Martinka Consulting's Getting the Deal Done Podcast
Martinka Consulting's Getting the Deal Done Podcast
I'm Not Mad at You is Stacey Bullman's Company - Join us for a fascinating discussion
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Stacey Bullman has 25 years of corporate experience and saw too many consultants "do nothing." She now uses her experience in giving practical and meaningful advice to small and mid-sized companies.
She says, "Follow the numbers, the data, and processes and it will work."
She and her team unlock the hidden value using their "wheel assessment" and says her firm works 83% faster than others.
Working smarter and growing faster is one of her secrets to business success.
She knows employees want to be heard and when they feel heard the company does better. She unlocks their voices.
John Martinka
Jessica Martinka
Contact us via either website or give us a call and be sure to check out our blog pages with new posts weekly.
https://nokomisadvisory.com/
https://www.martinkaconsulting.com/
https://www.gddpodcast.buzzsprout.com
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnAMartinka/videos
425-515-4903
Feed the horse that wins the race. That is something that many companies. So like understand your sales, break it out, break out as much as you can into implements. If you are in the business of where you are a service and you provide a service, generally you have hours that it took you to do that, correct?
SPEAKER_01My special guest today is Stacy Bowlman, and this is the Getting the Deal Done podcast. I'm John Martinka, and today Stacy is going to talk talk to us about the work she does to help companies do better. Uh and as my notes from our previous call show, Stacy, uh work 83% faster than others, which is uh, and these days is it's really important because things are moving so fast. So welcome.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you for having me, John.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I I have to start out before you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to this point. The name of your company, I'm not mad at you.
SPEAKER_00That's the most popular question. Uh, there's a lot of iterations of the company name, but I like to say one of them is that I'm not mad at you comes from unconditional love, which I was fortunate enough to have in my home and learn to believe in myself and not be judged. And that's something that we feel like we do as a consulting company is that, you know, we don't judge, we're here to offer unconditional love and to help the companies and people be better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So how did tell us a little background? How'd you how'd you get to this point? What's your story?
SPEAKER_00Well, well, I was an athlete as a young child and very driven, very disciplined. I played tennis growing up all the way into college competitively and had an opportunity to turn professional before I had an injury to my rotator cuffs. So I jumped into corporate America. I had a degree in marketing and trudged away in corporate America and was fortunate enough to climb the ladder and be promoted and have a lot of responsibilities. I managed over 5,000 people in my career. I managed PLs up to a billion dollars. So that will change your life very quickly the moment you're managing a profit and loss statement for a company and responsible for returning, you know, 56 cents on a dollar, things like that. So that was a tremendous amount of exposure and opportunity. And there were certain things that I saw in corporate America that I didn't necessarily like or didn't necessarily have an appreciation for, and felt like there were things that I could do to make the world better and take the principles and practices that I was learning there and offer it to others. And so began I'm not mad at you when I turned 47 years old, and we're just about 10 years into this, and it's been amazing. And we've, you know, like I said, taken the knowledge from being a competitor with tennis and strategy from eight years old to school to corporate America and mishmash all that up and all the education that that brought to me and perspective and ability to help others.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So you mentioned your consulting business. What type of client, size, industry, anything that uh you really go after?
SPEAKER_00I mean, we've worked with every range of company. We worked with New York Life all the way to uh solopreneur, you know, from day one. So we are generally the small to mid-size business. A lot of we've worked with a lot of construction companies. I came from the consumer package industry, and I thought I would work with more consumer product um companies, but that wasn't the case. I found a niche in construction, and that led to um everything engineers, janitorial services, pet facilities, um gyms, uh yoga studios, literally, you name it. We have worked with a vast array of industries, and to be fair, it really wasn't relevant what industry they were in. Business practices and principles run across all industries. And what I am teaching and what I'm not mad at you advocates is we pay close attention to the profit and loss statement, and we pay close attention to sales and marketing strategies, measuring return on investment for our spend, and you know, what gets measured is successful generally. So that's the background I that I bring to this consulting company. And as we said, we're 83% faster. One of the things we do is when we come into an organization, we do an assessment. We look at the Profit and Loss Center, we also work with their employees and we speak with them and assess the company, and we do that in two weeks, not 90 days. And generally, consulting companies would come in. Certainly when I was in corporate America, they would come in, they would, you know, rarely talk to the actual individuals that were working in the field and speak with you know mid-level to upper management, and then 90 days later come out with some report and that was not valuable and cost millions, millions. And that that that burnt me, that bothered me. And I, you know, for that reason, one of was how I wanted to be different as a consulting company. Come in, help these companies quickly, especially for the small to mid-sized business. They don't have time, they don't have the luxury of you know three months to tell them how to be better. They also don't want to go read a book. They need you to jump into their business and start helping them with you know things and actions that can help their business instantly. Instantly.
SPEAKER_01So one of the things that was interesting in our in our talk was your your wheel assessment.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Give us an explanation, what it is, what do you do?
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep. We we took that from the wheel of life, which I think existed back in the 50s. And when we I got life coach certified and I saw that tool, and I really liked it, but my goal wasn't to necessarily work with individuals, it was to work with companies. So I thought there was an application to this same principle. It's a wheel, it's got eight attributes that you would measure. So I knew that for a product, you could take these eight attributes. For a leader, you could take eight attributes for a service for anything you want to assess. Then you distribute this. I actually do the one-on-one interviews with the people in the company and with the leadership teams, and very quickly you find out how the company can be better. People will tell you all the answers if you're speaking to the people. So that tool was something I felt like, just like I said to you earlier, when the consulting companies would come in, they didn't talk to the people that really could make a difference. Maybe we had an online survey, but I'm not going to be that honest there. You know, I'm more annoyed that I have to go do that thing, usually when I'm working for a company. So having the opportunity to speak one-on-one with the individuals in the company makes a huge difference. And then oftentimes the individuals in the company can't articulate the ways to be better, but when they articulate to me, I'm able to gift wrap that a lot better to the leader and it gets heard. And the other part of that is that the individuals in the employee in the company feel heard. And as you can imagine, that really makes an employee want to work harder because then they see wow, the company made these changes based on those interviews that they had with us. And I've had that experience many times. It's very rewarding for the company, for myself, for the employees. I mean, it really is, especially if the employee's idea was positive to the profit and loss statement, right? You're like, I'm measuring against those things. Maybe they're not. But if their idea was gonna make them more efficient, more effective, more happy, whatever it was gonna be, let's do it. You know, let's do it at the same time, measure it against is it profitable? Is it something that's gonna, you know, drive the organization? So a lot of times you just need the mediator between the two. And I think that's just another thing that I'm not Matt is able to bring to the table.
SPEAKER_01You know, what you you you mentioned that, and I see that I'm in the buy, you know, the MA buy-sell world, and I see I've seen a lot of a lot of instances where a buyer comes into a company, and it doesn't matter if it's an individual or another a larger firm or uh you know, professional buyer like a family office or something, and they they they sit down and talk to the employees, and they're heard. And because a lot of times the owners they've been around so long, it's like I don't want to do anything different. I'm really doing well. I am making a lot of money, I am very happy, and the employees, you know, they're not being heard, and the buyer comes in and says, What could we do better? What could we do different? And it's the same as what you're talking about, and they they that spark of enthusiasm, that breath of fresh air.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And I'm a third party, so I think they feel comfortable. I'm not HR, I'm I'm not a manager. I have a company called I'm Not Mad at You. It's usually it helps to disarm people when we are in those interviews, even if they're on Zoom. Which, to be honest with you, you know, after managing over 5,000 people, and 99% of my management was in person, right? So with this company and the Zoom land, I was curious if I would be able to impact and you know connect with human beings as much as one-on-one. And of course, it's never the same when you are in the same room, when you're there with them. But I will tell you, this process, and maybe because it's so innocuous and people don't really, they just see eight words. It's not questions, it's not sentences, you know, they just see this wheel. It's not even completed. And, you know, as they're answering it, I'm kind of coloring it in, and sometimes I take longer. It's, you know, it's it's disarming. And I've had a lot of times, I've gone in and I've had employees that said absolutely they were not going to share anything with me. They were adamant. They're like, I'm not gonna tell her anything. And 10 minutes later, they're crying. They're telling me everything. It's a, as I said, employees do really, people want to be heard, right? I mean, people want to be heard, especially if you think you can help. If you really believe you can help the organization, you want to be heard. And it is difficult, as you said, for leaders, even if they are energized or if they are engaged, it's hard for them to hear everything the employees have to say, because let's be honest, not everything the employees have to say is a home run. So there's, you know, you you you have to affirm, you have to encourage. But I understand how leaders also sometimes there can be a wall there. And I think I'm not mad at you, has you know, really shown where we can come in and we can be a bridge, a wall breaker, whatever you want to call it, between the employee and the employer, oftentimes to to get the most. And that's all that, like I said, I'm only there to make the company and the people's and the people better. I only have one goal. We're focused.
SPEAKER_01As part of that, I know we you've you've said one of the three things, what I'd like to talk about, all three of them, but one of them is data. And uh what kind of data and and on numbers, profit and loss balance sheet are also a part of that, but other data besides the financial statements and you know, what are companies not generally, especially these mid-sized companies, what are they not doing with the data that they should have?
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you one area, and it's an easy one, and it's on the sales side. It's breaking out your sales, be it okay, a lot of times people say we do XYZ thing, and we made XYZ dollars in January. But maybe you made, for instance, I'm a consultant. Uh the the 80% of my clients come to me for CEO soundboarding, where we speak once a week and we look at all the things, right? So that's 80% of my business. I know that 80% and I I segment my sales out that way, but I also have where people will come in and just pay for message mapping. That's a revenue stream. And then some people come in for you know a speaking engagement, that's a revenue stream, right? So break up your sales to understand your revenue streams more thoroughly and understand your 80-20 rules. The other thing off you know, you know, that data's there. And it's interesting because I was breaking up a client's business the other day, and we found out that 44% of their clients were coming back for another job. So I said to my client, please store this in your mind and in your sales pitch now, you want to use that. That's a piece of data that now has become a sales nugget. And you want nuggets like that when you're in a sales position or in a position to be selling for your company, you would love you want nuggets that are real data that help you sell it without it being emotional or you know, just align. So there's data all over that you're trying to capture and use in different places. But as I said, one area that a lot of companies don't take the time to is break out the data from your sales and then look at how you make your money in the sales, determine your 80-20. That's also then how you should spend your marketing dollars. Oftentimes, people will throw their marketing dollars to something brand new or chasing something that's a new idea. Generally speaking, if you're going to spend your marketing dollars, spend them on the thing that makes you 80% of your money. Drive that home. And then maybe you take a small piece of your marketing budget and try that in your new thing, but bring feed, feed the horse that wins the race. Yeah. Right? That is something that many companies don't. So like understand your sales, break it out, break out as much as you can into increments. If you are in the business of where you are a service and you provide a service, and generally you have hours that it took you to do that, correct? Measure that. If you're an engineering, I have an engineering client, and I've said to them over and over and again, we really have to understand, you may be quoting it thinking it's going to take 10 engineering hours, but you just give them a quote. You don't tell them that, right? You say it's going to be $2,000 for this engineering work. And the owner's sitting there going, I think my engineer can do that in four hours. That's the markup. That's the that's now if the engineer goes and spends eight hours doing that, they just ate all the margin in that job. But if you didn't measure that, you don't know that's where you where you are losing margin. You wouldn't know. You think, well, that's I normally do that job, and I assume the engineer took four hours. I assume that should have made 40 points, but it didn't, because your engineer took nine hours. So measure as much as you can. It sounds nerdy, it sounds maybe cumbersome. It's really not, especially now today with technology. We have so many tools at our fingertips to track and measure and understand these things. And all the, you know, invoicing allows you to, I'm allowed to put CEO soundboarding or whatever it is, right? So I'm able to pull the report so I'm able to see that kind of data to make it easier for us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sparks a memory. I mean, you're in the construction, a lot of construction clients is this was a construction-related business. It was a commercial window covering, so they would go into buildings and put in from dozens, scores to even hundreds and thousands of window coverings. And I was, I brought in a friend who was a uh a CFO, and among other things, he put in a uh management report on the sales, but that not what you're talking about, you've probably done this also, but the timing. And it was an eye-opener for him when he put up a graph that showed, you know, well, you've got uh we'll just you know, you've got uh uh X the X dollars you want coming in in April and May and August and September, but June and July are at a third and a half of what you want. So concentrate on jobs for June and July. They had never done anything like that, but they always wondered why things were up and down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it those little things can make a make a big difference.
SPEAKER_00You talk about that. I I came into the the first client I had was construction. I came into their business, and the first thing I asked is, I want to break out your sales. I want to see how you made your money. And I just broke down one year the last year. I didn't, you know, make it too overwhelming. And what I found is obviously there was about 12 different categories. There was painting, there was striping lines in a parking lot, right? There was the different varieties of things that as a construction company they were doing. They were multifamily construction. So I remembered because they were good at keeping uh the return on, you know, the profit margin. They were good at keeping the data so that when I was able to break the business, I was able to break it up quite well. Instantly, I was able to see, like, wow, painting. You guys make 56 points on painting. That's something you should probably market. More painting jobs. Tell your sales team this, right? Let it be known that painting is profitable. They also probably had a really good subcontractor that was, you know, well and a good price, right? Reward him a little bit, right? Make sure you let that person know that person's probably facilitating your profit. And as I said, look at that as a piece of data and then go market more painting jobs. You know what you don't want your sales guys out there doing? Going out there and trying to find parking lot striping jobs, because those we make 18 points. So you can take those if they fall into your lap, fine, right? If the complex manager says, Oh, by the way, we need the paint, you know, the parking lot striped. But don't be running around asking for parking lots to get striped. Be asking to paint those multifamily buildings, right? But if you never know that, you don't know to use that as a selling point, do you? Right?
SPEAKER_01No, you don't.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01So financial statements, numbers, you mentioned early on, profit and loss. I always like that. The balance sheet too, because it's just not more important than the PL.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh what do you do in what do you do to help clients understand what's really in those financial statements?
SPEAKER_00The first thing I do is I feel like I teach them Chinese, which I understand it's Mandarin, but it's their words that have told me that I teach them Chinese in about 45 minutes. And that's just a matter of to be honest, as you know, the majority of the population is not that familiar with how to read a profit and loss statement. And when you see it, it generally looks like a bunch of numbers. As I know, you know. For those of us that know how to look at it, we go to certain line items, right? We don't get lost in all those numbers. Generally, you know what the first line, as we said, if we're just looking at the profit and loss statement, because you're right, the balance sheet lets you really know the cash situation, right? But the PL at least helps for an assessment circumstance. And in that scenario, I'm immediately going to go to the net revenue, immediately. I'm immediately gonna go to the sales, I'm immediately gonna go to the expenses, just those three line items. And the other thing that I think people forget to do is look at that versus a year ago, right? Measure it against something. Is it better? Is it worse? Look at dollars, look at percentages, back to breaking out your data everywhere. Then once I've looked at those key line items, which I usually take every CEO that works with me, this is required. Very few of them are that comfortable and familiar with the PL when we start working with them. This is usually one of the first things we do. And as I said, within 45 minutes, they're like, wow, this just how easy, how easy this is now when you tell me just like go here and go here. Then once you look at the key items, and then you want to do a little deeper level, you look at what's the payroll? What percentage is payroll to sales? That's a good thing to go look at, right? It's a big item. You go, hmm, payroll is 70% of sales. That's probably a problem because payroll should be around 40 to 50 percent of your sales. Guess what you're saying to the leader of that company? Somebody's gotta go. And that's not a fun conversation, but that's a real conversation. And I've had that conversation more than once. And I literally, these clients were brand new to me. I didn't have years of established relationship with these people. This was the first meeting I had with one of my clients. It was a web developer. And I said, You got two developers, you can have one. And this was the first phone call we ever had. He hired me, sent me the PLs, and we are on the phone telling him And it's tough, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It's tough for an owner to get rid of somebody. Board of a company, and that was the big problem that past former CEO had. She just couldn't get herself to say, we need to cut staff because they're people and it affects their lives.
SPEAKER_00Understand, but it is a tough one. And I am a big believer in this. First of all, I am coming from the outside when I come in the situation, so obviously I'm not attached to it. I recognize that position. But I will say this I don't really ultimately in consulting try to represent the employee or the employers. I believe I represent the company. And I believe somebody has to be the voice of the company, not the voice always of the employees and the employers. They'll do a good job of speaking up for themselves, generally speaking. But the company cannot speak for itself. I'm not Matthew likes to be the voice of the company, to do the right things for the company to survive, to sustain. And generally, if the company is a goodwill company, they care about employees, but they also care about the company surviving. And so if that company is heavy on too many programmers, somebody has to speak up and say, listen, while we're here to do goodwill, we're here for profit and we are here to stay afloat. So if we keep Betty working and we go out of business, I don't really know how we accomplished any of our goals. So I understand it sounds callous. I understand that it's not what people necessarily like to hear, but I'm gonna be, I mean, that is important for the success of companies. You have to measure against practicality. And again, you can't have payroll over a certain percentage of your sales.
SPEAKER_01And I think we've seen a lot of that in the tech industry lately, where they overhired a few years ago when there was a quote unquote shortage of good workers, and then they realized, well, we hoarded workers, and now we got it. We don't have enough for them to be, you know, we we've improved our processes. AI has improved our processes. We don't need them all. So it's the same as any business. So let's finish up with measuring processes and what you do.
SPEAKER_00As I said, we have the processes that when we intake a client, they're going to be run through those processes. One of which obviously is providing the profit and loss statement and us going through that, making sure they understand how to read it, and then how to read their own, and how moving forward each month, this is going to be a document that we review, it will become a process that each month, each quarter. We also do forecasting, usually by September or October with all the clients I work with. We're already forecasting for the next year. We're looking at what steps would be necessary to accomplish those goals, what increase in expenditures may be necessary, what anticipated growth, so that, like I said, already in October of the previous year, they can sort of have an outlook of what next year's anticipated to do and put that plan together. So by January, you're you're rocking with you know Weston Oil and not scrambling in February, like, what do we do? You're ahead of the curve. So that's a process that we take our companies through. As we talked about, if we get to them and they've and they're and they're in a position that they need to be assessed, we go through the wheel assessment process. And we, if there are employees, we interview them. If there's a small leadership team and there's just three or four people, then we'll go through the wheels with with them, with you know, just three or four people as well. It's generally the wheel is better when it comes out when there's a employees and more individuals in the company than usually the solopreneurs. Um, the other process, we have message mapping. Every company, regardless of where they're at, we usually take them through this because it is branding, it is storytelling. Almost every company is going to tell you they have a mission statement and they've got their story. It's almost never that good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00It's almost not really that good. And I'll put it this way it's not that it's not good, it's that it's not there to tell you the value proposition and the point of differentiation that clearly. And as I say, your story is compelling. People do buy stories, they like that. They also need to hear a story that, as I said, is relatable, is compelling, and clearly articulates the value proposition and the point of differentiation. And thus far, usually when I come into companies, while they may have these documents and they, even if they're 20 years old, that needs to be refreshed. And we have a process that, again, in an hour and a half, we can take the company through this and rebrand the company. Even if we take some of the heritage information or you know, have some existing stuff that we'll keep, we go through the process and it becomes a a story that can be told not just by the leader throughout the company. Because as I said, I'm not mad at you makes people and companies better. That's part of our message map. Anybody that was ever speaking on behalf of I'm not mad at you, I sure hope that then make sure that no matter what, that the person that they were speaking to certainly knew that I'm not mad at you makes people and companies better. This podcast, I hope everybody knows that I'm not mad at you makes people and companies better. And that that's all they remember, they remember that we make people and companies better. Right? And that's part of message mapping and teaching them what is that center statement, what is that thing you're gonna say? Because back to, like we said, when you're speaking to people, if they remember one or two things, that's generally where they're at. If they remember three, you get a home run. So I knew when I was kind of this process and working with this, because I again took lots of things that I learned from other places, but kind of making it I'm not mad at you was teach them a way to tell the story where the people are going to remember the most important thing they need to remember, which is accompanying what you do, right?
SPEAKER_01Yep. So, Stacy, what do you like to do when you're not measuring and improving processes?
SPEAKER_00So I was an avid golfer for 25 years. Since moving to Tulume has cut into my golf schedule, but I have a hole in one. I have broken 80 from the men's and the women's tees, but I do miss it a lot, and so since moving to Mexico, I have now taken up DJ. I am becoming a DJ. I play a tremendous amount of chess, a lot of chess, a lot of chess. I have chess clubs that I'm a member of. So cool. Lots of things to just keep exploring my curiosity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and final question as we wrap up here. Uh anything I didn't ask you you'd like to get out in the next minute?
SPEAKER_00I mean, you know, like the normal stuff, the promotion. If you're looking to find us, we're at www.imnotmat at you.com. You know.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna ask you to get how to get in touch with how to get in touch with you, but uh you beat me to it. So uh yeah, I'm not mad at you.com.
SPEAKER_00That is the hub.
SPEAKER_01And that's the way to get in touch with Stacy. Stacy, this has been a pleasure. This is uh this has been very entertaining and informative. Uh I can relate to a lot of the things you you've talked about that I've seen in businesses that they should be doing what what you are talking about and for the audience. Uh if if you or you know somebody who just needs that little bit extra to get your business where you want it to be, this is the queen of measuring and implementing. So thank you, Stacy.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, John.