you're watching in the c suite on princeton community television hello everyone and welcome to in the c suite where we bring you tips tools and resources for small business owners entrepreneurs and other professionals who are thinking about starting princeton i've always been the person one other time before really yes well welcome i'm happy to be here welcome look i'm excited about this i want to give a little bit of that history and how we met you happened to be in addition to a number of other things the host of the mid atlantic podcast conference i happened to be there for the first time it was phenomenal by the way it was your great to be in a room with other pod cast and i actually started out in pod casting and so it was great to kind of be there had a chance to connect and i was excited to try to figure out how we could work our schedules to get here not only do you do the math come but you also do dream con i'm going to hype that up a little bit because you shared with me that there's some one raising initiatives and that's a big thing for me so let's go ahead and have you you can start where you want but let's have people get a little bit of your professional background maybe even starting with processes the magic and how just everything comes to together to that experience for people and as i got older and got into my family's business that's where like it all kind of made sense and put all the pieces together so yeah so disney disney is like you know that's that's a love and a passion of mine i've run the races down there i love it yeah and i know that you told me let's talk a little bit about your album is called adventure toryism it took three months to put together its disney music mashed up with hip hop instrumentals to tell the story of pixar up its two c d s and we raised money with that when the original c d s came out for give kids the world which worked with the make a wish foundation down in florida like when the witches go to disney that that's where they go i love that you know outside of the business things and i'm a huge volunteer so i wanted to make sure that i signed the light on that and thank you for doing that and i know that you have  my first d j album and we raised money for the first three years we've done it for give kids the the world it's like close to three thousand dollars you know the small in the house party that is a little like another house party that we had an event  where we held back on that middle i guess conference so it was it was really awesome we play minutes away games so like i donate ten dollars for every person that completes the minute to win a game and from there that's people just keep  on the cash and before you know it you're here you know you're out a significant amount of money well i love anything that anybody can do i love when people get creative and thinking about ways that they could you know just pull their local friends and colleagues together to kind of support organizations talk a little bit about that i think that's interesting story yes so i never really listened like i found out about my first pod cast back in two thousand and five i didn't start listening to that by guess which was a disney podcast of shock surprise and in till two thousand and six and i became a super fan of the show and you know that they had like reunion meet ups and things like that down at disney and it was great and they raise money for for give kids the world and it was it really helped inspire a lot of things when i came really enjoy this this is this is fun and that's about two months after the album when i don't know what month left of the album live that's when i started up my first podcast rumors pod cast and now that was how many years ago now three and a half years ago i can test it and so did you know when you were kind of just getting dabbling in to it that you were going to do it for this long is it something that you know caught on with you as you started to go or is it something else that kind of drives you to going so i mean you know i've had my ups and downs as far as like how in love i am with all of it depends on what i have going on it is when i when i started out i was super all about you know i had the technology background the business background the  the audio background was deejaying and i was interviewing all kinds of people like i had made a whole list i mean as the story goes when i found out about the idea to start the show i was on a plane to disney world i soon as the plane landed i registered the domain name the twitter handle the facebook page and forgot for the rental car jumped right on it yeah and two weeks later i had my first episode out so did i know that was going to last well i think overall i wanted it to and i think that you know different challenges come up but i mean i've released at least one episode every single week since then as much as five episodes a week for shorts for like three or four months it was it was crazy but i had to take you know stuff down so i could put my books together so i knew i wanted to write books and i knew i wanted to do speaking but i also knew that doing a podcast five days a week is really tough to keep that up and a lot of time and i think you know as packages we kind of know that i don't think the people who are listening realize all the work that kind of did a couple other things so let's talk about that yeah so the the book was written pretty quickly it's it's a book all about thirty one concepts that i use in my life and i try to live by and help other people with accelerate that process for me so i was like i want to write a book that's short to the point and has a lot of pictures in it like i'm not an artist but i'm going to pretend that i am one because i want to show the power of what you can do when you're not something you know i love you as we were looking and you can hold the book up to that kind of you know what i loved about it it's kind of the book for a person who doesn't write books right what i mean by it's like what we were talking about with the winter we want people to see it's such an easy read very large right which i've got a lot of great feedback on the pictures are are huge it's in black and white the original was in color but color super expensive about the cost that's right yeah so so that was kind of short lived but it's content it's not designed it's content if the content is there that's what makes a difference yeah well not so what about dream big and when what how did you go from that to that next let's talk a little bit about that so so at the time i was doing a lot of talks at schools about dreaming because i had the dreamers pod cast and all that made a lot of sense so i was like you know i need to take what i've been telling people and put it into a book but i wanted to do a book that was similar style to the third one like changing concepts but i didn't really want to color in everything right again so i was like you know let's make it a coloring book so the words the idea behind the coloring is to get you in the frame of mind for dreaming if you're not a child it gets you back in the frame and if you are  figure out ways to kind of unwind coloring is a way to do that do you you kind of gaining that information but also kind of just relaxing too because that's something that's a great segue into the business part of this because this this is going to go by pretty quickly i want to bring you here for a specific reason entrepreneurs are working around the clock that's just kind of what we do so in the second half of this show i want to make sure that we talk about distress t right that's the word we're going to use today but also i want to if you don't mind i want to in the second episode to give some tips some really specific tips on how entrepreneurs can kind of streamline the complex processes that we kind of go through day in and day out and so that all we'll say for then but i want people to know that you've got a pretty strong background in the business industry your family if i'm not mistaken ten million dollar hundred hundred million dollars  hundred million dollar business that they were running so you were going to sleep in that business i want people to know that there is some substance to talk a little bit about that business background that you have and then will morph into the second half of the show joe fourth generation  entrepreneur slash business owner you know my business will start by my great grandfather my grandfather and my dad when my dad was quite young at the time that was the part of shock service parts  i grew up starting at the age of six there sweeping floors counting him and tori being my grandfather's office doing doing those you know those those things the learning the building blocks of what goes on in the business so it was it was a number of years i was there from the age of six toll i was twenty seven years old and towards the end i got more involved with i went from you know working in the where out the working at the counter work dealing with customers to salesmanship to the i t like all the ip stuff because i'm an i t guy like i love technology running the servers and that such to running operations and having my fingers in pretty much every facet of the business the big thing that i did why was there towards the end was we were running at like almost six million dollars and then tori and you know at the time i'm like ok well we we need to get this down because it's like we're doing lots of business but we're not efficiency we're not we're you know our numbers are in the right balance because of that so it's like let's get it down in two years we went from six million down to just under three million and we still bought a million dollars a month in him and for it that's just for the one business not  four when you told me that i wanted to make sure that i highlighted that i wanted to say oh yeah he's a business consultant because sometimes people don't know what you have as that framework underneath and i want them to know no no so we're going to talk about a couple of those tips that we've shared the time is flying everybody thank you for tuning in we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with hey i'm joe fargo and let me tell you a little bit about my thousand nine nine grandfather bought all this land to build this building to be a super warehouse and central hall for part of his truck service parts at the time we had eight or nine location three years ago model plane ride to disney world to run a five k a day three years later i've been able to help people from around the world with their businesses entrepreneurs and business owners  video marketing can skyrocket traffic to your website and your business from i catch in promotional lads and client testimonial to whether in our training series that showcase your expertise give your brand a boost visit staging execs dot com today get your show me here get your business on the map and now back to the show we are back here in the c suite with a phenomenal guess we got super dome pardo in the house today so until one the other side of the break we were just talking about your significant business experience you started out at the age of six up to twenty seven that has a lot of experience in and i'm sure that that was a family legacy i think you said fourth generation and we could probably do a whole sidebar show once the session planning and what that looks like  would love for you to share a couple of tips i want to go back to when i started at the top of the show we spend so much time working i mean literally if you're running your own thing and i think we sometimes have me process is so complex maybe because we're in it too much and we need to hire or form some of it out couple what tips that you could share specifically to help entrepreneurs streamline your business as was the first one you like ok the first one is know your numbers i like so everyone says that but when i talk about know your numbers it's not just about the ones that everyone knows which is like revenue profit baba right like that's great everyone should know that the numbers i'm talking about are the numbers that i want to take the pick apart how long does it take for a customer stand around these are the kind of numbers they can give you those there's as they say in the corporate world key performance indicators that you're going to be able to set up and design for yourself and then you can start to it and then you can start to bring those numbers down into a more acceptable range you know how all of the customer standing around how is the your employee standing around what how long does it take for a shelf to get restocked or anything how many steps does it take because you know this time is money every so if it takes an extra ten seconds but you're doing that process ten times or one hundred times a day you know ten times one hundred a thousand seconds wow you know and that's just one day that's one day and you know i think about the ramifications of not getting those numbers right right you don't even think about so how do you when you look at those numbers do you once the entrepreneurs go in the business owners and whatever to situ work we really step back and say wow i wasn't really paying attention to that stuff or do you think or do you find that they were out like a lot of people looking at those numbers are they depend so you know a lot of times we get caught up in the we've got to get this done it's whatever's right in front of us i've been there i've seen i've seen the stress of experience the stress and that stress gives us that tunnel vision it's like yes a perfect no but we're getting it done and so my counter to that argument would be like are you building a business or are you having a hobby you know one of the other pick i'm glad you brought that up so that you come at it from different angles whether you're talking to a startup or scale up if you know what i mean by that or do you really doesn't matter who it is you kind of start out with that one size fits all and you know get started with definitely not so i think that you know while say it like sales are super important and we need to focus on that when we're getting started because there are certain point where you mature to the point where you need to get your grow your profit margin because if you're not growing you're dying and it's super super important for you to feel like ok well we can save you know thirty seconds in this process or many here and we you multiply that out like you can save all this time that's how you're going to get to that next level right that's how you're going to say ok well if i had the inventory lined up like this instead of kind of all over the place maybe numbers and also distrust the file you as well because if you're not guessing so and that goes more more towards the like the basic numbers the ones that everyone knows the part of the profit revenue you know how many and what your bills are the mov and expenses and all that so take everything to the next level i like and that's why i wanted to kind of highlight i want people to know what you know it's not one size not all you really are going to customize you've got to work with the companies where they are second to so consistency as always you know when it comes to consistency in your business it's not just for you it's for the customer it's for your own team members right the people that are that are making all this happen they need a consistent experience every single time you know it's like when you why do you go to a restaurant is not because they have the most amazing food because they have the same food every single time and it's consistent you need to make those processes consistent whatever that means for you and whatever it would mean for your customers in whatever industry you're in it comes down to figuring out the science and numbers to get it to make it consistent what kinds of things that people need to bring with them when they're getting ready to sit down and work on getting those numbers together look at the consistency what kinds of things people need to start figuring out you know what let me pull these things together before i go so the first thing would be an open mind just right because because we might think that you know and a lot of times like people think they know what computers really know so if you think that you're like oh you know i saw only a teen in the store yesterday or really was six weeks ago the computer knows that you think you know that you know those things where it's like you have to have an open mind of like what is going to the baseline going to look like and that open line will also help you deal with the ramifications of oh we really didn't know or or wasn't what we thought or what we expected it to be so open mind is definitely number one and number two is getting a baseline for the numbers because before you're trying to solve the problem you have to actually figure out like ok we a what the problem is because you might not be there's a lot of unknown unknowns and business like people think that they know and they when they come to me as a consultant or like ok well these are the problems i have like great that's awesome one of things i do is actually go into their business for three days and to find those other things it's like these are the things that you do in their lives we're going on and we can fix them whether it's a technology based thing and a mentor or based thing a process based thing or a team member's piece based thing those are the types of things that you're just not going to see you know because you're too close to the situation i had to bring that up because i like the fact that you actually you're not doing this by phone like this and that a virtual human was all of that also but i mean you're going in there you're physically three days you can uncover a lot of different things in threes you know three days literally on the ground so i wanted to make sure that people knew that again i'm looking for things that differentiate super joe part of there's a lot of let's be real with this there are a lot of business consultants out here so when i this i want people to know that i reached out to you for a specific reason and i think that's a big deal i think that's a really big deal we've got a couple more minutes in the bonus tips you got anything else you want to that you could share so the other thing i would say fire self if you if you want to get your processes in order scheduling is super super super important and a lot of people put that on the back burner they think they're really going to scheduling or maybe they're just not giving enough attention to the scheduling those types of things take time to get good at clarify which scheduling what scheduling how often my meeting with my teammates how often are we meeting for like meeting together how often am i going to be  meetings and how well my announcing that to my team is that shared information is some form of it shared so that they can see it so everybody is on the same page that's and that goes right back into consistency right like if everyone knows like if i check the calendar so jo jo part is going to be here here here i can feel it i think he's got fifteen minutes live here and he's going to be in the building let me see if i can you know get out get in there how often can things go at a weapon people not on the same page right even in a small company small art but what with the downward spiral look like when things don't get on the same page and that's because this doesn't happen right talk about them that's a big i think that's a big deal and i think people need kind of missed out on that the people that are in the best we can as to get to just get the of the result that we're looking for and the result that we're looking for may not be up here it's you know it's down here but it could be up here so i think you just get kind of complacent in  that like oh this is just the way it is and you know the thing is with business and the pressures like what people don't understand that they don't have a business so they don't understand is as though the walls can close in on you very very quickly as a business owner and i've seen it i've experienced it lived it and it can get that way in a hurry when you let little things go little things go little things go because they turn into big things just like a relationship in life i mean i talk about life  my books but you know my my next book is coming up and that's a business book and focused on the that that part of life that business and life and how they go back and forth because a lot of business owners live their business and i think  it's really really important from a distrust applying system system or part to who builds your business for your lifestyle not your lifestyle for your business you know what you just said a couple minutes ago a couple seconds ago we live our business be doing so you talked about your new book that's coming out and i know you're close i know you're close to wrapping that up talk a little bit about the book so we can create the buzz for it now yeah yeah hope psychobabble would come and be done soon really soon  so it's called sales will not save your business focus on the top and top stance or team offer and process it's it's in the it's in the heart of where i have these books where it's short and to the point and it's base for people who own businesses or even managers really have who are looking for a better way to build out these processes because everything needs to be built into a process in order for you to take things then grow them right because if a lot of times like we get in that rut of i'll just do it myself and it's like well that's great until you're sick or till you're not able to do it anymore or you're ready to grow for the you know to provide for more people i like it  and it's a natural segue for the trilogy excuse me but also it's a kind of a tool it's kind of a tool that i think people will be able to use whether they're working with you or not so they can kind of take super joe with them even if they're not able to work with you how can people get in touch with you as you start to run down really some good substantive information there so super joe part of two hundred hours of free content bill had casting and video so you know the podcast i'm interviewing business owners from all over the world business lessons and  is business lawson's for straight from me in the real ness of life i love the way you shoot your videos oh they're so genuine thank you so much for being here time is flying time has flown i want upcoming saturday because lots of yeah so we'll see if i when i say you got a lot of people behind you we know how awesome you are adding not just of the podcasting piece because of pulling the whole podcasting community together so back to kind of how we started so i'm glad we had an opportunity to meet you to thank you so much for being here and wow we are going to go ahead and wind down this so thank you everybody for tuning in thanks to all the sponsors for bringing this show to us today if you have any other questions about anything that we do here please