How Top Entrepreneurs Turn Obstacles Into Opportunities, with Patti Mara and Colin Sanburg

Patti Mara: Welcome. We're at Strategic Coach CoachCon, our first conference, and I have this wonderful opportunity to interview some of the Strategic Coach clients and sponsors that are here. I'm Patti Mara. I'm a coach with Strategic Coach. My business, I work with pharmacy owners and their teams to engage the team and position for success in the community. And I have a start-up called We Choose Local. We're launching an e-commerce platform for locally owned businesses this year. So very exciting. And I'm here with Colin Sanburg with FinElevate. So Colin, a pleasure to meet you.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, great to meet you as well.
 
Patti Mara: So tell me a little bit about what is FinElevate and then how long have you been in Strategic Coach?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, so FinElevate is a fractional CFO service. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I own multiple businesses and I originally did it for myself, kind of almost in a holding company kind of approach. But from knowing a lot of other entrepreneurs through Strategic Coach, as well as just in my own network, realized how few enjoyed the financial side of their business. They hate it. So that was it. We created FinElevate to really help them take that off their plate, let them focus on their Unique Ability.
 
Patti Mara: Fabulous. And how long have you been in Strategic Coach?
 
Colin Sanburg: I joined Strategic Coach in 2018, so about eight years.
 
Patti Mara: Excellent. Fabulous. So I love what you're doing. First of all, I'm one of those entrepreneurs that don't love the financials. And of course, if you don't keep your thumbs on the financials, you're spinning tires at the best.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Right?
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely. Fair to say? Yep.
 
Patti Mara: So who do you generally work with? Is there a target audience that's your best fit?
 
Colin Sanburg: So we work with, you know, 1 to $20 million companies typically. A lot of times the founder is still stuck in that finance seat. And I would say that the biggest criteria that we love working with is someone who's in Coach or an EOS company, primarily because the owner or founder has figured out that they don't enjoy things. Not every part of business is built for them, and they just want to focus on their areas of Unique Ability. So it allows us to come in into a company where we're supported, and people are so happy to offload that part of their business.
 
Patti Mara: Yes. The whole Who Not How conversation.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely.
 
Patti Mara: It's an essential part. We can't build a successful business, a well-operating business, a profitable business, without understanding not just that the financials are taken care of, but what are the KPIs that we should keep our sight on to make decisions?
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely. And that's a huge part of what we do. We're very data focused. We say fractional CFO because it's the closest to what we do. But in reality, it's digging into the dashboard, figuring out what is the core KPI that'll help this business actually grow further, training the team to drive based on those KPI and, you know, really just bringing it all home with, we've got a playbook of a million different things you could do. But we put them in order custom for each business so that they actually are growing and better business and more freedom for the owner at the same time.
 
Patti Mara: Absolutely. And I think there's confidence in there too.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: You know, often the owner, I've worked with a number of entrepreneurs over the years, it's like they don't even want to give up signing authority because that's their thumb on the pulse. And there's a real fear of letting that go. Colin, give me an example of some stories that you can share of businesses you've worked with that kind of shows the ROI, where you've been able, by going in and identifying and streamlining and handling, but also figuring out what the metrics are so people are focusing on those key things that they can drive the business with.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely. So one of our favorite clients, also a Coach client, but they do video production. And so in their traditional, they were working with a CPA type of CFO service, which is not really the style that we are. And they were getting the typical, you know, 15 days into the month. Here's what happened last month. And so their team was purely reactive. The team was just working as hard as they thought they should work, and they were just going about their life. And when we went into the business, it was really driving, what is that critical metric? And like many companies, they get some big orders and some small orders. And we realized, look, we've got to focus on videos. It doesn't matter how many videos are in this order. How many videos or portions of a video did the team get done today and this week and this month?
 
And so we built metrics around that and they went from a 45-day rewind of what happened to knowing today, like as we're sitting here, they know today how many videos or portions of videos they've gotten done. And so it's wired the business around productivity. And that's a huge part of what we've done, and it's incredible. I mean, they went from last year, they were at, you know, one portion of the year, they were at 2% profit, and they had 34% profit in the first quarter of this year. And it's all because we really just built a better mirror to hold up to their face. And the team embraced it. I mean, the team, it's amazing. Teams love to win, right? The right players want a scoreboard. And so you just have to give them one they think is actually a good reflection of their hard work, and they engage with it.
 
Patti Mara: Yeah, that's back to Brad's smart top grading, A players, B players, and C players, and you want A players on your team, and the A players want the metrics of success because they want to win.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, they won't stick around if they don't have access to the right scorecard. That's right.
 
Patti Mara: Very good. You brought up a couple of things. I think of Pearson's law. Dan always quotes Pearson's law. Everything measured improves, and everything measured and reported on improves exponentially.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Peter Drucker said, if you measure it, you can manage it. If you manage it, you can improve it.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Right? So really interesting. And then you also kind of spotlighted the whole idea that you have to have lead as well as lag measures.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely.
 
Patti Mara: Right. So we'll talk a little bit about the importance of identifying your dashboard KPIs—that they're lead measures, not just the lag measures, as you said, 15 days into the next month.
 
Colin Sanburg: Exactly. And I think that's a huge struggle is companies, especially if you've got a visionary type of founder, so he's a high Quick Start, they want end results, they want those lag results, but doing the diligent work that it takes to build back to what the lead measures are that actually drive that is a lot of work. It's not always fun work. But ultimately, you really do need both because when the team wakes up every day, they've got to be focused on lead. And if we know confidently that those lead measures build to the lag measures, then when the lag measures work, it's like the light bulb goes off and the entire team buys in. Once they see the corollary between the two, if there's a disconnect or the system is, quote, not fair in the eyes of the average employee, they disengage completely. They just coast.
 
Patti Mara: Yeah, they can't win.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah.
 
Patti Mara: And if they can't win, then they give up.
 
Colin Sanburg: And then you become an organization that attracts B and C players, and A's get out of there because they don't want any part of that. I only want to play games I know I can win.
 
Patti Mara: Very good. This word has been coming up a lot, but it's almost like the benefit of creating a sounding board, or I'm busy in my business and I know what to do in my business. But without that kind of that bounce off that sounding board, I'm likely missing some of those key pieces that would change the culture of my whole organization.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely. And I think for all of us, no matter how skilled we are, even in a specific area, we need outside perspective. Always. We almost need to hear ourselves out loud, try and say what we're trying to accomplish and try to package it for someone else to understand. And so that's part of what we love. I mean, my other businesses are more enterprise level. Corporate America is who we sold to. And it was always really frustrating, frankly, kind of a nightmare. And so I love working with entrepreneurial companies because entrepreneurs want it straight. They want you to tell them, like, here's the good, bad, and the ugly, as I see it. And they want someone who's willing to do that for them. And then when you're willing to kind of keep it straight with their team as well, and like you said, build a scorecard that actually reflects the success in their business, giving the team something, a path to win, and then showing the entrepreneur the right things to focus on. Because we're all scattered, right? We're all scatterbrained entrepreneurs. We bounce around. If I give you a three-page P&L, you get hung up on this one little number and you're like, what is that? I don't even know what that is. And now you're missing the big picture. And so really giving them the right metrics that can help drive the business.
 
Patti Mara: Yes. I remember reading a story a number of years ago now, and it was an entrepreneur who was a cardiologist. He owned a cardiac hospital in India. That's all they did was saw cardiac patients and did cardiac surgery. But they took, one of the things he was brilliant at is what you're talking about, having his dashboard. And they had each of the surgeons would do one or two surgeries. And they did that all day, one or two surgeries, so they were masters. And all of the operating theaters were on the outside with windows, because they were spending the entire day in the operating theater, so they had natural light. So but not only were they the top cardiac hospital in all of India, but they were also the number one charity. And so what happens every day, you know how dated it was, he had a BlackBerry. Every day at noon on his BlackBerry, he would get the five key metrics that he measured. And based on that, he would authorize the number of free or low-cost surgeries.
 
Colin Sanburg: Wow.
 
Patti Mara: And so his whole model only worked, I mean, he was brilliant because he paid attention to the metrics and they had the best outcomes, the lowest cost, and the best recovery. I mean, it was just phenomenal when you looked at all the measures of success, but the key piece was being able to track on a daily basis to make decisions.
 
Colin Sanburg: I love that. And I think that's the key is finding, especially what we call the critical unit, which is that one core KPI. And I always tell people that a lot of businesses are complicated and they struggle to think even what that would be. And I say, if you walk in, if it's a busy day or a slow day, it's usually this KPI. So we feel it. And in the business, everyone intuitively knows like how well we're doing or how many we're doing. Once you really identify that and you optimize around it, and that's exactly what it sounds like they had done is once you optimize around a very small number of metrics, it's amazing how efficient, right? Because efficiency is profit. That's all it is. It's just thinking about, you know, your behavior in a very efficient way. And so it's easier to train your team. It's easier, even as you're saying, to link back to what are they giving and the investing in our community elements that we want to do. Thinking of them in those same terms, I mean, that's amazing.
 
Patti Mara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I keep coming up to this whole sounding board, and you talked about, you know, as being entrepreneurs, we're all over the place. It takes a lot of work to get to that simplicity of the key KPI that drives everything else.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Right?
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely.
 
Patti Mara: Because I'm focused on what I do and who I'm working with. It's not about creating value. Yes, it's there, but it's even in the marketing message. I found this the same. You know, I have to work with somebody. I work with pharmacy owners to help them define why people should choose their pharmacy in their marketplace, right? And I can be their sounding board. I can't be my own sounding board.
 
Colin Sanburg: That's right.
 
Patti Mara: It doesn't matter how good I am. It's you need that to reflect back.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes, I love that. And I always say with executives and leadership, it's all about going out and understanding the complexity of the world so you can bring it back and simplify it. Without that second piece, and I think we all struggle with that at some point of wanting to tell your team all the things you know or wanting to explain why this is such a hard decision or why it's so tricky to figure out the right KPI. But really your job is to bring back a cohesive story that if told correctly and followed will actually lead to where we want to go. You know, I think the numbers are part of that, strategy's part of that, but it's really a development of the leader that makes that so fun, right? And we're all working, we're all trying to get better every day.
 
Patti Mara: Absolutely.
 
Colin Sanburg: That's what makes this fun.
 
Patti Mara: Yeah, very good. It's very good. How long do companies, when they start working with you and you go through that initial analysis and then you clean up the financials and set up the lead and lag measures and the dashboard, how long do you generally then work with a company?
 
Colin Sanburg: So we work with most companies for several years. And the reason is because I would say those are those core foundational tools. But the reality is so much of your financial side of your business is about discipline. It's not one silver bullet idea that if you unlocked it, it would fix everything. It's a bit of a grind, which is part of why people fall off on it. You know, you might make a big push if you're tight on cash and you focus on your cash flow until you're not tight on cash. And then the same behaviors that led to the problem start creeping right back in. And so we're typically working with companies for an extended period of time because we're not a hot shot for hire kind of service where we're just going to give you a big complicated plan. It's really a service at all levels to help improve the business from inside. We're working on the business from inside the business, if that makes sense.
 
Patti Mara: So freeing up then the entrepreneur and the team to create bigger impact out.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely. Cast a bigger and bigger vision. Go sell your passion. Engage your team with your passion. Do all the things that come very naturally to an entrepreneur while knowing that behind the scenes, these things are being done and the business is getting better. And again, we're all database. So we want you to judge our results based on your own company's results. Once we know what those things are and we're working actively on them, the results won't lie.
 
Patti Mara: They'll tell you if we're doing it right. And then it's an ROI.
 
Colin Sanburg: And then it's an ROI.
 
Patti Mara: Very good. Excellent. So Colin, what inspires you the most about being an entrepreneur?
 
Colin Sanburg: It's talked about a ton in Coach. It is about the freedom to kind of design my own destiny. And, you know, I had a specific moment in life when I realized I want to be an entrepreneur. I actually was in a job interview, believe it or not, being left alone in a conference room to kill some time. It was kind of a low point in my life in my early twenties, and I was really not happy with where I was. And I happened to have an Inc. Magazine laying on the table in front of me, had never heard of Inc. Magazine. And I read an article and it was, I'll give you the short version, it was basically an entrepreneur who had taken life into his own hands. He had failed, gone bankrupt, and from that bankruptcy and the lessons that he learned, he built a billion-dollar business.
 
And it was this like thunderbolt hit me moment of realizing that there was a career and a path out there where you can just keep reinventing yourself. You can just keep waking up, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back after it. And that's not true in all walks of life. And that's not the story of my dad who got laid off from corporate America, right? And it devastated his life in his fifties. And it just gave me that passion to say, I'm never going to let that happen to me. And once I realized entrepreneurship was that path, it was just such a no-brainer. And I've never looked back. And of course, like all entrepreneurs now, I'm unhirable. I would be the worst person to ever have in someone's company, but I love it.
 
Patti Mara: Yeah. Oh, great. I love it. And I love that journey. So, you know, coming from the place that entrepreneurs are driving innovation and economic growth, and we're in periods that a lot of industries are going through pretty dramatic upheavals right now. From your perspective, how can entrepreneurs, so thinking from your experience, how can entrepreneurs impact what's possible right now in a meaningful way? How can they identify in the challenges where there are opportunities?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, well, I think the first one is just that recognition that every challenge is that opportunity. One of my all time favorite books is The Obstacle Is the Way. And I talk about frequently that, you know, we realize looking in reverse is kind of the Gap and the Gain. We realize looking backward that every great breakthrough came from some sort of breakdown. And so the very first thing is recognizing in the midst of a breakdown that this is the raw material for a breakthrough. I call that moment the turn for myself, is like the minute I switch from, woe is me, and I hate this, and this is miserable, into, okay, I don't understand it yet, but this will be ultimately part of a bigger and better breakthrough. And recognizing, again, Gap and the Gain, that every breakthrough leads to an even higher, bigger place, and new things become possible. And I think that's true with products. I think it's true with our leadership, I think it's true with our businesses as a whole. And so that's what I love. I mean, it really is what's making every great breakthrough, I think, in business and a lot of them in culture come from entrepreneurial environments.
 
Patti Mara: Yes, absolutely. When I first read the book Blue Ocean Strategy, one of the takeaways from that book is that a lot of blue ocean companies come out of depleted industries.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Right? The circus industry was Cirque du Soleil.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Right?
 
Colin Sanburg: Exactly.
 
Patti Mara: The wine industry, just for the confusion of it, was then Yellowtail Wine. And like the Yellowtail Wine, they didn't target wine drinkers, they targeted beer and cooler drinkers and made it easy to understand wine.
 
Colin Sanburg: It made them wine drinkers. They literally grew their market. Yes. I love that.
 
Patti Mara: Yeah. What dangers or obstacles do you think are most relevant for entrepreneurs right now? So talking about, you know, by the way, I love what you said about the opportunity. For me, throughout my whole life, it's like when something went wrong, it's like there's a gift in this experience. Darn it.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes.
 
Patti Mara: Where's the gift?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes. Right?
 
Patti Mara: Yep. But the same thing, as soon as you got it, but even looking for it shifted how I was interacting with the obstacle. So the mindset …
 
Colin Sanburg: Asking the question.
 
Patti Mara: Asking the question, where is the gift?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes. That, to me, is the faster. I started asking the question of, okay, how could this be? One of the best things that's ever happened to me. And I mean, when you're still on the ground, you haven't even gotten up to dust yourself off yet, and you start asking that question, I think the quicker you can ask that question, the higher and further you will go. I really believe that. Because people who are ultra-successful that we all look up to in terms of what they've accomplished, they don't waste any time down on the ground, rolling around, upset. They just don't waste time with that.
 
Patti Mara: No, I like to call that period the school of entrepreneurial success. And sometimes tuition is high.
 
Colin Sanburg: Very high.
 
Patti Mara: And yet, and yet, it's the raw material. Somebody said that this morning in the first session, that the whole point of view, if you look at the things happen for me, not to me, even if it felt devastating, you know, if you're looking for how did this happen for me, that's the gift. And then that often is the germ that takes us into the genesis.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely.
 
Patti Mara: Yes. Right?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yep. And then once you realize, I think to me the biggest breakthrough of probably being a coach is making that turn quicker, we talked about.
 
Patti Mara: Yes, important.
 
Colin Sanburg: And I know it's a little cliche because it's said all the time, but it's really, truly learning to enjoy the journey, not just embrace the journey or accept the journey, but learning to enjoy that those challenges and setbacks, the things that aren't working right now, if I can appreciate them right now, you know, I will be in a different place when it's time to capitalize on the opportunity.
 
Patti Mara: I have found, interesting Colin, when you said that, I have found that when I have a vision that's inspiring me, like I can't not take action, then I shift a little bit. Even what I think of as challenges right now is just the information I have to deal with, right? The importance of that big vision. What would you say for entrepreneurs today, if they're dealing with challenges, on navigating them through, how to make that? I mean, we've already talked about it, but how would you say in literally embracing what are the challenges are?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah. So I think the first one is, again, we talked about the mindset. So much of it is keeping your eyes on the prize, right? Keeping your eyes focused on where do you want to be in three years, five years, and then bringing it back to action, right? We know this. It's been proven through a million psychological studies that when you're taking action, whether it's exercise or it's just a step in the right direction, even if you're having all those same feelings, but you're forcing action, that it does tremendous things for your psyche. And it really helps put you in that right place. And so that's the biggest thing to me is frequently there's a million unknowns. And so we all get that kind of analysis paralysis. Maybe I know where I want to be, but I don't know what the first step should be. It's like, make a step. Ask what the first step is while making some other step that you've already determined needs to be done. And just the positivity and fulfillment that comes out of feeling like you're trying.
 
Patti Mara: And as soon as you're in motion, you're learning what works and doesn't work and can harness that.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely, yeah.
 
Patti Mara: I would add also, Colin, the Who Not How. For example, let's use FinElevate as an example, an entrepreneur that's struggling because there are certain things that just aren't connecting, or the team's not being productive, or you know you're just losing profit because something's not, but you can't put your finger on it. What's not working is telling you exactly what you need to focus on, and it may not be getting better yourself, it might be finding the right Who.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely true because we know that if you're toiling away in kind of living the wrong version of your story, that's never the path to success.
 
Patti Mara: Yes.
 
Colin Sanburg: Never ever, right?
 
Patti Mara: Yes.
 
Colin Sanburg: I always say when I look back, again, you can look back and think of those moments that kind of obstacle when you were down and you realize that was raw material, but it's also the people that you meet. It's also the people that you bring into your life and that you connect with, whether they're in another company or they're someone who comes onto your team, that is such a moment of breakthroughs that, you know, to me, when I'm in those moments and I say, I have no idea, and frankly, I'm not excited to figure out this problem, that's a dead giveaway. It's like, I've got to go find the right Who.
 
Patti Mara: That's right. That's exactly right. That's an important nugget. All right, so just a couple of things in finishing up, Colin. The first is, what for you has been the impact of being in Strategic Coach on your thinking, on what you think of as the future and growth of your business?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, I think it's really just the introspection, right? It's the exercise. I mean, I always say there's three or four amazing elements in Strategic Coach. And I think the first session I went to years ago was, I didn't know what to expect, right? But by the second or third session, I could get on the airplane and it would just start coming, you know, and I'm just writing. I mean, I remember on the flight to Chicago, I'm writing as fast as my hand can move. Ideas are pouring out of me, big innovations for the business, innovations for my role. And I think that's really it. I think that's what Coach does so amazingly is it teaches entrepreneurs, like we're all kind of our own brand of crazy. And so you have to build a business. The only healthy way to build an entrepreneurial business is to build it around the strengths and weaknesses of the entrepreneur. And if you try to cookie cutter it like corporate America would tell you or somebody who doesn't know small business, you will get it wrong because your role will never quite be a fit for you. We're too central in our businesses to not be in the right role, whether the right role is CEO or head of sales, or even just I'm out of the business. I'm on the board of directors. I've got a great team that run the company. It doesn't matter which of those answers is right for you. It just matters you find it.
 
Patti Mara: Yes, very good.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah.
 
Patti Mara: And how can people find you? How can people find FinElevate?
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, so the easiest way, you know, FinElevate.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn. I'm really active on LinkedIn, just Colin Sanburg. But yeah, I love meeting entrepreneurs. Like I said, my first company was in, first couple companies were in corporate America selling in that world. And so whether I end up working with people or not in FinElevate, I love meeting entrepreneurs. I love, you know, this has not worked for me to be at something like this. This is just fun.
 
Patti Mara: Fabulous.
 
Colin Sanburg: Absolutely.
 
Patti Mara: Well, Colin, thank you for joining me. It was a pleasure getting to know you.
 
Colin Sanburg: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
 
Patti Mara: Absolutely. And that's Patti Mara at CoachCon and, you know, to everyone's success.