Build A Business Rhythm That Tells You If You Are Winning with Austin McMillan

We talk with Austin McMillan about why most service-based owners feel stuck with “the numbers” and how a simple financial scoreboard turns confusion into clear decisions. We walk through labor efficiency, pricing, opportunity cost, and a profit-first system that helps you keep more of what you make while building time to enjoy the business. 

• delegating finance with a who-not-how partner so the books are accurate and useful 
• using profit and loss statements to prove what is working and what is not 
• starting with long-term goals so the numbers serve the owner’s why 
• cutting metrics down to one or two KPIs to protect focus 
• tracking labor efficiency as a core service-business metric 
• building a crew or truck leaderboard that teams can see and improve 
• using the data to spot pricing problems, drive time waste, and bad-fit customers 
• applying opportunity cost to stop clinging to low-margin revenue 
• choosing profit over top-line bragging and measuring what you keep 
• treating money as a tool for impact, investment, and better decisions 
• using Profit First style accounts to create rhythms and justify ROI 
• defaulting to calendar year reporting while coordinating with tax CPAs 

Remember, go to Morris Sims.com for more information. 
Our website is flywheel.financial. 
You can find me at Austin D. McMillan on Instagram. 
Get out there and meet somebody new.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So because you're in the service-based industry, you're leveraging your people's time to then make a markup on your business to create a profit. Right. And so really what we try to do is make it super, super simple for them and create a rhythm in their business that naturally creates a scorecard or we call it a leaderboard for the people that are going to work serving people in their business to create some kind of leaderboard to say, how are you doing from the metrics, actually performance in your business. So I'll give an example.

Welcome And Show Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:40

We're here to help you increase your business revenue and have time to enjoy it. I'm your host, Maurice Sims, and I've been consulting and training business people for, well, let's just say over 40 years. We're focused on increasing revenue and having time to enjoy it. After years as a professional salesperson, I spent 32 years in the corporate world. I retired as vice president and chief learning officer of the sales department of a large insurance company where we designed and built and delivered training for over 12,000 professional salespeople. Now I get to consult one-on-one, helping people grow their business and organize themselves to make the most of the time they have. We also build online courses to support business owners in their work as they strive to build the business that they've always wanted. Our objective is really very simple. It's this.

Bookkeeping Plus Accountability And Goals

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Anything from bookkeeping, taking all the stuff of admin and accounting off your plate while also holding you accountable to kind of achieve your goals and building a profitable business. So that's essentially what we specialize in.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Oh, that's fantastic. And that's one of the challenges I think that most of us have as we're trying to run a business, is dealing with all the financial stuff. You go online, you start looking at it or AI some of these things, and you hear stuff about, well, you've got to have investors and you need to generate uh, you know, income to the all this kind of stuff. And it just seems to be so freaking complicated. It's amazing when most small business owners that I know say, Morris, I just want to build a business that creates enough money to pay my bills.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

And, you know, get that stuff done. But as they grow, if they don't have some help with the financial side, I bet it can all go away. What sort of challenges do you see from your customers that you help them solve?

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah, great question. I think you drilled it on the head. There's so many small business owners all across America that got into business because they wanted to serve people and, like you said, build something that can support their family, pay their bills. But not many, if any, business owners get into business because they're excited about bookkeeping and keeping track of the numbers, right? They want to go, they're a technician or they know how to serve people or visionary, whatever you want to call them, to go out and like sell the thing and then provide on the things that they sell. And then there's this whole financial division of a business that people are like, ah, I don't even want to worry about that. They even want to see it kind of thing. So that's where we come in, kind of the who-not how concept of saying, like, let us be that partner in your life because we know that you hate it, and let you continue to do the sales and operations side and let us handle the finance side so we can help you get there. And so, really, from that standpoint, the the the interesting thing about finance of any business is that sales and operations what's driving the business forward, right? But the financial side is what actually tells you if that's working or not. Because if you don't understand the profit and loss and the balance sheet side of your business, then you have no clue if what you're selling, you're making money on, the different things that you're selling, are you actually profitable on each of those things? Some things might be losing money every time you sell it, some things might be making a lot of money when you sell it. And if you're not clear on that, it's hard to really get a grasp on should you continue to do what you're continuing to do and because you don't know if it's working or not. And that's what we ultimately try to do is help people say, okay, this is what's working, this is what's not working based on the true numbers of your business, and reveal that data to them and then really consult with them to say, like, okay, here's what we think you should be doing if we could put ourselves in your shoes from the lens of finance, and what levers should you pull to ultimately create a long-term lasting business that's gonna build wealth for your family?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

So you do more than just add up the numbers and see what the bottom line looks like. You actually consult with them about their business. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Yeah, absolutely. Because one of the one of the first things we do when people come on board with us is we ask them, what are your long-term goals for this? We have a whole form that they fill out. And we want to know, like, why did you even start the business? Like, what is your long, do you want to sell it in 10 years? Do you want to keep it forever, hand it to your kids? Like, what are you want to do with this business? And we walk through that whole criteria with them. And so our whole goal for us is to say, no, let's not only just take that stuff you hate doing off your plate, but then because we enjoy it and do it, now we know it's accurate. And then now we can tie in to what we're doing on a daily and monthly basis into those long-term goals that you initially told us about, and tell you if you're on track or off track for what you're wanting to build one day. And so it really just helps us use the number side to then speak the language to the owner side of saying you're on track or off track to your long-term goals based on what you told us your long-term goals are, which is a lot of fun for us.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Clarity And The Power Of Why

SPEAKER_01 7:23

I that's I'm with you 100%. It's a lot of what I do with my clients. I teach a principle uh that I call the clarity principle, which basically is a workshop that takes folks through what do you want, why do you want it, and how are you gonna get it. Because if you're not clear about what you want, if you're not clear about where you're going, uh it's chances are you're never gonna get there.

unknown 7:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

And if if you don't have a strong why behind that what, then it's hard to get up in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

You know, it's hard to get up and go through the brick walls and jump over the hurdles and do all those kind of things. And your how is your strategy. What is your strategy for getting there? Well, I've got 10 different strategies. No, don't do that. Yeah, you gotta focus.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

And and that's kind of where it is. So I agree with you 100%. I mean, that's if we're not starting there, we're not building a foundation for the business. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah, 100%. Because, like, if to your point, if you do not have a strong Y power, you will give up in the game of business ownership, right? It's just it's not worth your time if you don't have a passionate thing that's going to draw you out of bed. I call it the pull power, right? To pull you out of bed every day. Because business ownership is like very difficult, right? It's like it exposes you on so many levels of a personal, like what you're weak at, what you're good at, how do you delegate well? Are you actually training well? There's there's so many things about small business ownership that if you're not passionate about it and you're not intentional to do it at a profit, it's not worth the risk of you doing it. Just go get a W-2 job because you can be home at five every day with your kids. You don't have to, it's not on your brain all day, all night, kind of thing. And so it's something that you have to have that strong white power to go do.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

You really do. There's got to be that wide, and I like to say it needs to be wrapped in passion and fueled with emotion. Yes, when I do this workshop, the first thing folks say is you know, somebody in the crowd says, Morris, that's a stupid question. Uh, what do I want? I want a successful business. Well, yeah, okay, let's go a little deeper than that. Yeah. And then why do you want it? Well, Morris, I got bills to pay. Come on, that's why I want it. Yeah, well, okay, let's go a little deeper than that. And it's it's gotta be that why it's got to be wrapped in passion and fueled with emotion because that's what's gonna fuel you to. And I love your comment, pull power. I'm gonna steal that, Austin. I just want you to know for it.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

I love it. I stole it from somebody else. It came from some book. I just don't remember what book. So it's not not original me.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Well, let's get down into some of the specifics, if you would.

Reduce The Business To One Metric

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Yeah, tell me when you're working with that that medium-sized business, just for the heck of it, we'll choose that as an example. What are the metrics you want them to look at? Because I don't know, there are a bazillion different metrics you could look at. Yeah, and if you start looking at all of them, you're gonna get wacko or no wacko, or it's crazy. So, what are the metrics that you start with with a business owner?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Great, great question. And I fully agree with you. When you what typical bookkeepers do, and this is probably how we differentiate ourselves, is to give somebody a PL and that might be a hundred line items long on a profit and loss statement. And your small business owner that hates finance is gonna be like, this is worthless to me. This is Chinese on a page, you know, it's no reason for me to get this. Yeah, and so what we do is we try to condense their whole business down into like one or two metrics in the season that you're in to focus on, right? And because we specialize in the service-based industry, almost always a metric that you have to keep an eye on, always, is labor efficiency. So because you're in the service-based industry, you're leveraging your people's time to then make a markup on your business to create a profit, right? And so, really, what we try to do is make it super, super simple for them and create a rhythm in their business that naturally creates a scorecard or we call it a leaderboard for the people that are going to work serving people in their business to create some kind of leaderboard to say, how are you doing from the metrics, actually performance in your business? So I'll give an

Crew Leaderboards For Labor Efficiency

SPEAKER_00 11:20

example. We actually were just talking with a landscaper in Jacksonville, Florida. And so what we helped him do was create a crew leaderboard for all the trucks that he had leaving his shop every day to go maintain and cut grass for all of his different customers, right? And so inside of that truck, we created a truck metric to set, okay, every time that truck leaves throughout a week, because he paid payroll every single Friday, every time he paid payroll, he knew exactly how much each truck cost him in labor. Just labor, not the fuel of the truck, not the equipment, none of that stuff, just labor. And then he also then looked and said, okay, how many properties did that truck over that week's given time maintain throughout that given week? And how much revenue did that generate for the business? And it's a very simple ratio. It says, take your total labor on that truck divided by the total uh revenue that that truck brought in, and that's gonna give you a number. And then he puts those numbers uh in the on he basically puts it up on a screen in the shop so every truck can see where they fall on the leaderboard, and he knows the the crews that are more efficient from a labor standpoint are gonna be at the top of that leaderboard, and he incentivizes it off of that as well. So now he says, like, here's and this is the most beautiful part, Morris, about this whole thing. Because he took a very complex business that you can track a lot of different things down into literally one metric on a per-truck basis. And he said, Truck number one's doing this, truck number two is doing this, truck number three is doing this. All of a sudden, people at the bottom of the list, their crew leader was coming up to him as the business owner and being like, What do I need to do to get to the top of the list? I want to make extra money, what do I need to do? And he's like, Well, tell me how long you're spending at gas stations throughout the day, how long is your lunch break? Like, how many properties are you getting to a property just sitting in the truck and scrolling through your phone? Like, what are you doing? And it the crew leader self-identified, there were some problems, and he approached the business owner to then come say, like, what do I need to do to improve? Because he made the game simple. And what I love, and what I know I'm talking a lot here, but the last thing I love about putting this analogy on, and obviously we're both football fans, even though Auburn's not that great. We're both football fans. And the way I like saying it is the other team doesn't need to know what the average yards per carry for the other team's running back is when they're out there on the field playing. All they need to know is how much time's left in the game, who's got the ball, and what down is it, right? So it's like they have condensed a very complicated game down into a very simple scoreboard that any player on the field can read. And we try to do the same thing for business owners.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

That's it's absolutely right on target. I mean, it if you can't, if you don't, because you can, if you don't focus on what's really important in your business and choose to do the things that are gonna generate income, generate revenue, then yeah, it's not gonna be good. Yeah, it's not gonna be good at all. It it requires being able to focus. And when there are a zillion things to try and focus on, your focus is fractured. And you cannot win if your focus is fractured amongst a hundred different things. You're constantly, you know, looking all over the place for whatever it is you're supposed to be looking at. It's just good, yeah. It goes nuts. There's no doubt about it. Yeah, but it gets back to that effectiveness and efficiency part. Now, tell me this though.

Pricing Fixes And Saying No

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Uh as a crew leader, do I control the the properties I work on? How do how do I, as a crew leader, besides operating more effectively and efficiently, can I go out? Do they go out and sell their services to new properties? Or how does the I worry about control when it comes to leading people and we give them something to shoot for, it's got to be something they can control. How does that factor in or does it for your landscaper?

SPEAKER_00 15:09

That's a great question, Morris, because here's the beauty of simplifying that entire landscape business down into those metrics, those one metric per truck, is that it now exposes a couple of things. It exposes, okay, if the crew leader's like, we're not wasting any time, we're doing our absolute best out here. Like there's some, there's something else wrong with the equation, right? And so now it challenges the business owner to be like, well, hold on a second. What's the drive time to those properties? Are we wasting a lot of windshield time just to cut grass? Or are we pricing this property correctly? Is it actually taking longer than we thought when we originally quoted that property to go cut the grass on that property? So now it's this balance between the crew leader saying, Okay, we're doing things right, and he's having the conversation with the business owner. And then now it's the business owner analyzing each one of those properties to be like, did we even price these things correctly? And I tell people all the time, like, sometimes one of the best levers you can pull in small business is just revamp your pricing. So so many people play this like competitive, I got a low ball to get the bid kind of thing. And all of a sudden you do this and you're losing money every time you're driving to that property or whatever your business model is, right? And so for a lot of people, it's just simply saying, okay, are you saying no to the right things? Like, do you have the power of saying no? Because a lot of people, especially in startup mode, they'll say yes to anything just to get dollars coming in the door. And then all of a sudden, five years down the road in business, you're like, why am I still serving that customer? It's a horrible customer. I'm losing money every time I do something, and I'm just a nice person that doesn't want to say no. And that's what we try to help people do as well, is be like, we try to expose that in their business to say you should be saying no to these things because every time you crank the truck to go cut that property, you're losing money. And so people just need to know that. And if you don't have the data to do that, then it's impossible to make those decisions.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

No, absolutely. And it's you know, it's one of the beauties of being a business owner, you get to choose who you want to do business with. You don't have to do business with somebody that's a well, we won't say what they are, but you know, you don't have to do business with those unnice people. You just you just really don't. If they're not going to treat you like a professional, then um, you know, you don't have to do business with them. Well, Morris, but they bring in so much, yeah. Well, there's a good person out there that'll bring in even more.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

That's exactly right. You know, and and to your point, one thing I want to interject in there, Morris, what I try to talk to people about is the opportunity cost, right? So you're like, because you're worried about losing that customer, in reality, you're saying, well, if your margins are slim to nothing or possibly negative on that customer, how many other customers out there would you love to go serve at a much higher profit margin, but you're scared to say no because you don't know that customer's out there because there's just an opportunity cost to be like, no, you could actually have good customers. You just have to be willing to bite the bullet and say, I'm saying no to these guys because there's an opportunity out there to go serve better people.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's hard to do when when when you're watching that revenue number, because that revenue number makes everything happen. I just did a course. I love to tell people my job is to help you increase your income so and then work it out so that you have more time to enjoy it. Uh that's that's the key. You can work yourself into the ground and make a lot of money, but if you don't have time to enjoy it because you're working all the time, yeah, we're in we're in deep trouble. Anyhow, the the fact is that opportunity cost is a great concept, and it's one that most business owners, I don't think, stop and really think about. If you do, pat yourself on the back, because that's a real good concept. Is it is it am I spending my time doing the most important things, the most profitable things that I can do for my business? And a lot of times we're not, and we got here where we are, and now it's time to look at at how we can revamp that and change.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yeah, so good. I love that.

When Revenue Drops Profit Jumps

SPEAKER_00 19:01

And and and one last thing I'll mention on that too is that um for this business owner in Jacksonville, Florida, this is just so much fun for me to talk about. We because we've been with him long enough to kind of see his business, I showed him the year-over-year comparison, and we had this whole conversation about like analyze your properties, say no to the people you shouldn't be saying no to. And he sent me some texts along the way and he's like, This is killing me. I'm literally watching our revenue drop. And he's like, This is it's so counterintuitive as a business owner because you're like so scared for that. But then the next time we met, I showed him that same exact month from where he was a year ago to where he is now for the exact same month over month comparison, and his revenue dropped by 10% from what he did a year ago during that same month, but his profit increased 20%. Wow, right. So, like he made an additional like 30 grand in that same month, even though his revenue dropped from that exact same period before because he was focused on serving the right people. And I'm like, this is the power. So it people love to brag about revenue, love to brag about the biggest numbers in their business. And I tell people that means nothing because when you brag about those things, you have no clue what they're actually keeping on the bottom line to actually go create impact and build well for their families and all the things you get in the business to go do. And so, what you have to focus in on what is your take home, not what is your top line biggest number that you love bragging about. And so it's just it's a fun conversation.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Yeah, in in my world of financial services, it was always you can make millions of dollars a year, but it really all boils down to how much of that do you get to keep. That's right, that's right. You know, I mean, if you're making millions, but you're only keeping hundreds, we get a problem.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yeah, yeah, so true. That's uh such a good point. And and and one last I want to mention something about profit because and this is so much fun for the Morse, because you know, so many people, if their why power is just like big bank account, you know, lots of money, etc., it's never gonna be strong enough. And so what I the the thing that I think profit gets a bad connotation a lot of times in small business because you're like you correlate that with greed and money and Mr. Scrooge with all the piles of money, whatever you want to call it, right? And so in reality, what I tell people profit does is it gives you the opportunity and the creativity to have greater impact. And what I mean by that is that like when you have margin in your business and you have the money in that margin to go spend things like impact your and your team better, you know, bonus them better during Christmas, or wow your customers because now you have the the financial margin to go do special things for them that has customer attention, you know, there's and or give away to like nonprofits that you support. I mean, there's so many things that you can do when you operate with margin in your life. That's true about time margin, that's true about any margin in your life. But I try to help people with financial margin. But when you have that, it just gives you the opportunity to have greater impact for what you're called to do as a business owner. And that's what gets me fired up every day. It's not about building a huge bank account because we all know that once you have the bank account, your life really doesn't look any different. It's really about saying, like, how can I leverage money as a tool to have greater impact of what I felt called to do while I'm on this planet?

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Hang on a minute, I gotta write that down. Leverage money as a tool. All right, everybody out there, y'all, y'all write that one down. Because that's that's exactly what it is. Money is a tool. Money is a a thing you use in your business. Yeah. It's a thing you use to reward or to to pay for the services of the folks who work for you. And it's a it's a tool you use to pay yourself and take care of what you need, but it's a tool you can use to invest in the right things to build your business. Whether you need to invest in a new machine or you need to invest in training for your team or for you personally, maybe you need a coach.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Very true.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

You know, those kind of things uh are the things that the tool, money, can help you do. So there's just all sorts of all sorts of reasons for it. And yeah, mindset, man, if you get the wrong mindset going on, it can submarine the whole place.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Absolutely. Yeah, there's no doubt. And we one other thing I mentioned about the pro. Oh, I say I say one other thing. I could give you a million one other things. But

Profit Buckets And Smarter Investing

SPEAKER_00 23:28

uh what's fun about this too, when you really try to simplify the game of business, what we even do is we actually help people create separate accounts. So, like every month you're pushing certain money aside into a profit bucket. It's the whole profit first mentality, if you've ever heard about that. But you push money aside into that profit bucket. And the beauty about this is that it now sit you can see trends over time of how your profit bucket is growing. But then the what here's what I love more than anything. To your point, if you need to buy a new machine or you want to invest in yourself with a coach, or if you want to have greater impact of however you want to like grow your business, it now has it it forces you to say, okay, I'm about to transfer money back out of my profit bucket into reinvesting something. So now you have to justify the return on investment of pushing money back out of the profit account so that you see a greater return for money coming back into that profit account at a later date. Right. And so now you're it forces you as a business owner to be like, is this a smart investment? Because I can clearly have to push money out of this account into another account to go and reinvest in the business. And now it makes you at least think about is this a smart investment? Because I am I either gonna burn that profit money by pushing it out or am I gonna reinvest it to see potential more money come down the road more than what I just pushed back out? And it's just a fun, it's just like an investment mentality, right? It's just like anything, putting it in the stock market, whatever. It's that concept of saying, like, is this a smart investment? And does it make me push pause for a second because I physically have to move money out to see if it's a smart move?

SPEAKER_01 24:53

That's a great idea. I will steal that one too. Uh personally, because I I'm a salesman at heart, and salespeople are the easiest people to sell if you're selling something. Uh, if you're selling something, go find us another salesperson, they'll buy from you. Yeah, because they know what they're supposed to do. When you when you get to that point in the process and they're supposed to buy it, they know oh, okay, this is where I'm supposed to say yes and buy the product, and they will. Okay, I'm a salesman. I will buy anything that comes across the screen and I need a way to manage myself. And isn't that really what it always boils down to? Having a personal operating system.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

So true. That is so true. And and I love that concept, Morris, because like you've probably heard it said time and I think James Clear is the one that came up with this. He wrote atomic habits, but he's the one that came up with people don't like uh achieve to the level of their goals, they fall to the level of their systems, yes, right, which goes to your personal operating system, right? So it's like when you what we try to help business owners do, and I I need to count to be on my life to do this as well, is just you build rhythms of your business, right? And counting by nature is rhythmic, but we also help people build rhythms of saying, like, how often are you pushing money into that profit account? Don't think that you just push it whenever you see whatever's left over at the bank after you've paid all your bills. Now, you have to be intentional about prioritizing profit and having a rhythm in your business to push that aside and creating these. And that's just one example of many rhythms of a business that we think you should operate in so you can kind of have a smarter picture of what is what is life looking like put moving forward as I sell more? What does that look like as we hire the next person, that investment to potentially hire us for growth? It's just yeah, it's just the constant rhythm of creating systems in your business that's ultimately allows you to compound over time, over time, over time to help you win in business.

Calendar Year Choice And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Austin, we can continue this conversation forever. I've got one more question for you, though. Do you have your clients on a calendar year basis or a fiscal year basis? And why one way or the other?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Great question. We do we do calendar year. I mean, we we always work with like the tax CPAs at the end of the year to say, like, is there a reason you want to do it something differently? But 100% of our clients right now are all on the calendar year.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Very good. Very good. Austin, this has been a blast, man. I've learned a lot. I've got two pages worth of notes for my business, and that's always means it was a good show. So thank you, my friend. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for being here and for what you do for your clients. How do we get in touch with you? If we want to talk more with you about what you do and maybe invest in your services, how do we get to you?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Well, I appreciate that so much, Morris. It's been a blast talking to you. Um, so our website is flywheel.financial. It gets confusing. It's not.com, it's dot financial. So flywheel.financial. And then honestly, too, I'm new to social media. I've I've I've never been on social media prior to a year ago, but I just knew that that was a good lever to pull just to try to add value in people's lives. So I'm only on Instagram. Uh, but you can find me at Austin D. McMillan on Instagram. And I honestly, I'm just putting content out there just to try to add value to business owners' lives, and you can always reach out to me on there as well. Outstanding.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Austin, thank you so much for being on the Commission Code with us today.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Thank you so much, Morris. It was a blast. I appreciate you having me.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

It was fun. War Eagle, brother. War Eagle. Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the Commission Code to success in your business. Remember, go to Morris Sims.com for more information. And in the meantime, hey, have a great week. Get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes, I'm Morris Sims.