In this episode of the Proven Entrepreneur Show, Don Williams interviews Ben Hansen, also known as the Profit Doctor. They discuss the challenges faced by business owners with a strong top line but a sick bottom line, and how Ben helps them improve their profitability and cash flow. They also talk about the importance of diverse skills in building a successful team and the value of coaching for entrepreneurs. Ben shares his journey from being a child fascinated with snakes to becoming a successful entrepreneur and business consultant. Ben Hansen shares his entrepreneurial journey, starting with his first company, Mactis Group, where he provided services to his former colleagues at Microsoft. He emphasizes the value of starting a services business in an industry you already know well. He then discusses his current venture, ProfitDoc, where he offers coaching and consulting services to entrepreneurs. Hansen shares the importance of focusing on the critical few numbers in financial reports and the need for every party in a transaction to win. He also advises trusting your instincts and following your heart in business and life.
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Building Successful Teams with Diverse Skills Ensuring Every Party Wins in a Transaction
Hey, Don Williams here with today’s episode of the Proven Entrepreneur Show. Man, what a treat. I have my very good friend all the way from Austin, Texas. Well, Austin’s not really all the way from Fort Worth, but it’s down the road a little bit. Ben Hanson. Ben, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Don. I’m really excited to be here. I’m looking forward to it.
Yeah, me too. So, you know, I met you at an EO event maybe five or six years ago. And you were like one of those bold people who said, sit down here and have lunch with me if I remember right. That may not be the exact words, but that’s pretty close, right?
I remember meeting you at lunch in like a Hyatt Hotel down in San Antonio.
Down in San Antonio, we were both trespassing. And so, you know, one of the good things about going to conferences is you want to meet everybody you want to meet. Stick your hand out, tell them your name and say hi, because you never know, you know, where that might end up. So, you are in most circles known as the prophet doctor. Okay. Now, I happen to know you do not have a medical degree, but I also happen to know you have
Exactly.
Yes, trust me. I’m a doctor.
excellent degrees in the world of finance and business. So tell us a little bit about Profit Doctor, what you do and who you do it with.
Mm -hmm.
Yes. So if I were to just give you the shortest thumbnail, it would be something like this. I help business owners who have a strong, healthy top line.
I help business owners who have a strong, healthy top line cure, heal, help a sick bottom line Share on X
cure, heal, help a sick bottom line. So if you’ve got a strong top line with a sick bottom line, you may want to call the prophet doctor. And so what I do, yeah.
I love that. And I’m going to be a little sarcastic with this question, but like there are companies that have great top lines and sickly bottom lines.
That is a fun and sarcastic comment all rolled up into one. You know, one of the things I’ve learned over the last 13 years in entrepreneurs organization, being with so many business owners, different forums, and hearing what’s kind of going on with people is sometimes the people you think have got it all figured out are kind of doing the duck, cool, calm, and collected on the surface and paddling like hell underneath the water.
And what’s really driving them crazy is that while they’re growing and revenue is good and they’re adding employees, sometimes bottom line profitability is terrible. And so their cashflow sucks. Somebody told me, I think they called it, I’m to get the letters wrong. It was something like, it was like a play on PMS, but it was like payroll something syndrome where like twice a month they’re like freaking out. So basically, yes, there are so, so many.
entrepreneurs out there with what seems like a good situation where their company is growing, they’re delivering with quality to their customers and they’re growing top line, often adding employees, but under the covers, if you will, behind the curtain, under the water, they are paddling like heck trying to keep up with a really sick bottom line and poor cash flow.
I love that. So was kind of an epiphany to me. You know, I’ve been a founder of a dozen startups and have a portfolio of companies and many of those, some of were real stinkers, but most of them had great growth. But it was kind of epiphany to me the day that I learned that sometimes growth actually kills a company. They outgrow their means and it just killed the deal. And so I love the fact.
Yeah.
I come from a long line of wheat farmers, so we’re very profit oriented. It’s like, it doesn’t matter how much you make, it matters how much you keep. And you can’t keep it if you don’t, if it’s not profit. So, I love that. And even though you’re in Austin, Texas, you literally serve clients all over the world, correct? Yeah, awesome. Okay, so I want to move into your story because the Proven Entrepreneur Show is a show where…
That’s true. That’s true.
Other entrepreneurs, either startups all the way up to established companies can learn from the experiences of proven entrepreneurs like yourself. And so I’m gonna ask some questions about the good and some questions about the bad. And I may even ask a question about the ugly, but you’re gonna answer. And so that’s how we go. So let’s start with this and you know how to do this anyway. But as you know, I’m a gratitude junkie.
Got it.
Yep.
And so I like start most meetings with one good thing. So something you’re grateful for that the audience does not know. And so do you have one good thing you’d share with us today?
Well, one thing I would share is over the last couple of years, I really reshaped my identity around health and fitness and athletics. Gosh, 20 some years ago, I got thrown into a swimming pool and hit my hip on the side of the pool. And that created like a problem with my IT band. And then that turned into a knee problem and a foot problem and an ankle problem. And I really kind of fell away from a…
idea where like I was athletic and did a lot of exercise and things like that. And literally it took me about 20 years to slowly start getting back after it. All manner of like doctors and physical therapists and PTs and Shiatsu guys and all sorts of stuff. But just this last year I summited Kilimanjaro. We’ve done about five 14 ,000 foot peaks in Colorado and I’ve been running and just I’ve really kind of
shifted my identity back to like a guy who’s athletic and that has been really great for me.
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I’ll say this, that day five or six years ago or seven years ago, when Ben asked me to sit down and have lunch with him, he had brought all of his own food and his own juices. And I was like, okay, this is a weird guy. He brought all his own food, but he had a ton of food. I was like, if he eats all that, I’m going to be shocked. But he pretty much did. And it was like, you know, multiple health stuff.
So kudos to you and I’ll follow along with the hip and gratitude. So I am, think 16 days on a brand new hip. And so I’m grateful for brand new hip. I went the other day and they took a picture. And if anybody’s lost a screw about that big, there’s one in my pelvic bone where they attach. Looks like they got it at Home Depot or something, but probably not.
But I am really grateful and I’m grateful for recovery and Ben and his wife and partner Ginger shared some health strategies and products with me and so I’m grateful for that. okay, I’m gonna hop right in. Ben, in the home where you were raised, and that’s different for all kinds of different people anymore.
okay.
But in your home, where you little men, okay, was there an adult entrepreneur who set an example for you?
No, both of my parents were slash still are technically university professors in anthropology. And you know how it’s like every kid either grows up thinking I’m going to be just like mom or dad, or I’m going to be just like the opposite of mom or dad. Well, as an only child, I always thought my parents primary job was to entertain me. And
There was a period where somehow that was not happening, at least to the liking of seven -year -old Ben. And I was like, gosh, dad, why aren’t you available to come play? And he was like, hey, I’m busy working. And I concluded from, I think, that moment on, A, something is wrong, and I am not going to be a university professor. I’m going to be a business tycoon, I guess. I don’t know if I knew that word back then. To make a lot of money.
so I could have a lot of free time and I guess play was probably sort of what I was thinking then. So that is kind of what jump started, I guess, my entrepreneurial journey. It turns out that my mother’s father was an entrepreneur and he did have his own business and pretty darn successful. And he was a chemist. And I think his primary success or his formula for success was he was
Bye.
very gifted in certain areas of chemistry. And this is like working for industrial companies like Coca -Cola or other different manufacturing facilities, mostly in Atlanta for him. And people knew that he was good. So he was a consultative salesperson and a subject matter expert in that space. As an actual like nuts and bolts MBA Wharton Business School business guy, maybe like a C minus.
But he was good enough at the other thing to build a, you know, like a 20, 30 person company that was probably spitting out, you know, several million dollars a year of revenue and keeping at least a good chunk. So he was doing pretty good.
Yeah, I love that. you know, while it’s true that of the world’s, think it’s of the world’s billionaires, like 40 % are engineers. And so that, you know, you can’t, that’s too big a statistic to overlook. Okay. But certainly out of entrepreneurs, there’s as many entrepreneurs that
Mm -hmm.
Yep.
didn’t graduate college or maybe didn’t even go, okay? And we’re C students, you know, in their scholastic career. So entrepreneurs, all shapes, ages, doesn’t make any difference. I know for me, my parents were not entrepreneurial. I just knew I couldn’t stand for people to tell me what to do. And so I’m like, yeah, this other people tell me what to do is not working for me. And so I’ll have to tell me what to do.
Yep.
Yeah.
okay Yeah
There you go. I did have one comment on that. That chunk of entrepreneurs that you talked about, we’ll call it the C students that didn’t graduate from fancy this or fancy that, are actually some of my favorite clients. Because almost invariably, what has got them to the level of success that they have is that they’re usually really good at the thing that their business does. So whether that’s construction,
or plumbing or recruiting or whatnot. And what’s cool about that is they’re usually delivering with excellence for their clients. They’re often very good at picking out people who can deliver with excellence in the thing that they work on. And then often an area that there may be weaker in, we’ll call it that C minus business person. So whether that’s like reading and reviewing and understanding financials.
whether that’s thinking about the business model of their company or pricing strategy. And so what I love about a lot of those kinds of entrepreneurs is they’re often like, just give me some nuggets and I’ll run with it. And so sometimes they’re like the most coachable, the easiest to get the most upside in the shortest time and a lot of fun because well, often very appreciative too.
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, we know this as far as team building, that the best teams are people who have diverse skills. Okay. And so if you’re, if you are that construction guy who’s great at construction, okay. But you, breathe in a brown paper bag when it comes time to look at your balance sheet and your P and L. Okay. Then to add a world -class talent, like the prophet doctor.
Yep.
Yep.
Okay, who that is your skill. That’s just like kind of like a no brainer. Okay. And like in my own coaching practice, most of my clients are what I call scientists. They’re very high IQ. They’re very brilliant. Okay. That almost means they’re a little low EQ. And of course selling and influence is all on the emotional side of the equation.
huh.
Yeah, absolutely. I see it in a very similar way. You sometimes I feel that I can provide almost what if that entrepreneur who was so good at some things, but maybe not so good at some others have the world’s best complimentary business partner. Well, sometimes I try to provide that except the difference is I don’t take, you know, half the equity.
Yeah. And keep this in mind, what Ben just said about complimentary. So like for the first 20 years of my entrepreneurial career, I tried to hire people that looked like me, walked like me, talked like me. Okay. And one, there’s not very many of them. And two, we’re not very compatible. Okay. The world is not big enough for both of us to be in the same office in the same company, but to work with people that have diverse skills where they are really good at something I’m not. That’s way you build the best team.
Okay. So now I want to go to, you’re still a little Ben. Okay. 18 and under. All right. Your first, maybe you were not, maybe you, maybe your first job, you were an entrepreneur and you sold lemonade. I don’t know. Or maybe your first job was sweeping out the garage. Mom and dad paid you. But what’s the very first thing you did where you traded time and effort in return for dollars.
All right. Yeah.
Got it. Well, the funnest story, which was a genius business model, is I had a contract with my mom where she paid me a snake allowance so that I wouldn’t catch snakes and sell them. OK, so the back story here is one day me and a buddy were out biking the neighborhood back when you could be unsupervised as a 12 year old and just
tear off until it was dark. We ran across a coral snake. Coral snakes are usually, you can’t really do the sizing with the skinny video here, but coral snakes typically are like 18 inches, 24, 30 inches maximum. This was a whopper. It was like three feet plus. So we grabbed it, we put it in a public paper shopping bag, just pinched over the edge, and I started calling pet stores to figure out where I could sell this thing.
I don’t know what got me thinking about that. Anyway, ultimately we realized no pet stores wanted to buy it, but we did donate it to the Florida Natural History Museum. And they were so thrilled because apparently coral snakes don’t last long in captivity. Mainly they eat other snakes. This one had just eaten another snake, which is probably why it was so docile and let us catch it without like a fight. And they were going to send it off to Sweden or something like that. But my mom, who’s terrified of snakes,
was like, no, no, no, you can’t do that. And I don’t know that I want to use the word blackmail. I’m going to use the word smart negotiation and a clever business model. We struck an arrangement where she would pay me X a week or something like that. And I would not catch snakes. But maybe a more legitimate business model, which I think was pretty good, was my dad offered me a different job.
or business proposition. He said, hey, I’ll buy the mower, I’ll make sure the mower works, I’ll get the gas, you mow our yard, but then you can use the mower for free, including the gas that I buy, to mow other people’s yards, and you can keep that money. So that was one of my first cash in the pocket business models. And back in the day when you could earn about 25 bucks,
for maybe 45 minutes of, albeit, incredibly hot, sweaty work in the summers in Florida. It seemed like a good gig.
Yeah, I love that. I love both. What came to my mind on the coral snake and getting paid not to do it. I’m thinking of like the movie Goodfellas where, you know, the mafia guy comes in and says, you know, your place is not going to burn down as long as you give me, you know, 2000 a week. I’m like, so like, was in the mafia, man. He was doing, he was selling protection to his mother. Okay. Which the entrepreneur side of me kind of.
Yeah.
digs that a lot, okay? And then it sounds to me like dad tried to maybe do a little course correction on something that was maybe not quite as exotic as protection. So love that. Okay, all right. So we’re leaving a little Ben behind, okay? You graduate high school and then you either went to the university, you went and joined the Peace Corps.
Okay.
You backpacked across Europe. You joined the Merchant Marine, right?
I got into boats later in life. Yeah.
Okay, okay. All right. So what happened? You graduated high school. Where’d you go? What’d do?
So both my parents were professors, sorry, as I said professors, they got their doctoral degrees at Cornell University, which is why I think they let me in. And so I went to Cornell and graduated in four years, which apparently doesn’t happen all that often these days. And then I moved to Houston to end up working there. The story was I was kind of, this was back in, gosh.
A long time ago, there was kind of a recession and Texas had gone into the recession first and was coming out of the recession first. At least that was my logic, 21 year old Ben. So I moved out to Houston to take a job and this was basically selling custom computers and small business networking services and so forth. So I was there about three years.
And then I came to the University of Texas for business school where I got my MBA. You want to hear about the rest or are we just going to start on mini medium then?
Awesome.
Yeah, let’s just do that part. We’ll move to medium, Ben. So love that. I have a grandson and the great grandparents on the other side are both astrophysicists. Yeah.
All right.
Nice. Okay. I’ve got a technique for dealing with rocket scientists and brain surgeons. Whenever you come up to a physicist, rocket scientist, mathematician, whatever, who is really high on their capabilities, you’re just like, I mean, come on, what’s the big deal? It’s not like it’s brain surgery or anything. And then of course, when you run across a brain surgeon,
tell me, tell me!
neurosurgeon, whatever, who’s like a little too big for their britches. It’s like, I mean, come on, it’s not like rocket science. Okay.
I love that. I have a really good friend here in town, entrepreneur, and he is a physicist. And so we were talking one day about engineers and he’s like, yeah, they’re like physicists juniors. You’re like, Ooh, that’s a little harsh. Okay. All right. So, you were a double alum, went to Cornell, got out in four years, which that’s, I’m sure above and beyond, eventually or later.
There we go.
went to the University of Texas at Austin, got your MBA, okay. And at some point you started your first company. So tell us about what it was, what led you to do that, how you did it. Was it great? Did it, was it horrible? Was it in the middle? Tell us about your first entrepreneurial venture.
Gotcha. So I was working at Microsoft. I was a product marketing manager in their Windows team, and that’s Windows Client here in the US. And Microsoft hires or hired many, many contractors to work for them. And almost like a big chunk, let’s say a quarter to a third of their total workforce at that time was contractors. Let’s say a
And so in many cases, many, so I said, I had hired many contractors to do work for me. So then I realized, gosh, this is a good business model that I could adopt for myself. So essentially I left the last day of March 2007. And then the first day of April, April Fools was my first day officially at Mactis Group. And mainly what I did.
is I performed the same kind of services that I used to buy to my former colleagues. So I would kind of joke that my business was selling what I used to buy to the people I used to work with. And so that went pretty well. I had a, I kind of already figured it out. I actually think that a really good business model for many people is this sort of services company, or sorry, services business, where you essentially sell back into the industry or the company that you’ve been.
with so long because you kind of understand the players and the dynamics and it’s not like you’re testing the market, proving the market. You’ve already experienced the market for a long time and kind of already know the ins and outs.
I love that. And I think that’s a great first launch for a lot of entrepreneurs. Okay. And you know, it’s like, it’s kind of like sitting down and play poker and they, and you get two aces right off the bat. Okay. You might get trashed for the other three cards, but, you at least started with a pair of aces because you know a lot about the industry that you’re going to serve. You know a lot about the people in the industry you’re going to serve. They do the same thing.
And so that big monkey, which kills a lot of entrepreneurial companies, is they just don’t know how to sell enough of whatever they sell. You kind of get to check that box right off the bat. Okay.
sure. And I also think that that’s one of those types of businesses that in many cases, you can kind of start building, building, building a little bit while you still have your day job. And then you can almost switch over often fairly quickly. Like, you know, let’s say you’re in the ad agency world, you know, very commonly, you know, like your last day with your old company, you know, then your next day is with some of the clients that you have worked with or experienced, you know,
over the last several years. So it’s very common that there’s not a big gap or like a lack of cash flow between like your last W2 day and your first, you know, entrepreneur day.
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I think what a lot of people that are new to entrepreneurship don’t realize is that outsourcing, which doesn’t really mean sending jobs to China or India or whatever, that’s, that’s offshoring, a little different than outsourcing, but outsourcing where companies like Microsoft and Verizon or American Airlines and Burlington Northern, you know, they don’t want to add W2 headcount because if they’re based number one in a union state, it’s very difficult to
drop that head count and plus the load, if they hire somebody at 30 and they’re going to be there until 65, the retirement load is huge. so companies outsource to manage that HR component so that they don’t have to do that. And so that’s a huge percentage. mean, almost every Fortune 500 company has significant outsourcing. And so good point. Okay. All right. So
So that was your first company. There’s been a couple since then to now, if I’m guessing. Okay. Tell us how you started ProfitDoc.
Yeah. Well, I was winding down my participation with Macdis Group and I was like, what’s next? And it took me a little while, but over the years actually being in entrepreneurs organization, I had sort of almost informally acted as a coach or a consultant to a number of my colleagues who were having different kinds of business challenges. And I realized that a couple of, I don’t know, native skills or whatever that I had
really lent itself to that kind of consulting practice. I felt that was very good at kind of sifting through a lot of information or conflicting information and then identify kind of the root cause of the problem, prioritize some of those issues. And I think, I don’t know if it’s the gift of gab, it’s probably not quite like that, but a lot of people have told me that they really appreciate how I can take.
maybe complex or sophisticated ideas and sort of both boil them down and explain them in a way that it’s very, I don’t know, graspable, if you will. And I think that’s one of the problems. It’s often not that entrepreneurs aren’t working hard enough or maybe the problem hasn’t been identified, but maybe there’s just so much noise in the system. There’s a hundred problems to work on. You’re running 150%.
And often what I have been able to do and kind of what people appreciated years ago was that I might help them realize, hey, put on the blinders, just work on this one thing for the next six months and it will maybe not solve all your problems, but get you out of this big hole and give you some breathing.
I love that. you know, communication is a real skill. Somebody who can take something that’s complex or convoluted and boil it down to where somebody can grasp one or two things and go from there. you know, one of my businesses, we’re in the contact center business. Well, we generate more stats on everything than anybody on the planet. Okay. I mean, nobody generates as much data as call centers, but out of all those 500 metrics where
we’re reporting on, there’s only maybe three or four that I will call magic numbers. You just keep your eye on these three or four. You probably never have to look at the other 495. Okay. Unless you’re drilling down into something that, you know, probably you’re gonna make much difference anyway, but, but there’s three or four that you really have to pay attention to. Okay. So yeah, please.
Can I sneak in a little story like a little value add news you can use? One of the things I see very commonly with people and their financial reports is like, imagine looking at a P and L that’s five or six pages long. Again, it’s right like you’re talking about, Don. 500 numbers on a piece of paper and you’re like, too much. You know, when that P and L gets like consolidated down to maybe one page, two pages maximum,
ideally probably two pages landscape, which is like one and a half pages long. And then you’re like, I’m looking at like one or two sheets of paper, I can circle the three or four magic numbers, know, top line growth, total costs, bottom line profitability, those might be the beginning of the three magic numbers, looking at your P and L. And so that is kind of an example of how
Too many numbers is a bad thing, and being able to focus on the critical few is the right thing.
Too many numbers is a bad thing, and being able to focus on the critical few is the right thing. Share on X
I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. So now I want to look back across your extensive entrepreneurial career. Okay. And I want to ask you about a hard lesson. So something that happened that when it happened, you were like, that hurts. But maybe, maybe not, but maybe as time went by, it turned out to be something very positive for your journey and your path. But
But can you share a hard lesson, something that happened that you’re like, ugh, this is hard, this hurts. Got one there you can share.
for sure, and if I can, I’ll throw in a Godfather movie reference if you don’t mind.
I’m so glad!
There was a time when I was going to write a book called The Godfather School of Management because I was a big fan of the author and the movies and I was going to make little parables, don’t talk outside the family, et cetera. So rewind back, I just started the company, it was 2007 and then 2008, 2009 rolls around. For your younger audience who might not recall, that was a bloodbath of an economic situation during those years.
and for others, you know, just take in a few deep breaths and try not to get sucked into the PTSD of that moment. So I started getting calls from my clients who were so upset and nervous and apologetic, basically telling me that their budgets had just been slashed and they needed to terminate their contract agreements with.
And at first, you know, was like sort of my first reaction, if you will, was to be upset, to try to talk them out of it. I don’t know if I was going to try to guilt trip them into doing whatever. You know, we sort of had contracts and agreements that theoretically could have, I don’t know, done something. And I thought about it. And then I thought of the Godfather. What would he do? So in the movie, The Godfather 2,
where the godfather is a young man is working at his friend’s father’s grocery store. The mafioso of the neighborhood comes in and tells the store owner, you need to hire my nephew or something like that. And so the store owner is like, my God, I can’t have two, I don’t know, stock boys. I don’t know what they would call them back then. So he had to let the godfather go and he felt so terrible and guilty and whatever. And
The Godfather sort of sussed out the situation and he was like, no, no, no, you don’t need to feel guilty. Nothing’s wrong here. I just want to thank you for the opportunity you’ve given me over these last whatever it was, months, years. can’t.
And so I thought about that and I’m like, I am gonna try to flip that around. So instead of the client feeling upset or sheepish or obligated in a uncomfortable way to me, that I was gonna try to flip it around. Cause I had in my mind over the long term, when I saw that person again, we’ll call it in the cafeteria, were they gonna feel like they had to duck me?
because I had made it somehow uncomfortable. And I was like, my God, that is gonna crush my business. So I wanted to sort of flip it around and say, don’t worry about it. I completely understand, no problem. It’s just the situation. I don’t say not a big deal, but nothing that you need to worry about. And that ultimately I think paid a lot of dividends. And I don’t wanna say bought loyalty and appreciation, but certainly didn’t undermine our long -term relationship.
Well, I love that. And I think people judge you for what you say, certainly, but far more importantly for how you live. to be gracious there, you know, during the great stay home of 2020, when everything got shut down, I probably had 20 speaking gigs already on the books. I’ve already taken deposits. And I got 20 phone calls that said, hey, we’re…
You’re hot.
not doing it and we’d like to have our money back. And so somebody asked me like in 2021 said, well, how’s the speaking business? I’m like, man, I am so successful at saying, I understand. we’re sending you a check. I’m a hundred percent successful at that. But you know, many of those clients have come back since we’re not at the great stay home because you make it easy and comfortable. So thank you for that hard lesson.
Okay, so now you might be old enough to remember this, but there used to be a show, Star Trek, only ran four or five years, but pretty popular show. And every once in a while, Captain James T. Kirk would say, Scotty, I need warp power. I need warp speed. And so can you share a warp speed moment sometime during your career, or maybe even things were going great, but all of a sudden the right hire,
the right strategy change, the right execution piece, all of a sudden it was just like a rocket ship. It just went straight up and you experienced that warp speed. Do you have one of those you could share with us?
Big Captain Kirk fan, a little sad that I don’t have an exact warp speed moment. I think that…
It’s sort of a little bit of a spin on that. But when I was just starting the company, what I thought to myself is how am I going to compete with these more established quote competitors that are in our space that are a lot larger, more established, more name brand recognition, et cetera. And I’ll just use one as an example. Back in the day, I think Excel data might have that right, was one of the big dogs.
over there at Microsoft and we’ll just call them Excel, maybe there’s Excel services or something like that. Find company, nothing wrong with them, et cetera. Caveat completed. And so what I thought to myself is when somebody is on the phone with me, like considering working with us or buying decision or sales conversation, what am I going to say that’s gonna make them wanna give us a shot?
Instead of just being like, well, why wouldn’t I work with the incumbent? know, nobody gets fired for buying IBM or whatever. And I was like, I am going to have a niche focus on marketing, marketing oriented people, because mainly that’s my background. And I can tell the difference between good marketing people and bad marketing people. I can do needs assessments in that space for what the customer really needs. If something goes wrong, I can refill.
And basically I’m going to do a niche marketing strategy or niche business strategy. And so what I would tell people is, let’s just pretend that competitor E has a thousand people working at Microsoft and I’ve only got 30. You might think they’re 30 times larger than me, but if you’re looking for a marketing person, 30 out of my 30 people are in marketing and maybe only 25 of their people are in marketing, or maybe it’s 50.
But our relative scale in that space, which is, let’s say, 1 30th of the total pie, is about the same. And I guarantee you that if you call me, I know more about marketing, finding marketing talent, evaluating them, matching them, and backfilling them, or fixing it if there’s a problem, than the 20 -something person you’re going to get on the phone with Excel data. So that was probably my big rocket fuel, if you will.
was just really being smart in picking my niche, kind of sticking with the knitting, because it allowed me to be, you know, maybe not a big fish in a small pond, but just about as big as other fish, at least in that.
Yeah, I love that. you know, so in our call center business, which is a staffing type business, you know, we have about 100 people and there are call centers that have 10 ,000 people. But if a client’s looking to hire 20 people, in their mind, they think, well, I want that company that has 10 ,000 people. I’m like, you don’t. You’ll be the smallest, least valuable client.
on the roster. The important part is that you find not necessarily my company, but that you find somebody who’s the right fit, okay, for your business. And then, you know, when you talk about, you know, financial consulting like Profit Doctor, that even gets, that’s even more concentrated because, I mean, I know this about your business, they get to work with you, okay? And so it’s like, I get to talk with
Mm -hmm.
the subject matter expert. get to talk with the man, so to speak, or the woman, whatever. And that’s one of the reasons, you know, coaching and consulting is so successful is because you get to deal with somebody who’s literally world -class. so that’s great. Okay. So next question. And here I’m looking for a nugget. I’m looking for some piece of wisdom.
Like if we knew everything you knew, what’s the one thing we’d want you to share?
Wow, that is so broad. The first thing that comes to my mind because you use the word nugget is I used to have a philosophy that I called nugget management. And the idea was that everybody, and we’ll call it the transaction, needs a nugget. so before I started MacDIS Group, I was a product marketing manager at Microsoft. And one of the things that I did there,
was what we called like early adopter programs. So if you’re going to release, let’s say, know, Windows XP, Windows 10, Windows 11, pick your favorite big software product. You don’t want at that time, you know, Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer to get up on stage by himself and announce the product. You want, you know, CIOs and CTOs of Fortune 500 companies and other luminaries and whatnot. And you don’t want, you know, the CEO of Boeing
or CIO of Boeing to get up there on stage and say, well, Bill’s a good guy and I know he’s gonna release a good product. You want the CIO to say, well, we’ve got, know, Windows 11 rolled out already on 20 ,000 PCs and it’s working great, right? So I led that type of a program on a couple of occasions with a few different Windows versions. And what I wanted to make sure is that every party in the transaction, in this case, it was, you know,
the CIO, the IT folks at the company, our individual consultants at Microsoft, the account team that was responsible for working with Boeing, and then our internal product marketing teams, we’re all getting a nugget out of the transaction. So I guess what I would just say is incredibly important to think through the motivations of the various participants. And we’ll use the word transaction.
but maybe a business deal or a thing that you’re doing, and everybody’s got to win. And so certainly for those of you entrepreneurs who are selling to what I might consider more complex decision -making units, right, where it’s not a single person who’s making that decision, very important that every member of the team or member of that quote decision -making unit is getting a nugget out of the transaction.
Yeah, I think that’s a great nugget. Everybody has to win. Everybody has to win. Okay, so maybe the toughest question I’m going to ask you. Yeah, I know. So I’m put you in a time machine and I’m going to dial you all the way back and we give you 60 seconds on the ground face to face with 20 year old Ben.
Yes.
Okay, go for it.
And so what would you tell your 20 year old self that would speed or help you along your entrepreneurial journey to where you are today? So into the time machine you go, all the way back. Here’s 20 year old Ben. What would you tell yourself?
Yep. All right.
All right, well, the first thing, okay, this is a different answer, but the first five or 10 seconds might be avoid these three or four giant mistakes that are coming. Sometimes they might include, let’s say the wrong person to date or missing out on this or whatever, but that’s just like, you you should have bought Google back then, but separate from that in terms of like regular, like coaching up of 20 year old then it would absolutely be.
You got this kind of a self -confidence boost. You’re going to do great. Trust your instinct. Things are going to work out. You know, I think one of the challenges I faced and I know that I see this in my clients all the time is a lot of that second guessing or not believing in themselves enough to kind of take that bigger step or bigger leap that they know that they should, but maybe fear or trepidation or lack of confidence.
is holding them back. So essentially, young Ben, you got this. Things are gonna work out. Trust your instincts. When you think you should take this job or you should approach this business deal in this way, you’re right. Go for it.
You got this. Things are gonna work out. Trust your instincts. Share on X
I love that. I’m a real big believer in that the magic in your life comes from your intuition, comes from your instinct. And it doesn’t mean to ignore your intellect. Your intellect is really important. But follow your heart, okay, for sure. So, okay.
I think I would add in there in terms of like life advice. I think it’s also super valuable to look backwards in your life and get a sense of how good your instinct is. And what I mean by that is chances are most of the people who are listening to this have pretty good instincts because you almost have to have that to be successful as an entrepreneur. But you probably also have one or two of those friends
whose gut feeling maybe isn’t the best. And I guess I would just say, you know, for some people, their instincts are not so good and maybe their first step should be, you know that friend you’ve got that’s so level headed and always gives you a great advice? When you’re facing like a, you know, a do or die, you might phone a friend. But for most of the people on this call who have been successful in business, you know, already building up their, you know, seven and eight figure companies, chances are your instincts are
dead on, great. And you can trust those.
I love that. Yeah, if you can tell the imposter to sit down and shut up and just follow what you thought to do. Okay, so Ben, how would somebody reach out to you to talk with you about Profit Doctor? What’s the best way to do that?
sure.
Yeah, well, I’m easy to find. There’s a Profit Doctor YouTube channel, a website, and again, Profit Doctor is like money, P -R -O -F -I -T, and doctor is spelled out D -O -C -T -O -R. It’s not profit with a P -H like Moses, it’s profit with an F like cash. Probably the easiest thing here is just to reach out to support at profitdoctor .com. Easy to remember.
But I’m pretty big on LinkedIn like huge but very focused on LinkedIn So connect with me on LinkedIn or come to my home page. It’s so easy to find me but probably the quickest thing you could do is mention the Don Williams podcast or the proven entrepreneur podcast and Send me an email support at profit doctor comm
I love that. So if you have strong top lines and weak bottom lines, support at profitdoctor .com. Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I’ve had a ball and I know the audience is going to find your story very valuable in their own lives. So thank you very much.
Yes.
Yes.
Awesome. And just as a quick close, thanks Don, really appreciate the time. And I can’t tell you how many people that I’ve worked with who have been struggling and struggling and trying so much and working so hard. And we just give them a little bit of the profit doctor formula and it makes all the difference. know, negative 20K a month to positive 20K a month is a huge thing if you’re, you know, two or $3 million a year in revenue.
That’s it.
So be well and profit.
That’s.
Ben, thank you so much. And that’s today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show.
Thank you everybody.
