In this inspiring podcast episode, Colin Sanburg shares his remarkable journey from struggling student to successful entrepreneur and leadership guru. Despite failing English and barely graduating high school, Sanburg's passion for leadership roles and innovative thinking paved his way to an MBA without an undergraduate degree and the helm of multiple businesses.

Sanburg emphasizes the importance of effective communication, the transformative power of asking "why not," and leveraging financial acumen for business growth. Sanburg's story is a testament to the idea that unconventional paths can lead to extraordinary outcomes, underscoring the pivotal role of persistence, curiosity, and strategic financial management in achieving success.

Want to learn more about Colin's work? Check out their website at https://finelevate.com/.

Connect with Colin on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinsanburg/.

Key Points with Time Stamps

• Introduction to Colin Sanburg (00:00:22) - Background and anticipation for his insights.
• Unconventional Educational Journey (00:00:49) - Editor of school newspaper while failing English, obtained MBA without an undergraduate degree.
• Passion for Leadership (00:04:32) - Early roles in leadership and the drive towards entrepreneurship.
• Importance of Communication (00:05:48) - The role of writing and communication in business success.
• Leveraging AI for Communication (00:06:10) - Using technology to enhance communication skills.
• Overcoming Personal and Professional Challenges (00:11:00) - Reflections on past mistakes and the drive for improvement.
• Financial Acumen in Business (00:19:37) - The critical role of financial management and strategic planning.
• Profitability Consulting (00:31:23) - How Fin Elevate helps businesses improve their financial health.

Transcript

00:00:22:19 - 00:00:49:11
Craig Andrews
Today, I want to welcome Colin Sanburg. Colin has an interesting background. There's a lot of things that resonate with me, and, I've been looking forward to having him. Come on. I'm breaking a rule. I, quit inviting financial folks on the Leaders and Legacy's podcast for a variety of reasons, but when I saw Colin, I was like, we need to have him on.

00:00:49:13 - 00:01:17:17
Craig Andrews
And he has some amazing backgrounds. and we're going to get into this, but just some tease of what's about to come. He was the editor, the school newspaper in high school while he was failing English, and he got an MBA without having an undergraduate degree. So whatever we're about to learn about Colin, it's going to be packed with stories of being able to do things that most people would think are not common.

00:01:17:19 - 00:01:55:08
Craig Andrews
And that's the thing I saw when I invited him. Beyond Layers and Legacies. Colin is a multi business owner and founder of Thin Elevate. It's a MBA led strategic accounting firm which helps business owners use their numbers to make money rather than simply categorizing their expenses. As CEO and owner of manufacturing, distribution and service businesses. He developed a passion for demystifying small business finance and supporting fellow entrepreneurs in achieving their dreams.

00:01:55:10 - 00:01:57:04
Craig Andrews
Colin. Welcome.

00:01:57:06 - 00:01:59:07
Colin Sanburg
Yeah, thanks for having me, Craig.

00:01:59:09 - 00:02:13:24
Craig Andrews
So, yeah, just for those that are listening, I'm down in Austin, Texas. You're up in Fort Worth, so we're we're both dialing in from, Texas today. Always good to have, somebody else from Texas on the podcast.

00:02:14:01 - 00:02:15:22
Colin Sanburg
Yeah, absolutely.

00:02:15:24 - 00:02:35:11
Craig Andrews
But the you know, the thing that really fascinated me about your story was, you know, you you said you. So I was a horrible student in high school. I, you know, graduated with some pitiful, GPA. That's why I went in the Marine Corps. And so, I from what you're saying, you managed to potentially do even worse than I did, and that's.

00:02:35:11 - 00:02:38:00
Craig Andrews
That took work. so.

00:02:38:01 - 00:02:39:06
Colin Sanburg
Or lack of. Yeah.

00:02:39:08 - 00:02:43:08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So what? What's the deal? What happened?

00:02:43:10 - 00:03:02:16
Colin Sanburg
You know, so that's a great question. I, I felt like as time went on in school, I got just more and more kind of actively disengaged. it's kind of like our worst nightmare for an employee, right? Is somebody who doesn't, doesn't leave. But also, is it really their, you know, they're just kind of going through the motions and not trying.

00:03:02:16 - 00:03:23:20
Colin Sanburg
And so, that was basically me in high school. And then as I realized after probably my sophomore year, how bad my grades were and that all four years counted, I was like, this is, you know, this is hopeless. So I was really anxious mode and, found a couple of things I was interested in. I was always very serious about my jobs that I had, but when it came to school, I was I was out.

00:03:23:22 - 00:03:32:03
Craig Andrews
So, yeah. So how were you the editor of the school newspaper when you're failing English?

00:03:32:05 - 00:03:53:24
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. So my, the teacher of the of the newspaper was very disappointed to find out, late in my senior year when I was editor, that I was in the bottom 10% of my class. And, you know, that was, meant I had failed a lot of classes. I had done really, really poorly. And, you know, I had a decent act, score, you know, pretty good act score, actually.

00:03:54:00 - 00:04:12:17
Colin Sanburg
Can, all things considered. But in general, when it came to classes, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't buy in. I would not do any of the work. And then and then aced the test and, and average out to, you know, scrape by or fail. And so, yeah, it was, it was kind of wild. I always loved reading.

00:04:12:17 - 00:04:18:17
Colin Sanburg
I always loved writing. But when it came to doing a worksheet, man, I was nowhere to be found.

00:04:18:19 - 00:04:32:05
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So, yeah. And I guess here's one of the things I'm trying to figure out. You weren't motivated in school, but you wanted to be the editor of the school newspaper. What? What was the interest? What drove that?

00:04:32:07 - 00:04:48:18
Colin Sanburg
You know, that's a great question. I've wondered about that a lot. I think I've always just been driven toward leadership type roles and when I was in in my job, my very first job, I was a shift leader. You know, my my second job, I was a shift leader, one of only two who were, you know, in that role.

00:04:48:18 - 00:05:20:03
Colin Sanburg
And these were you know, practically minimum wage, like fast food jobs. But I just always was if someone was going to be in charge, I always kind of felt like I wanted to be that that person. And so with the newspaper, it was I enjoyed writing. And in my first year I was given a page that I was in charge of, and I excelled at that and basically felt like you know, I think the experience a lot of us have had, if we're an ambitious and we're looking around, is you kind of look around and size everybody up and go like, man, there's there's not anybody here who is definitively better than me.

00:05:20:03 - 00:05:23:07
Colin Sanburg
Like, I should have a shot at this. And so you just go for it.

00:05:23:09 - 00:05:48:01
Craig Andrews
You. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things I believe is obviously, if you're in business, communication is an essential skill. It's not optional. And writing is a form of communication. What would you say to people now? You obviously have a natural love for writing. But you you run into businesses all the time that, you know, some owners don't write.

00:05:48:02 - 00:05:50:12
Craig Andrews
How would you advise them?

00:05:50:14 - 00:06:10:16
Colin Sanburg
I think you're absolutely right that communication is one of the really one of the the pillars of, you know, leadership and just honestly being an effective, worker for the most part, I don't know of any real role where you don't need effective communication. And so, yeah, I mean, not everyone's cut out for writing. That's not maybe your love.

00:06:10:16 - 00:06:32:03
Colin Sanburg
Hey, you're if you're working today, you're in the best era of all time to get by without being much of a writer. Because you got ChatGPT and all the other options that are out there, but, you know, hone your skills for communication. I think that was one of the things I did too late in my career, was really get passionate about developing interpersonal, relationship skills on a, on a higher level.

00:06:32:05 - 00:06:38:22
Colin Sanburg
And communication is a huge part of that. So I think, you know, the more you can lean into that, the earlier the better.

00:06:38:24 - 00:06:57:20
Craig Andrews
Well, and I think we both post to LinkedIn either daily or near daily. And I think that's if nothing else, if you have a business that's an opportunity to step up to bat and swing every day. Yeah. And you get some sense of feedback on what's resonating and what's not.

00:06:57:22 - 00:07:17:02
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. And that's actually been really fulfilling for me. I've only been doing that for a few months. But as I started, it was kind of a chance to get back into writing. Right. We all right emails. And you know, you just write little, short stuff, but it's kind of great to have a creative outlet. And and again, you know, these aren't long form books for writing.

00:07:17:04 - 00:07:34:17
Colin Sanburg
you're taking a simple topic and you're just expanding on it. And so I think it's a great opportunity to, you know, do that. And like you said, get that feedback loop, what's resonating, what's working and develop your own style. You know, I have a, my own style that is not grammatically perfect by any stretch, but it makes sense to me.

00:07:34:17 - 00:07:43:15
Colin Sanburg
And the hope is that it kind of resonates as a real, you know, real voice and not just, you know, something I got I to crank out for me.

00:07:43:17 - 00:08:11:15
Craig Andrews
You know, I've actually had a debate with two writers that worked for me. We we invested collectively probably three hours into whether or not to leave some, grammar errors in an email. And, and so eventually, basically, it was me saying, I think these grammar errors are important. And my two copywriters are like, no, no, we disagree. I'm like, okay.

00:08:11:15 - 00:08:22:04
Craig Andrews
And I told one, okay, rework it. And she came back a day later and said, Craig, you were right. I fix the grammar error. It sounded cold and stale.

00:08:22:08 - 00:08:39:21
Colin Sanburg
Exactly. Yeah. No, I, I, I fight Grammarly, so I use Grammarly for a lot of my communication just, you know, kind of oversight over, you know, what I'm writing. But when it, it changes things like I'll say, hey, I'm game for this and it it doesn't want you to say that. It's like, no, you don't really say your game for something.

00:08:39:23 - 00:09:01:06
Colin Sanburg
You know, you should say I'm eager. And I'm like, no, no, that doesn't sound like me. So I change it back. And to your point, I think it comes across as more authentic, comes across as a real person wrote this, flaws and all. And that's, you know, interestingly, we can all leverage machines and computers, but it makes us all yearn that much more for the actual human.

00:09:01:11 - 00:09:06:07
Colin Sanburg
And so when you let that human show through, I think that's actually very effective.

00:09:06:09 - 00:09:32:08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and as, as an example that I think people could take comfort in the, you know, Ernest Hemingway, certainly a celebrated writer, he won the Nobel Prize for The Old Man in the sea one. It's written at a fifth grade level. It doesn't look like a PhD dissertation. Yep. Second, the last sentence of the opening paragraph is a run on sentence.

00:09:32:10 - 00:09:42:16
Craig Andrews
And so here's a piece of literature that got, you know, that was the reason he got the Nobel Prize. And he can't even make it out of the first paragraph without having grammar.

00:09:42:18 - 00:09:44:06
Colin Sanburg
Yep.

00:09:44:08 - 00:10:12:00
Craig Andrews
And so that's, you know, and that's the thing, it's, it does leave that human element. And, you know, I was I was actually but before we started recording this podcast, I was a guest on the podcast and let me just say, if you will improve your communication skills, get on as many podcasts as you can. because one, it just gives you a chance to say things in different ways and hear what resonates and what doesn't.

00:10:12:02 - 00:10:34:03
Craig Andrews
But, one of the things that we talked about was, people are leaning heavily on AI to do a lot of writing. And so what I would say is the new noise level is AI generated copy. Yeah. And so if if you're using only AI, AI, what that means is you're at the noise level.

00:10:34:05 - 00:10:34:20
Colin Sanburg
Yep.

00:10:34:22 - 00:10:41:14
Craig Andrews
And if you want to rise above the noise level, you have to add that human element that you're talking about, Colin, to your writing.

00:10:41:16 - 00:11:00:06
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. Yeah I agree with that 100%. I mean, we can see when something comes through. To your point, it just feels cold and kind of stale. Right. And I love using AI as kind of a I try to leverage it more for, you know, hey, give me a draft that I can then tweak and fix and update. and I think it's effective for that.

00:11:00:06 - 00:11:06:22
Colin Sanburg
But if you, if you allow it to put the finishing touches, I feel like that's apparent when you receive it.

00:11:06:24 - 00:11:30:18
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, you, so you graduate high school barely. And, I think something else we have in common is we both have run in with the police, but from from what? I remember the differences. I could run faster than you. And so I never got arrested. But I'm not sure that was the outcome for you.

00:11:30:20 - 00:11:48:17
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. Yeah, I, I did, unfortunately, when I was 17, I got in trouble. and, and, you know, got busted. And that was a really that was a really, deep moment for me in my life and something that for a long, long time, I didn't really want to ever talk about. But, you know, the reality is, I was 17 years old.

00:11:48:17 - 00:12:13:14
Colin Sanburg
I was actually about three weeks, passed my 17th birthday, made a big mistake here in Texas. That's an adult. And, and so, you know, I was in the back of the car and that really, you know, again, I think there was a period there that that was a kind of a major tipping point for me. And it really took hold when I was 20 or 21 with Ricky and Ising that, like my life, had veered far off of the course that I expected.

00:12:13:14 - 00:12:29:05
Colin Sanburg
I mean, you have to understand, my dad had a PhD, my mom had a master's degree. I mean, my parents were highly educated. my brother, you know, dropping out of high school, I barely graduated high school. And I just kind of was looking at this like, what have I done here? You know, what is going on with my life.

00:12:29:05 - 00:12:56:08
Colin Sanburg
And so that, really kind of put, you know, put the fear in me that, you know, this was a life that I could just continue on the path I was on and end up somewhere really horrible. And so that set the stage for me at 2021 to really say, like, hey, I've got this entrepreneurship idea that could kind of take a life by the horns and give me a shot to get back in the driver's seat headed where I want to go.

00:12:56:10 - 00:13:13:05
Craig Andrews
You know, I had to be hard to come from a family with such high education and then to not be performing. I mean, that. What did that would that feel like? Would you would you wrestle with and how did you tackle that?

00:13:13:10 - 00:13:29:00
Colin Sanburg
Yeah, it felt horrible. I mean, you know, now looking back, I realize it felt like for 2 or 3 years, you know, we talk about imposter syndrome where you're you're trying to do something bigger and better than what you think you're qualified for. Maybe you've never done it before. I had whatever the opposite that of that would be called.

00:13:29:00 - 00:13:47:24
Colin Sanburg
I mean, it just felt like I was living, the wrong life, you know, I was headed down this path. I was always smart. I always enjoyed, like I said, I if I'd apply myself to something, whether it was a job or an interest, I was outstanding at it, but I. I didn't have the maturity. I probably should have gone to the Marines, like you did.

00:13:48:01 - 00:14:03:20
Colin Sanburg
I didn't have the maturity to to kind of, do my chores, if you will. Right. And that's kind of what I try to teach my kids. Like, hey, you know, life's on you, living the life you want on the other side of get your chores done. And I don't just mean at home. It's just. That's the attitude you have to have in life.

00:14:03:22 - 00:14:29:03
Colin Sanburg
And I didn't have that as a young person. I didn't really have the discipline to to do that. I would just get annoyed that something was, quote, stupid and then I just wouldn't do it. Well, who's stupid in the end? Right? So you know that that really, once I clicked that into gear and like I said, entrepreneurship became that path where I said, man, this is this is a chance where it's all merit from here forward, it doesn't matter what degree you have, it doesn't matter.

00:14:29:03 - 00:14:38:05
Colin Sanburg
You know well what you've accomplished so far in life. It's merit from here forward. If I can get that, to work, you know, I can get it all back and get on top.

00:14:38:07 - 00:14:46:17
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well, and you did something else. That's pretty amazing. You. You managed to get an MBA without actually having an undergraduate degree. How did you pull that off?

00:14:46:23 - 00:15:12:03
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. So interesting story. So when I, when I graduated high school, barely I literally high school came down to the last two weeks. I needed an art credit, believe it or not. And the craziest part was the my old middle school art teacher had gone up to high school, and now I had this guy in like seventh grade, and I've got him again in 12th grade, and he doesn't like me because he realizes I've got the maturity I still had in seventh grade, basically.

00:15:12:05 - 00:15:29:11
Colin Sanburg
And so anyway, it ends up at the very end of the year and I come down and I barely get the the credit. I had to pass the final to get the art credit, to, to graduate high school. Embarrassingly enough. And so, I obviously coming out of that, I was not on a track to go away to a stellar college.

00:15:29:13 - 00:15:52:18
Colin Sanburg
And so I just went out, got a full time job, started trying to do community college on the side that was kind of petering out. It took, you know, years to get, a little bit of progress. And I actually had started my entrepreneurial journey and was doing a job interview with a guy, and he happened to have a, he had gotten an associate's degree and then was rolled in a, in a, an executive MBA program.

00:15:52:20 - 00:16:12:22
Colin Sanburg
And it like this thought clicked like there might be a path where, you know, he didn't have a, an undergrad, he just had the associates. And so it kind of made me realize without a bachelor's degree, there might be a path here. And at that point, I think I wanted to kind of claim one for myself that, you know, hey, this is a reflection of who I really am.

00:16:12:22 - 00:16:30:24
Colin Sanburg
Not, you know, the kid who barely graduated high school and I was, 24 or 25 at that time. And so I found a local school here in the Dallas-Fort worth area, was a top 20 executive MBA program in the country at the time, and I wore them out until they let me in. I basically said, look, you know, I've got life experience.

00:16:30:24 - 00:16:51:03
Colin Sanburg
I'm willing to take the gamut, you know, put me up against anybody you've got, and I guarantee you I'll do well. And they eventually gave me that shot. And apparently I was the last person more or less in the state of Texas, because after that, the state of Texas, school system, I guess any public school basically, outlawed letting anybody in who didn't have a bachelor's.

00:16:51:07 - 00:17:11:09
Colin Sanburg
So but I made it through and, you know, finished near the top of my class and, and was, you know, right there, elbow to elbow with kids who went to the Ivy League and, you know, had been and worked for fortune 500 companies. And I'm right there with them, you know, in my late 20s, get my MBA and I did well with it.

00:17:11:11 - 00:17:36:07
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's it's it's powerful. And it talks about the power of persistence, you know, and something you said there reminded me of a conversation I have with somebody. on Saturday, I met somebody for the first time. Saturday, we're having breakfast as part of something, larger. And, he mentions that he was in the Navy and we start comparing notes.

00:17:36:07 - 00:18:06:06
Craig Andrews
Turns out we were both at Subic Bay at the same exact time. Now, Subic Bay is a massive base, and so it's easy to be there and not meet somebody. But as we're talking, he just naturally assumed I was, a, an officer and a pilot in the Marine Corps. I'm like, oh, no, I was enlisted. And so when you're telling your story about you're sitting next to these Ivy League students, you know, what are the assumptions they're making about you?

00:18:06:06 - 00:18:10:15
Craig Andrews
They're making it based on how you're showing up and appearing.

00:18:10:17 - 00:18:28:04
Colin Sanburg
Yep, yep. And at that time, I was I was really insecure about what had happened in my youth. You know, now I've kind of really in the last handful of years is that, hey, this is this is who I am. This is my story, you know, this is how it worked. But at that time, I didn't tell a soul that I didn't have a, you know, an undergrad, that I didn't have a bachelor's degree.

00:18:28:08 - 00:18:58:00
Colin Sanburg
That to me, was really kind of felt humiliating. Right. And so I brought that with me every day. I brought that energy of something to prove. And, and that's, you know, that's ultimately for me, like, I've got multiple businesses. I've done different things. What I love about entrepreneurship is exactly that story that I just told. I love that, you know, if you have intent, if you have, if you're intentional and you bring some intensity and purpose to what you're doing, there's not a limit to what's possible.

00:18:58:02 - 00:19:15:24
Colin Sanburg
There really isn't. And so that was, you know, that once that kind of clicked in me, that the attitude I'd taken toward, you know, the, the things in life that I actually cared about up to that point and been really successful with, if I would just apply that to getting myself somewhere in life, I would be, you know, great with the results.

00:19:15:24 - 00:19:22:13
Colin Sanburg
And so by the time I got in, in my executive MBA program, that was just how I operated through life.

00:19:22:15 - 00:19:37:01
Craig Andrews
Well, that's excellent. Now I'm guessing we have to go back in time at some point. You joined the family business, and, you describe that as a financial house of cards?

00:19:37:03 - 00:19:56:13
Colin Sanburg
Yeah, yeah. So when I was 20, 21, I decided, you know, I had this, really interesting moment where I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It just came to me, like, hit me like a thunderbolt. I was actually reading an ink magazine article about a guy who had basically picked the shambles of his life up and made something amazing of himself through entrepreneur ship.

00:19:56:13 - 00:20:13:03
Colin Sanburg
And it was like, wow, this is this is my path. This is what I'm supposed to do. And so, as I went to pursue that, I looked around and I had a family member who had a business, and I said, hey, I'm going to go here for a year or two. I'll help out. I'll see behind the curtain, and, you know, I'll be out of there, go do my own thing.

00:20:13:03 - 00:20:32:01
Colin Sanburg
And 22, 23 years later, I still own that company. ran it for about 15 years as CEO. But when I first showed up to your point, you know, the business. I didn't know anything about business. I was, you know, 21 years old. I show up and everything seems fine. Business. Been in business for five years, I assume.

00:20:32:01 - 00:20:49:16
Colin Sanburg
You know, it's got a dozen employees. I. I assume everything's great. about a year in 15 months. And I start dealing with the financial side of the business. And it was even to the untrained eye, it was ugly. I realized this was not what business is supposed to look like.

00:20:49:18 - 00:21:13:06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And, you know, you touched on something there that thinks really important. I think one of the one of the hallmarks, or one of the traits that you find in any seasoned leader is you always check assumptions because you have those moments early in your career where you made assumptions and you realized how wrong they were.

00:21:13:08 - 00:21:14:14
Colin Sanburg
Yep.

00:21:14:16 - 00:21:23:20
Craig Andrews
so what would be some examples where you know, that that's changed you, that where you would have previously just maintenance assumption you're now checking them.

00:21:23:22 - 00:21:38:20
Colin Sanburg
You know I love that. And to your point you know it's funny. We I'll give you I'll take it one step further back. So, you know, when you look at from the outside looking in, you look at small business and you assume like, man, these people know what they're doing. You know, all these entrepreneurs, they're just whip smart.

00:21:38:20 - 00:21:53:20
Colin Sanburg
They've got it all figured out. You get in and you realize, like, man, everybody is kind of in this fake it til you make it mode, right? Yeah. because we're always trying to get to somewhere we haven't gone before. And by definition, you're having to go out in the in the kind of land of the unknown. Right.

00:21:53:22 - 00:22:10:14
Colin Sanburg
And so that that first assumption that everybody else has to figure it out. And I'm the one who's the the fake here, that's obviously nonsense. We know that. Then you to your point. You get it and you say, hey, you know, this person is successful. because they either have stuff or they have what appears to be a big business.

00:22:10:14 - 00:22:31:11
Colin Sanburg
That's a, an assumption you can't necessarily make. Sometimes it is a house of cards and some houses of cards are small and some are really big. And so, you know, just because you're seeing the outward signs of, you know, money and success does not mean that inwardly it's, it's right.

00:22:31:13 - 00:23:01:12
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And I, I mean, earlier in my career, I worked at a couple of large international enterprise size companies, and there were clearly things that weren't fully thought out there. But, you know, going on a level even higher. I somewhat recently read I was ordered biography and he talks about how he when he went into Chrysler, their finances was a house of cards that he immediately had had to attend to.

00:23:01:13 - 00:23:07:12
Craig Andrews
It was, you know, they had great engineering, but their financials were just a disaster.

00:23:07:14 - 00:23:28:11
Colin Sanburg
Yeah, yeah. And that's that's scary how common that is, right? Especially especially in small businesses where you have a business run by somebody who's not financially competent. Maybe they just haven't invested the time or energy or gotten that person on the team. That's a really scary. But that's a really common thing. I mean, we don't see businesses that survive for any period of time.

00:23:28:11 - 00:23:50:02
Colin Sanburg
They don't have sales. This is literally not possible, right. Unless you're just, I guess, bankrolling zero revenue. But, you know, they figure out some of version of sales and then they're not going to have anything to sell if they don't figure out some version of product and operations. But man, there are some really big skeletons in the finance closet.

00:23:50:04 - 00:24:33:02
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and I think one thing we could take from the from the, Chrysler example, you know, obviously that was a company run by MBAs, run by seasoned business people. And if a company that size with their mouth and talent can have financial issues, sort of the, you know, the, the mid-level companies that you and I run into on a regular basis should have no shame if they also have those issues now they need to address them, but they shouldn't let shame keep them from taking action, because much bigger companies with much more horsepower also have those issues.

00:24:33:04 - 00:24:51:09
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. Well, and I think that's, you know, me not having a great pedigree coming into being a small business owner, coming into working in small business, I think just got me right really early with being able to say like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing here. Like, I'm, I'm good at these three things. And those two over there.

00:24:51:09 - 00:25:10:12
Colin Sanburg
I have no idea about them. I'm not even going to pretend. Right. Yeah. So getting kind of ripping off that band aid in business is, is so important for the entrepreneur. And to your point, I think what happens is people kind of ignore the financial side of their business for a period of time, and they get away with it for a little while, and then all of a sudden they're, you know, two, three, $5 million business.

00:25:10:12 - 00:25:24:11
Colin Sanburg
And they got a bunch of people on the team and they're like, man, they feel like they don't want to expose the fact that they don't really know what they're doing. They're still treating it, you know, like, basically living out of the checkbook and, and acting like, hey, if we have money in the bank, we're doing okay.

00:25:24:13 - 00:25:44:20
Colin Sanburg
We must be doing something right. You know, you get that kind of thinking going. And, you know, to your point, obviously, Chrysler's an extreme example. But as you go up, the complexity is exponentially different. It is not just like an incremental change to go from running a half million dollar business to a $2 million business, or 2 million to a 10 million.

00:25:44:22 - 00:25:52:06
Colin Sanburg
It is an exponential change in the complexity of what you need to do financially to be to be safe and and take care of your business.

00:25:52:08 - 00:26:07:16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and something else you just said there about, you know, based on your background, the, you know, kind of layered in what you were saying was the power of asking the stupid question or the dumb question.

00:26:07:18 - 00:26:08:12
Colin Sanburg
Yeah.

00:26:08:14 - 00:26:19:20
Craig Andrews
When you can go in and boldly ask questions that most people are afraid to ask, isn't that that isn't that the place I, at least in my world, that's when I started seeing some of the biggest breakthrough opportunities.

00:26:19:22 - 00:26:44:24
Colin Sanburg
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, everything obviously in in sales, right? It's the willingness to ask questions that maybe other people will just skip over that unearths whether it's an objection, whether it's an opportunity. I mean, yeah, the to me, the biggest opportunities, the biggest sources of creativity come from, you know, being willing to kind of do the unexpected, to ask seemingly dumb questions and a lot of times the question is my favorite question, why not?

00:26:45:05 - 00:27:06:21
Colin Sanburg
Right. It's like we going back to your your, statement about assumptions. I mean, we make these broad brush stroke assumptions that box off, you know, entire opportunities, realms of opportunity, because we just assume that there's no other alternative. Right? We get in that kind of groupthink. And so I love I mean, to me, I wake up every day going, why?

00:27:06:22 - 00:27:20:14
Colin Sanburg
Why would it not be possible? You know, and I think that's once you have that mindset and you don't let let yourself get frustrated or beaten down to the point, you stop asking that question. I mean, it's amazing what is possible.

00:27:20:16 - 00:27:37:04
Craig Andrews
You know, you know, there's something you said, switching gears a little bit that I just really love, you said simple accounting adds no value to the business. Yep. What do you mean by that?

00:27:37:06 - 00:27:55:14
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. So, you know, again, I came up through the financial side of the business. I've done bookkeeping myself for my own companies. I've tried to solve that problem every which way. And I always came back to the same problem with the bookkeeping in and of itself. If done well, it's like, it's like a well-organized library, right? The Dewey Decimal System is perfect.

00:27:55:14 - 00:28:14:23
Colin Sanburg
I can find the right book, at any time. It doesn't mean that I have knowledge just because my library is organized. Right. And so it's very different to pull out a handful of the right books and study them and be knowledgeable about them. And so that's kind of that's the way I like to look at financials. Is the organization is is a foundation.

00:28:14:23 - 00:28:33:12
Colin Sanburg
But it it doesn't in and of itself accomplish anything. And so what we try to do and that's where we're really I founded Fun Elevate I was doing this from my own business as being kind of the the CFO type guy. The problem is, you know, you're only as good as knowing what to do at any given moment.

00:28:33:12 - 00:28:57:03
Colin Sanburg
And so what I started doing in my career was building a deep playbook every different, you know, financial option you could possibly have every play within a business. And so once I built out that playbook, I just start stringing them together and saying, okay, if this, this and this is happening, here's what you do next. And essentially what I've built, facility to do is deliver that for other companies.

00:28:57:03 - 00:29:18:02
Colin Sanburg
I mean, we can't help you by just better organizing the books. We've got to get in and say, you're not profitable. We're going to get to the bottom of. Is that because labor is too high or because you're pricing is too low? Those are two totally different scenarios. Both of them. You have to have a good strategy and a and a foundation for, but you've got to figure out which one's which first.

00:29:18:04 - 00:29:26:24
Colin Sanburg
And so that's really where we dive in. I mean, that's the part of business that I always have loved and, and, and love working with other entrepreneurs on.

00:29:27:01 - 00:29:46:00
Craig Andrews
And, you know, there's a concept, I have a buddy that has, fractional CFO business as well. And, you know, it started off as more of a bookkeeping and CPA firm. And, you know, I told him, I said, you you never want to be a cost center. I think the worst place you could be in a business is a cost center.

00:29:46:02 - 00:29:51:10
Craig Andrews
And so for those without financial background, what's I mean, obviously agree with that statement. What does it mean.

00:29:51:12 - 00:30:11:24
Colin Sanburg
Well, so I'll give you an example. How about this. So my first business and this is continue to be a struggle. We're in the airport space. We do manufacturing of conveyor systems. So like when you claim your bag off at the airport we make those to your point. You know, the airline does not make more money because they've got a newer, shinier, better, faster conveyor.

00:30:12:01 - 00:30:42:09
Colin Sanburg
It is a, you know, yes or no proposition. It either delivered your bag, which is just means it's functioning or it didn't, which means it's not functioning, you know, and it's a side note, but when somebody loses your bag, that's a person that's not the conveyor. The conveyor is like it can only go in a straight line. It's only going from A to B, and if anything got from all the way from A to B, then your bag should have also, and so when you know, when we're talking to an airport about doing business on that, they're not excited about investing more money in their conveyor systems.

00:30:42:15 - 00:31:13:14
Colin Sanburg
So to your point, it's a cost center, meaning the airline does not derive profit from that. It is merely like save as much money as possible so that we have left over that we can make profit on. They cannot make there's no return on investment in that, in that environment. Right? Yeah. and so to your point, you know, you don't as a company in general, one of the cornerstones of having a good business model is figure out how you're going to create return on investment for your, your customers, your clients, because that is how you ultimately that's the best way to sell.

00:31:13:14 - 00:31:19:00
Colin Sanburg
That's the only really effective long term way to be able to sell more business.

00:31:19:02 - 00:31:23:02
Craig Andrews
And how's fin elevate do that for your customers.

00:31:23:04 - 00:31:41:10
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. So to your point, you know we're we're taking a baseline of we like to say, you know we're we're kind of a subset of the, the fractional CFO realm. We're profitability consultants. We are helping we're looking at a baseline of what kind of profit you were making before. And we're going to benchmark that against what the industry averages are.

00:31:41:10 - 00:31:58:24
Colin Sanburg
And most of the clients that come to us is because they're having a hard time breaking through. You know, maybe they're at 10%, but they really ought to be at 20 and they want to scale, and that's part of it. But that's not if you're at any seven figure number and you're not at your benchmark profitability, there's something wrong fundamentally with the way your business is built.

00:31:58:24 - 00:32:19:08
Colin Sanburg
It's either your pricing is too low. again, your labor is too expensive. It could be some other cost structure. Sometimes it's an overhead cost structure, but we're going to dive in and help you figure that out and put companies on a path in a very short order. Within a quarter. We're putting companies on a path to get to typically double their profitability.

00:32:19:10 - 00:32:30:01
Colin Sanburg
And some of that's going to come from growth. But a lot of it is going to come from really getting to the heart of where your your business model is, is off. Right?

00:32:30:03 - 00:32:52:21
Craig Andrews
Well, I love that. I love that, you know, I've, I've worked with a number of CFOs at larger companies, and so many of them come up from the, from the comptroller ranks. They were comptroller before they became a CFO and seems like the only, you know, you open up their war chest and the only thing they have in there is a battle ax that cuts cost.

00:32:52:23 - 00:33:04:22
Craig Andrews
All they know how to do is cut, cut, cut, cut. Yep. And the thing I like about what I'm hearing you say is, yeah, maybe there's some places to cut, but you also need to look at growth and you need to look at optimizing.

00:33:04:24 - 00:33:24:24
Colin Sanburg
Yeah, yeah. And I look at the cost side is more of an allocation of resources. Right. So it's not to say that the answer is always less. It could be that it's structured wrong. It could be that there's some changes in really the the mindset that the CEO or the whoever's running the company needs to have around the way the financials work.

00:33:24:24 - 00:33:43:24
Colin Sanburg
Right. Understanding which are variable costs that are going to move up and down with revenue, which things are fixed, and we've got to get low fixed costs one way or another. That may mean shifting some of your labor to a more variable pay plan, giving them a bigger upside. But you've got to have, you know, a lower base type of, of, play.

00:33:43:24 - 00:34:04:00
Colin Sanburg
So yeah, I, I agree and unfortunately, you know, in that, in that controller typical controller mindset, it's a lot about affecting the financials. And to your point, you know, shaving down costs, that's always the answer will that you can't ultimately win. That's not a long term strategy. You can't save your way into being a great company. You just can't.

00:34:04:02 - 00:34:22:07
Colin Sanburg
You have to have to just discipline around how you spend your money and allocate your resources 100%. But part of it has to be, you know, breaking out of the mold of wherever you've been stuck. You don't do that through, you know, chopping heads and, and, you know, shutting down offices. That's that's not how you do that. Well.

00:34:22:09 - 00:34:43:05
Craig Andrews
Colin, this has been some amazing insights you've been sharing. I, I would love to go, you know, for another hour, but, we need to wrap up. But I do think, I mean, I love what you have. I think likes I broke my rule to have somebody in the financial space on leaders and legacies. And you absolutely delivered.

00:34:43:05 - 00:34:46:21
Craig Andrews
I think people should reach out to you. How do they reach you?

00:34:46:23 - 00:35:04:08
Colin Sanburg
The easiest way, I mean, we talked about earlier is I'm on LinkedIn constantly. So the easiest way is, you know, reach out to me on LinkedIn or look up my website, find elevate.com. I'm sure that'll be in the show notes. those are the easiest ways. You know, we're, I'm I'm here. I'm not going anywhere, so I'm not that hard to find.

00:35:04:10 - 00:35:07:08
Craig Andrews
Excellent. All right. Well thanks again. Colin.

00:35:07:10 - 00:35:08:05
Colin Sanburg
Yeah. Thanks, Craig.