How Entrepreneurs Lose Control of Their Business with Nolan Bradbury

Dustin: [00:00:00] Does your business support the life you truly want? Welcome back to the Seven Figure Leap podcast, and that's gonna be the key driving question. Today I have an awesome guest, Nolan Bradbury, uh, as a friend. He is a member of our seven Figure Leap Mastermind. He is an alumni of our accelerator program.
He's also someone that I turn to for financial help. And so we're gonna talk today about money and cash flow, but not like by the numbers as you might expect so much from a CPA like Nolan. We're gonna go I think, much deeper and much more. Uh, meaningfully into like, what are you really working for? So, Nolan, I'm really grateful that you're here.
I know we're gonna have a really fruitful conversation, maybe unpack some of my own baggage, my own numbers and, and some of the things that we're striving for here in our household. Uh, so yeah, man. Welcome. Thank you for being here. And please take a few minutes, uh, introduce yourself.
Nolan: Yeah, first off, pleasure to be here. Really excited to do this with you. Um, so as you said, I'm a CPA by trade, although my hope is, uh, after talking today that you think of me as the least or the least stereotypical CPA that you've. [00:01:00] Met, um, I, I went to college truthfully to be a psychologist. Uh, and so a lot of what I approach accounting from is with that as sort of a backdrop.
And I really try to lean into, not ignoring, but acknowledging the fact that money, which a lot of what we're gonna talk about today is about, uh, as a very strong emotional component to, of. My hope is through all this conversation that we provide some real value to.
Dustin: I love it. Yeah, and I. You know, when I met Nolan, I saw LinkedIn, CPA, we talked about marketing and podcasting, and I, I, I, you know, immediately went to that stereotype. And, uh, you know, as an engineer, I should know better, right? Like, I, I think I'm the least stereotypical person with an engineering degree too.
Um, and maybe that's why we're such kindred spirits. So, yeah, man. Like I, I would love to know maybe as the opening salvo here, um, just sort of your. [00:02:00] Philosophy on like how we should be thinking about, so everyone listening is an entrepreneur. We, you know, have businesses, we have
bookkeepers, we have to file taxes, we set goals and everything's about revenue and all that stuff.
I don't know that we're really asking the right questions often when we're setting those goals or picking the bookkeeper or getting a CFO's advice and those sort of things. So I'd love to just let you set some context here about why you do this and sort of like the big picture. Then we can talk more about what you actually do, and then maybe you can kind of coach me through some of the things that you do for other entrepreneurs.
Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm gonna date myself a little bit. So I've been, I've been in the field for about 25 years and, uh, over the last almost 15, I've been focusing on the small business, uh, owner. And I really love working with them because I feel like it's an area where I can actually help people improve their lives.
And that's truthfully what is the most important. Um, and in, in, during that last 15 years, what I come, what I came to better understand [00:03:00] is that there's. People, they're business owners and regardless of where they're at, they tend to sort of shake out. And this is generally into like one of two categories.
So you have a business owner in a small area where they are, they're growing their business and they're, they're trying to get to a place of, of feeling like they're successful, right? They're in that growth phase. Maybe they're at a half million revenue and they're trying to get to a million or, you know, whatever their, their stretch is.
And then you have another business owner who on paper is successful. And I'm gonna emphasize the on paper and come back to that. For whatever reason, that success has not transcended past the business itself, meaning they don't feel it personally in their lives. And what I would say is those feel like on the surface, two very different problems, but they under, they are ultimately the, the result of the same problem, just coming at it from different directions.
And that's the idea that. At the end of the day, both, both of those business owners struggle with the idea of really having strategically [00:04:00] anchored goals that align to what they want their life to look like. Right? And that when we very few people set out to start a business with the intention of like scaling it to like 10 million, 20 million, 50 million selling it and exiting, right?
Like that's great. That's, I'm guessing that the people we're talking with about today, right? That's not their objective. It's an objective of like they want to live
a life. That is, allows them to be more in tune with who they are, a more authentic them. And that they felt that by going out on their own or creating the business they have, that they would be able to do that.
And the word I'm gonna use that I think that most people are chasing is freedom. Freedom to do what you want, freedom to spend the money you want freedom to use the time for what you want to do, whatever freedom is to you, that's the objective you're trying to accomplish. And so with that is the backdrop.
The challenge fundamentally is that a lot of people don't ever stop to think about what freedom really is to them. And without that intentionality, all of the strategic decisions you're making are never [00:05:00] going to assure you or guarantee you that you will get that life you want. And that truthfully pains me on a humanistic level.
Like I don't want that for people. I don't want people to slave away in a job or create a job for themselves that they don't truly love, only to not get the outcome that they really want. The goal for most people is not to make a million dollars, even though that's what they'll say. The goal is to have a million dollars so they can do something else with their life that they wanna do, right?
Like to be able to take an afternoon off and go hang out with their kids, or to take a week off and participate in a school field trip, or whatever the case may be. It's about making sure that what it is you're trying to accomplish, you really understand why you want to do it, and what is it that you have to do to make that happen.
Dustin: I love that. Yeah. We had Ryan Leve on on a recent episode, and one of the key questions that he repeated in different contexts was what optimizing for, we were talking more about business models and. Um, home life and things like that. And, uh, I think that's also here. It's like, [00:06:00] hey, you say you want freedom.
And I think this is the classic entrepreneurial trap, right? Like, I wanna leave my nine to five, screw the man, I'm gonna go start my own thing so I can finally be free. I don't need to like clock in, clock out account for time sheets and vacation days. And then you end up working, you know? 80 hours a week instead of 40.
And, and you're like, and then you're just constantly getting into this mode of like, well, I gotta grow because you gotta grow, right? And so I gotta continue to expand and grow and do more. And we very quickly, and I speak from
personal experience, lose sight of why you did it in the first place. You know, you, you've kind of quit pointing it at, pointing all this effort at some outcome.
Like you just kind of forget there's an outcome and day of this and.
I feel that I appreciate that and yeah, I, I, I'd love to kind of unpack your framework around this, or, and, and maybe we can just use me as a Guinea pig. I'm, I'm, I'm a willing wanna, you know, get raw and [00:07:00] talk about my own aspirations and numbers and all that stuff. Um, so, you know, Nolan, if, if you'd like, feel free to.
If you and I were meeting for the first time, and I'm like, I, I think I need some help. I got this growing business. It's scaling. I I got some tough decisions to make and I'm, I'm looking at you as a CPA and a, someone who owns a successful bookkeeping company and does fractional CFO work. And I sit down at your desk and I'm like, help me with my numbers.
I, I have a feeling you might first ask me some.
Nolan: Yeah, absolutely. So what you're gonna hear is a theme throughout. What we're gonna talk about today is I strongly believe in the concept of simple meaning that I don't want to overcomplicate things where they don't need to be more complicated than they're complexity just creates friction. Friction creates the ability to not do what you wanna do or need to do, right?
So with that as a framework or with that as sort of the backdrop, the first question I would wanna understand is, why are you in business and what are you trying to do with that business? And so there's no real wrong answer to that, right? [00:08:00] It's, it's about why did you start on out on this journey? Uh, that's the starting point.
And then the more pressing question is like, what does it mean to you now? And so for a lot of people, they will give different answers to that, even though fundamentally it is the same question. And that informs a lot about how much they have not deviated, because I think that imp that they're in, how much they are.
Like moved on from why they started this to where they're at.
Dustin: Yeah. I'd love to answer it. I, and, and I feel like it goes through some phases and I, I'll go quickly, so we're not spending this whole time psychoanalyzing my life, but, you know, I grew up very poor, had no idea what
an entrepreneur was. I didn't ever meet a business owner other than probably shopping in their shops or something.
Right. And so when I left high school and went to college. Being an engineer was like super high identity status. Like wow, that would be amazing. I got a scholarship, I gotta go do that. And so I practiced [00:09:00] engineering for 17 years and partway through that I decided I need to have an online business. And this gets starts to getting into this question of why would you do that?
Right? And so for eight years, I both had a 50 hour plus. A week plus growing different online businesses on the side of that. Plus, you know, having three kids and, and a wife actually, like all those sort of things. So phase one was like, why did I do that? And I, at the time I think it was a creative outlet, I wanted the idea of like, what if I could.
I'm kind of capped at a dollars per hour environment. You know, in the envi in engineering. It was a good hourly rate, but it was still capped and I felt like, wow, like what if I had my own thing? And then that became, wow, I really like digital marketing. I wanna do more of that. And now like this engineering stuff kind of feels like it's taking all my time.
So eventually, you know, the next phase is I left engineering, went full-time into marketing consulting, formed a business partnership with Fire Creek Snacks, and I just sort of like went through a, I'd say a. It's [00:10:00] call it a six year period of just trying on different businesses. And I think the thing I was seeking was basically more dollars per hour.
It was like, Hey, you know, like I'm, I, I feel like I'm a have, I own a job again. All right. Oh, now let me try this thing. Maybe a partnership we could exit. Maybe that'd be the ticket to freedom. And it really wasn't. And then I at some point stumbled into what became Seven Figure Leap. And for the first time I started to feel fulfilled in doing the work.
Like it wasn't like, I wanna do this work to make more money. Just to have more money. It was like, I, I do want more money, but I also like really like the work and I started to actually find the people I like to be around and the, the format and the people I like to serve. So I'd say for the past three years, Nolan, I'm doing work.
I actually really enjoy. I don't ever like dread getting on a call. I love showing up and being with the people I get to serve. But it starts to ask different
questions like, uh, you know, at first we made $50,000 doing this the first year and it was 500,000 in gross revenue, and then last year was right at a million.
And this year, you know, we're on track to, to grow a little bit more [00:11:00] from that. And so I've started to ask some of these similar questions of. Now what's it for? Right. So I'll kind of pause there, but just to give everyone a little background and context, it's not like I came out of the womb as a successful business owner.
It's like this is kind of new for me, like the past couple years. I finally feel like I've figured it out to an extent. It's been pretty successful. It's growing quickly, which comes up with new questions and new pressures.
Nolan: you sharing all that. And so I'm not gonna simplify you down to like one sentence that feels disingenuous, but what I will say is that the things that you described, and what I take away from that would be at every stage before you got to where you're at now, there was a misalignment of what you were doing and what you really wanted to do.
Maybe you weren't aware of that in that moment, right? Like even as an engineer, I suspect, like you weren't going like, I hate doing this, but there was something that. Was not allowing you to be all in on it. Right? And so the way you describe what you're doing now, you started by saying, I love what I'm [00:12:00] doing.
Every other thing you talked about up to that point was about what you are making. that isn't a really important distinction that I think is worth knowing, is that this is my opinion, but when you, it's not as cliche to say when you love what you're doing, like you never have to work a day in your life.
But there is an idea that like when you. Find the thing, your purpose or the thing you love doing that success will follow it. It comes with it, right? Like seeking the money to start with is often a harder path to go down because you end up doing things that are not always the things you love to do, right?
And so not, not to go down too much, that rabbit hole, but what I would say is that with that as the background, what you just, what you ended with is really important as well, which is that. Where we want to be also evolves over time that where you wanted to be five years ago is different than where you want to be now.
And where you want to be in a few years now is different than where you wanna be now. And that's all natural and normal, [00:13:00] but we also can't ignore it, right? This is not a set it and forget it type situation where human beings, we evolve our needs, our wants change. You have kids where they were when you started.
This is different than where they will be when it ends and what, how tethered you want to be, where you're at may change to. Right. The ability to travel now that they may not be in the house as much. Like all of these things influence or should influence how we design this thing that is a major part of our life.
Right. And so understanding that, and I'll, and I'll, I'll make a hard left here just to sort of like think about the next thing, which is. Anytime we're talking about a path we're trying to go on, like if you think of like Google Maps or any app on your phone that does maps, right, it, it asks you, maybe you don't realize this, but it asks you two questions when you start, right?
It asks you where are you at and where you're trying to get to. It can't do anything unless you give it that information, right? And the same is true for your journey as well, which is we need you to [00:14:00] understand, not me, but you to understand where you actually are at today. And have real clarity on where you want to be and that to be can change and evolve and probably will.
Right. Then using the Google Maps analogy a little bit more, once you tell it, that it then asks you follow up questions, but they're completely preference in nature, right? It's, well, what would you like the journey to be like? Do you want to take mass transit? Do you wanna walk? Do you wanna drive, do you wanna avoid tolls?
Like, do you wanna take the most environmentally friendly, uh, path you can take? Like all of those are preferences to you. If you and I did this exercise and we both put in the same starting and ending point, right? The journey we take may actually be different even though we have the same set of parameters that we've given because our preferences are gonna,
Dustin: Yeah, I
Nolan: and that's an important aspect in this as well, right?
Which is that we each are going to interpret the data in different ways based upon what we want and what we need. And that's why this is also equally important.
Dustin: Yeah. [00:15:00] And as you said that, um, one thing that is very true, this is the first time since.
Profession or you know, like I always had something in a side hustle or I had three businesses at once, or I had, you know, I've always had multiple streams of income, quote unquote. But really it was just multiple ways that I was spending my time and attention, and only really in the past. Only six months ago did I fully exit the partnership with Fire Creek Snacks as an example.
So this is the first time ever, uh, as an adult basically that I've only been doing one thing. And I think that that's very telling. I hadn't reflected on that till you said it, but, um, I think that's because I am all in to use the word that you used on this for good reason. And yeah, and I, I also agree with you that, um, I.
Have struggled at times of getting clear on both ends of that. Like, where am I really? Like what, what is our financial status or what is our, where are we at in life? Where are we at with our, [00:16:00] our financial picture? And then I think always the harder question, where do we actually want to go? And I think it is a we, because even though this business is totally me, uh, and you know, teammates, but.
Totally me from a standpoint of in my household, this is my thing. Um, it's still my wife and I, and in, in another sense, my kids, my wife, and I, it's our thing because it's the primary thing that provides all the things we wanna do on the personal side. And I think that's one of the things I love knowing about you in general.
And, and this topic is. You're very quick to not segregate those things. It's like the business is your life, right? And your life is the business because it's such, you, you even said it's such a large part of your day-to-day existence and where you spend your mo your, your time and your attention and your, your brain width.
Um, yeah. So anyway, I, I guess just all affirmation of what you said and, and where would you, where, where should we go from here? I mean, do actually talk about like where we're trying to go or do.
Nolan: Well, so I, I think let's, I'll, I'll take you to the next step. And so, [00:17:00] because I think what we've explained is sufficient to get us to where we, the next piece we wanna be to, which is you said something, which the question of like, well, where are we really right now? Okay. And where do we really wanna get to?
So I. There are many ways to answer this question, but the way I approach it for people is I start by asking them to tell me how they spend their money, or in essence, like, describe your lifestyle to me. Okay? Now this is really important because. For a lot of people, understandably, going back to that emotion and money component, right.
That is a very vulnerable thing that they have to be doing to me as someone they probably just met. Right? I fully appreciate that, and what I always tell people is I do not care how you spend your money. I, I, I genuinely do not, it does not go
into a database. I don't statistically track it. I don't sit there and go, oh, that's an interesting use of money.
Like, it does not matter to me. It only matters to me that you know how you spend your money. Absolutely no judgment because once you [00:18:00] understand what your lifestyle looks like. In terms of money going in, money going out, you, you can start to paint a better picture of what your life really is like, and regardless of whether you like your life or not, most people aspire to have their life be better, whatever better is to them, right?
Whether it's more traveling or less debt, or.
Regardless of how much money you have that you want your life to be different. So we start by having them define that for us. We make sure that they agree that that's what their life spending looks like and how they generate income, both from the business, but maybe outside the business. Maybe you have a spouse that works, maybe you generate some income from rental or some other place, and we paint this picture that is a very simple financial snapshot of here's how much you bring in on average each month.
Here's what you spend and put away to taxes. Can't ignore taxes, right? You have that obligation. Here's what's left over to [00:19:00] sort of spend on your life, and between that you spend this amount into savings and this amount into funding your life, right? How you, how you live your life. And here's what's left over.
Now, it's probably not surprising that a lot of people, that bottom number is a negative number. It's more and more common actually. And that doesn't mean that they're irresponsible with money. It doesn't mean that they're bad at business. It doesn't mean any of those things. But it is often a surprise to people, uh, and that is a very important piece of this.
And we often will pause there and go, what? How does that feel? Is it a surprise? Did you expect that? And whatever they say, we, we let them sit with that feeling because it's important to really feel what that feels like. Because the next thing we do is I ask them, okay, here's what you said your lifestyle looks like.
If you could do any modification to this with a snap of a. How much would you wanna spend in each of these categories, right? Like, okay, so you spend 300 a month on travel, you'd like to spend 700 a month on travel, like [00:20:00] whatever that is, and really emphasizing that this is not an exercise, and how do I cut back relative to make that last number work?
It's about how do we design the right point We're trying to get to. I to use an example, right? If you came to me and you said, Nolan, I wanna lose 10 pounds. And I said, great, Dustin, uh, let's. Cut out your favorite food, and you were like, well, that's not really how I was hoping to get to that goal. And that's important because you probably wouldn't stick with it.
It wouldn't be enjoyable. You'd opt out at some point. It would take a tremendous amount of effort and focus to stick with that. So we don't want to create an environment where everything is working against you. You're gonna have days where you're tired, you're gonna have days where you're, you're, you're not, you don't feel well.
And all of those things will undermine what you need to do if it's, if the plan you set out is not fully in alignment with who you're right. And that, and that's, and I'm gonna pause just to sort of like emphasize that, which is, if the person you're trying to [00:21:00] become is truly who you are, it's less effortless. that's a really important component in all of this, right? Uh, as you did, uh, you kind of, you didn't say this exactly, but we were talking about what you're doing now. It was very clear that what you're doing now is probably the easiest work you've ever done. Not because of like, it's not, doesn't take effort, but because like it's at most in tune with who you are and what you want to do, right.
Would you say that's true?
Dustin: Hundred percent. Yeah. I would say when I first, the very first accelerator I ever led, and I was sitting in this seat and I had sort of like curated a group and it was like. This is what they mean by like unique ability. Like I'm kind of in flow state on all these calls and it just feels, yeah, easy might be too strong, but it feels kinda like an athlete.
They may be exerting effort, they may be trying hard, but it feels like natural, I guess is the right way. Right? It feels like what, what they're meant to be doing. And they're able to do it, um, longer and with more intention and more focus, you know, the flow state, um, because [00:22:00] they're in a, they're in a place that really.
Is it in, in, in tune with their unique ability? Yeah. So I, I think that's totally true.
Nolan: So I'm not gonna, it, it would be hard in this situation, right, to have you tell me what your current spend is and what your new spend is, and just wouldn't work in this situation. So. What I'll say is once we define what that new lifestyle looks like for you, we then focus on the business, meaning that how do we make that number work given the way your business operates?
And, and what I'll say here is that. Oddly enough, most people don't ever think of how many options they have in the way they run their business. So the analogy I tell to people is, imagine for most decisions you face as a business owner, you envisioned it as though you're standing in front of this door and your choice is I either open the door and walk through, or I don't open the door and I stay here.
Okay? But the reality is, if you took a step back, you would see that there's an infinite number of doors stacked next to, in.[00:23:00]
All. And that part of that understanding of that is that there is no right or wrong way. There is just a way to try. You do, you do the next thing, and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't, and that's completely okay and that when we're designing the business, we have to sort of shed ourselves from the idea that it's a certain way and that it would be too hard to do something right. another analogy. It's like if you were climbing, if you had the base of a mountain, you're like, that's the ledge I want to go to to get the best view up there. And then you get there and you're like, well, this is the view that I expected. So you just start climbing higher instead of going, oh, well maybe if I go down and go to that other mountain, like that will be the ledge I can look from.
Right? We just always assume that the path we're on, we have to stay on and just keep going further and further and further down that path. The reality is that's not true. That's how you get into a place of like. Really kind of being unhappy because to your point, you said earlier, you get bigger, you do more things, the [00:24:00] business, more things more complex, and if it's not the thing you want, all of those just get amplified and they just become more
problematic and more stressful, and you just get further from what you really wanna experience.
Dustin: I.
In hindsight, in my own journey, you know, it's like I stuck with engineering, I'd say like seven years too long. 'cause I wasn't yet at, like, specifically because I wasn't yet at this piece or this, I, I didn't yet have the trust, the faith, the courage to know I could make a different choice. I. And I can always go back, you know, like everything felt like a permanent decision.
And once I finally made that first decision, since then, I've been much more capable of trying new things and trying different paths. Right. And, and I know my journey sounds crazy when people hear it. It's like engineering a marriage business. I had a golf club flipping business. I had a shin splints business.
I had like, there's a bunch of them. Um, you know, and then the fire creek thing with meat sticks and then [00:25:00] podcasting and like, none of it makes sense, but. To me, the through line there is every subsequent business choice has gotten faster and faster as I've gotten closer and closer to the thing I should be doing.
And I guess I've finally found the freedom to make new choices. I, I guess, and in, in this business, you know, I got a three year history in this business. I find that I'm able to optimize more quickly than I was ever able to do 10 years ago in any other business. Right? And so I. Share my own experience.
And the truth that that you're saying is Yeah, it's like totally, it totally is in alignment with my own, um, with my own experience. And I guess too, I'll say this real quick, Nolan, so we can move on to the framework, because I felt like I started to open up and share with people and then they're like, wait, then they quit talking about this and stuff.
I, we're not gonna get all the numbers. It's not actually that relevant, you know? When I first started getting clear on like, when I first started having some money, and so the, [00:26:00] when the number was not, was less negative and then not negative, and then it became positive, then you start to have new choices to make.
Right? And so for us, the short term choices were pretty easy. It's like, we wanna pay off all our debt except, you know, we stuff a mortgage. 'cause you know, it's 2.125%. You know what? But so we, we maintained that, but we
were able to pay off our debt and that was amazing. And then we have three kids and two of them drive, so we.
Four cars. We've got kids in college that were cash flow in college. And so that number starts to get, um, used, I was gonna say dwindled. That's not a negative thing. Like we, we have this capital to deploy and we get to be very conscientious about what we're prioritizing. And for us, that's, um, not having cash flow go to debt and it's being able to free our kids from.
Unneeded debt, um, at this phase of life. But you know, that's just a phase. So then there's stuff beyond the cashflow and the cars for the kids and uh, you know, all that stuff. And then that starts to open up the next chapter of like, well, if the cashflow continues or even grows, what are the next objectives [00:27:00] beyond the one to three years?
'cause one to three years to me has always been a pretty comfortable place to plan. Like that feels tangible and I could do that. Um, so I guess hopefully that gives people some context. Where this road started with seven figure leap and personal cash flow, kind of where we're at today in this phase of life with the kids and the different things we're dealing with.
Um, and then yeah, we, we could talk more about our, our current best guesses on what we wanna do beyond this, uh, the immediate needs of our family. Yeah.
Nolan: Yeah, so to use that, and I'll flip it a little bit slightly here just to sort of fit it into the framework that we're. As you got as, as more money came in, right? As you said, you sort of have different choices that you had to make. And the challenge in all of that, right, is that like, how do you make sure that those choices are staying true to what are the most important things, right?
Because those choices will move, right? As you said, like kids going to college versus paying off debt and then like setting the kids up for like life without debt and so [00:28:00] and so, all of that comes back to like. At a very simplistic thing, what we want people to walk away with in the early phases of this process is, do you know your freedom number?
And what I mean by that is like, do you know the number that you have to generate from your business to live the life you've defined for yourself? Right? So the first step is defining what happiness looks like to you financially. Meaning how do you, what do you need to live this life? The second question is like, what does that mean your business has to do?
And there are two pieces to that, which I, I don't wanna ignore one of them because one of 'em is the one we often ignore. So the first is financially, what does it have to produce, like profit wise, cashflow wise, like what does that look like? And we help people build out that. For themselves. Like we, we take them through and understand like on a monthly or whatever sort of is the most meaningful cycle for them.
How does your business flow when PE money comes in? How does it move through the business till it ultimately gets to you and your family at the bottom of that funnel? Okay. The second piece though is [00:29:00] how much friction occurs as it comes through the business. And by friction, what I really mean is how much do you hate doing what you.
Dustin: How much do you hate the things have to.
Nolan: Because let's be honest, we're all, all of the people listening to this are in some way or form in the business. We all wanna be on the business, but we are still in the business to some extent, right? And so I'll ask, what I want to understand for people is, do you know how much in the business you want to be?
For some people, they love doing the work and their actual ideal state is to be able to do the work. In a way they love that is really important to know. For other people, it's like, I don't wanna do any of this work. I want to outsource all of it and just be able to lead the business. Those are very different things, and they will you again, preferences where you start, where you end in that, in that financial, Steve, if you think of your p and l, how it comes in, how you earn it, and it comes out, different preferences lead to how that money flows through there.
And [00:30:00] so for person understand again, what is the most. Happy they will be in terms of their role in the business. So once we understand the financial involvement and their personal involvement, we can help them define or reshape or readjust the business in a way that is more in alignment with what they want.
So now they're gonna get, in an ideal world, what we've created for them. Right? And this is the part that often surprises people is they will see this number and they go, okay, you've justified the life you wanna spend and how you wanna spend it. Yes, yes. They say. And then we go, okay, now you've redesigned the business and this is what you're gonna generate each month.
You agree with that? Yes, we agree with that. Okay. So then this is all you have to do to do that, because we've just agreed that to get these numbers, you're doing these things right? So maybe for you, Dustin's, right, it's a certain number of cohorts per year that you're a hoarding, right? Or that the number of people per cohort.
For a lot of people, they will. They will stop at the level of, oh, I need to make a million dollars this year to get that number. It's like, well, yes, but that's not an [00:31:00] actionable item that you can focus on as a business owner. There's a lot of different ways that you could do that, but for you, what we help them identify is how are you going to get to that million dollar number, or how are you gonna get to the.
60, $70,000 a month number that you wanna have in revenue and how, what are the things you're gonna focus on, right? So maybe this is a good opportunity for jump herein, Dustin, you can sort of explain to you, for us, to the listeners, how
you approach sort of answering those questions as you sort of go through that analysis and you start to build out what the business wants to look like for you.
Dustin: Transparency Nolan's helped me with this very thing, and especially the first part of it, uh, with the monthly cash flow side. So, but I really like the, I really like that you have the both sides here. It's not just the number, the number's really important, right? The freedom number, the monthly cash flow number, the, the nut, whatever you wanna call it.
Like the, the amount that you really need in want, you know, the amount that you want, uh, that fills your needs and your wants. Then [00:32:00] because we're talking to business owners, how are you tweaking the knobs in the business to where you get that number in a way that optimizes your own freedom and happiness?
Because there's lots of ways to get to the same number. And so these are, I love the kind of the, the visual here that there's different knobs, there's different doors to walk through to get really the same end result depending on your, your desires. So for me, um, yeah, we basically set like a monthly. Um, comfortable take home pay, right?
It's, it's more than a need. There's like the need of, you gotta pay the mortgage and food and all that stuff. And then for us, that would include, one of the things we've done since we've had some more cash flow is bolster security in the sense of like, disability insurance, more life insurance and umbrella policy.
You know, as, as you have a little more cash flow, you're able to plug the holes a little bit on risk. So some risk mitigation. It's really boring, but it's something.
Nolan: Boring can be good when it comes to money, just to be clear, right? Like sometimes you don't need excitement in that realm.
Dustin: Yes. Yes. Um, so we got some boring stuff that we're covering. Like I said, we've got, you know, some kids, some kids [00:33:00] cashflow, our cashflow, we're going towards kids, um, uh, upcoming college and things like that. And then we do have a pretty healthy travel number. 'cause one of the things as a family, we decided a couple years ago as we were, uh, less, uh, constrained on, on some of the cash flows.
Like, hey, we love to travel and. Let's set a goal to do a quarterly trip. And so every quarter we do something. Now that could be a weekend in St. Louis. Doesn't have to be anything exotic. Last year it was two weeks in Italy with my wife. That was pretty exotic. Um, and so depending on, you know, what we're doing, we always have a pretty healthy allocation to travel, and we've decided when we travel, you know, we want to do it right.
And so like. The summer, we're going to the beach. We could be three miles off the beach and take a shuttle down, but we're gonna stay on the beach, you know? And we make different choices around that because we're optimizing for the stuff that we care about. So for us, there's that monthly number and we got the cash flow to support that.
And then basically every quarter. There's hopefully some excess, right? It's like, oh, we got the, the monthlys coming out and that supports everything we really want at this stage. [00:34:00] Uh, and, but then we have some excess. And so that excess, then we can, on a quarterly basis, think about what we wanna do with that.
And so maybe that goes into an investment, maybe that goes into a rental, maybe that goes into. Just more savings 'cause we feel like we wanna have more savings. Maybe it's a, a gift to a church or you know, a something that we care about, but we make that sort of, that's sort of the cadence and at the end of the year, maybe we've kind of beefed up that and we can make more of an annual decision.
So I like to think in terms of regular strategic decisions, I don't wanna have to think about it every month. So every month we've got like the monthly flow of things that just kind of happens. Automated through, no one's help. Quarterly,
we got some kind of mini decisions to make, and on an annual basis we may, we may set some new goals and have, you know, some projections for the next year.
So that's kind of how we've handled the, the, the freedom number part of this. And then. As Nolan said, there's lots of ways to get that number or exceed that number for, uh, on purpose for a while. Right? Or maybe you back off [00:35:00] because you're having a health issue or you want to spend more time, you're taking a sabbatical, you can also back off the number as long as you know, you, you plan.
'cause once you know the number, you can make a lot better decisions around the number. Um, so for us, well, I'll, I'll take a breath there. Anything I should fill in and I'll talk more like where we're at with the season of, of how we're getting to the number.
Nolan: No. No, I think that's perfect. I think it. Setting the tone for sort of helping people understand like that's where we want to get to, and then helping them understand how do we approach getting, like making the decisions that allow that to happen. Right. Which I think what you're gonna kind of talk about.
Dustin: Yeah. And so for me in this present moment, you know, I'm looking at um, all the different hats I wear very in the business, right? And, you know, I've got some great contractor help, but I've made some choices. I. A conscious choice. This would really drive this home for people. You know, last year, you know, we had a great year.
We had like a 70% margin in our business. That sounds great. That's good cash flow. That's great for the family. Cash flow, it's also means it's exhausting because I'm not investing enough back into the [00:36:00] business to get more help. So heading into this year, you know, towards the end of last year, uh, I've.
Hired my first full-time employee, and so she, Tiffany is the executive assistant of me, of mine, and she helps with our client success because community is a big part of, of what we do in Seven-Figure Leap. So that was a, a big step, first time, full-time employee this year. You know, I love sales and marketing, but what I started to realize is I've totally become the bottleneck.
To the sales and marketing of the business. So now I'm, right now, as we record this, I've invested in some who's, some people, some help to help me streamline some sales and marketing activities. And so I'm just making these conscious choices sort of one quarter at a time. You kind of hear that theme. For me that's
just, I like to think in 90 day sprints, so every quarter I've got a different priority, like what am I taking off my plate this quarter?
And then so I'm taking some of, what could it be? Dispersed cash flow to my family, holding it into business and using that to invest in systems. Like last year it was circled and it was hiring an executive assistant and it was getting a fractional COO [00:37:00] for a quarter to help get some project management systems.
This year it's sales funnels and the next role I'll hire will be someone to help me, um, basically do customer enrollment like a salesperson, because I still take those calls. I wanna do less of that. So maybe I can go play golf more or go on another trip. Or realistically what I'll do is probably spend more time delivering in the program.
'cause that's what I love to do. I love the coaching and leading masterminds, having in-person events and things like that. So I know that maybe sounds a little random to the listeners, but I. I think we all kind of like have all these different roles and I think one thing I've gotten better at is identifying the next most.
Like I wrote it down, the most painful thing I'm doing, what's the next pain I wanna remove as much as possible and, and use my resources and in terms of energy and money and attention to replace myself in in the next best role. Um, and just finish this thought. These are all sort of. One year and three year sort of goalpost for me.[00:38:00]
So I kind of have a very clear vision in three years what role I wanna play in seven figure leap in roughly revenue. With the lower margins more help, it will also be a more systematized business that would be saleable. I don't have ev, I can't even imagine a time when I would sell this, but I like that optionality, uh, because I think it makes for a better business.
And you know, who knows? Maybe I. God forbid, maybe I get sick or there, there's some need for me to, I can't control everything, right? So maybe there's some need that I do wanna sell it in five years or 10 years, and to have it available as an asset for my family, to me is very attractive.
Nolan: Appreciate all that. And that is like, I think there's so much there to take away and, and I'm, I'm gonna risk trying to simplify it down again 'cause there's one, there's one theme I wanna pull out from all that, which is. Is if I, and tell me if I'm off base on this, but I think a lot of the clarity you've gotten stemmed
from knowing what it is that you had to like, where you had to get to and like very definitively like what, once you knew what your freedom number was, [00:39:00] right?
Like the rest of it became a lot easier to assess whether or not it was worth doing or not, or how you wanted to do it, right? Like that's the thing that I want, I really hope people understand in all of this is that. Fundamentally there, there's, someone could have done a completely different journey as you, and that would've been okay, but it'll, knowing that information upfront allowed you to then make the right step and journey for yourself.
And now, and because of that, right? The decisions you say they get faster, they get easier because they're all sort of like you start running downhill almost, which is like you, you get the benefit of like gravity pulling you because you're not fighting against. Somewhat perfectly in alignment with who you are and what your lifestyle wants to be. And as opposed to what a lot of people I think, feel like is the business is at odds with them. Like they, they want to take time off and yet they feel like they can never step away from the business. They want to spend more money in their life, but they don't feel like the business is [00:40:00] giving them that money.
Like those are the things that we want to eliminate. And what I feel like our framework helps do for people is really help them get clear on those pieces. Like if you think it's a really nerdy example, but if you think of like a Venn diagram, like the two circles that overlap themselves,
Dustin: I love NN diagrams.
Nolan: I knew you would.
I knew you would. So like if you think of like one circle being your company's like finances and the other being clarity where they overlap, that's your personal freedom. That is what creates that, right? It's the two of those things in harmony. And when they meet and you get that, you get.
But it allows you to make the right choices to get that piece.
Dustin: Yes. Yeah, I love all that. I'm really glad we kind of went down that journey. And in reflecting on that, you know, sitting in this seat today, I feel very blessed and privileged. Of course, there's plenty of challenges, there's still tough decisions to make every day and all those sort of things, but I. I mean, Nolan and I really started exploring this together.
He was in my [00:41:00] program, he's in our mastermind, so we had to spend quite a bit of time together. We were hanging out in Nashville at our retreat last fall, and then just before that I started working with him on a professional basis with him, with him helping me, and yeah, probably not. Coincidentally, I would say like that was an inflection point about a year ago, where as I.
Uh, number, like the freedom number. Like I know what, what we, I, I built, we, we built all this stuff in like this is what we want have on a monthly basis. And then we looking at what the business is doing. And I know that sounds funny to some folks who maybe aren't on this side of it. There's like too much cash flow.
Like there's, there's enough here that you could take it all home. But are there things in your business that you'd rather spend that money in to give you more autonomy, freedom, and, and free you up to make some different decisions? And it was like a year ago that I started making those sort of more strategic decisions in the business.
And so if someone's listening and they're like, must be nice, you know, like I'm trying to just get out of the red on a [00:42:00] monthly basis. Dude, that was me like two years ago. This, this is all kind of new and yeah, so maybe the thing you need to focus on is your offer, your sales and marketing. Most of the things we usually talk about on this podcast, but the reality is whether you're in the red, you're way in the black, you are like fully financially independent.
You still need to be conscious and optimizing for your version of freedom, and you're still gonna be making decisions about what you're gonna do with that. And so. People hearing sort of my before, during, and after, uh, and working with Nolan and through this framework, just to give some context. That's, that's my goal.
I don't want people to know my financial, uh, you know, personal accounts and we didn't get that specific, but I want to provide it just so people can kind of hear a real life, real time example of what's shifted even in the last year, where I'm at right now, what I'm thinking about over the next year. You know, maybe we'll do a follow up in a year and I'll have totally changed my mind, or circumstances in my life will change and, and we'll make different choices.
But fact is you have [00:43:00] choices. And I think that's one of the key things here. So Nolan, I, I, yeah, I wanna turn it back to you, let you recap what we wanna recap and then of course we wanna make sure people know how to, uh, start taking some action on their own, using the resources that you have.
Nolan: So I'll kind of try to tie these all together as best I can. 'cause I think they, they overlap and to a certain extent, which is, as Dustin said, like once you get clarity on like what it is that you need to do, like, you know, like this is the thing, this is why it's the thing. It becomes very personal to you.
Then it allows you to make better decisions. And what I would say is, and Dustin alluded this is if you picked it up, was after he started getting the information, it became more present in his life in sense of like, it not that like he was spending hours and weekends, like reviewing his like p and l.
That's not what I'm suggesting, right? Like that's not how we're spending our time. But like there was an intentionality that came with that. There were better discussions around what the numbers were, what they meant. Then it allowed you then to reflect on what that meant to you and Right. That's a really important piece. [00:44:00] The conversation doesn't stop once you get the number because the situation will evolve. Like every day is a new day in the business, and there's a new challenge to face. It's a new thing to think about, and that's really an important piece because then that leads to the last piece, which is it helps you make better decisions, both now and in the future, because when the future changes, and it inevitably will, right?
A year from now, three years from now, what you want will evolve. You will already be thinking about how it will evolve because all along the way, you're reassessing where you're at and where you're going. It isn't like a, and I'll use
taxes here as an example. A lot of people, it's a once a year thing. You reach out, you do your work, here's the thing, and then you don't talk to the person for another year, and it's like, well, the experience you had is probably not what you wanted because it wasn't an actual like experience or relationship.
It was like you talked to someone once, like. The expectation you're gonna get out of that is not the same as if you're doing it monthly or quarterly, and you're having an intentional conversation around what it you want, why you're doing it, and what you need to think about before the next time you come back.
It creates a [00:45:00] whole environment of accountability and focus and clarity that I think. Is really important. We have it in other aspects of the business, right? Marketing, I think it's a lot of that attention, right? But the accounting, finance aspect of it, because it's not what we love and what maybe we, and so we avoid it, it gets overlooked.
But it is a key, key component. All this in ensuring you, you get what you want. So to summarize this, what I'll tell people is if you're think, if you've heard this
and you listen to this, our conversation and you're like, I really like. I heard or like I, there's some things in there I wanna reflect on, but I don't really know where to start.
Let me give you three things to sort of take away from this and think about. Right. So the first is, do you know what your business needs to earn? To, to give you that freedom. That's, that's kind of where I would suggest you start.
And if you don't, then there are, we've talked about how you can approach that, uh, and, and sort of get clarity on that.
And then second thing is, are your goals anchored in true happiness? Meaning that, like the things that you've set up that, that you've used to create the freedom goal, all they actually, the things that are [00:46:00] going to bring you happiness when you achieve them? Or will they be anchored in sort of like keeping up with the Joneses type stuff?
Right. And then the last thing I say is I'll add is like, are your numbers helping you make better decisions? Meaning that like, are you able to use the information you have to make the decision that will get you on the same path or keep you on the path towards achieving that freedom that you want? And the reality is just like a lot of stuff, you're capable of doing this on your own.
Oftentimes people need and want support because it isn't human, it's not our, our area of expertise. And so people often benefit from working with us to help. Guide them on that journey and keep them focused just like a personal trainer would if you went to the gym, right? You can go lift on your own, you can read YouTube videos on how to properly do the weights, but there is something different about having someone there when you show up and giving you real time pointers on like, oh, your form's little off.
You wanna do this? That over the long haul make a huge impact as they [00:47:00] compound upon themselves, and you'll get to your goals faster in most cases.
Dustin: I would say from a personal standpoint. Having someone, you know, just like a trainer. It's a great example, having a financial trainer, uh, and one named Nolan, uh, is, uh, in particular, you know it, yes, Nolan's very, an important part of this. And Nolan asks, you know, great questions. He has amazing frameworks.
Like Nolan is obviously my preferred person for this, so that's who I use. But Whether's, Nolan, or anyone else. Accountability is a really important part of
this, and that's not only to like slap your hand and say, oh, you didn't do what you said. It's more like being prompted once a month, once a quarter, whatever the cadence is, and not just once a year sitting there only focused on taxes to actually look at your numbers to make a fresh choice to, yeah, it, it could be a five minute thing, but to actually have to have a conversation about the numbers.
You have to think about the numbers. It brings them back into your purview. The other thing I, I'm really getting at with this, Nolan, for me personally, a huge benefit of [00:48:00] this that we didn't talk about that I wanna make sure we sneak in here is, you know, I have a wife of 23 years. I love her. She's not an entrepreneur.
She is very much in the camp of Honey, I trust you. You know, like I, whatever you wanna do in the business. I think that's awesome and I think that that is great and. Not good. And you know, it's also risky. And so one of the things that this has done for me on a very personal basis is, we'll, I'll sit in this chair and I'll have Bethany, my wife, sitting right here in a chair and having Nolan on the other side of Zoom to do our check-ins, to talk about our goals, to say, what do you guys wanna be doing in three years, in one year?
And it's no longer, even if she doesn't contribute a lot, she's contributing something. And now, now we have a united front as a couple. On something that's honestly been pretty, um, segregated and like I'm, it's my business and I do the business. This is the chair I sit in all day and now she's got a voice.
And I super appreciate that. She speaks a lot of wisdom into it, and I think there's just a real energy that comes if you're, if you're married and having both of [00:49:00] you talk about finances, where one of you probably by default doesn't want to very much. And so I, I think that's a. That's, that's reason enough to have a financial coach in your corner and have someone from accountability is to have that U United front with a spouse, if that's. So Nolan, uh, three questions. People should walk away with trying to answer what's the freedom number? What's that monthly number you need, uh, to accomplish your goals? Two, what are the goals or are your goals rooted in something that's actually gonna give you happiness and not just a borrowed goal or keeping up with the Joneses and what you see other people doing.
And three, do you have the numbers that you need? To help you make better decisions. 'cause ultimately that's the service of the numbers, right, is like they should really make you make better decisions for your own life. So I know you have resources for people. Where should people go next if they wanna go
deeper on answering these three questions or any of the things that we've touched on today?
Nolan: Yeah. So, uh, if you're, if you're interested in sort of like, kind of like taking that journey a little bit [00:50:00] more and kind of following like what that experience is like, or if you will kind of wanna relate more about who our clients are on that, you can go to numbers for freedom.com. Uh, it kind of takes you through the, the client journey, if you will, and kind of things to think about, uh, help you reflect upon that.
That's helpful. If you're at a place where like you just have questions and you, you want a more direct answer, you can go to our website, bradfield co.com, uh, and there's a contact button on there and you know, you can send an email to us. Um, real human being will respond to that. So please don't spam us.
Uh, and, uh, just, and reach out and, you know, just ask your question and we can set up a time to talk and we'll talk through sort of what your answers to some of these questions are and whether we're the right fit or not is not the point of the call. The point of the call is to help put you on the path that is right for you, and maybe that's working with us.
Maybe it's working with someone else, or maybe it's just getting an answer to a question that allows you to figure out the next step in your life. Like I'm less concerned about that piece. I'm more concerned about just making sure that you get something meaningful outta the time together. That's, we can do that.
That's my hope. That's the, that's our main focus is [00:51:00] helping business owners get closer to the their ideal.
Dustin: I love it. Yeah. And I, and I do, I get to spend a lot of time with Nolan, it feels like, in, uh, all, all aspects of our professional lives. We help each other a lot. I'll say it that way. We spend a lot of time in proximity. Everything he said there is a hundred percent authentic and true. He really just wants the best for people.
And so I love this, uh, numbers for freedom.com. That's gonna take you to sort of the. Self-assessment, self-assessment route. Like you can go like help yourself and you can als also, you know, get, get ahold of some resources and some, um, personal contact there if you need it. And then if you just wanna like, Hey, Nolan is Dustin's guy.
I just wanna talk to Nolan. I wanna talk to his team. You can go to bradfield code.com. Is that correct? And just, you know, fill out a form, book a call, and have a conversation and, and see how they might be able to help you directly. So, Nolan Bradberry, man, you are a, a gift to me. I really appreciate all the time here, um, the ability to gently guide me through, uh, some sensitive information, right?
Like, no one wants to talk about their [00:52:00] money and their, their goals. Um, but I'm, I'm grateful to have someone I can trust to do that with and we'll let other people listen into the conversation this time. So.
Nolan: Thanks for having me. It's an honor as always. Thanks Dust.