The Scale With Speed Podcasts coming to you live from the studio here in CFF, Dallas, Texas. I’m Matt Manero and with my buddy Judge Graham.

Are you ready for a big podcast?

Yes. And, thank you to everybody for every week. This podcast gets bigger and bigger.

Love that. Yeah, for sure. Thanks for sharing it. We’re also, we have, uh, on YouTube Z, what? It’s on the burn? The ships YouTube. Yes. So, uh, Z who’s amazing who he and his team cut up everything. We also have it on YouTube. So if you’re listening, um, we appreciate it. But also if you ever want to see what the studio looks like and, um, check out, you know, I guess what Matt and I are wearing and how we look on camera. Go there too.

So cool. Uh, Z, thank you for that. All right. I know that takes time and we appreciate it. So, a judge here’s the deal today. I want to talk about this concept of time and circumstance that nobody talks about. And when you and I talk about it at the burn, the ship’s boot camps, we’re, we’re often talking about it as it relates to the exit of a business that when people are putting a valuation to their company, they never apply the time and circumstance factor to it. In other words, why might the buyer need it and therefore have to pay more for it, but we’re going to save that version of time and circumstance for another podcast.

Yeah, I think when I can even bring up, um, one of my, uh, buddies and I’m going through a sales process, there’s, we’ve hit some time and circumstances. I believe Matt, everything is time and circumstance, personal life, business, life, professional life, everything has a time and circumstance element.

So, let’s, let’s define it for the audience what we mean when we say time, time, and circumstance. Because as business owners, we don’t take time and circumstance into account. We don’t take it into account when we’re running our businesses. When we’re managing our staff, when our salespeople are selling to a client, we’re just not even incorporating this concept of time and circumstance. What we mean by time is, is the timing of the deal of the purchase of the conversation, right? And then what are the circumstances that are behind the reasoning? Now, this applies in so many different ways, but again, we never talk about it as business owners. So what do I mean by circumstance? Let’s say we got a problem with a staff member, right? Circumstance matters. Not for the infraction or the technicality of the actual action that makes this tough conversation. Maybe there’s a bunch of other going on and circumstances in their lives that need to be taken into account. Right? Yeah.

I mean, I can give you the prime example of, so we’re, we’re in a sale process. We’re literally, we’re supposed to fund this Friday. Okay. A couple of time and circumstance things, a timing issue because of the circumstance of the buyer is trying to get another MSI, a mezzanine round of financing, and wants to wait until that one’s funded before he closes the deal. Now that time becomes problematic because the circumstances of my buddy losing a client can affect the election next week and who knows what’s going to happen? So the difference between my buddy closing October 31st or November 15th, that timing and the circumstances that can happen in between the 31st and the 15th, he’s not sleeping. Now, the anxiety level is just out of the roof, right? That buyer, depending on who sits in the big chair to run America may have a different view of that whole acquisition come June, November 3rd. And then the

S you know, you know, the

180 days we’ve been working on this deal could just go away because of a circumstance in timing that’s out of his.

And what about the time and circumstance of the mezzanine lender? Oh, totally. To the buyer, completely seller,

Completely throwing everything off. Right. And so, you know, we have to and let’s, let’s give a positive one. Let’s say you have yours together. Okay. Your product, your service. We talk about this all the time. You have to be great all of the time because of timing and circumstance. You never know who you’re going to run into who you’re going to sit next to on a plane, what opportunity presents itself. Right. And if you’re not ready, timing is based on the opportunity circumstance that could change the course of your life.

Yeah. Great twist, a great twist on that, that you have to be ready all the time, because all the time, tying up time and circumstances, a real factor that we just don’t take into a category,

A book on it. I think it’s that important. And I think if you’re constantly playing oftentimes against timing and circumstance and you control, you’re always in control of what you can control. Then inherently, it’s a mathematical statistic. Timing and circumstance are going to play out in your favor. Although you’re gonna, it’s gonna, be bad sometimes, but if you’re constantly on offense and ready timing and circumstance, at some point that ping pong or that, you know, pinball

We’ll hit. Right? Yeah. And you know, time and circumstance are somewhat controllable. It’s controllable through constant levels of action that keeps you in the game, right? Otherwise, it’s more like luck, and time and circumstance are somewhat controllable. And it’s also controllable by the questions that you ask are, for example, a simple question, like, is there anything that we haven’t talked about that could get in the way of the success of this? Use your buddy’s deal, for example, right. So it’s, it’s, it’s nice that you guys have flushed out a lot of the time and circumstance challenges that buyer may not have wanted to tell you that he wants the mezzanine financing, because he made another purchase. I’m guessing three months ago that reduced their cash position. If he buys your guy what’s happening. Okay. But you guys have done the due diligence to ask the tough questions, otherwise, time and circumstances are happening and your, your buddy, the seller isn’t even thinking it through. He’s like, what is going on? What’s going on? What’s going.

Yeah. Yeah. So, we have a whole strategy. I mean, I don’t want to derail this podcast, but yeah. I mean, we found out about this a week and a half ago, we’ve pivoted, we got the attorneys involved. What we’re going to do is we’re closing and signing the deal Friday. And there’s a, has to fund by November 30th. If it doesn’t, there’s a lump sum that gets paid to him and we’re announcing it to the market, which is strategic because I, I want to announce it to the market strategically because if he backs out of the deal and we announce it, there’s going to be even more recourse from brand reputation or whatever. So we’re doing all the factors legally and in chess moves to ensure that we now are controlling the circumstances as much as we can. That’s another piece of it, right? When it hits you, dude, you’ve got to then go, how can I control it to where I can to help me, you know, help me in my favor.

All right. Great examples so far, but let’s just go a little bit deeper for the audience. So they get a better understanding of it. Like for example, uh, obviously commercial fleets, we finance trucks. Well, we are now having the extreme time and circumstance conversations with our customers because it’s about to be November. If you want to buy a piece of equipment, you can take the section one 79 depreciation benefit, which means you can D you can write off the entire purchase a hundred percent this year. So we’re now saying to our clients, have you started to look at the tax implications of making a purchase right now, if you were very profitable this year, you might want section one 79 of the accelerated depreciation. And therefore you might want to buy a piece of equipment. Not because you want it by the piece of equipment, but because you don’t want to pay the tax on the profit, because you had such a good year, totally a perfect example of time and circumstance.

So some examples of why, if you’re listening, you need to include time and circumstance and organization more first tax deadlines, both for you and your customers. It’s huge. Yeah. You don’t know what the buyer, what the other side’s tax strategy may be. It’s a huge thing. When it comes to acquisitions, that’s why we got to do the podcast of what it looks like. Right? Look, if you’re in real estate, you know, you may have a piece of property that you want to sell, and you haven’t been pushing it that hard, but your buyer has a 10 31 exchange because they just sold the property and they have to put that money to work. Well, that might make your property more valuable to them because they have a 10 31, but you may not know they have a 10 31 and you just think they’re another buyer. Totally. Um, another example is, you know, what happens? And you saw this all the time in your digital, uh, agencies where there’s excess cash in the budget. And as crazy as that may sound, you know, if there’s excess cash, it’s got to get spent as the company gets larger and the bureaucracy gets more involved in politics. Yeah. If you don’t spend the budget, guess what your budget gets cut next year.

Well, let’s do even a step further. And that’s talking like the clients we serviced had huge budgets and huge, you know, fortune 500 fortune, 100 accounts, fortune 1000. And if they didn’t spend what they spent last year, then it would be tough for them to get that amount again or ask for more. Right. That makes sense. So our team was trained, starting in November, where are you with the budget? Where can we help? But timing circumstance, even more important. I train my team, dude, we have to close these projects. We have to recognize our revenue this year, too, there’s another circumstance, right? This can’t be something that trails into the other year because it’s going to be looked at as a fiscal budget thing and the prior year. So what can we do now to spend money for our clients to benefit them in the next six weeks, to recognize the revenue and complete it versus carrying it to the next year, which is counter to what needs to happen,

Which brings us, to the next point, which when it comes to time and circumstances, you know, it always comes down to the money and bonuses, where is my money? And you’ve got other people on the other side, we, we, we talk about the buyer persona. It burned the ships, boot camps that they may have a big bonus riding on totally how their Q4 plays out. So you think it’s normal business, and they’re saying, wait a minute, the baby at home is expecting this bonus because the baby’s going to get the new Prado or I’ve told her we’re going to get the boat. Or, you know, she told him she’s going to get him the boat. However, it plays out. You need to understand that bonuses and said, look at the car business, for example, you know, so many incentives happen based on units being sold. So at the end of the month, the dealership may have a huge incentive coming to them. If they cross the 200 vehicles Mark, but they’re at one 70, well, your one 71 sale helps them get to two, which tier triggers a huge incentive from the manufacturer. Yeah.

I’m gonna play this out even again with the, we keep because it’s such a timely time, uh, the election, right? If you are a vicious in seasoned buyer, okay. And you’re looking at assets right now, you could be in the market. You know, probably August, September, October, you could go find some assets and probably buy them on the cheap, because you could start feeding the opportunity of a flip coin Biden versus Trump. And if you sell now, you get to realize capital gains. Even if I buy you a discount, you’re flip coin, great. Keep growing your company. Biding comes in, you now have capital gains. Even if you sell it for much more than I’m offering you, you’re going to make less because of the potential circumstance of that election. So like there’s a whole when we start playing, going from checkers to chess when you start seeing the field of circumstance things, and you understand how to use those to your advantage, so that’s when things get super interesting, right? I mean, that’s, that’s how you, you build generational.

Well, yeah. Which comes back to, um, the last point for today, which is, you know, when should you pull the trigger and make certain investments? I mean, here’s a perfect example in this Lakehouse that the rocker talked me into. The one thing that she never did was she never applied time and circumstance. All she did was say, yeah, I want it. So that’s how it went. But I applied time and circumstance. Listen, I knew the street. We had been renting a house on the street. I knew the exact area of it. There were five houses on the street, the time and circumstance that this house or one of those five was going to come up then were probably limited ability that allowed me confidence that in the future, the same will apply. Right. Then all of a sudden there ended up being a bunch of people, uh, buying it because they were probably doing a mixture of both.

The baby was saying, we’re going to buy the house. And the other guy was saying, well, there’s time and circumstance. The seller knew that price is high. And to win it, knowing that if I pay up for the next person’s going to pay up for it, I applied time and circumstance goes, well, I paid more for it. But that was, that was all based on timing and circumstance. The circumstance that it was in this one street and the timing of it’s available now, it probably won’t be available again. And the odds of the other four coming up will be years before that might happen again.

And I know we’re probably getting close to wrapping here, but let’s make it applicable to the sales guy or gal, listen to sure. Okay, dude, if you don’t appreciate timing and circumstance and sales, you’re, you’re missing the joke here. Okay. There are so many opportunities. Let’s say you have a zoom with all the decision-makers

On the call. Okay.

And they’re pretty much set. Now it’s down to a price or a timing issue on their side. You as the salesperson and the company have to be empowered to make that decision and recognize right now, I have all the decision-makers on the call that may never happen again. They are all aligned and bought in comma, but these two minor points you, as the salesperson, have to know the timing of the circumstance of that opportunity right now is like a cheetah that you need to pounce and kill because that may never happen again. And the deal goes away.

Oh my God. You know what? We need a major Mike Trump because what most, most salespeople will simply say, um, uh, I’ll get back to you when we can set this jerk again? Yeah. It’s a great call. Thanks, everybody. And you never get the four decision-makers on the call. Or we got six takeaways and suggestions in which you can apply time and circumstance into your business. The first researcher, freaking customers get a better idea of their buyer persona. What makes them tick? Like we talk about at the Bootcamp and buyer persona segment, you know, are they, are they the people that want an email, or are they the people that want to communicate on Tik TOK, right? You have to know what your client wants, what is important to them. So just freaking research them a little bit for goodness sake, just go to LinkedIn and understand a little bit of their freaking profile. The second one is you get to understand what is important to them at that time. Right? Right. Is it, my bonus is on the line. Listen, great relationships. You can have that conversation with them. What’s in it for you. Then what’s in it for me. It’s 25 grand.

The thing about Tik TOK or whatever, I don’t even check ticks. I don’t have a tech talk. I have Instagram. I go on that thing every four months. I probably need to be better at it and have a ton of messages, right. Or LinkedIn the same thing. Understand just because you send a message on a platform or something, that person may not check it. They may not give about their circumstances right now. It’s not important. You can’t give up. It’s a salesperson. You’ve got to be aggressive and continue to do it because of the circumstance.

Number three, you’ve got to understand their business better. What makes them money? And I just don’t think we, as a group of salespeople, do that enough and you’ve got to understand how do I make my money and how can you help me make more of it? Um, talk about time and circumstance, introduce the concept. Number four, introducing it. Is there anything that we should be talking about? Are there any timing issues or circumstance issues that we haven’t talked about that could get in the way of this deal or that could help it or could it along of course. Yeah. Number five. Have you looked at the tax implications of this deal? When you start to move from a business model of playing checkers to a business model of playing chess, one of the things you will realize is that taxes are what the Richie rich talk about. They care about and they mitigate. So if you’re not talking about tax implications to how your deal impacts the buyer, you should. And the last one is, and this, this, this never happens enough, dude. I want you to make recommendations to me. I want you to tell me what, I’m not what I don’t know. Right? Like you need to tell me that you just did a deal similar with another customer and something important to them that we haven’t talked

And then you’re gonna stop me in my tracks. I’m going to get to thinking about that. And I’m going to appreciate you more. You know, great stuff. I don’t know why people don’t do that. Remind me of what? I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. We just had this, um, thing over at the Lake on painting the house and the painter I hired. The first thing I said to him is what color would look good here? Is that guy? I, you know, whatever you want. I said, no, trust me. I’m going to do the Google images. Okay. I’m going to go to Sherman Williams. I’m gonna figure out the pink color. I’m asking you. You’ve painted what? Like 400 houses out at this Lake. Look at the property and tell me the color that you think would make this house pop the most. He’s still, he still didn’t do it. He still didn’t come back to me with that. Conversely, this office hired years

Guy, right? Jason? Yeah. I got him trained though.

A couple of weeks into it. He keeps calling me. He’s like, Hey man, what’s going on? I thought we wanted to move on. I go, man, I’m struggling with the pink colors over. He’s like, man, I wish I’d known that I got a designer. Let me send Wendy out there. Wendy comes over blaze out. All the colors put the color wheels up. Prints. The colors bring it back the next day. Boom. Done deal.

Yeah. That’s great, yeah. Right. I’m starting to snatch. Yeah. Tell me you’re together. You want to run or not? Alright. Plug burn. The ships

Bootcamp. Get there on December 10th and 11th.

Shoot automatic guns, cigars, bourbon,

Same routine that we always do. But with unbelievable content, by the way, the texts are firing up from the last burn. The shifts Bootcamp. The one that we just did,

It’s like less than a month ago and the results are incredible. One of the groups, they brought six of their management team, nine people, it was nine total, but six from their management team.

He sent us a text, said the best week they had in sales was $72,000. The first-week post burns, the ship was 125,000. Yeah.

And comma attributed it to run the show. To burn the ships. Yeah.

And alignment never thought it was possible to sell that much. Yeah. Right. So that’s, by the way, that’s 50,000. If they do 50,000

Times, 52 weeks, it’s almost $3 million. So, you know, from that event for what they spent to generate 3 million in revenue on top of where they were, you know, and it’s a hundred percent money-back guarantee, which we’ve never given out, burn the ships.com, check it out. Hope you can make it December 10th and 11th and as always make it happen.