website which is at Sandgrowth
Ventures dot com, so you can check me out there
as well.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Great, this has been fun for me. I'm looking forward
to having you back. Thank you for your time and
I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 5 (50:16):
Thank you so much, Karen. I love it. I love
this conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Thank you me too, and thanks everybody for watching and listening.
This is a show about business and business challenges and
business successes. If you've got concerns about the sales effectiveness
of your company, whether your sales team is you or
small or large, feel free to reach out to me
that's on LinkedIn or Facebook at Winning Business Radio. One
of my many email addresses, as I often say, is
(50:40):
Kevin at Winning Business radio dot com. Our company develops
sales teams at the high achievers and sales leaders into
true coaches and mentors, and you can probably see the
partnership with Cruz there. We're not a fit for everybody,
but we maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you
one for another great job. Be sure to join us
next week Monday, September fifteenth.
Speaker 6 (51:00):
We'll do it all again. Until then, this is Kevin
helen In.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your
host Kevin Helenin. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(51:28):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin helen In and Winning Business Radio
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