KNOW YOUR NUMBERS | Episode 1 with Meny Hoffman & Simeon Friedman

Most business owners work very hard growing, pushing forward, but still feel like they have zero clarity when it comes to their numbers. You're making decisions every single day. You are hiring, spending, pricing, expanding, but without full clarity, those decisions come with uncertainty, and over time, that uncertainty adds up. Today, we are starting a new series, which is called the series of finance. We hope with this series, you will be changing that. I'm joined today by Simeon Friedman, a partner at Scholl & Friedman & Co., a firm with over 50 years of experience helping and advising businesses on their financial decisions. The decisions that matter most, and what better choice for our conversation with someone with so much experience. Together, we'll have real conversations about the financial sides of running a business. I know sales is important, marketing is important. There's so many aspects of business. Finance is the boring part, but everything starts and stops with finance. With this episodes, you're going to be listening one by one, just like you heard the episodes about sales with Pinhas Schiff, and if you didn't, go back and listen to them. Every week, we'll have another episodes about topics that matter most. You'll go from guessing to knowing, and you'll go from not understanding to understanding and leading with confidence. Look out every single week for another episode, where we'll deep dive into different topics related to finance. And I'll ask you the same that I asked you before. If you do have topics that you feel we did not cover, send it our way. Any type of feedback, we appreciate it. Like this, we could bring the best content to you. Because when you understand your numbers, you You just run a business, you take control of it. And when you take control of your business, so many things and opportunity will see after the Shamaya come your way. Before we dive to our first episode, let me have our our guest introduce himself as well. Simeon, why not tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and about the firm? Hi, my name is Simeon Friedman, Yaakov Shimon Friedman. Um I'm a partner in Saul Friedman Saul N. Friedman & Company. Uh the firm was founded by my father over 50 years ago. I've been at the firm for over 26 years. Um and uh any experiences that I have that hopefully will be able to convey uh is experience that I've learned over the time in servicing my clients and situations that happened to them and using those experience, hopefully I can share that with you and it's going to help you out as well. Thank Thank you, Simeon. Thanks for having me. Sure. And And I'm starting to get comfortable with these with these episodes. Um we went from having just weekly episodes with guest and we tried something fresh, which was the sales episodes where we dove into a topic and we had people really connected. And how do you know if people are connected? Because they're asking, "I can't wait for the next one." And the reason why I felt about it is because if you're interested in the topic, you really want to learn the topic. You want to understand the topic. And if you want to understand the topic, you need it needs to be covered widely. If you have a guest for an hour, you could cover a lot. To tease the topic, you can't cover every part of the topic. Now, I want to cover with you a bunch of topics related to finance. Obviously, this is not for accountants. Of course, accountants are going to be listening to this or bookkeeping services will listen to this. But I want the business owner to understand their responsibility in finance. And I think it's so important and we'll get to so many different parts of it. Me dealing with so many business owners, what I felt throughout the years, and we'll get topic by topic. But I what I want to explain to our audience um on the first topic is if you don't know your numbers, you're guessing. This is the title for episode number one. And we know that if you're guessing, you have a chance to succeed, but you have just as just about a chance to not succeed if you're only guessing. And if you know your numbers, it's important. I remember years ago, I actually had a conversation with a CRM. It was the earlier years of CRM, which means before that it was pen and paper, not knowing what's coming in, leads, how many how many sales how many leads you have in your pipeline. And I remember they interviewed me at that time because I was literally from the first 100 people using that software. And they asked me like, "What can I share about about the software?" I said, "Data is king." Because at least you have and you could see it in front of you and then you can make decisions. You still have to make decisions, but at least you have the data. And I think when it comes to finance, if you know your numbers, at least you are able to look and connect something. A decision that needs to be made, connecting to something. So, I want to start with the first question on this topic, which is "Why do you think owners avoid understanding their numbers?" Interesting. I don't know if it's it's avoid understanding the numbers, it's acknowledging that to run a business successfully, you really have to know your numbers. Uh how many times have I heard in my career, "Don't ask me, ask my accountant. My accountant will tell you everything." At the end of the day, an accountant's function is um I'm not going to call it a reactive function, but it's always after the fact. Meaning, whenever your books are closed, the accountant comes in, comes with a dim of a cash bin and my guy daughter made it the you know, you do you do cash bin and efforts on your business and this is how you did. Go out there so you now you know how you did. Problem is is that the accountant is analyzing the information after the fact. You find out that five or six months ago you had an issue and now you find out about it. If you would have known back then, you would have take action to prevent the issue from becoming larger than it is. So you have to get a handle of your numbers. Uh when you talk about data, today with computers and the systems that people have used or use, in essence, data is available. Having data is einsach, right? It's one thing. Understanding how to read the data or to know what to look for, that's another thing. I find that many business owners are not so detail oriented, meaning they have people maybe that they delegated to, but they're interested in seeing certain aspects of the business. So at minimum, they have to be provided that information on an executive level so that they can see the trends or they can see the data so that they can see how they're doing and if they have to make decisions. But when you say avoid, yes, people have talents. Numbers to some people is is boring stuff. It's the necessary evil, etc. But when you're running a business, you want to know how you're doing and if there's issues, how to correct it. Mhm. I I I I want to go actually I am going to double down on the word on the word avoid and I'll tell you why. Because I deal a lot with business owners and I think a lot of the times when they say speak to my accountant, speak to my bookkeeper or I ask them for a their margins or what type of profits that they're working with and so on and so forth. Um sometimes they know they that they have a some sort of guess on where they are, negative, positive, very close to negative and so on and so forth. But the end of the day is they don't want to know the details because they feel they're going to they're going to lose the motivation in their business. And I've seen this recently even more than the past. And again, obviously we're we're speaking to a very wide audience and we speak to very successful companies and then very small startups so to speak and then and everything in between. So obviously what I'm saying now might vary between who's listening to this. But there's a lot of people that are just grinding and grinding and grinding and sometimes they avoid that number because they're afraid of of what the results are. >> So that that's technically a psychological thing, which is you're putting your head in the sand and rather let me not know, right? When you say people have a gut, right? Many business owners that really know what's going on, but it's because they're experienced or they know their business well where their gut tells them something. That's great. And many times I find that their gut is accurate, meaning when they look at numbers that I don't know, their bookkeeper puts together some financials or whatever and they say it doesn't make sense. Right? And many times they're right because they have a gut. Right? The problem is is that when you're running a business based on what's in your head, right? As opposed to prove what's in your head so that somebody else can come to the same conclusions, that's dangerous because if if you leave the business or something happens to you, right? What's sitting in your head, not everybody knows. So you have to have a system that can report based on what the reality is. Your gut could be correct. But as far as not wanting to know, I'd rather not get into the details. Are you in business or you're not in business, right? Are you just deny in denial if things are not going well or no, I just don't want to deal with it. If you don't want to deal with it, get other people to deal with it. Running away from it doesn't help the situation. >> doesn't help the situation. >> Yeah, so which which leads me to to another thing which is that it's okay that you're not good with numbers and I think everybody has their strengths and weaknesses and I think as a society we grow up that let's say even in the school system and everything like that that people try to work on their weaknesses. Sometimes that's what you do and that's what you have to do, but sometimes stick to your strengths. You know, if numbers is not is not your strength. >> so I I'd like to say that yeah, I understand that everybody has to be in their in their lane, right? What I may say most people would agree with that if you're saying numbers is not my thing is profits and dollars your thing? Of course. >> Of course. >> That's what you operate. That's what you operate. How do you know what profits and dollars you have, right? Obviously it's based on how your business is performing. Mhm. Right? So, everybody that's in business is there to make money, right? And you want to do as best as you can and grow it as as best as you can. If at the end of the day what reports and gives you an idea of how you're doing when you're when you're when you're if you're profitable or if you're declining and why you're declining or your margins are getting tighter or whatever it is, you want to know about it, especially if you're in the position to make a decision on how to improve it. I mean a company, you know, average size company employs x amount of employees. You have a family to take care of. Uh people are working. There's a responsibility to keep that to keep that afloat and and and focus as best as you can. Mhm. Now, obviously executives don't necessarily have all the talent. That's why they hire people that do and report to them. Yeah. Um great great point. 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Remember, your business and your sales team will always thank you for setting the right system so they could focus on closing more sales. I sit sometimes with business owners because they have to make decisions. They're coming to me about hiring, firing, expansion, and stuff like that. And whenever we touch that, you know, in terms of the health of the business and everything like that, and when the the common theme is I don't know exactly or or I have to speak to my bookkeeper or my accountant and so on and so forth. My response is always that you might not need or able to know all your numbers or the nuances of the numbers. There's always a set of numbers that should always be at the forefront of every business owner. And I And let me explain and then I would want you should elaborate on it. Uh if you have a Amazon business and just or e-commerce business and you want to grow and you you don't know and you're making a growth plan if you don't know do we want to now double down on growth gross revenue or is it a phase in a company that it's not about gross, it's about net profit? So, if you don't know the numbers and you're trying to So, how do you know if you're going to be successful? Or how do you know what what the focus has to be in the decision-making factor or what to track to see if we're getting there. And like you said before, your accountant will sit with you maybe sometimes when you need some planning and you need that advice, but mainly you're operating your business every day on your own and you're sitting with your leadership team, with your people around you. So, nobody is exempt in my opinion I and I would love to hear your opinion. In my opinion, as a business owner, nobody's exempt to say I don't know my numbers. You might say I don't know all my numbers, but there's a set of numbers in the phase where I am in my business that I need to know. All right. So, you know, the expression in order to get somewhere you have to know where you're coming from, right? There's no end point before a starting point. >> We know that now with GPSs. So, the same way it comes to finance, right? You're saying somebody wants to know how to develop a plan for growth, right? Which is basically projecting. You're projecting, right? And if you're very good at projections to an extent where you're a prophet, then people will be around the block, you know, trying to get your advice. So, nobody's Nobody's a prophet when it comes to these things. But, you want to project and put a put a business plan together. The first step on a projection is knowing what the reality is today or has been over the past whatever period of time. You need a baseline to create a projection, which is if I did X amount of sales at X amount of margins with X amount of overhead or, you know, whatever my expenses are to carry the business, and I want to move to a different level, you have to make certain assumptions to get you there. Either increase your product base, improve your margins, um hire more marketing, cutting some expenses, whatever movements you want to make to get the company to the level you want, you need that first baseline to know where you are now. And that's basic knowing where you are now as opposed to I'm just going to grow the business. I know what You can't You can't expand on something that you don't know what the foundation is. So, you have to get a good Now, your accountant can help you with that and can probably help you with projections, but you have to come up with the strategy of what it is that you want to do to grow, and you build that model and then you monitor your projections based on the reality to see how you're doing. Mhm. But, knowing where to go, you have to know where you came from. Exactly. So, let's break down I know that the the the fundamentals of of finance um is basically in the three buckets that I like to to look at from my perspective as a business owner, not from an accountant. Um you have profits. You speak about cash, you know, the second bucket is cash flow, and the third is margins. Those are the three things that, let's say, if you look at a business owner, you know, the first thing, and this is again I learned this the hard way and in on this podcast my my audience is used to me being vulnerable at given times. I remember when I started my company I was you know, I I I tried to I found my first accountant. And I asked him like a couple months in and he told me you're very like you're just starting out. Just go for the year and we'll we'll see you at the end of the year. Like that time was like we're talking about 25 years ago the accountants was were different for a small business. And I got to that meeting and we go through and I and I found out that I did not make the money that I thought I made. And the problem was that I confused margins and markup. >> [laughter] >> Very common and throughout the years I've sat with business owners and I see this so so common like >> Mille Mille Barra Mille Gav. Yeah, so I you'll go into that details. That's what I'm saying that I feel when I sit with a business owners I the first thing I want to know yes, you might have a cash flow but you're still profitable profitable but then what are your margins if you want us to create a growth plan. So let's go into those three things as an accountant what should a business owner look at? What should a healthy profit margin cash flow and margins look like? >> Right. So obviously to tell you what a healthy profit margin is, let's split it in two buckets call it gross gross profit margin and the net profit margin. You want to expand on that? So gross profit margin basically is your sales less the cost of what you sold. So assuming you're in a electronics business, right? Your sales is what you sold the product for less what the product cost you. Question is what goes into the product cost but let's just keep it as a general category as >> Direct direct cost. >> Direct cost of the product. To get into the granule to be a little more granule you may have products where you have to there's a some manufacturing components or there's labor that goes into it. There is a raw material and there's machinery and equipment that gets the product available for sale and then you sell the product. Bottom line is the cost of the product that you sold. It let's simple way, if you buy something for a thousand dollars, you sell it for fifteen hundred dollars, your gross profit is five hundred dollars, your cost of the product was a thousand dollars, right? So, it's about thirty-three percent gross profit. Then you have the net profit, which is once I generated my gross profit, which is my markup on the product that I purchased, less the purchase cost, right? Giving me a gross profit. That gross profit feeds the rest of your business. Which is your selling expenses, your marketing, your overhead, getting you to a net profit, right? So, those are the two numbers. I can tell you what's healthy because depending on the industry. I have clients that their margins are fifteen percent, they're making a lot of money. I have clients that are sixty percent, they're making a lot of money and some of them that, you know, it's depending on what what the product is. But what you want to see is when you're analyzing obviously sales, it's simple, right? You want to see how your sales are doing. You then want to manage your margins. Because your margins really should be consistent as a percentage of your sales, right? If I see or someone sees that their margins are fluctuating where one month my margin is my gross profit percentage is thirty percent, the next month it's fifty percent, the next month it's forty percent, it's volatile, that means that your books and records are problematic. Cuz there's obviously an issue with how you're recording these transactions. So, let's add the health of a business. If your system is accurate and you have the correct margins for you to if you see that your margins are going down, you have to figure out why. Do I have to increase my prices to get my margins healthier? Do I have to buy better? What can I do to get my margins healthier, right? The higher your percentage is, the more gross profit you have. So, you want to monitor that and see how you can improve it. Then when you get to overhead, overhead tends to be fixed and generally speaking, selling expenses, commissions may be in line with the sales, but overhead tends to be a fixed number. It does increase as your business grows, but it doesn't increase at the rate that your sales increase because overhead is overhead, right? You want to look to maintain and control that and as your business grows, you want to see that your overhead as a percentage of your sales go down. Right? As your sales go up, even though the overhead in dollars may go up, but as a percentage of sales, it goes down. If it's going up together at the same pace, then you have a problem. >> So, you're saying that you need to be able to produce more sales with the same type of uh If you're building an infrastructure and you have an overhead, you can you're not maximized, meaning your infrastructure is not is not necessarily maximized on what it can produce. You can produce more and you want to get more sales. If you're going to do If somebody does $5 of sales and then he increases his business by a million dollars, he may not have to increase his overhead by much. Well, if he has to he has to pay more rent, you know, uh So, so >> of just for a second, um so, we spoke about gross margins and net net margins at the end of the day. Um for a business owner, obviously they need to look at both. Um is there one that has priority over the other? I would say the gross profit margin is the priority because the gross profit, which is in layman's terms, sales less the cost [snorts] of what you sold, giving you money. That money feeds your business. That money that feeds your business covers the expenses and overhead and whatever's left over is in your pocket. Yeah. If somebody is going on a 40% gross profit, so if he sells something for a for $1,000, he made $400. If he's able to push that up to $450, talking about per item, right? And his overhead is pretty much in line with what it was before that. Whatever he increased on that little half a percent or 1% is money in his pocket. Yeah. But what I what I've seen a lot of businesses is let's say they had a certain um um growth trajectory or they actually were making a lot of money seasonal or whatever and they hired more so they brought more expenses to their to their overhead and now they the the sales have declined and all of a sudden it's in an imbalance. They Right. So the answer to that is why did you bring on the people? So there's two ways to look at it. Did you bring it on because time was good and I can afford it? Or did you bring it on because I see that my business is growing and I want to continue investing in my infrastructure by having people which means yes, I know I'm hiring. It's going to be an expense where right now my sales are not where I want but I'm setting myself up Exactly. >> that when I get to those to that growth I have the infrastructure in place. So it may be that until you get to the sales level that you want to get to you're increasing your overhead which means that your profits go down Mhm. but you may look at it as an investment, right? As an investment. But if you're just doing it because time is good and money is you know, I I can afford it and then sales come down and then it hits you in the face then you have to start cutting. So so I think this is very important and I think for our listeners I think it's I'm I'm happy that we started off on this topic because I've seen so many people that I sit with at one point um I asked him like what's your profit margin and they'll throw a number and I said could you back it up with some data and then yes their accountant and bookkeeper will send me some information and then it's not that and and I asked the bookkeeper and says we were at that margin but we long lost that because things happened in the market. So for business owners it's not only it's not a one-time number. That's what happens when you avoid knowing your financials, right? You find out later that this was and you're you were living in la-la land. So, could I could I could I trouble you for our service providers? You mentioned like a product. How do you go the same let's look at margins service provider? >> So, service provider is let's take an example of a of a service provider. >> Marketing agency. >> Marketing agency. You generate >> We have guys shooting this videos. >> Shooting this video. How is the What are you What are you producing? What's your deliverable? Some people would say hot air, right? At the end of the day, it's great hot air because people are paying for that hot air, right? So, hot air gets you to a certain extent, right? But obviously you're providing a service, right? You're providing results. If there is projects that you're involved in where you can directly associate certain costs to those projects, for instance, you have staff or employees that work on specific projects and you pay them a salary, right? Or you pay them a commission based on the on the on the revenue you're generating, but let's go simply pay them a salary. For you to know your cost technically, any any outlay that you have to either printing or marketing material or whatever it is and or staff that are dedicated to specific projects, if you allocate their cost the labor cost your employee cost to the revenue, right? Meaning it's it's directly related to the revenue. You allocate those costs to direct costs of the service you provide, at the end you have a gross profit. Right? If you can ignore and just say my salaries are just my overhead because every week I'm paying the same amount, that's not true. So, you're saying you have zero overhead? Allocated to your revenue, right? Based on the amount of time they spend on certain projects to know what am I making on How should I price myself? Yeah. I'm happy you're saying that because by us we've gone through this over the years so many different times how to structure it. But today, we have literally an hourly rate, which is our direct cost to every single output of what we do. So, we can know profit margins per project, regardless of the company's profit margins. >> So, you you basically are setting a hourly rate for your internal function, not your billable [clears throat] function. >> Internal cost. Based on the amount of hours they are supposed to put in on an annual basis divided by their salary, right? So, you know that their hour costs me X dollars. How many hours did they spend on this project? You can know what you made on that project. >> Exactly. So, we we we use a a tool as a CRM for tracking a project um results and tasks and everything like that. So, I guess you're not avoiding financials. No, so we would put in our an initial cost and it will calculate based on each person that's involved in that project and will give us our margins exactly on the project. Now, I can't say always this 100% accurate because it is still service related. Yeah. you can ask, why do you need to know that? Okay, so you know what your margins are. The answer is as you retain people and they grow in your in in in your in your organization, it starts cost they cost you more because you either raise them or they're entitled for bonuses or whatever it is, which is normal, right? Loyalty costs money, right? >> Yeah. You have to know if your pricing has to be adjusted as well. Because as your costs are going up and you're not adjusting your pricing, your margin goes down, And all of a sudden you find yourself at the end of the year. >> yourself at the end of the year. So, you have you may have to uh adjust your pricing accordingly. That's why it's important to be able to monitor it. Got it. So, I want to I want to still dive in on this episode on explaining profit um in terms of So, we spoke about margins, we spoke about the profit. Is there anything else you want to add on the profit and what a business owner needs to look at before we speak about cash flow. Again, now this is in basic terms, this is what it is, right? Now, I will I will get to I'll just raise one topic which probably is going to one point which is probably going to be elaborated more when you get to cash flow. Yes. Is what is the definition of revenue and what is the definition of costs? Is it when you when you bill it, when you earned it, or when you collected it? Is the expense when the expense happened, meaning I owe money for whatever it is, or when I paid it, right? Strictly from a financial end, if you want to know how your company is doing from a profitability standpoint, you basically want to know in whatever period you're analyzing what revenue did I generate and what expenses did I incur? Which means what did I bill and what expenses did I incur, meaning what was my cost during that period of time? And that gives you the net profit number. Mhm. So, from a from a business owner listening to this episode so far, um what is the between those three metrics? Obviously, we need to have a healthy company and we'll get to it we need to have good numbers good good metrics on all three of them. Those three like we know let's say now in SaaS and then software companies will go crazy on on on on profitability, but they still have to have cash to be able to operate, otherwise they can't operate. Like is there a difference of of the size of the company or the stage of the company where look more profit versus cash, cash versus margins? Well, let's could we get to the cash part? >> Sure. Yeah. On a minimum level because we'll do a a whole session of well, a whole episode on that guys. >> In short, basically is cash obviously is a good determining factor of how you're doing, but it's not the only determining factor of how you're doing, right? >> Sure. You can you can be very very tight on cash, but if I'm a financial from a financial standing or the way you are financially, you're you're doing well, right? Um from the focus standpoint is if you're running your business properly properly, you're keeping your healthy margins, you're collecting your receivables, you're not you're in control of the expenses that you have, your cash flow should be okay, right? Obviously, you can it can become an issue when you're not doing well or if you're in the investing stage. You're expanding, you're buying software, additional your your your re I don't know your your redoing your warehousing and whatever investment cost that you have which is eating into your cash, right? And you're really tight on money. We're not getting to the financing end of it. That's separate topic, but you can be very tight while from a business profitability which is sales less the cost of your sales or cost of services bring you a gross profit and then your all your your selling expenses and overhead gives you the net profit, right? From that number, that number doesn't change regardless of how you are on the cash flow. Meaning you can be tight or you can have excess cash. That really doesn't Although obviously it feeds the cash, but the cash number is not what you're looking at. You want to know that your business is profitable. Correct. You might have a issue with collections or anything like that and therefore you're tight on cash versus but the your your balance sheet and your P&L is showing um profit. >> At least you're you're running a business that may not be managed properly, right? But you're running a a a a business that is profitable. That's step number one. Right? So, I I I want to I want to close out this episode with something that I actually heard from your father and and actually I think it got it went a little viral because it's a very good line. He said that I've yet to meet a company that is successful that doesn't have clean books. I'm not saying that every company that has clean books is successful. >> Correct. Right. >> And I think I I I it was like an aha moment, which is right. Like, of course, not every company that has that has clean books is successful. But, all successful companies have clean books because that helps them make decisions. >> Exactly. Elaborate on that based on what we just talked about. >> Base Basically, what that means is is that uh the the segulah for success is not to have clean books. But, when a company is successful, chances are they have When we say clean books, let's let's let's understand what we mean. It's It's a finance You have a financial picture of the company. Your books are accurate. They can tell you exactly what's going on in your company. The reason why people are successful is because uh they're with the siyata dishmaya, they're making the right decisions, right? How do you make the right decisions? By looking at data to help you see issues, make the decisions, execute, tweak your business, do this, do that. You know what's going on. You have the You have the visibility of what's going on. And you make you make the decisions for the betterment of your company. You can only know what's going on if you have a system that's telling you in the reality of what's going on. And uh unfortunately, there are many businesses that don't necessarily have that. I'm not going to get into the detail as to what's considered um accurate books and records and not accurate books and records. But, at the end of the day, if it if you don't encumbers if it doesn't encumber all the aspects of your business on the financial end, where you'll see exactly what's going on. It's not that that attributes to success, but by not having it, you're not You don't have all the tools you need to make the correct decisions. I'll just add on that because a lot We've seen We see a lot of small business owners start off, I don't even know who's going to be doing my books. So, let me start doing sales. Let me start doing transactions. And they they like they have this assumption, okay, as I'm going to grow, I'll find a bookkeeper. You're making that bookkeeper work so much harder that time because now there's a year of data and and you have to go back and and look at every transaction, reconciling banks and and and and all of a sudden you already forgot about the numbers. Like you're just making it harder for everybody including yourself as you're making those decisions. So yeah, so let's remember what um um what Mr. Friedman um said, which is I don't know if every successful every every company that has clean and clear books is successful, but every successful company has clean books. So thank you for this episode. I appreciate it. For our listeners, I want to tell you why we're doing this. If you have clarity, it will lead you to have proper control. If you have proper control, you can make better decisions. I've heard it recently actually. I heard a podcast from a very successful business owner. His company I think is like 300 in the range of 3 to 400 million dollars on e-commerce and he said the following. He said that if you know your financial part of your business, every decision is being made differently. Every time that you don't know your financials and you sit down at a table and you have to make now a $50,000 decision, $100,000 decision, you don't have the clarity. If you don't have the clarity, ultimately sometimes >> in the dark and you're hoping that it sticks. Yeah, so thank you for listening to this episode. And if you found this helpful, please make sure to subscribe regardless of where you're listening to this and you should be notified about the upcoming episode. Share it with your friends. Share it with your co-workers because they'll get so much out of it. And most important, as you have to the shamayim, we'll see you again next week. Next week's episode will be about what we started today, which is how could it be a profitable business and still running low on cash and what can you do? Where should you dig in? What should you you in order to avoid it? See you next week. This episode of the Let's Talk Business podcast is sponsored by Flow Digital and Pipedrive. Sales is the lifeblood of every business. No sales means no revenue and no business. So, if you are a business owner or in sales, you already know how important it is to have a proper CRM. A good CRM helps you manage your sales process and keeps leads from falling through the cracks and makes sure you have the proper reporting so you could analyze what's happening every single day. If the CRM is too complicated or not set set up properly, the team just won't use it. When that happens, leads get lost, follow-up get missed, and ultimately deals stall. That's where Pipedrive comes in. Pipedrive is an easy-to-use CRM designed to make tracking and sales process simple. You can see your pipeline at a glance, move deals forward, and make sure you never miss a follow-up. And with built-in AI, get insights to help you close more deals. But that's not all. Easy-to-use doesn't always mean efficient. That's where Flow Digital steps in. I'm personally a Flow Digital client that helped me set up the Pipedrive at Pii Technologies. Speaking from personal experience, I could attest they're the best in the business at setting up CRMs and automating the sales workflow. As one of the top Pipedrive experts, Flow Digital builds automation and AI-powered workflows that handle the busy work. Pipedrive becomes one of your most powerful tools for your sales people. As a listener to the show, you can sign up for a free Pipedrive trial at flow.digital/ltb. Where you'll get a 45-day trial of Pipedrive, plus you'll be able to get a 45-minute consultation to get your CRM set up the right way. Once again, that's flow.digital/ltb. So, you get the best of both worlds. You get the easiest CRM out there, which is Pipedrive, and you get Flow Digital to help you set it up. Remember, your business and your sales team will always thank you for setting the right system so they could focus on closing more sales. And that's a wrap for today's episode of the Let's Talk Business podcast. I hope you enjoyed the practical no-nonsense advice that our guest shared. If you found value in listening, I would be so grateful if you could share the episode with your friends. And if you could give the show a five-star rating on Apple podcast or whatever platform you listen. Subscribe to the show and get notified every time we publish a new episode. The Let's Talk Business podcast is a Pitego original production. Until next time, make it a great day. >> [music]