EPISODE 215 WITH RYAN URBAN: NAVIGATING FINANCES AS A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

Ready Yet?! Podcast Episode 215 with guest Ryan Urban: Navigating Finances as a Small Business Owner

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: Oh, right. Hello. Hello. Welcome to this episode of the ready yet podcast. I got distracted there for a second. So here’s why I just Ryan, I just realized you’re in a Hawaiian shirt and I’m in Midwest winter flannel. And it just struck me as funny before I even got to introduce you. And I didn’t notice that previously.

Erin Marcus: That’s right. But my guest today, Ryan Urban, is not just obviously on the opposite side of the weather that I am. That just struck me as hysterical. But I’m excited about this conversation. I have a question that I’m poised to ask you. I can’t get I can’t wait to get your take on it. But before we get into all that, why don’t you tell everybody who you are, what you do and where you are that you get to wear a Hawaiian shirt while I’m in Midwest flannel.

Ryan Urban: Well, okay. You know, actually I can kind of put the two together. I was a a financial advisor for many years. Wrote a book called the business owner’s guide to money and in July of 2022, the phone rang one day and to make a long story short, I, I sold the practice and, and I, I, I didn’t want to retire.

Ryan Urban: We lived in Colorado at the time and, but we moved to the Carolina shores, which is why I’m wearing. You had to

Erin Marcus: completely sell all your Colorado clothes and buy new clothes to fit in.

Ryan Urban: Yeah. And yeah, I don’t like buying clothes either. So you know, I went ahead and did it, but I had to and you know, so I, I, as I said, I didn’t want to retire.

Ryan Urban: And so I just, now what I do is I do provide just guidance, just hourly basic hourly fee guidance on everything from investing, retirement planning, asset protection, but also some of the goofy stuff, you know, the a lot of people will have questions just on personal finance that pop up, you know, from buying homes to starting a business, to anything else, taxes, you know, so, so I’m never at a loss for an opinion.

Ryan Urban: Yeah, that’s why, you know, you got to pay for it, though. That’s how it works.

Erin Marcus: That’s awesome. So I have a question. It is a money related question, but it’s probably more of a mindset question. And I think with your background, it’d be interesting to have your take on it. Because there is this dichotomy, I guess.

Erin Marcus: As for small business owners, especially for entrepreneurs and I do differentiate those two because I think there’s a very big difference between a plumber, electrician, brick and mortar, geographically based small business, and then some of us who are a little crazier entrepreneur with small Looser guidelines as to what it is that we do.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. Yeah, and you need to find this balance And I think we suck at it. By the way, I think entrepreneurs suck at this. I’m looking for advice for us the balancing of The eternal optimism and not spending money you don’t have, money you plan on having but don’t have yet. I think that’s a very, I know I’ve done this myself, I know I’ve frustrated myself on it, I know that’s a balancing act.

Erin Marcus: That I’ve had to learn and continue to remind myself not to do because the optimism, the eternal optimism it takes to do what some of us do, because let’s face it, if it was easy, everybody would be doing this, right? There’s a reason all those people who quit their jobs to become an entrepreneur during.

Erin Marcus: During COVID are now not doing that anymore, right? Yeah. Yeah. How do you balance that? How do you balance investing to grow your business with not making a mess of it? You know, I know you know what I’m talking about. You’ll probably be more articulate

Ryan Urban: than I am. Well, okay. There is an answer for that. And it’s actually, it’s a pet peeve of mine.

Ryan Urban: And it’s it’s one of the biggest mistakes that business owners make. And coincidentally, it’s also one of the biggest mistakes that individuals make. All right. And remember that a business, in fact, one of my, our, our, our lines are, our subtitles is at the intersection of your business finances and your personal finances, right?

Ryan Urban: Because it all goes together for, for a business owner. This is an eat your broccoli answer though, Aaron. Okay. You’re ready. It’s it’s, it’s all in planning. And you use the word planning your question. I heard it. And that sticks out to me. When, when you’re getting a business, when you’re starting a business, or even if you’re just thinking about starting a business, you have to plan it out and you have to do whatever you can to, to get the numbers right.

Ryan Urban: And that’s the eat your broccoli part. Nobody likes doing that. Also, nobody likes making a budget. Nobody, but you absolutely have to do it. Now, one of the main reasons I have kind of a backwards way of looking at business plans and that is that when it’s done. It’s, it’s about 99 percent irrelevant.

Erin Marcus: I was just going to say the same thing because I absolutely agree with you.

Erin Marcus: It’s that old Eisenhower quote, right? When going to war plans are in, you know, irrelevant, but the planning process is invaluable.

Ryan Urban: That’s exactly right. And, and, and here’s why, because if you do a real business plan, and by the way, I don’t do them. This is not a commercial for me writing business plans.

Ryan Urban: Okay. If when you do a business plan, it forces you to look at that business from every conceivable angle, you have to start looking at things like, well, how much is least going to cost or the insurance? How much are, are, is a fax machine going to cost fast machine, you know, but anyway, you just

Erin Marcus: aged both of us, by the way, I was working in a law firm when they’re.

Erin Marcus: when they bought their fax machine. So I hear you. That

Ryan Urban: was brutal. Where did that come from? But you’ve got to do this, have contingencies. And here’s the thing it, by the time you finish writing that business plan, you may decide it ain’t going to work. And I would rather have you decide it then, then after you’ve maxed out all your business cards.

Ryan Urban: Yeah, so, so planning is, is terribly important and it’s also very important for a family just as you’re doing your, your budgeting and everything else. And so I, I generally tell people, you know, yeah, I know. Eat your broccoli. Learn Excel. Yeah, learn Excel, get to know it. And, and, and everything I do in my business life, personal life, everything’s on Excel.

Ryan Urban: I can tell you any what’s going on and when. And so therefore that’s it. That’s my big speech, but, but to me, that’s the big answer. I

Erin Marcus: totally agree with you. And I’m going to ask my question part B. And I’ll, I’ll freeze it this way. One of the things that was said to me once is if the plan has to be perfect to work, you need a different plan.

Erin Marcus: Yes. So, how then, because I 100 percent agree with you It’s not that I totally, I like the planning process. I dive deep into that because it, that’s, putting ducks in a row makes me feel more in control of my world, whether it’s real or perceived. You know, I don’t know that it’s actually putting me more in control of anything, but I feel a little bit better about it.

Erin Marcus: So I do tend to deep dive into that. However. What does somebody do then from a financial perspective, like I know what to do from a marketing perspective, but what do I do from a financial perspective? How do I make sure that I am staying ahead of the cliff, right? So that if the plan isn’t working. We make a different plan.

Ryan Urban: Okay. Now you, you you just use another word that I love.

Ryan Urban: Starts with a C. It’s control. It’s control. And, and you want to have control over this process that, that goes back to the planning Aaron, because when it comes to anything having to do with numbers and, and, and dead serious here, anything having to do with numbers. Is something you can plan out and and so let’s dig into that just a little bit So let’s whatever your industry is.

Ryan Urban: It does not matter you can go online and you can find out A lot of things about, about the numbers regarding your your industry, right? And that can be anything from marketing advertising to, to capital equipment, to inventory, to bookkeeping, everything that there’s so much information out there.

Ryan Urban: You just got to find the. You got to sift out the garbage, of course, got to get rid of the crap, but everything else is going to be good. And that’s part of the process. I hate to sound like a broken record, but that really is it. You don’t, you have to understand, we have to understand that the unexpected is going to happen.

Ryan Urban: Right. Okay. So therefore we have to look at every possible cost that we’re going to have, because that’s what kills a small business. I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t think of that cost. Well, okay. If it’s certain kinds of costs, you should have known. You really should have known that was coming. Okay. So if it’s, if it’s something totally unexpected or not your fault, that’s something different.

Erin Marcus: Like a pandemic, but yeah. I, I, right. And I think going back to the way I phrased the start of the question, one of the things that I try to do, and you cannot do this, by the way, if you haven’t done the work you’re talking about, is creating these litmus tests where, okay, this is the plan, but if I get to this point and it hasn’t worked yet, we need to recalculate.

Ryan Urban: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you’re, what you’re doing is you’re stress testing. You’re the, the, the idea. And, and you know, that’s kind of the word. It’s very

Erin Marcus: stressful. So I’m massively stressful. Testing

Ryan Urban: is stressful. Yes. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s going to have to be an individual situation where you’re saying you have to look at, at what you can afford.

Ryan Urban: And, and the thing is, when you ask that question, I’m thinking, you know, there, it’s not an end answer. It’s a process answer. It’s, it’s something where you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re having guidelines along the way, you have to break it up. And so that’s why, and we go back to the business plan where you’re saying, okay, based on what I’ve seen and my research and what I’m doing and how much I’m spending on marketing and advertising and what I’m doing, I should have this kind of revenue.

Ryan Urban: Going by month X, by month X, X, X. And at the first year or what, or quarter or whatever it is for you, if you haven’t hit that, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s time to reevaluate. And, and as a business owner, as a newer business owner, typically it’s going to involve two things. It’s going to involve. Your marketing has probably been inefficient and, and number two, your, the, the money has not been done properly.

Ryan Urban: There, there are some numbers that have not been planned for properly. So you’ve had more expenses than you were expecting and your, your income, the other side is not working as well. The thing is that, you know, nowadays marketing obviously has changed so much because everything now is, you know, funnel advertising and, and, you know, everything else.

Ryan Urban: That is, it’s very different. So you have to have those guideposts. And, and if it’s me, I’m doing a monthly, I’m sitting down every month. I do too. Okay. And you have to, and if you’re falling behind, those are the two things you have to do. You have to look at your marketing, but there are other things too.

Ryan Urban: What your processes. All right. What happens when the phone does ring? You know, it’s so funny. I, I talk to people when they’re, when they’re figuring out their marketing and I’ll ask them, okay, so what’s the process? What’s your Feng Shui? You know that, you know, if you’re a interior decorator, you know, they talk about Feng Shui being the, the movement of, of, of air through the, through the house, right?

Ryan Urban: What’s your business Feng Shui? What happens when that phone rings? Are you ready? What, what’s your process when someone actually calls you off of your, half of your advertising? The ball gets dropped there many times. How well do you know your competition? What’s happening when your competition answers the phone?

Ryan Urban: Okay. What is their service like? How, how quick did they get back to people? How, how quick are they with the answers? What are their numbers? What are their costs? What are they offering? What service are they offering? So man, you got to dig deep. You got

Erin Marcus: it. Yeah. And I. I look at these as different levers, right?

Erin Marcus: Which lever do I have to pull to make the system work better or which column do I have to focus on? And, and you gotta wiggle this all up together, right? Because if you get great at your mark, to your point, if you get great at your marketing and you socket client fulfillment, You’re just going to end up having to refund everything you’ve just earned.

Erin Marcus: And conversely, if you put, and this is the one I see a ton of, probably because of what I do, if you are magnificent at client fulfillment and backend, but you’ve done very little out in front to create a client acquisition system, same problem. Yes. Same problem. So the one thing you have not said, which I appreciate, is Well, don’t be optimistic, be, Oh, and, and, and I think that’s, I personally feel that a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs do not do the work into their numbers and finances or go get the help they need because they’re worried the person on the other end of the screen is going to tell them, no, don’t do this and being such a driven, optimistic, sick.

Erin Marcus: personality, you don’t want someone to say no, but you’re, what you’re exhibiting by, but not saying it is you’re not necessary. You know, the person on the other end of the conversation is not necessarily there to tell you no. They’re there to tell you how.

Ryan Urban: Yes. Great point. Y you know, it, it’s funny because it, it’s like anything else, it’s like a relationship.

Ryan Urban: When, when, look at this chronologically. When someone is thinking about putting together a business, how excited are you? Just like with a new relationship, you, you ignore all the red flags. totally right. and you, you, you kind of just, all you see is the good stuff and it’s, you just don’t wanna look at the bad stuff.

Ryan Urban: That’s, that’s perfectly normal and it’s. It’s it’s human and

Erin Marcus: it’s probably necessary because I say all the time if I would have known what I didn’t know when I left corporate, I might not have done it. So thank God I didn’t

Ryan Urban: know. That’s right. And that’s okay too. And there’s one other thing here. And that is that in entrepreneur, we have our own mentality.

Ryan Urban: We want to do things our way. That’s kind of the whole point. And so if, if someone from the outside is saying your marketing is wrong, well, what? No, my marketing is fine. So, so it, it, it really goes against the grain for, for an entrepreneur to be told. They’re doing something wrong. And especially if they’re, if their business is based on what they did before they started the business, right?

Ryan Urban: So, Oh, I’ve been doing this for years before I start. Well, you know what, you’ve got to keep your mind open. And that’s another mistake that business owners make. They do tend to close their minds. So there’s this, there’s this balancing act between doing it your way and following your vision, but also maintaining control over the small stuff.

Ryan Urban: Yeah, it’s tough. It will. That’s why, you know, a lot of businesses fail and it’s, there’s a lot of pitfalls and I, you know, you brought up working with somebody, but if it starts off as a, as a bookkeeper, if you’re working with a bookkeeper, great. You know, if you’re not good at something, farm it out.

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. And to me, bookkeeping and numbers is one of the first things to get off your desk. Yeah. Yeah. Even if you, you know, it’s kind of one of those, even if you can, doesn’t mean you should. And it’s not just the time for the task. You have to know your numbers. I, I think in the beginning everyone should do their own numbers for a period of time so that you really, really learn it.

Erin Marcus: Because you have to be able to read the reports that the bookkeeper gives you. But having that expert, objective, view is, you know, not necessarily fun, but certainly productive and necessary. All

Ryan Urban: right. So you just did it again. You just said You just said something. Magic words. You said the magic words.

Ryan Urban: You have to know your numbers. And, and here’s, here’s another mistake that we make. You know, those business, those financial reports income statement, cashflow statement, balance statement, all that. That’s another thing that we almost kind of run because we think we have to, we’re supposed to as a business owner.

Ryan Urban: And where does it go? It goes in the drawer. What I tell people to do is those are magical little documents because when I look at a, at a cashflow statement or a balance sheet. I see a bunch of questions and what a business owner needs to do, even when they’re smaller is when they run one of these reports, look at every line item.

Ryan Urban: And there ain’t that many, really. There’s really

Erin Marcus: not as many as you

Ryan Urban: think. And ask yourself, am I optimizing this number? Is my insurance as low as it can be?

Erin Marcus: We do this, I do this almost every month. Almost every month, I, when I reconcile or when I look at reports I’m looking at every line. And what’s terrifying, and I, I can only imagine, if I do this on my personal side as frequently, how much money is hiding in your business that you don’t even realize.

Erin Marcus: Like, you bought a subscription to something, but then you started using a different thing, and now it’s 9 a month. Like, it doesn’t matter. But there’s hundreds and often thousands of dollars of waste in even a small business. That if you just stayed on top of what could you be doing with that instead, it’s, you know, and do your time audit the same

Ryan Urban: way.

Ryan Urban: Don’t, don’t just throw those documents in the drawer. Those are really valuable documents. And you have to, and if you have a key person, you know, that you work with, it’s, it’s always better to have more than one set of eyes. So go over and, you know, are we optimizing every line item? That’s, that’s a big, big question.

Ryan Urban: And, and

Erin Marcus: well, and the other way that I say this, because you can talk about optimizing and it’s a true, I mean, it’s a completely accurate word, but it’s also one of the challenges I see with people who aren’t Well versed in this content as far as finances and how this works is those words don’t mean anything.

Erin Marcus: They’re a little bit intangible and the reports are intangible. So I will say is what I’m doing, is where I’m spending my time, is where I’m spending my money, is my focus moving, I get real black and white about it. Is this moving me towards the goal or away from the goal? Because there is no standing still, right?

Erin Marcus: So is spending this dollar in this place moving me towards the goal or away from the goal?

Ryan Urban: That’s right. You know, and that hits on something that I, I, I think it’s almost unfair is that you can be the world’s best. Plumber or the world’s best chiropractor or the world’s best florist. And that doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good business owner.

Ryan Urban: That’s nothing to do with it, right? It’s an entirely different skillset. And it requires you to be able to, to, you know, cause a lot of times, you know, people will look at a document with a lot of numbers on it and God bless them. I mean, this, you know, it’s, it’s a human trait and it, all they see is noise.

Ryan Urban: And you need to be able to focus in, you really do it. And it is a skill set that you can learn just like, you know, communicating with employees or how to hold meetings. All of that is, is, is a skill set, but, but the finances, man, that’s, that’s at the foundation of your business. That’s, that’s where it all comes together.

Ryan Urban: Absolutely.

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. So let’s flip this a little bit and do some, there’s two questions that I love to ask people on their own entrepreneurial journey. And I call it short, let’s lessen other people’s. Learning curves as you’ve progressed and move from one, you know, not just move cross country, but through your career, like what is something that just hasn’t worked from an entrepreneurial standpoint where you can say, look, if you just didn’t don’t do what I did, you already be further along.

Erin Marcus: What have you tried? Where are the failures? I love sharing. I think, because I think what happens is the internet, you know, social media is filled with everybody’s highlight reels. I get it. That’s what it’s for. And the gurus out there, the Tony Robbins, the Gary Vs, whoever you follow, that’s wonderful. But it’s hard to learn from them because the world they came up in doesn’t exist anymore.

Erin Marcus: Yeah, very true. Our world’s a little closer to our audience. So what, what have you done that you’re like, yeah, that didn’t work at all?

Ryan Urban: Don’t do that. Oh, well, well, remember I was a financial advisor and, and when you, when you get started in that business, that’s rough. I mean, it takes you two or three years, you know, at least to get on your feet.

Ryan Urban: I, I probably, you know, the hard part was always gaining clients. And, and the funny thing is I guess if I were to encapsulate it, I would say don’t try to reinvent the wheel. You have to do what works and, and so you have to find out what that is. And so every time, man, don’t even ask me to quantify this with how much this costs me.

Ryan Urban: But every time I thought I would try something different. Well, the reason it was different is because it doesn’t work.

Erin Marcus: Everybody’s everybody else tried it and stopped doing that. It’s, you know, and the other entrepreneurial version of this, and I talked to people who do this and I’ve probably done it myself is you find something that works.

Erin Marcus: And then you stop doing it. Yes. Yeah. Because we have this feeling that if it’s not new, it’s irrelevant. Yeah. Yeah. As entrepreneurs, we’re, we tend to be creators. And so we’re looking for the next thing to create because staying with the systematic approaches that work starts to feel

Ryan Urban: boring. Yes. And you, and what that leads to, it leads to mission creep.

Ryan Urban: So, so what’ll happen is you’ll, you’ll You’ll start adding services. You add this or you add that because you think there’s, there’s a tie in you can’t focus, focus on what you’re doing and just be better at it than anybody else. And we’ve all done it. You know why? I’m going to add this service. And then you, Oh, geez, forget it.

Ryan Urban: You know, do what you do, you know, and don’t do what you know you’re not supposed to do. Right.

Erin Marcus: Either for your clients or for your own business too. Absolutely. Yeah. And so the flip side of that is what’s the, what are you most proud of? Oh

Ryan Urban: boy. I, I had a big life changing. Well, you know, I, I was in radio for, for 20 years.

Ryan Urban: I had, I had two careers. I had I was in radio for 20 years and then I was an advisor for roughly the same time. And I, I, I always looked at radio and I used to have to get up at three in the morning. I used to have to be funny at five 30. I mean, it’s, you know, and the whole time I was in that business, it was like, I’m just doing this until I decide what I’m going to do when I grow up.

Ryan Urban: Yeah. So, I was sitting in my car, I was doing an appearance, you know, where you show up and they pay you and you talk to people and that stuff, and I was sitting in my car at a 7 Eleven in Santa Cruz, California, and I said, I don’t want to do this anymore. You know, what, what do I really want to do? If, and I always like to investing in numbers and.

Ryan Urban: And I thought, man, I’m going to have to, you know gotta studying and all these licenses. And then it kind of hit me, you know, it, the time is going to pass anyway. And you don’t want to look back in two years and say, well, I could have, you know? And so I think jumping off that ledge was probably something I’m most proud of where you just, and it turned out I could do it.

Ryan Urban: It turned out well for you, which is a bonus .

Erin Marcus: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I love it. So if people wanna continue this conversation with you, get more information on how you help people, and just even chat with you, what is the best way for them to find you?

Ryan Urban: Easiest way is I have the podcast called The Business Owners Guide to Money.

Ryan Urban: The website is Alpha four Business Alpha, the number four business.com. And my email is Ryan, RYAN, at alpha four business.com. Easy peasy. You’re not hiding. No, ma’am. This has been so much fun. Thank you. Awesome.

Erin Marcus: Thank you for joining me. Your insight, your energy, your Hawaiian shirt makes me colder than I already am, but that’s okay.

Erin Marcus: We’ll deal. Thank you. Thank. Thank you. You bet.