Max My Profit with Ben Fewtrell

Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments

Episode Summary

In order to earn more, every business owner needs to learn more. Knowledge transforms into confidence that lets business owners try things and not be fearful of change. Even after operating 64 trucks in the transportation industry in Sydney at the age of 24, Ben Fewtrell felt that he was not getting anywhere in life. Now he helps business owners to grow their businesses using the five stages of the Business Exceleration Blueprint. If you are still asking, “How can I max my profit?”, the simple answer is by working on your business to give it value and making it a valuable solution to your prospects. Learn why making time, people and money as the foundation of your business can help it grow and make people invest in it.

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Our guest is Ben Fewtrell who is an expert on helping businesses grow their business. He really shares with us a five-step process on how to get yourself from just struggling to soaring. It’s all about the foundation, the growth, how to optimize what you’re growing, the transitions so that you’re not the only person that can run the business, and finally how to diversify. He said you should really be budgeting for profit and that cashflow is like gas in your car. His real tip is on how to hire the right people and he has a really interesting insight into that. He says, “You don’t close a sale, you complete a sale.” Let’s learn the secrets to growing our business.

Listen To The Episode Here

Max My Profit with Ben Fewtrell

I have a guest all the way from Sydney, Australia. His name is Ben Fewtrell. He started his first business at the young age of eighteen in the transportation industry, and by 24 he had 64 trucks on the road, and by 28 he was done. He was working long hours and making hardly any money and he knew there was a better way. That’s when he then decided to pursue his passion for business and became a business coach. He spent thousands of hours training himself and others on just what they need. In the last ten years, he’s been featured in several publications. He’s an author. He hosts a podcast. He’s just an all-around great guy. His podcasts are called Business Brain Food and Daily Business Tips. He also gives keynote talks. If anybody who wants to book him from Australia into America, I would highly recommend that. Ben, welcome to the show.

John, thanks so much for having me.

I always like to ask my guests to take us back and flush out that little introduction. You’re 28 years old, you’re like, “I’m not going to kill myself. This is crazy. I’m going to help others figure out how to grow their business.” How did that all come about? 

It was probably about six months before that moment in time that I had met somebody who called themselves a business coach. Back then, it was a relatively new thing. There weren’t a lot of people out there doing it. I went to one of those BNI breakfast meetings. I don’t know if you know those, John, where you get a breakfast and you get 60 seconds to do your elevator pitch.

I know it well because that’s what I train people on how to have a good one. 

There was this one guy there and he would never use his 60 seconds. He would stand up and he’d say, “My name is Andrew and what I do is I help business owners work less hours and make more money.” Then he would sit down. I was in the situation where I was in the transport business and I had the disease that so many business owners have. That is that no one could do it as good as me at this or what I call the Superhero Syndrome where I was doing everything and it meant I was working crazy, crazy hours. I didn’t understand how to make money out of my business. We were turning over millions of dollars but I wasn’t making much, and I was making less than if I worked for somebody else and working a lot harder. This guy would stand up and do that every single week. When I go to this Breakfast Network, I don’t always get there but when I get there I said to myself, “I wonder what he actually does.”

One day I had lunch with him and he told me what he did. I ran back to my business. I was actually in partnership with my father-in-law. To give you an idea of what he was like, he would always find the twelve reasons why something wouldn’t work instead of the one why it would. When I told him about this coach, I said, “I found this guy that can help us,” I was struggling in a business and was not sure what to do, he just wouldn’t have a bar of it so it never happened. When I got to that point where I reached the end of the road and it was my relationship that was on the line, my marriage more than anything, that was the catalyst for me in making that change. My wife wasn’t happy and had given me a bit of an ultimatum. I had to make a decision. Do I sacrifice my marriage or my business partnership? Of course, my business partnership is what I sacrificed. I wasn’t happy there. Then I thought to myself, “What am I going to do?” As soon as I had sold my shares out of that business, I set in and said, “I wonder how many people are in the same predicament where they think they’re doing the right thing by working hard but they’re not getting anywhere.” That’s when the penny dropped for me. I went, “I want to do what that guy does that stood up every week and said he helps business owners make more money and work less hours.” I booked him in for lunch again and said, “How do I do what you’re doing?” Here I am today.

There’s a great example of having a compelling pitch that intrigues people enough to say, “That’s interesting, tell me more,” without having to get into all the details. That’s classic. Ben, I was watching one of your videos and you really are quite smart with this whole frame of reference. I’m someone who loves words, like within the word authority is the word author, so whatever you are the author of, you’re the authority of. Tell us about what you do when you talk about the word earn and how you add one letter to that that totally changes everything.

There are a lot of people out there that would like to be rich, let’s face it. If it was easy to get a couple of million dollars in your bank account right now, you’ll probably go, “Yes, Ben, show me how.” I can show you how. I think the great thing is that if you want to earn more, you do have to add one letter to the old L plate. You have to learn more. I always say to people the reason why there are people out there that are making $1 million a year or $2 million a year or $10 million a year, is they have learned how to. If you’re not earning that, you just haven’t learned how to. It’s possible. We know it’s possible. It was like the four-minute mile, people just have to learn how to run it. I believe the same in business is true. I think that you are a direct reflection of the knowledge you have, not because knowledge makes you money but knowledge gives you confidence to be able to try things that you may be fearful of trying otherwise.

You have a lot of different expertise. I’m going to dive in to the five-stage business acceleration blueprint, which totally ties into what you were just saying about the importance of learning to earn. Can you tell us what those five stages are?

Sure. I might just go back a bit because it’s important to understand that I think one of the challenges so many business owners were faced with is they didn’t have a road map. It’s like kids; businesses don’t come with an instruction manual. It would be nice if they did. It’s perfect for your listeners because if they’re pitching a business idea to an investor, if they’ve got a road map where they can say to an investor, “Here are the four stages I’m going to grow this business through. Here’s how I’m going to get the results.” That investor’s more likely to be intrigued and interested in investing in that idea. It’s great for any business, whether you’re looking for investors or if you just want to grow your business. What I worked out was there are five distinct stages a business goes through in its growth cycle. Myself and my business partner developed this thing called the Business Acceleration Blueprint. Now, when we work with a client, we take him through these five stages.

[Tweet “Budget for Profit”]

The first stage is foundation. This is a stage that so many people miss because it’s not sexy. It’s all the boring stuff like getting the basic fundamentals right in your business. The second stage is then the stage of growth. Growth is about being able to get your marketing and sales working in such a way that you have a predictable marketing machine. It’s important, if you’re going to grow a business that you know that when you spend $1, you’re going to get $10 back in. Whatever it might be, it’s got to be predictable. It’s no good waiting for the phone to ring. Having the best product doesn’t mean that you’re going to grow a great business. We’re seeing some great international organizations that make very average hamburgers yet they have over 30,000 stores. After you’ve got that marketing and sales working really well and got good cashflow then we go on to the third stage, which is to optimize. Optimization is all about systemizing repetitive tasks in the business with automation, in particular. In this day and age, it’s very easy to get into using software or a program of some sort that can systemize your business. It could be something simple, that doesn’t have to be automation. It can just be having a simple flowchart so people know what they’ve got to do. It just makes a business much more efficient, which of course includes profitability.

The fourth stage, the amount who go to business that has good foundation is growing nicely and predictably is optimized and runs efficiently, is now to transition how to working in to on. That’s a challenge so many business owners are faced with and being able to trust their team but also trust their systems that if they’re not there watching everything or macro-managing, that the business is still going to be successful. I’m sure as an investor they’d like to know that the business doesn’t rely on one individual because of course that’s dangerous. The transition stage is making sure the business can stand on its own two feet. The fifth stage, once you’ve got a business that runs without you having to be there, is then to be able to diversify. In the business sense that could be opening up of outlets, putting more vans on the road, it could be franchising or licensing or it could be totally something different. It could be buying other businesses or it could be investing in a property or a share. As an individual, it’s about diversifying and then capitalizing on the work you’ve done the previous few years to get to that stage.

Those are great stages: foundation, growth, optimization, transition and diversification. Let’s take a little bit of a deep dive into the one that’s so important. It’s like building a house, if you don’t have a solid foundation, the whole thing will crumble as you build up. What are some of the key mistakes people make in not having a good foundation?

If you look at why so many businesses fail, and that’s probably the point where I start with, is getting them to understand that businesses don’t fail because you want them to. Nobody starts a business with that as their goal. Everyone has this goal of building this great amazing business that’s profitable and fun to have, etc. The reality is most businesses fail, eight out of ten, they say statistically. I think it’s actually slightly higher in Australia. The reason for that is because they run out of money. When you look at the foundation side, the first thing is to do what I call financial foundation, which is having control of your money. It’s one of the resources that you need to manage. In your business, there are three resources that I believe you have in finances. One of them is time and people is the other one then money is the third one.

There are some key areas within finances that you need to master. One is reporting. You need to be able to look at a monthly profit and loss statement and understand what those numbers mean, look at the report and be able to make decisions based on what’s actually happening rather than on fictional. A lot of people say, “I go on gut feeling.” Gut feeling is not a great way to run a business. You want to run a business based on what’s actually happening and you want to be able to look at what are the most profitable products or services and then be able to capitalize on that by selling more of those. If something’s not making you money, you want to stop selling that. If expenses are getting out of hand, you want to know why. If you’re doing really well and you’re under budget, then you can also want to know why because you’d do more of that. The reporting is really important.

Max My Profit: Gut feeling is not a great way to run a business. You want to run a business based on what’s actually happening.

The second area then that it leads to is the ability then to be able to do budgeting. A lot of people think you budget for expenses or you budget for sales. I always say to businesses, “You’ve got to budget for profit because that’s why you’re in business. I know money is not everything but it’s somewhere very near to oxygen in my book. You want to be making sure you’re making money. Then the other real critical part of financial foundation is then cashflow forecasting. If you think about cashflow being like your fuel in your car, if you’re running out you’re going to stop. We want to make sure that there’s always fuel in the tank and that business continue to drive forward all the time. Those are the three key financial foundations but of course that leads to other parts of it. We don’t want to make business as accountants but we want to make them accountable.

You’ve got some really great sound bites, “Be accountable, and your foundation has to be both money, time, and people because it’s all about the team.” What do you look for when you hire people to work for you?

I think I made the mistake so many business owners make when they first start hiring, and that is to hire on skill. That can be important if you need somebody who’s got a qualification on something, then you’re going to have to hire that person. I really hire people on attitude because if someone’s got the right attitude and is a good fit with the team, then you can teach him anything. When I look for someone, that’s really the key thing; I look for what is their attitude and what are their personal attributes. Are they disciplined? You look at their lifestyle. Are they disciplined or are they lazy? They are a reflection of their life so that helps you then decide whether or not they’re going to be a good fit in your team. I always say to people, “Think of your business like a rowboat and you’ve got twelve people on the rowboat and you’ve got eleven people rowing, but you’ve got one person throwing the anchor at the back, it’s going to be a very difficult trip.”

The second part of this five-stage process, you talk about growth and the importance of sales and marketing. This is again really your sweet spot. What are some things business owners can do on LinkedIn to get more customers?

LinkedIn is a great platform. In fact, I always tell people LinkedIn is the most up to date business database in the world. We know that because you’re updating it. Everyone can jump on there. I think a lot of people are expecting with any social media platform that you can just put witty quote cards up or funny pictures up or a comment here and there, or maybe even pitch a product online and people are going to buy it. I think it’s still important to build a relationship. LinkedIn is probably more important than any other to have that ability where you can be very targeted but then start building a relationship with the people that you target. You do that by adding people to your network of course and you can look at second context through your current network and get introductions. I actually have a script that I wrote for people that are in the service-based industries to be able to contact somebody on LinkedIn. The good thing with something like LinkedIn is when you call somebody, if you just open with this online when you contact somebody at LinkedIn, you might Google them, get their phone number, ring them directly and say, “I’m giving you a quick call because I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I thought it was interesting.” Rarely will someone hang up on you.

Right, because you’re making it about them and not about you. You also have some really great skills and insights, and you give a whole keynote talk on this about how we can all simplify sales. I think one of the biggest challenges people get is, “I don’t know how to handle objection.” The biggest objection is, “Your price is too high.” Do you have any tips there, Ben?

[Tweet “Cash flow is like gas in a car.”]

This is a great distinction. If you’re getting that objection, you’re probably not articulating the value of what you offer. Objections are a good thing, by the way, so don’t be upset if you get an objection because it means that you’re getting closer to a decision. You’ve got to be comfortable with the fact that some people are going to say no and some people are going to say yes. We can use those objections as a tool to understand what is going on because communication is the response that we get. Whatever we’re getting back, we must have communicated something to get that response back. If someone says it’s too expensive or your process is too hard, what they’re actually saying to you is, “I don’t see the value in what you’re selling.” It’s totally different if someone says to you, “I can’t afford what you’ve got.” That means they see the value but they don’t have the money. I always say to people if you’re getting that objection that the price is too high, go back a few steps and go, “How can I make sure that my prospect sees the value in what I offer?” That’s going to come down to the questions that you ask. You want to be asking the right kind of questions to understand what it is they need? What are the challenges they have in their life that they need to overcome? Why aren’t they overcoming them? How does your product help them do that? I call that the POD formula: the Problem, Obstacle and the Desired Outcomes.

If you know what the problem is you solve. I always say to anybody, when they start writing up their sales process or thinking about objections, “Think about all the problems that you solved because the problem you solve could be different for every single person.” For example, if I own a hardware store that sells electric drills, for the person that wants to hang a picture, I’m solving that problem. For the person who wants to build a billy-cart, I’m solving that problem. For the person who just wants to drill holes in the floor to mount something, I’m solving that problem. For everyone, it’s different even though it’s the same product. I say to people, “Whether it’s the product or service, think about all the problems that you solved and then skip the O for a second and go straight to D,” which is the desired outcome and go, “What is the desired outcome for that problem that you’re solving?” For example, if the problem that you’re solving is overweight and the desired outcome is that, “I’m nice and fit and healthy and I can fit into the clothes I used to be able to fit into when I was eighteen,” then you can start thinking about what are the obstacles that person is faced with achieving that desired outcome? That’s where your marketing and your sales come in. That’s where you build the values. If my obstacle is that I don’t have time to exercise then if I want to help them reach their desired outcome, I could start pitching to them by saying something like, “Lose weight in ten minutes a day. Lose weight even if you don’t think you’ve got time to exercise.” All of a sudden, my sales have just become much more pertinent to what their desired outcomes are and their needs and it’s addressing their obstacle.

I love that so much because you’re getting inside the head of your potential customer and figuring out what their spoken or sometimes unspoken obstacle is to getting their goal, and then that’s what makes them go, “I want that outcome but I don’t have time.” If you don’t address the fact that you don’t have time in your pitch, then I just think, “I don’t have time to buy an exercise machine or whatever,” but you’d go, “In ten minutes, I could do that? Maybe I could buy a machine to workout ten minutes a day.” I love that you connected that problem, obstacle, desire. Half the people don’t even talk about what problem they’re solving, so just doing that is better than 50% of people out there. What gets you in the 1% then is you really take it to the next level of, “We’re not going to talk about your problem, we’re not going to talk about your outcome, but we’re going to talk about whatever your obstacle is to getting that outcome will be solved through this and therefore, you’ll pay anything to get that outcome because we’re overcoming your particular obstacle,” if I heard you right?

Absolutely. I always say to people, “Just imagine that you’re stuck in the middle of the desert and you’ve been walking through the desert for days and you’re just minutes away from death, from dehydration, and someone offers you a bottle of water for $10,000. You’ll find the money. You’ll buy it because the value is there.” The price is never too high. It’s that the value is not high enough.

The other thing is people say, ” I know I have to ask questions in order to get people to tell me what their problems are or their challenges.” What are the tough questions you find people afraid to ask?

One of the things is people dance around the fact that they are selling, and I think that’s dangerous because it puts everybody into a false sense of security. I’m pretty upfront with people. If I’m a salesman, I’ll say, “John, I don’t want to waste your time and I certainly don’t want to waste mine.” I’ll make sure you know my time is just as valuable as yours. That then allows me to ask the next questions where I would say, “John, is it okay if I ask you a few questions?” You’ll say, “Yes, sure.” Then I can start asking you because you’ve given me permission to some of the questions and I’ll make sure we’re not wasting each other’s time. I think things like saying, “Have you put aside a budget for this? Have you thought about how much you’re willing to invest to fix this problem?” Number one. I think too many people don’t do this, so they don’t qualify their leads.

Max My Profit: It is just about learning to ask good open-ended questions.

I think another thing that you’ve got to make sure you ask when you’re in any sales situation, whether you’re pitching for an investor or selling a product or a service is making sure that you have all the decision-makers at the table when you’re pitching whatever it is you pitch. Otherwise, you’ll get the one objection that’s very difficult to overcome and that is, “I’ve got to go and check with my partner,” whether it’s a business partner or a life partner. If you haven’t got all the decision-makers in the room then you’re in trouble. I think a lot of people struggle with asking that question. I think sometimes it is just about learning to ask good open-ended questions. What I mean by that are any questions that can’t be answered with a yes or no, but it typically start with a who, what, where, why, when and how. That enables you then to start gathering information so you can offer the right solution. You might love pitching what you pitch because you love it and you’re passionate about it but if it doesn’t resonate with your prospect, they’re not going to buy it.

In that spirit of open-ended questions, what do you find is some of the best closing questions that people can ask?

In my case, what I teach people is not to close and I teach people to complete because you’re starting a relationship. I think that the word closing has a negative connotation. What I like to do is I like to do a thing called temperature checking. The way that we do that is I use either/or questions, so alternates, rather than saying, “Will you buy from me?” The danger of saying “Will you buy from me?” or “Would you like to go ahead?” is you’re going to get a yes or a no. If you get a no, it’s all over. What I’d rather do is I usually say to somebody something like, “John, based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like it could be a good fit. Would it be okay if I offer you a couple of different options?” You’ll go, “Yes,” and I’ll say, “We’ve got it in green and we’ve got it in blue. Which color would you prefer?” Now instead of saying “Would you buy from me?” I’m now doing what’s called temperature checking. You might go, “I really like the blue.” I go, “Great. We could deliver that next week or the week after. Which week is going to be better for you?” One or two things are going to happen. You’ll say, “I’d like it next week,” or “Hang on a minute, I’m not ready to buy this.” I’ve got this opportunity now where I can go, “I’m sorry, what is it about the blue one that you weren’t happy with?” I can go back to my open-ended questions. Never am I getting a no to finish the conversation. I’m slowly easing us into doing what I call the completion process, which is of course in most cases paper work and payment.

It’s almost a little bit of the assumptive close in there until you’re told otherwise, right?

Absolutely. I always assume that because I say to people, “One of the key things is not what you do when you’re closing but what you do when you’re opening.” I do a thing called a positioning statement, which I know you’ll love because you’re all about positioning yourself. I would say, in my case for example, I walk into a meeting where we sell business services, I would sit down and say, “John, is it okay if I quickly outline how today’s meeting is going to go?” You’d never say no because we’d like to know what’s coming. It’s like sitting in a dentist chair and the dentist says, “You want me to just surprise you or would you like to know what I’m going to do?” I say to people have a positioning start where you say to somebody, “What’s going to happen in today’s meeting is I’m going to explain a little bit about my company, a little bit about myself, so you understand what gives me the right to be in front of you offering our services. Then I’m going to ask you a whole bunch of questions to find out exactly where you’re at, what problems you have, what’s stopping you from solving them, and see whether or not I can find a solution. If we both agree that what I can do will help you achieve those goals, then what we’ll do is we’ll have a look at the different options and if we’re all happy, we’ll get the paid work and the payment out of the way today and we’ll get you started. If not, no harm done. I’ll politely let you know if I don’t have a good fit and we’ll both be on our way. Is it okay if we go through today’s meeting that way, John?”

Just to jump back to one of the five steps here is this transition. I don’t think a lot of people even think about ever transitioning, as you said, from in to on. Getting somebody else to take over if you’re not there or you get sick or whatever it is that they are just so controlling that their identity is so tied up in it. How do you get someone to have the right mindset to even start thinking like that?

I think there are a couple of key factors. One is knowledge. If you put the oId plate on, you’ve got to learn. I think the knowledge needs to be, first of all, that you have the systems in place to be able to give you back the information you need to be comfortable that your business is working fine. Part of that process in foundation is setting up all the key performance indicators, the KPI, so you’ve got the reporting in place, and making sure that your business is structured for growth. What I mean by that is that you have distinct roles and responsibilities with KPIs attached to them. It is easy for you to monitor what’s going on, what’s working well, what’s not working well, so you can make more informed decisions. I think the reason a lot of people don’t make the transition is they’re uncomfortable because they’re not sure what’s going on is working. That’s the first step.

[Tweet “Hire people on attitude not just skills.”]

The second step, the other key fundamental is then the mindset. It’s your baby, you built it, you want to be a part of it, you feel proud of it, so you have this mindset that you need to be involved in it. The other dangerous mindset to have is that most people, and this is really a big problem for business owners all over the world, is that they value their money more than their time. What that leads to is that business owners will do a task that they’re not good at that they could pay someone a lot less to do than they’re paying themselves because they think they’re saving money. Huge danger. I always teach entrepreneurs that you’re making most money when you’re working on it, not in. When you work in your business, it feels good because you’re trading your time for money and you’re getting paid instantly. When you work on your business, you’re actually not trading your time for money. You’re actually trading your time to build leverage in your business that will pay you somewhere down the track, but it will always pay you more and it will pay you forever. It’s like you write a book. You don’t get paid now for that, you get paid later for that but you keep getting paid for it.

Ben, do you have a book that you would recommend either about business or life?

I’ve read so many books and I’m such a fan of telling people that can’t read books. The one that changed my life was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I gave that book to somebody one day and they said, “I don’t get it. What’s it all about?” I said, “Did you read the cover?” That’s about mindset. I believe that your business is a direct reflection of who you are. I can give you all the strategies, I can teach you, I can put your sales process together, I can put an amazing marketing plan together and get leads barreling into your business, but if you don’t have the right mindset then it’s not going to work long-term. It will only be a short Band-Aid fix. As an entrepreneur, if you can get your headspace in the right thinking where you are doing the things that are going to make the biggest impact. Most of us grew up working with somebody else in the beginning. We had to look busy to be valuable. When you’re a business owner, being busy is not valuable, being busy is inefficient. I always say to business owners, “You’ve got to be productive,” and to be productive you’ve got to make sure that your mindset is in the right space so you’re not doing the wrong things, because that’s where people get busy.

Any last thoughts or words of advice? 

We talked about going to the dentist. I always say to people, “You wouldn’t give yourself a root canal. You’d go and see a professional.” If you’re going to grow a business, don’t try to do it on your own. There’s nothing wrong with hiring a professional to help you. You’re building a house, you hire a builder. You’re getting your kitchen built, you get someone to come in to do that. People pay people to wash their car. Why don’t you have somebody help you build your business? You might get there on your own but we’ll just get you there faster and quicker and a lot more cost-effective than if you try doing it on your own. I always say, whether it’s me or somebody else, go and find somebody to help you, to be by your side to walk you down that path and guide you and help you overcome the obstacle. You’re never going to get there in a straight line, that just doesn’t happen, but you’re going to get there in a straighter line.

Ben, how can somebody find out more information about you, engage with you? What’s your best website to go to?

The best website to hit isMaxMyProfit.com.au. That’s my main business website. There’s whole bunch of freebies on there. You can download my latest eBook, which is Planning Your Path For Business Success or you can download the Business Plan Template that we’ve used to grow thousands of businesses across the globe. That’s a very dynamic business plan template that we used to sell for a few thousand bucks, you can get it for free just by going to MaxMyProfit.com.au.

Ben, I can’t thank you enough for being on the show and sharing so much wisdom and insights. It’s been a pleasure. 

My absolute pleasure. Thanks once again for having me on.

Links Mentioned

• Ben Fewtrell
• Business Brain Food
• Daily Business Tips
• Think and Grow Rich
• MaxMyProfit.com.au
• Planning Your Path For Business Success
• Business Plan Template

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