3PX Coaching

Why Smart Companies Say NO to More Customers

• 3PX Coaching • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Is every sale really a good sale?

In this episode of The 3PX Show, we unpack one of the biggest leadership mistakes growing businesses make: chasing every opportunity instead of defining what the right opportunity looks like. We discuss why the strongest companies don't just fill the funnel, they filter it.
Through real stories from our own businesses, we explain how the wrong customers, low-margin projects, and overly complex jobs can create operational bottlenecks, overwhelm your team, hurt profitability, and distract leadership from long-term growth. You'll also learn why this isn't a sales problem and how clear guardrails, aligned incentives, and the courage to say "no" can transform your business.

If you've ever felt like your company is growing but becoming harder to run, this conversation will help you rethink what sustainable growth actually looks like.

🌍 Interested in getting one-on-one coaching from the 3PX team? Go to https://3pxcoaching.com

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Wayne Foreman: @wayne4man
Steve Kincanon: @Steve_kincanon

LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1810132342
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JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
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Intro and outro music by Korshun
https://audiojungle.net/user/korshun

Produced by Quentin White | @quentinlwhite

🌍 Interested in getting one-on-one coaching from the 3PX team? Go to https://3pxcoaching.com

Follow us on Instagram:
Wayne Foreman: @wayne4man
Steve Kincanon: @Steve_kincanon

LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1810132342
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6icTxp0wsvMPmnjZsGtybV

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3pxcoaching/
📖 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61575312680020

Intro and outro music by Korshun
https://audiojungle.net/user/korshun

Produced by Quentin White | @quentinlwhite

SPEAKER_01

The more aggressive you are with revenue, particularly when you are not defining the type of customers and the type of revenue you're looking for, you're gonna yeah, you're gonna grow all right. The custom and complicated work that you will end up doing is gonna be way more than what you ever expected. And you're gonna be in that situation where you're walking across the stage at some award ceremony celebrating how how much you've grown, but your business is falling apart, you're not making money, your turnover's high, and and you're ready to start crumbling if you're not careful. Hey, welcome back to the next episode. So if you've been following along, this is the second season, episode eight. Thank you for joining. We love that you're here. And um, this is gonna be a great topic because last episode we talked about filtering people. I know that sounds terrible when you say it, filtering people, but um, you know, in the context of laps last episode, you'll know I'm not a mean person when I say like something that sounds mean, filtering people. But uh this episode, we're gonna be talking about filtering revenue, um, you know, filtering versus feeding the funnel, not chasing bad revenue. Because what happens is most growing companies are built to chase every deal, every opportunity for revenue that comes along. That that company is trying to find a way to get that deal done, make that deal happen, cap capture the revenue rather than really rather than also at the same time focusing on rejecting the wrong deals.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So we're gonna get into into that today. And uh so we're gonna talk about revenue versus quality. Because there is bad revenue out there. And and um we can tell, we can tell some stories about about that, can't we?

SPEAKER_00

It it comes back all the time. Yeah, you know, because everybody's hungry to get it to get the sale right. And so are you. And I'm I'm hungry for it too. Especially when it's a nice big sale and you think, oh man, this would be great. It's a great cash flow. It and and it always starts off great. But you know, it's always just everybody's excited about it, everybody's pumped. So, yeah, man, we got that one, you know. And and then as it the further along it gets into the order and gets into the process, it creates such bottlenecks, creates such jams within the business that you realize and and you look back on, it's like, man, why did we take that order? Should have never even done it. Should have never touched it. And there's and and but it it happens, and you have to be ultra protective about that because you know what fits you if you if you know it fits you. And now if you don't know, if you don't look at it and you're chasing every deal, then it doesn't matter. You just chase every deal. And there's some businesses that you that you do, and that then maybe it works perfectly of how you do that because it just your business model is it is to take it. But we know what our business model is, and we've we've known it for a while now and we know where it is, and it's still sometimes it can get past you because it looks right right then at that moment, and then you look back at it and and um you think, man, that was that is by far the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And the uh, you know, the the the volume trap, the mindset that we're kind of talking about here is more more leads, more orders, more revenue. And that's how you know you define growth. You've you're up 20% last year. What's the what's the 20%, 30% this year? So it's where can we find more leads? Where can we get more orders? Where can we get more revenue? But what lacks is a clear definition of what good revenue looks like for you. And to be honest, we've tried to crystallize that over the last uh couple of years, but really just in the last couple months, did we kind of draw a hard line in the sand and and say, okay, we're not doing X, Y, X, Y, and Z anymore because it it hurts us so much. So there is such a thing as putting money in the bank and it not being worth it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, putting money into the wrong thing and not being worth it, right? So it's um oh my gosh. I uh you know, that this is one that we got to be careful because it it can very be very easily we can chase some rabbits on this one because we've done some some things, but you know, I think we've gotten uh uh over the past couple of months of I've really gotten more focused to where, you know, because you can spend however much money you want to for leads. And you know, it can be the wrong leads, but is if you're not looking at it right, you're spending, you're getting leads, and and then you start seeing things really not the the pieces not being put together correctly, right?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, a hundred percent. Because what what ends up happening is yeah, you got more traffic, you got more leads, you got more deals coming in, but they're low margin deals, or they're high friction customers, or they're these oddball edge case type scenarios where it's like we gotta figure out how to do this. Well, we yeah, we can do it. We got smart people back there, you know, we can figure out how to how to make it work. Or you've got payment risk, chargeback risk. Could this be a you know, a bad deal from the sense of like theft or something something like that? You know, I'm I'm thinking about you know, what was it, a hundred hand dryers?

SPEAKER_00

I don't think it's that many, but it was a lot.

SPEAKER_01

It was a lot. It's well, it's it's burned in my memory. It's etched, right? Yeah. As soon as I got that email shouting out this accessory sale, I was like, man, that looks like uh theft. I just felt it in my bones. Sure, because that's all they ordered. Sure enough, that's exactly what it was. But you know, sales was all fired up about it. Yeah, and um, and then not even two weeks later, here it comes, massive chargeback. And we lose. We lost the product and we lost the the chargeback. So all I'm saying is the more aggressive you are with revenue, particularly when you are not defining the type of customers and the type of revenue you're looking for, you're gonna, yeah, you're gonna grow all right. But the the the weird scenarios, the custom and complicated work that you will end up doing is gonna be way more than what you ever expected. And you're gonna be in that situation where you're walking across the stage at some award ceremony celebrating how how much you've grown, but your business is falling apart, you're not making money, your turnover's high, and and you're ready to start crumbling if you're not careful.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's consequences to everything that you do, right? Or uh or you know, however you look at it. You know, you just uh, you know, early on, you gotta you gotta figure out what is good as and what is not good, and then and then stay true to your value, stay true to your system, because if you don't, you'll just repeat the cycle over and over and over. And it's so important just to make sure that as you do grow and as you do uh expand your businesses, because the whole overall thing that everybody wants is you want growth every single year. Because if you don't get growth and you stay stagnant, then you start to lose ground and you start to go backwards, right?

SPEAKER_01

Because of inflation, yeah. Costs are increasing, yeah, supplier costs, cost of goods, cost of employing people. If you're not growing, you are going backwards, whether you believe it or not.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And and if you're growing three or four percent, well, if if inflation is five percent, you're still going backwards. You're still going backwards, right? So you may think, oh, we grew 5% this year. Well, no, you really didn't. You just stayed flat. That's right. And and and if you're lucky, you stayed flat because everything else goes up as as a cost and and as a percentage. And so, you know, when you're growing 10, 15, 20 percent, you got to make sure that you're just go growing in the right direction and with the right products. You know, look and see which which items fit you the best, which uh which sales fit you and your team. And um, and that's ultra important because if you don't, uh you you you buy down more than you can chew in some areas and you can fill it uh I mean, really quick after you get that those orders.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. And and I just want to be clear this is not a sales problem. Right. This isn't the fault of salespeople. This isn't an issue with the sales engine, this isn't uh the sales department's uh pr problem or issue or or fault. This is 100% a a leadership problem because leaders are not defining the revenue, they're not defining the marketing and the funnel that you're trying to generate that the the the top of the funnel. And if you don't do that, your sales engine are just naturally is gonna chase everything. Well, how many times what sales does? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

How many times have we said, hey, we just need more quotes? Because you get more quotes, more quotes should equal more revenue or more sales and more revenue. And in all actuality, sometimes you spend more quotes, spend more money on quotes, and you don't get more sales. No, the quality of your leads goes down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because you're just the close rate goes down. The um the the you're attracting, now you're attracting quotes or leads that really don't fit necessarily within the framework of your business because they're these more fringe scenario scenarios. Um Mark marketing, particularly with um, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, the um the the way that your marketing funnel sources leads online has gotten really smart and really predictive with going after customers that these tools believe will fit within your model.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's gotten really strong, I have, I have to admit. It's it's fascinating. Whereas just a few years ago, um, as a marketer, particularly as an online marketer, you are having to pull all those levels, levers yourself to define who you're going after. Well, there's tools out there that do it for you. But the more you want to spend, the more it will go out there and it'll just find anybody to go to your website and give you an order. And those are not good deals.

SPEAKER_00

Well, because they're making money regardless of whether you make any or not. And so when you say, hey, I want more orders or more quotes, sure, I'll give you all you can handle. The more you can spend, the more we'll give you. And uh again, if you're not looking at it right, you can just you can spend, spin, and spin and overspend. And before you know it, you've you've got this huge monster that then you realize, like, man, we're we're getting a lot of quotes. We're just not getting the right ones. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So strong companies say no early. Exactly. Define what revenue, good revenue looks like for you. Good strong companies say no early and protect the system, where weak companies are just celebrating revenue, but really ignoring the downstream margin. And also, this is the this is the hidden issue, the operational complexity and the operational bottlenecks that it causes inside of your business. So you may even be selling some of these, some of these uh additional jobs or additional orders, and you're and you're telling yourself, well, we're making money. Margins, X, Y, Z, so we're still making money. Right. But downstream, it takes three different purchasing people to figure out how to buy this. It takes half the operations team and all the, you know, the people power you got down there to figure out how do we how do we do this right without messing it up, get it out the door, you know, all that kind of stuff. And when you add in all the layers of complexity, it wasn't worth the margin to begin with.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, and and and it's those hidden margin types of things. You know, we had a job uh not long ago and it was just a uh it was a really big job. Everybody was excited to get it. You know, and our average jobs are small that we get, and we just we turn a lot of volume, we do a lot of different things, and uh and so we know how many man hours go into a normal job, how much you know, when it when you get the order, get it processed, go through the shop operations, gets built and gets shipped and goes to the customer. We we we we understand that line, we understand the curve, it's dialing really, really big. And we had this one big job that's come through, and um the hundreds of man hours that you can't really put a number on because it's just it's you just I mean it's it's not there to put a number on. We lost it. We know that we spent hundreds of man hours on this one. Yeah and on the on paper, in a sense, you you can almost look at it and say, okay, well, that looks good. That didn't turn out bad. No, it did. You know the wake, the wake looking back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Throwing them on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know, sometimes you don't need to put 10 people on an inner tube when it only holds two. And uh we might have had uh a lot of people on that inner tube. And they and and man, you're talking about uh uh the wake that uh when they hit that wake, it was it was a bad situation.

SPEAKER_01

But this is where you can't and I'm not blaming sales for the folks that are listening. This is not sales' fault. No, this is 100% leadership. Sales is going to go after sales. That's their job. That's what their job is. But if you don't clearly define what the rules are, the rules of engagement, yeah, then that's your fault. That this that sale 100% was my fault. I have to be the one to own it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Because we never set clear guardrails on what we do and what we you know, what we don't do. And also in my defense, it was the last month of the year. And yeah. Well, no, trying to deliver, you know.

SPEAKER_00

I was I was right there with you. So you can't we can't say it sounded good. You were it sounded good. It sounds like throw you under the bus, but no, that's okay.

SPEAKER_01

I'll you we held hands on that one.

SPEAKER_00

I'll I'll take ownership in that just as much as anybody else because it was uh, you know, we're making transitions to the new building and making transitions to this. And so that was just a nice big cell that we are all excited about. And you know, hey, it's uh hopefully it'll you know it's been delivered and um and we're and we're good at this point, we hope, but um hope we don't have any issues coming back on it. But it's uh it's it's a learning experience. I will say this, um, because when I said it's a learning experience, it also brings a lot of validation and a lot of a lot of things when when the next one comes along and we say no to, the team that had to endure all the stuff, they're probably more apt to say, you know what, I'm gonna go with you on that one. I I think we're gonna say no.

SPEAKER_01

Nobody's gonna be mad about saying no to a monster deal because that everybody remembers it wasn't the last one wasn't worth it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so that's uh that's uh a super important fact. You know, it's a you know, is it one of those experiences that you can go through and say, um, hey, uh the cost was not overwhelmingly too big for us because it taught our team a whole lot, right? I guess there's a a way to look at that. It didn't break us. It didn't break us.

SPEAKER_01

It was fail-safe.

SPEAKER_00

It's fail safe, yeah. And so it was one of those that um, you know, it's a learning experience, but it it it taught a lot of people, including us.

SPEAKER_01

It makes you appreciate that there are other companies out there that are specifically built for that. Yeah. Let them do it. And they are built well for that.

SPEAKER_00

And so that's just that's the but that's the playground that they play in, right? And so where we are in our niche and how we do it is uh is it's a total different ballgame. And so it's you know, you you you live and learn.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. One thing real quick here is uh talking about ins incentives. So we have not done this yet. We are um we are working towards that. And um your your sales team is gonna go after what they're incentivized to go after, right? And um, and for our companies, um, our sales teams are incentivized by top line revenue. So naturally, they're gonna go after top line revenue. So we have had to put, you know, manual, I'll call it, guardrails in place, you know, for what deals we should be going after or should not be going after.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

But that's not the best way to run it. So what so we are, like I told you, I've said this on several episodes, like these are things that like we've either been there, done that, and we're trying to protect you from making those mistakes, or we're in the middle of it right now and we're talking about it, right? But we're a lot, we're working to align our sales compensation and incentives around generating good, profitable revenue for the company as opposed to revenue that might not even generate profit for the business.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And a lot of that is not uh um on the sales team anyway. We have a pretty uh well uh machine, uh well-loiled machine where it's uh the pricing is is pretty well preset. Now they get they they're allowed to take some discounts here and there and stuff uh if they're they feel like they got to get more competitive and things to a certain degree. But um for the most part, our system uh is uh runs and it runs itself. You know, we're we're making the calls, we're trying to close the orders and do that kind of thing. So uh that makes it a little bit different on that.

SPEAKER_01

So the other thing you got to think about uh outside of sales incentives, right, is you've uh you you can't get lost in short-term thinking. So and and that's where that's where we were. And uh to some degree, well, I think that's where every company was in the in the first quarter. But when you're trying to close out the year, we had a big move coming up. We were trying to launch a new system and we needed, we needed the cash. So we're thinking, I hate to say it, but I, we, we were thinking short term, right? Yes, we were. This would have been a big boost for us. But uh when you're when you're so focused on short term, you're just feeding the funnel. You're just feeding the pipeline. But when you're thinking about uh long term, when you are when you're raising your floor, when you're thinking at scale, how I'm scaling the business, you're not thinking feed the funnel, you're thinking filter the funnel.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And what I can tell you since we've done that is yes, we have said no, like this is an anchor moment right right here. Because if you're listening to this, you're you could be thinking, how is it possible? If I'm saying no to deals, I need every deal I can to go through, you know, so I can pay bills and all that kind of stuff. Listen, we are saying no to deals more today than we have ever said in our entire history. And yet our margins have improved, gross profit has improved, revenue is growing. Like we are creating more time to actually go after the right kind of business. So it sounds counterintuitive to say no to revenue, but since we have done that, we have seen incredible growth all over the place.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, because we've we've gotten back to our focus and making sure that we're gonna get the deals that work for us. And and it's and it's what we're really good at. And so if you focus on what you're really, really good at and you and you push out the noise of the other stuff, and uh then it just allows everybody to just streamline to know, okay, I this deal is good and it it fits our wheelhouse perfectly. Now you're just now now the numbers are turning. Now everything is turning in the right direction. Everybody's going in the right, they're rowing in the right direction. I mean, imagine a big rowboat. If you've got people that are are trying to turn or row in the wrong direction, you're not going to get anywhere. But if you all of a sudden you get your team, hey, we're gonna, this is where we're going, this is how we're doing it, these are the type of sales that we're doing. We all have to be in the same motion, same row, all at the same time. Then everything starts turning and starts pushing and you and you start moving and on then you can start putting the foot on the gas pedal at that point because everybody's aligned with what we do. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

So d don't forget this. The best businesses, the best owners, the best leaders, you don't grow by saying yes to more things or saying yes to more revenue. You grow by saying no to more wrong things.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And first, you got to even know what those wrong things are, right? You got to define that. What are you actually saying no to? But that's the way the best businesses grow, not by saying yes to more things, but saying no to the wrong things and not letting those wrong things. And you know, the other thing I'll say is this is not just a distraction. You know, the wrong revenue coming through the system is not just a distraction for operations. It is a distraction all the way up the chain to the highest level of leadership, where half I could remember half my days sometimes dealing with issues, fallout, upset customers, NCR issues, rep replacements, operations is frustrated. Why are we having to do this again? Turnover, you know, turnover starts to spike. We can't train new team members properly because they're having to constantly learn things that we've never ever done before. It's like all of that stuff gets to the leader's level.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And now we're also pulled into having to help solve for these problems. And how do I make this deal work? How do I not sink the ship by, you know, getting this revenue in? So when you say no to the wrong things and when you stop thinking in that short-term mindset of just trying to get all the revenue through, it also smooths the water for the leader as well, where we're actually able to think about, hey, what could we do next? We have time to think about new products we want to get into, new businesses, whatever the case is. We're able to think about how do we go after more of the right revenue as opposed to wasting our time trying to solve problems on how to get good, you know, bad revenue deals out the door.

SPEAKER_00

Aaron Powell Well, you got to know yourself, right? You got to know your team, you got to know yourself, you got to know what your business model is and uh and what your strengths are, but you also gotta know what your weaknesses are and make sure that you don't fall into the wrong pattern or fall into the wrong system. I love your analogy uh that you've that you used uh in the last episode and even in this one when it talks about the boat with the wake. You know where the smoothest water is? It's behind the boat.

SPEAKER_01

Tucked in right in the water.

SPEAKER_00

Right behind the boat, right in the middle, right behind the boat. You're right in that wake. And as long as you stay in the middle and you got the the wakes on each side over here, you're in the smoothest water of the entire lake, ocean, whatever, wherever you're at. That's where the smooth water is. It's when leadership or whoever's driving makes a makes a sudden turn, is when it throws everybody out over here, and all of a sudden they start hitting that rough water and they hit that really, really big weight. And sometimes it seems fun. It it always seems fun right when you're about to hit it because you know kind of, you know, you don't know what's coming, but you're you're excited, and all of a sudden you hit it, and then you hit the other side. And bam, boom, boom, everybody goes flying off the table. And then the next thing you know, somebody's getting up. It's like, oh my God. And they're hurting and all that kind of thing. And then it's not as fun, right? Because it's not fun to get hurt. That's what happens sometimes when you have the wrong deals and you have the wrong uh things and you chase the wrong uh items, is you know, why why not stay right there in the middle, right? Why not stay in the wake where everything's smooth and it's fun and it's uh and you're just and you're floating and and it's just everybody's laughing and having a great time. It's extremely important sometimes to protect that part of it because if you make sudden turns as a as a leadership team and you and you turn this way, and then the next thing you know, you're turning this way. Well, why do we always want to throw everybody off the boat, off the off the uh um the float or whatever it is? Well, you know, well, sometimes you think, well, that's gonna be fun to do. Well, no, it's not if somebody gets hurt. It's not if it's the wrong thing. And so stay in the middle. And uh, if you have kids, you know, you want to keep them in the middle. You don't want them to get hurt, you know, the same way with your family. You don't want anybody to get hurt. And so you just as long as you stay in there, you can have fun all day long and uh and and stay out there and and everybody has a great time, regardless. You know, you can kind of move around and let them get up on the side over here and move over here and get on that side. And hey, you know what? Everybody had a great time.

SPEAKER_01

Trying different things, trying different things, yeah. Staying inside the staying in your lane. Yeah, you know what it reminded me of when you were saying that I was having uh now, I'm not like a major NASCAR fan, but I was having I was imagining a NAS car, you know, flying around the track, and then you get that car right behind it, tucked tucked in, uh draft drafting, I think is what they call it. You know, that that second car back there is drafting. And I've heard this before. I hope it's right. If it's not, somebody can correct me. But one car going around the track is not as fast as two cars if the second car's drafting in behind it, almost like they're they're moving together.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

They're both faster than the one car just by it by itself.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So when you got your people, when you've got your revenue well defined, when you've got your people tucked in close to the back of that lead car, everybody's moving faster.

SPEAKER_00

And that there's no bad air or or saves fuel, it saves everything. Everything's going. And then uh at some point you slingshot them around and they can they can hit that finish line super fast. Or sometimes you can throw them in the guardrail and destroy it, right? So, you know, we've we've done both.

SPEAKER_01

Having my like my my Ricky Bobby coming to mind. You know, I won't do it. People will think less of me if I start quoting Talladega Knights uh up here. So listen, if you're if you're first your last. Well, I wasn't gonna say slingshot engaged, but since we said if you're if you ain't first your last, um so if you're listening or you or you're watching and your business feels harder as it grows, you're probably just feeding your system. You're not filtering your system.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

That goes with people and it also goes with work or revenue that you're doing. The more a business grows, it is naturally going to gravitate towards more complexity. It is harder leading a $100 million company than it is a $1 million company. If you're leading the $100 million company the same way that you led the $1 million company, it is going to get more complex and it's going to get harder. That's why filtering is so important. So if you're listening or watching and you are feeling like, man, the more, the bigger we get, or the more I run this thing, or the longer I'm in business, it's getting harder, not easier. Then you are probably not filtering people and revenue like you should. And I would encourage you to evaluate your business today, tonight, take a clarity break. Shout out to clarity breaks. Wayne mentioned a couple episodes ago. Take a clarity break, wherever that is for you, close the door, shut off the phone, get your notepad and pen, and just start writing things down. But challenge yourself, where am I feeding the funnel too much when I need to be filtering the funnel? And you can start reining systems and things back in with a good clarity break like that.

SPEAKER_00

Well, sometimes by doing that too, it helps you to work on the business, not in the business, right? Yes. You can see it from a 30,000-foot view, whatever it is, but you got to be able to step back. You know, you can't, if you're in the moment in the trees all the time, you can never step back and look at the entire forest, right? And so you have to take those breaks. You have to uh just be able to look out and see it. And sometimes we all want to go 90 to nothing. And if you're like you said a second ago, if you're if you're in that jam and you're in the middle of it and it's just it's everything's kind of bad, sometimes you got to turn around and take a look in the mirror. You may be the problem.

SPEAKER_01

Dude, you remember what we said last episode or two or a couple episodes ago, they all run together. But um one of us said it. What when you're in the middle of a storm, when you're going through it, everywhere you look, all you see is storm. Right. Right? Well, we uh we moved here from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We we lived in the Biloxi area. My wife's born and raised there. So she was there for, you know, over 20 years. I lived there for maybe 15 years or so, something like that. So we know storms. I rode out Hurricane Katrina on the coast. I've been, you know, every um, every major storm wrote it out, been there, done that. And what what I just realized just now is when you're in this, when you're in the storm, and we were talking about everywhere you look, you see the storm. There's only one place you can go to see past the storm. And that's up.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So at Keysler, at Keysler Air Force Base, I can't remember what they were called, like storm chasers or storm hunters or something like that. But they would launch these planes from Keysler and they would fly out over the Gulf and they'd get so, so high. And then they would look down at the storm and they'd take all these measurements and which way is the storm going and left and right and models and all that kind of stuff. Dude, and it just hit me. It's like that's what the clarity break does. You have to take the clarity break. You have to get out of the storm. And the only way to get out is to go up and look down and start filtering.

SPEAKER_00

Just to get over the top of it, right? You have to get over the top of it. Isn't that a good that's a great analogy? That that gives you great visual just to be able to see it. Because if you did if you're just sitting at the bottom and you're waiting, you don't know what's coming at you. Yeah, I remember in Katrina, you know, I went down there with some uh uh buddies uh to help uh clean up. And one of them uh had uh um his uh grandmother lived about a mile off the coast. And when Katrina was done, there was one of those massive containers in her front yard from a ship. You're talking about some pressure, water, all that kind of stuff that just takes it from that and lands it right there. That's that's a um, you know, so that Mother Nature, God has a way of just planning things that, you know, it's it's powerful, right? And so if you don't get out in front of it or don't get over the top of it and look down, you know, when you do that, you can see what's happening. You can see the debris, you can see how big of a storm it is. Sometimes you got to get out of the way of that storm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think that's about the best way we could uh we could wrap this thing up. You know, quick call to action here. I kind of mentioned it is um, you know, get that clarity break. And I want to challenge you to think of three filters that that that uh that you can say no to. What are three things, whether it's people, whether it's revenue, what are three things that you should be saying no to that will that will help strengthen your business, strengthen your people, strengthen your margin, strengthen your profitability. So uh where are you feeling the pressure of growth? Why is the business feeling hard for you right now? And start thinking about where I can filter in those, in those areas. So any last words before I do my like, share, subscribe thing?

SPEAKER_00

You know what? Just uh keep your keep your head focused, keep your, you know, look at your products, look at your overall system and just take a look at uh at where you are. Um again, uh I love the analogy. If you're in the middle of a storm, sometimes you got to just step back and get over the top of it so you can see the overall picture. That clarity break brings a lot of it to where you can uh just take the time to evaluate your business, evaluate where you are in the business as well. Because sometimes you got to take a look in the mirror and realize that, hey, you know what, I may be the bottleneck. And uh, if you are, invest time into growing yourself. And you need to do, I think every business owner should invest time in growing themselves no matter what stage that they're in. It's super important to continue to do it. If you get to that point where you say, hey, you know what, there's nothing else for me to learn. I know it all at this point. But if you ever get to that point, or if you ever have an employee at the point, maybe it's time to step out. Because if you think that you know it all or that you're just that there's nothing else to learn, um, then your your head's not in it anyway. That's the way I look at it. I just feel like, you know, if I if I continue to because I can always continue to learn, you can always learn more.

SPEAKER_01

And um, and you're not just talking the talk and not walking the walk, right? Yes, you still belong to what what is like a mastermind group. Yes, the chief that you go to. You just went to a CEO kind of retreat conference, you know, forum kind of thing. Yep. And we're still reading books like crazy, you know. So um we're not just up here saying what, what, you know, hey, you got to do this because it works. Like we know this is the way you grow your business. It's it's still built on people. And if you as the leader, if the people aren't growing, the business will not grow.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Period. And then you just have the expectations for all your team to do it. And I think, you know, you look hands down throughout the organization. There are a lot of people that are doing the same thing. They're they're reading, they're doing things, they're growing themselves and getting stronger every moment.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. All right. Well, hope you enjoyed this episode. You don't say grow, you don't say yes. Uh, you know, saying yes all the time is not the best way to grow your business. You have to know what to say no to. That's people and revenue. I hope you enjoyed these last couple episodes. And uh, if you did, don't be afraid to like, share, subscribe, all the things. We'd love to interact with you on our social media accounts. So we hope you enjoyed watching or listening to the 3PX show. We cannot wait to talk to you again next time. See ya.

SPEAKER_00

Take care. Bye.

SPEAKER_01

You're gonna grow all right, but the the custom and complicated work that you will end up doing is gonna be way more than what you ever expected. And you're gonna be in that situation where you're walking across the stage at some award ceremony celebrating how how much you've grown, but your business is falling apart. You're not making money, your turnover's high, and and you're ready to start crumbling if you're not careful.