When it comes to your business, if you can bootstrap it and figure out the operating model right, where you can pour gasoline on it and then grow, I would say try to bootstrap it as long as possible. This is BYFIQ. Wealth and success come from understanding how finance works in business, and together we'll explore the most important topics to 10x your financial results. My hope is that we can work together soon. Please share and enjoy. Today I want to do something a little different. I have a financial IQ assessment that I created at byfitucom and a lot of people have taken the assessment and what's really cool is not only do they get their financial IQ score at the end of it, they also get the opportunity to ask a question. So in today's episode I'm going to run through these questions. I can't do all of them, but I'm going to do as many as I can and I'm going to answer the questions that you've submitted through the financial IQ assessment. Let's start with Cassie's question. She asked what's the biggest challenge that I faced and how did I overcome it?

When I was 16 years old, I left my mom's house. I love my mom she's just married to this total punk at the time. So I left and I went and moved in with my sister. I had $0 to my name. I had no safety net whatsoever. It's not like I had the safety net where, if things didn't work out, I'd go back to my mom and she'd give me thousands of dollars right, there's nothing. I had $0. I was making $4.25 an hour at Dairy Queen and that was terrible. That was not cutting it, so I had to do something different. Anyways, I worked a couple summers for a landscape business and then I went off on my own.

At the age of 16, I set up shop in my sister's garage. That was my first business and for 13 years I grew the company into a multimillion dollar business. Here's the good news and the bad news. I learned a lot along the way and it's really cool building these high-end design build landscape projects. But here's the bad news I had no clue how to read financial statements. I was literally running my business through sheer grit and hard work and just heroics. Right, that's what I was relying on. So obviously I made a ton of mistakes along the way because I didn't know how to read an income statement, balance sheet or even a statement of cash flows. All right, so obviously I would get my financial statements from my accountant and I would know how much we were doing in sales and profit. But if you were to ask me, steve, what are the three financial levers that you could pull to improve gross profit? Well, first of all, I didn't even know the difference between gross and net profit, so that wasn't super helpful. So I just go out there and make decisions and just work really hard and, as a result, I left a ton of money on the table and ultimately I had some big failures. So that was probably the biggest failure, the biggest setback in my life. But I don't know about you. My failures have been huge launch pads into future growth.

So it was at this time that I was like crying. I was like depressed. I was like, oh my gosh, what did I do? I destroyed so many employees' lives who depended on me and I said to myself I will never, ever do this again. And that's when I doubled down on learning accounting, finance and strategy. I went back to school. I spent over eight years in undergraduate and graduate studies, I got my CPA, I went and worked in public accounting and then I started my company called Coltivar. So during this time it was a tremendous period of growth and I vowed to myself I will never let a bad strategy or my lack of financial intelligence hurt other people, including myself, and that's why I'm so passionate about this topic. So thank you, cassie, for that question.

Next question In college, what skills can I build to stand out? That's from YT. I don't know what your full name is, but at least you put your initials, so YT. Here's my answer In school, if you can learn how to build financial models, that's going to be a game changer when you get out there in the real world. So, after all my years in school, I can tell you there's this one experience.

I was in the finance club. I know total nerd alert, right, but I was in this finance club and I remember getting this one flyer, and this one flyer was talking about a workshop that was going to be held on the weekend, where somebody from New York was going to fly in and teach the group how to build financial models. Well, first of all, I was like what is a financial model? And then, second of all, I was like the weekend right, I want the weekend to be mine. I don't want to go back to school and go to campus on the weekend to learn about financial models, which I don't even know about. But nonetheless, I decided to sign up and I committed and I showed up for this two-day event and during this time this guy came in from Wall Street and he schooled us on how to build financial models and I was like, wow, this is great. That then created a spark of curiosity for me and in subsequent semesters I signed up for a financial modeling course and that's all we did for the entire semester.

Then I started to get obsessed with building financial models. So in Excel, I'd build discounted cash flow models, I'd build pricing models, I'd build forecasting models and I had these giant models built out that would help me to make better decisions. That's the key. You can be a nerd building financial models, but if you can't take that model and then make a decision and take action, it's just for naught right. And then make a decision and take action, it's just for not right.

So I would say, if you can learn Excel or Google Sheets, some variation thereof, and, more importantly, if you could learn how to build financial models to make better decisions and to inform people, you're gonna have so much the advantage. So that's number one. Number two is make sure you learn how to read a statement of cash flows and how to compute cash flow. When you're in school, that's going to be really critical, all right. The third thing which is kind of weird, because I didn't learn this in my finance or accounting classes but learn how to write. I know there's chat, gbt and other tools out there, but being able to take your thoughts and convert them into words that are influential and to be able to tell a story is so powerful. Oftentimes I hire people and they can't write really well and they can't synthesize their thoughts, and that could be a real bottleneck to their progress. So that's my advice there, right?

The next question comes from Ryan how to make strategic decisions based on financial statements. That's great. So when it comes to financial statements, if you can understand the story behind the numbers for example, you go to the income statement and you notice that gross profit is declining and then if you know that the three drivers are okay increase sales, change your pricing or reduce your costs, your cost to get sold then you can start diving into the micro strategies, the tactics to pursue in order to change those numbers. But if you don't even know what the levers are with financial statements. You're just going to be looking at them and you're going to be like, oh yeah, our current assets are climbing. I don't even know what that means. I don't even know how to fix it. So I'd say that that's a very important thing, ryan, is to understand the levers behind the financial statements. And then, when it comes to strategy, just make sure you understand a really solid framework to solve problems with strategy.

So at Coltivar, I have free videos. You can go to Coltivar. com. I walk you through how to build a strategy blueprint. So be sure to check it out. It's free, you can go there. You could also listen to my other content where I explain what strategy is all about. But that's how you start to make strategic decisions. The other thing I'll say is that when it comes to strategy, it's all about focusing effort, and anytime I work with a company, I will ask them okay, what are you working on right now? And then my follow-up question is what's the potential upside of this specific action? In other words, if you are successful at completing this action, is it going to make your company more money or to reduce costs or to reduce risk in some manner, and if so, can you quantify it? So that's really important to understand, because you could be working on some task over here, but maybe the upside's only 10 grand, whereas you're ignoring this other task over here which is, if you get it right, it can generate millions of dollars for your business. So, creating a website, yeah, they may be good, but what's even better is figuring out how to change your lead generation funnel to convert more leads and ultimately increase your revenue. All right, so that's what I'd say there. Just focus on upside.

Here's another question from Jacqueline as a business owner, how can I maximize compound interest? Really good question, jacqueline. I would say this If you're running a business owner, how can I maximize compound interest? Really good question, jacqueline, I would say this If you're running a business and let's say you're sitting on a bunch of excess cash, number one you could take that cash and you can reinvest it in other investments. For example, maybe you want to buy a building for your company and then lease it back to your organization, or you want to make an investment in another company. There are some tactics that you could do there. Or maybe you're sitting on some cash and you put it in an account and you earn a little bit of interest on it, but for most businesses their bank accounts don't earn the same amount of interest as personal bank accounts. So just be aware of that. Sure, you can invest in commercial paper and other financial assets, but you may not want to tie up your cash for long periods of time.

I would say this the best way to leverage compounding interest in business is to reinvest it in your business, but in the right areas of your business. So, for example, if you look at the lifetime value of a customer, which is LTV that's the common definition, lifetime value. But if you go even further lifetime gross profit of a customer okay, lpgp, and you compare that to your customer acquisition cost per customer, and if you can fix that formula, then you could pour the gasoline on your business and then talk about compounding interest. So let me explain. I've gone into businesses before and their lifetime value of a customer may be. I'll make up some numbers here. Let's say it's $1,000, but it costs the company $500 to acquire that customer. Well, that's an LPGP, the $1,000 to CAC ratio of two to one, 1,000 divided by the 500, two to one right. But as I work with this company, if I'm able to reduce the customer acquisition cost or make the customers more valuable by increasing the frequency in which they buy products or services from the company, or by raising prices, because we're able to increase perceived value, whatever it may be, from, let's say, two to one to 10 to one. Well, all of a sudden, that means for every dollar you invest in customer acquisition, you're gonna get $10 back in gross profit. Well, when you figure out that formula, it's like pour the gasoline on your business and you will grow exponentially. Now I say that with the caveat, obviously, you can't grow faster than your cashflow, but the point I'm trying to make here is that, instead of trying to invest all these random things or other investments because we believe the grass is greener on the other side, oftentimes in our business it's all about just getting the strategy right, fine tuning the operating model and connecting that all with finance to maximize value, and that's where the biggest upside is. Good question, though, jacqueline. The next question comes from Emmanuel.

How do you overcome the fear of doing a presentation? I could tell you, the first time I did public speaking, it was at a garden club for a bunch of old ladies where I was teaching them about the science of color as it pertains to planting flowers in a landscape. And I was so nervous, right, I was so nervous and I was like, oh my gosh, can I do this? And my hands were all sweaty, my armpits were all sweaty. It was crazy, but I did it. And then I had the opportunity to speak to a larger crowd, and this time there were a hundred people in the room. But I stood up there. I was super nervous. It was probably a terrible presentation, but I put in the hours to prepare for that presentation. I did it and then I learned from it, and then I kept doing this over and over again.

So here's the thing in my life Like when I'm scared of doing something, I know I'm on the right track. So, in other words, do what scares the crap out of you. That's my advice. So if there's something that's like super scary it's like, okay, you're scared of talking in front of strangers, or you're scared of learning how to do finance, or you're scared of making sales calls, whatever it is like just do it. Like face your fear and do it and you'll overcome it. I'm not talking about doing like reckless things, like jumping off a bridge without a bungee cord or something like that. Instead, I'm talking about the things that will lead to your personal growth. It's just doing things over and over again. And guess what, when I do these episodes, you don't know how much editing goes into it, because sometimes it takes me like an hour to spit out a 10 minute episode. Because I'm like and I'm hesitating, I'm pausing, I'm saying, um, I'm acting like an idiot, so just go out there, do it, and the more reps that you do, the better you'll get and, trust me, like things will come together and you'll overcome your fears. But good question.

Next question comes from John. This is a good one. How do I decide if I should take over the family business? Here's my answer. It should be something that you're passionate about. Think about it You're going to spend over 2000 hours of your life every single year at least running a business. That's a lot of time, and if you're running a business that you're not passionate about, then a big chunk of your life is going to have a void. All right. So I've done that before. I've ran things that I'm not super passionate about, and it comes through. Even my clients can see if they're like, yeah, you're not super passionate about this side of the business and I'm like, yeah, I'm not.

So, when it comes to deciding whether or not you want to take over the business, first of all ask yourself okay, are you passionate about it? Here's the caveat, though I had to bust my butt in the early days. Going back to my landscaping story, when I started my company, I was out there on the trencher the machine that digs the holes in the ground. I was shoveling dirt. I had dirt under my fingernails and I'm total like type A germaphobe with my hands, but I'm in there in the dirt like digging. I was working all these backbreaking hours and I did that for years and years and years. So I had to put in the work. And then, when I started Coltivar, I had to learn all these new things, create all these tools. I grinded. I still grind to this day.

So don't be afraid of the hard work and don't let that get in the way of you making a decision about running a company. I can say for a lot of people if you're given the opportunity to run a business and then take that business and then grow to the next level, oh my gosh, you have so much the advantage. Just make sure it aligns with your passion. But don't be afraid of hard work. If the economics are there, it may be a great opportunity to jumpstart your career, because if you go work for another business not saying there's anything wrong with that, but you're going to slowly climb up the ladder and at any point they can just fire you. All right. So there is power in entrepreneurship because you get to control your destiny. That's at least how I feel and that's my advice to you. Good question, though.

The next one isn't really a question, it's more of a shout out to Henry. So Henry's a 16 year old and he filled out the financial IQ assessment and he was telling me about how he started a window washing business and I thought that was so cool because he's like Steve, I just passed the thousand dollar mark Number one. Kudos to you for listening to Boosting your Financial IQ, not because I think I'm anything great, but just kudos to you for being interested in boosting your financial IQ and learning more about finance. I wasn't thinking that when I was 16 years old. So, henry, great job, and I think that's the thing like. There are so many business opportunities for younger people. You can wash windows, you can start a cleaning business. You can power wash out trash cans, you can do so many different things and have these like blue collar quote, blue collar jobs and they can turn into robust companies.

And it's funny when I was doing my MBA program at Duke, a lot of my classmates are like, yeah, I'm going to go work for Amazon and Google and high tech and tech, tech tech was the thing. And I went against the grain and I was like, yeah, I like blue collar businesses. My background's in construction. I work with a ton of construction companies and what's interesting is that I was working with a plumber years ago and this guy owned the business. He made a million dollars a year. Take home, all right, take home a million dollars a year. Take home, all right, take home a million dollars a year. But then I've also worked with other people in professional services, whether it's in healthcare or their attorneys or whatever it may be and they're making like 250 a year.

Now I'm not saying it's about money all right, I'm not saying that at all. You should pursue what you're passionate about and do a good job and add value to the world and money will follow you. I'm just saying like, don't poo-poo blue collar work. And for Henry, like going out there and washing windows. That's awesome, because you're gonna learn a ton of skills that will help you along the way. When I was running my landscape business, guess who my customers were? Guess who could afford these very expensive landscape projects CEOs, business owners, executives. So here I was, 16 years old, interacting with these executives, learning how to talk to professionals. Now translate that to what I do at Coltivar, when I'm presenting in front of a board of directors or I'm working hand in hand with CEOs. Well, I had that experience years ago and so I feel much more comfortable and confident in my approach. So, like Steve Jobs said, it's hard to connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. But, henry, I just wanted to give a shout out to you Good job, keep up the good work.

The next question I want to address comes from Melissa. This is much more granular. She's talking about how she has a chemical business. She switched manufacturers, then their facility burnt down, they had no business insurance, and now she's like oh my gosh, what do I do? I made a terrible mistake and she's beating herself up. So I just want to say, melissa, give yourself a little bit of a grace here, because I've done the same thing so many times, I've made so many mistakes and even the smartest business owners can make all the right decisions, but then just bad things happen.

I was reading a book once where it was like, okay, you can have a good decision and a good outcome, you can have a good decision and a bad outcome. You could have a bad decision, have a good outcome and you could have a bad decision and a bad outcome. So you can't tie decisions always to outcomes. Sometimes things just happen right. It's like the saying sometimes bad things happen to good people. That's just the way that the world works, so I just want to address this. When it comes to making business decisions, number one kudos to you for having a business and taking on risks. A lot of people don't want to take on risk and sure, yeah, you could have business insurance. You probably should have business insurance, but rebuild, fix it and use this as an opportunity to restart and to recreate your operating model.

Some of my biggest failures in life have given me a unique opportunity to start fresh. So I've seen them as blessings in disguise, and I believe in God and I know that God directs my path, even though sometimes things happen and I'm like what the heck is going on. I know that there's a bigger plan for my life that I don't see. So when I align my will to his, it makes all the difference in the world. So first of all, I just want to share my empathy for like what's going on. I'm sure it's really difficult in your life, but I also want to point out that like this could be a great opportunity to learn from these mistakes and then propel yourself forward.

The next question comes from Matt how do I get out of debt and invest properly? So when it comes to getting out of debt, it's really simple. There's two levers you could pull. Number one, go make more money. Or, number two, spend less money. Oftentimes, when I'm working with people, I'll help people from a personal finance perspective. This topic does overlap with what I do in the world of business finance, so I'll just share a few things with you.

And also in my ecclesiastical responsibilities for my church, I've had the opportunity to work with people from a welfare perspective and what I've learned in the process is that typically, when it comes to debt and just poor personal finances, it's oftentimes an earning problem, not necessarily a spending problem. Now, sometimes people have crazy spending problems and they're just buying a bunch of dumb stuff on Amazon, or they're just wasting their money on crap. Okay, so you don't wanna be doing that, and if you are, you need to fix that ASAP. But, more importantly, there's only so much you can cut when it comes to your costs or your monthly expenses, but your earning potential is infinite. That's why I'm so bullish on building skills that translate out there in the market, because money chases value, and if you could deliver value to companies or to people, if you can solve problems, that's where you make money.

Think about people who solve the biggest problems in the world. Think about Elon Musk, for example. He's in the process of solving major problems like related to energy or space exploration. So the bigger the problems you solve, the more money you'll make in life. So I would say you know I'm not this like financial guru. You could listen to the other ones that are out there that'll talk about how to get out of debt fast and how to invest.

I would just say my advice to you is like double down on yourself, invest in your education, build skills, grind it out. Like do the work, stop reading books and doing all this stuff. A lot of people they're like Steve, give me another book to read, give me another book to read. I'm like stop reading books. I say that like, obviously don't stop reading books. I read books all the time. But I'm just saying like, stop using books as an excuse to going out there and acting like go out there and act, put in the hard work, like grind it out, like learn skills, and you learn skills by doing, and when you do that, then your earning potential is going to increase. And and when you do that, then your earning potential is going to increase and then you'll solve all these other issues. So it goes back to this whole philosophy that I use when I'm turning around and growing companies about solving constraints. I would just say to you, like what's the number one constraint in your life? Like what's the one thing that's holding you back from paying down your debt and investing into your future? Identify that problem and then solve it. But you have to get like super real with yourself and then you have to eliminate everything else that doesn't align with you solving that problem. So if the number one thing that's holding you back is your earning potential, and then you say well, what's the problem with my earning potential? It's education. Then I would say go get educated and eliminate everything else in the meantime so you could focus on getting educated, so you could overcome that constraint. Otherwise you're doing a bunch of random things and you're not going to get rich by setting aside 50 bucks a week and putting it into a money market account. All right Now, sure, there's exceptions out there, but you're going to make money by investing in yourself, so you could have the skills to earn money, save money and then reinvest that money in a meaningful way in the future.

Next question comes from Ashley. She's asking about is it a good idea to take on debt or equity when it comes to starting a business or growing a business? Here's my answer. So when I was in grad school, I remember there would be like this bell, this metaphorical bell, that would go off and it'd just ring among my whole cohort Anytime that one of my classmates raised capital. So there were a few classmates of mine who wanted to be entrepreneurs and they were seeking capital from investors. And I remember one of my friends. He's like Steve, guess what? We just raised a million dollars from investors. And I was like, okay, guess what? We just raised a million dollars from investors and I was like, okay, that's great, congratulations. But now, like you better put the parties aside, the celebratory parties aside, and go out there and grind, because now you have to go grow the business with that million dollars. Because if you can't increase the value, guess what? If you run out of cash, you're either going to go bankrupt or you're going to have to go raise more capital, which means you're going to be diluted even more.

So I've seen companies take on equity early on without the value being there, and they give up so much of their business in the early days. So I would say there's always debt, whether it's your personal debt, whether it's your time debt, whatever it is. There's like this debt that we acquire. Equity capital just helps you to leapfrog that debt that you incur. But still you have debt on the back end because when you go to sell your business, you're getting less because you gave up equity in the beginning. When it comes to your business, if you can bootstrap it and figure out the operating model right, where you can pour gasoline on it and then grow, I would say try to bootstrap it as long as possible. Yeah, I'm not saying equity capital is a bad thing, trust me. There are a lot of companies that take equity capital early on and they're really smart about it. But I just want to point out too many companies take equity capital too early on and that can be problematic because they give up too much of their business.

For example, a while back I was working with this company. They were doing a million dollars a year in revenue, but they had negative profit. All right, no surprise for a startup. They went to go raise capital, but their valuation was small because they didn't have the EBITDA, they didn't have the systems in place and the investor wanted to secure the return on their capital. So therefore they took a giant cut. Then they were able to figure out their operating model, and they figured it out without the extra cash. I mean, they leveraged the cash, but it wasn't the cash that helped them to figure it out, and they also didn't really get much from the investor. So they figured it out themselves anyways, it just took a little bit more time. Then they accelerated the business, but by then they were already diluted.

So you just got to be careful. Now I will say there is a cost of debt, and if you take on debt, oftentimes you have to do a personal guarantee. So you just have to be careful. If you raise equity capital and the business doesn't work out, everybody walks away right, you wipe your tears and you go your way With debt. If you get that debt from pulling on a home equity line of credit or by maxing out your credit card, for example, then you'll ultimately be responsible for paying that debt back if your business ever fails. Hopefully you never get to that point, but just be aware of that. So, as you can see, there are pros and cons to taking on debt capital versus equity capital, but maybe this gives you enough information to go on, ashley, to make the right decision for your business and your circumstances right.

Moving on this one, I'm going to be very careful about answering because I want to be very empathetic to this situation. I mean it's terrible, but this is from Troy said how do I start over after losing everything to a life threatening medical issue? Now, I don't know Troy, like I don't know you, buddy. I'm just going to answer this from my experience and just give you maybe some words of encouragement. That may be helpful, but everybody's situation is unique. But here's the deal.

In the past I used to be so anxious, I'd stress out about the future, I would worry that I was falling behind and all of these other things Right. And then one day I was having a conversation with my brother and I was completely discouraged. I was like, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm so far behind in life and I should be running this very successful business at this point. And he said Steve, my founder, like the founder of his companies, like he left his firm when he was 60 years old and he started his own business. Then he grew that business into a billion dollar company in his sixties. And I thought, wow, okay, I have a lot of runway to get to that point.

So what I want to say to you, troy, is that, like I don't know your circumstances, like I said, but this may be a great opportunity to start over from scratch. Now I say that with caution because I want to be very empathetic to you. I can't imagine how difficult this situation must be for you. But also I want to add that sometimes, like the biggest periods for growth in my life, or just reinvention, have come from these, like major setbacks, this major hardship that I've dealt with in my life. So I just want to share that with you. Maybe that helps, maybe it doesn't help, but yeah, maybe use this as an opportunity to start fresh, to pursue something completely new and do business. I believe business is one of the best vehicles to build wealth. So maybe, through this experience of losing everything, you're passionate about this topic and you want to help other people. You could create an online course or a program or a mentorship thing based on this experience, or maybe there's a product that comes out of this.

I was talking to a guy once. He's on my podcast and he's sharing a story how his daughter got cancer and she ended up dying, and it was skin cancer as a result of overexposure to the sun. So he ended up creating this sunscreen that in this applicator that you could apply to your back, because that's the side that's oftentimes hard to get to right On our own. So he took this terrible experience with his family and then he turned it into a product and service and he grew a very successful business. So that's just one way to look at it. I've never been in that situation before. So that's all the advice I can offer. But, troy, just like, believe, have faith, and I keep working hard and I know good things will be coming your way. All right, here's a question from Jason.

How did I personally go about learning finance? Did I take any courses? Do I read books? What did I do? So let me just provide a little bit of a background. Remember, when I was 16 years old and I started my company, I had no clue how to read financial statements. In other words, I had like zero financial literacy skills. But after going through that hard experience that I explained earlier, I ended up going back to school. I did my undergraduate in accounting and finance. I went on to get my master's in accounting, I got my CPA and then I worked in public accounting and that's where I really tied everything from the classroom into the real world, because I was in the financial statements, working with all these companies of all different sizes across industries, and that's when it really started to solidify. And then I went on to get my MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and I studied finance and strategy. So I spent time in academia, right, learning just the fundamentals of accounting and finance. I've also read books. There's one book that I really like. It's called the Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance by Tim Kohler Kohler, I don't know how you pronounce this K-O-L-L-E-R. That's a really good book that ties us in the principles that I talk about, like strategy and finance.

I would just say the biggest thing is just always be learning, listening to podcasts, consuming YouTube videos, doing the work, being interested in the financials of your company. So if you're working for a business, you can say, hey, I'd like to educate myself more on our financial position, and if you get access to their financials and you could ask questions, maybe you get mentored by the CFO or a controller. You could take online programs. I created a program at byfiqcom called the financial pro, and I also have the fundamentals of finance. There's the app boosting your financial IQ app. That's free, you can download it and take that mini course and that will help you along the way.

But just the biggest thing is just have this curiosity that just sparks action, because you can read all the books in the world about finance, you can be this super nerd, but if you can't take that information and then go act to pull the right levers to drive value in a company, then it's just gonna be in vain. Great question, though. There you have it. That's the end of the Q&A for today. If you want a question answered, you could go to boostingyourfinancialiq, byfiqcom. You could connect with us there. You can shoot me a message on social media I'm really active on LinkedIn or you could go to the financial IQ assessment at byfiqcom and at the very end there's a place to submit a question, and I'll try my best to get to the ones that I can. But anyways, thanks for tuning in. I wish you all the best Until next episode. Take care of yourself. Cheers.