Authentic Business Adventures Podcast

Doug Brown - CEO Sales Strategies On Knowing What to Look For: "Number one, we help companies find revenue, hidden revenue that they already paid for but they haven't collected in their bank." There's a funny thing about business, and that is that your entrepreneurial journey will take you places you may have never dreamed of.  This can often mean that you are in a situation, with a business, that you may not fully understand.  That can lead to you leaving money on the table.  So how do you make sure your business sis as profitable as possible? Doug Brown learned these lessons early on.  Trial by fire, similar to how many of us entrepreneurs get taught.  After years of experience and some profitable success, he decided it was time to share his knowledge. From sweeping floors at his father’s electric machinery repair shop as a young child to discovering multi-million dollar opportunities inside companies, Doug Brown shares his journey through entrepreneurship, the lessons learned from the trenches, and the emotional impact of helping business owners transform not just their companies, but their lives. Listen as Dough explains some things to look for in your business to make sure you keep of the cash you have earned. Enjoy! Visit Doug at: https://ceosalesstrategies.com/   Podcast Overview: 00:00 "Entrepreneurial Journey and Business Insights" 05:29 Early Lessons in Business Leadership 15:06 Medicine to Music Business Shift 16:48 From Medicine to Business Success 25:18 "Straight Talk Changed My Life" 26:58 "Moral Obligation to Guide Others" 33:37 "Connection Builds Rapport" 37:36 "Preventing Revenue Leakage" 43:57 Customer Insights Through Questions 47:42 "Seeking Feedback on Past Missteps" 56:06 Effective Prospecting Leads to Opportunities 01:01:24 "Hiring: Learning and Improvement" 01:03:34 "Preparing for Top Talent" 01:10:10 "Skate to Future Success" Sponsors: Live Video chat with our customers here with LiveSwitch: https://join.liveswitch.com/gfj3m6hnmguz Some videos have been recorded with Riverside: https://www.riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=campaign_5&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=rewardful&via=james-kademan Podcast Transcription: Doug Brown [00:00:00]: So what they would do is they did a two and a half hour business training and at the end of the, toward the end of the training, they would go around the room and say, hey James, what did you find here? And you go, Well, I found $600,000 in my business, you know, and they go from person to person to person. They were small rooms, they were only like 10 to 20 people. But what they were doing after that, you know, I mean, they were literally finding sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in these trainings. Right? James Kademan [00:00:30]: You have found Authentic Business Ventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link phone@drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service, the Bold Business Book and Live Switch. Today we're welcoming Slash, preparing to learn from Doug C. Brown of CEO Sales Strategies. So Doug, how are you doing today? Doug Brown [00:00:59]: James? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me here. I'm so grateful. James Kademan [00:01:02]: Yeah, you know, it's funny, I just came back from a trade show in Florida, so. And when you work in a booth, the name of the game is sales. So I'm excited to talk to you now because maybe I should have talked to you last week before I went to this thing. Let's just lay the foundation. What is CEO Sales strategies? Doug Brown [00:01:19]: So the company itself is a company that does primarily four things. Number one, we help companies find revenue, hidden revenue that they already paid for but they haven't collected in their bank. And I don't mean, you know, outstanding invoices, I mean in the whole customer journey, there are places where revenue just stagnated, stopped, not optimized. Could be, you know, something as simple as pricing dormant clients, lack of follow up, something like that. Where we get in there, we find what that revenue is and we, we go, you know, identify it and then help collect it and put that money in the bank for the folks. We also do that with margins, ebitda, so profit, if you will, in some capacities. We manage or build, you know, teams of sales people as well for companies. And then we end up coaching CEOs and founder led businesses on how to do all of the above. James Kademan [00:02:28]: All right, and how do you get involved in something like this? Imagine you don't. Just, you're not born with sales strategies for CEOs. Doug Brown [00:02:37]: No, no, I actually it started when I was very young. I didn't realize it until, you know, I'm 63. This year and I was doing a podcast and somebody asked me, how did you learn what you're doing? And I actually started working for my father's business when I was three years. And. Yeah, three, all right. Yeah, I was sweeping floors for 25 cents a week. I loved it because they used to bring me to the, to the lunches, you know, so we'd go to like the, the local, you know, pub and grub, if you will, or whatever. They prop me up on the bar stool, give me my Roy Rogers and they'd sit and have business conversations. Doug Brown [00:03:19]: I hear my mother wasn't too pleased they took me to the bars. James Kademan [00:03:22]: But, you know, you learn in all kinds of places. So it's all. Doug Brown [00:03:28]: So, you know, a lot of that stuff when we're with children, it sets in. Like you hear CEOs and business owners talking and, and so along the path, you know, we started selling at 5 or 6 to clients, but it was a family owned business, so the family helped me. And one day I sold a part for $20 and we paid 10 for it. And I realized I was making 25 cents a week at that point, which was still pretty good for that time. But I had to work a whole week for 10 bucks. And I just did this in like six minutes. Right. So what I realized is you can make money by looking at ratios and numbers and that's where it kind of started. Doug Brown [00:04:10]: So even in my dad's business when I was a young boy, I mean, 10 years old, I'm looking at his inventory and trying to figure out, because, you know, when you have inventory at the end of the year, you got to pay taxes on it. And so I was looking at, like, how do we widen out the margins in the company? And I, I always had my own businesses growing up since 13, and you know, I always worked my dad until I was up to about 19, before I went into the military. And so I was kind of doing this with all these businesses back then and that's how it sort of started. I didn't realize it, but then as I got into larger businesses, you know, tens of millions and hundreds of millions, I realized that they had the same challenges that businesses in the hundreds of thousands or the millions, multi millions still have, just on a different level. But when you look at the math and metrics in all of this, you can find all these great stories that tell you the story of where you're supposed to be going. Once you figure that out, then you just optimize the point. So it's, I guess I Don't know if I was born with this or it just kind of, you know, it certainly the skill grew over, over time, but I enjoy doing it because to me it's like a treasure hunt. James Kademan [00:05:23]: Sure. Fair. It sounds like you were sent on that trajectory with your dad's business. What type of business did your dad have? Doug Brown [00:05:29]: He had an electric machinery repair company, so industrial machinery, and it was sales and service and you know, so I was constantly around all kinds of different businesses from manufacturing to, I mean, you name it, pretty much we were, we were around anything that had a, like even in an office building, they had a commercial fan or something. We would, you know, we would work on that. So it was a great, wonderful part of my life that, you know, I love doing it. And you know, sometimes when you're a little, little kid, you don't realize some of the things that shape you as you get older. But as I start to look back on things, you know, even my dad ended up in the hospital one time. He had a heart attack and I was 17 years old and I had to run the company for a little while and that was a super learning experience. But I got at certain levels of the books I never got at before, so I was able to kind of look at it. So when he came back, I was like, dad, I think we should do this and this and that. Doug Brown [00:06:33]: And one of the things that was successful in my dad's business was actually raising prices because he hadn't done it in over 10 years. James Kademan [00:06:40]: Oh, wow. Okay. Doug Brown [00:06:41]: Yeah, yeah. So my dad was a brilliant guy. He just wasn't the, he was a guy who knew how to build a business around him, but he didn't know how to build a systematic, functional, you know, business without him being present. James Kademan [00:06:57]: Sure, that's fair. So the inspiration for, I guess growing the business or seeing even that the pricing should be different. Imagine a 17 year old. That's not necessarily something that every 17 year old in the world is going to be aware of or even know that it's a thing, let alone no look at it. Doug Brown [00:07:16]: Well, I mean, Most of the 17 year olds I meet are really smart. They just, they didn't, they weren't around it probably for 14 years. Right. And so, you know, and I, I had, you know, I, I could, I could look and see things that, and spot things that could be monetized a lot of times. So for example, even when I was, I think I was 8 years old and I wanted to, you know,