How to Scale Your Business w/ M.C. Laubscher (2024)

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Welcome to season 2 episode 60 of Baktari MD! In this episode we are joined by M.C. Laubscher where he speaks on how scaling business is of the upmost importance as well as making time for your loved ones! All of the tips and tricks you need are right here! Find out all of this and more in the full episode! 

Transcript

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You could have the best idea, best product, and you could actually be crushing it, and you could be crushing yourself out of business by doing too well. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. Today I actually have a very interesting guest who I think is going to be able to give some insight in some of the many topics we've covered over this past season. I want to welcome M.C. Laubscher. He is a business owner, investor. He's actually a podcaster and a bestselling author, and I have brought him on the show because he's going to help us figure out how to navigate our career life as a leader in an organization to deal with finances, deal with talent and use that to grow our company and and take our company to the next level. So welcome to the show. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, it's a big honor. So go ahead and give us a few blurbs about who you are and how you started, how you got here, and then we'll go right into the questions. Sure. So, my name is M.C. Laubscher. I'm the founder of Producers Wealth. We're a wealth, firm in the United States servicing all 50 states. I'm originally from, South Africa. I do reside in Pennsylvania now with my beautiful wife and my two children. So, originally from South Africa, I came, to the United States in 2001. Plates, travel plates, played sports up until then, and as I was playing sports, I, you know, and pursuing a career in sports, I took some of the, the capital that I generated, through athletics. I, invested in a lot of real estate, started businesses, invested in other businesses. And, I've had a lot of fun doing it, and learning a lot. Fast forward to where I am today. I, I was introduced to the concept of a family office. You know, I would say five, six years after I was in the United States through friends that I met. Family offices, just private wealth management firms that manage the money of families of $100 million of net worth and up. So became really good friends with folks I still have maintaining relationships in that world took some of those strategies. And then I started Producer's Wealth in 2015, where we, we help folks, implement and execute similar strategies in their own life and especially working with business owners, as our mission is to elevate the financial well-being of business owners and their families and leaders in business. And then, as you mentioned, I've got a podcast started as a passion project in 2016, interviewing interesting people in the world of business and investing. Talking about alternative wealth strategies, alternative asset investing. And, we've reached, over 7.5 million people in, you know, 180 countries. So it's turning into an education kind of company. And then, as you mentioned, become a bestselling author this year, writing a book called Get Wealthy For Sure: The number one financial strategy for business owners to multiply wealth predictably, where we just basically share some of the most powerful things that business owners and leaders can do to really move their, the growth, and, and really elevate the growth trajectory of their businesses. Wow. That's that's really important because I think if you may have the best idea, you may have the best everything, but if you run out of capital or finances become an issue, it doesn't really matter how good your idea is or where your position, the, you're going to have to get the financing in order to get next level. So tell us, what were you doing in 2015 as your last business before you pivoted to teaching others? I want to know, like where you were at that time and then how you use that knowledge to pivot into this. Yeah. So I was a real estate investor during that time. And also, at that stage, like I, as I mentioned, implementing and executing similar strategies. So I was running some real estate businesses and, you know, it had other operating, operating businesses. But yeah, I was, I was at that stage really deep diving into it and kind of implementing and executing the strategies on my own life during that time, too. I did an MBA in finance because I wanted a really a really increase the financial skills that I had at that point. So that's a that's how I spend that time. And then, you know, we took what we were doing ourselves and started helping other people do that. And, you know, one of the things that I'll share with you, I think I mentioned it briefly beforehand, is we've been able to catch onto certain trends way ahead of of of before the trends took off. Right. So one of the trends, for example, was the online consulting world. So actually during when I did my MBA in finance, one of the projects I was working on was consulting at Amazon. So we went in there that was part of the, the program. We we took a, tour through the building. In the facility, we walked around, I looked into the one the the conference room, took a peek, sneak peek in there. And what I saw at that stage completely blew my mind. You know, what I saw was one person sitting behind a table and had an entire screen up of people with, in their small little boxes, and they were communicating with each other. Now, I was looking at them using Skype. Now people go, oh, it's a zoom call or whatever. Well, you do that in, you know, 20, 2012, 2013 right there, that's a different ballgame. So, at that stage, I knew that the business that we were in the process of, of building of how are we going to launch this is all going to be done online because I saw I just saw the future. There it is. Right. An epiphany hit you. Yeah. And I everybody thought I was crazy at that point. Right. It was things like that that is position and really helped in the projectory too of some of the businesses that I have been involved in, being involved in crypto businesses and, you know, 20, 2015, 2014 and so forth. You know, those things propel where you want to go really quickly. If you can identify trends, position yourself and your business correctly for them, and then caching that wave. So, that's kind of where I went from during that time that really, really propelled our business growth to and our reach. So I want to get to, you know, as you know, we talked about Crash CEO School on my podcast where we teach, leaders in organizations how to help their organization get to the next level. You know, I mean, obviously, you have a lot of different strategies, whatever. But what advice would you give someone who is either starting their own company or down the journey, maybe 3 or 4 years? They're the CEO. You know, the company is starting to take off or is taken off. And what are the pitfalls they need to look for? And what are some strategies in terms of not running out of capital and positioning them their finances so they can take advantage of opportunities, and be able to pivot as needed as their company moves in the right direction. Great question. So especially that specific avatar, the biggest challenge that every single business owner is going to have is cash flow management. And I call it the seasons of cash flow. So the summer season is your highest revenue months, very simple to manage cash flow during that time. Right. So you've got a lot of revenue. You got a lot of profit. That's the easy times. The opposite of that is your winter, which is your lowest revenue month and the slow, slow times. Now if you're listening to this as a business owner that is in that kind of time frame, you've started your business. You're 3 to 5 years into this, you're nodding your head. And you could probably if I put you on the spot, tell me when your highest revenue month is and your lowest. So for me, it's May is my highest revenue and it's usually August is my lowest. Take- I take the majority of August off. Go visit family in South Africa. Right. But you still have the same overheads. You still have employees that you're buying, you still have contractors, a lot of other things that you're paying your during during the entire time. So for people that have never, never done this before and have never been told this, they kind of realize pretty quickly, oh wow, I have to manage my cash flow better because if I don't, I'm not going to have enough capital to get through the other months, it’s really slow and my lowest revenue months. High months, pretty easy. And also it propels you into your highest revenue months in the spring. Now in this spring is the time for, product development, right? So you're doing it. Maybe you're working on different marketing campaigns to launch, to generate more interest, generate more leads. You convert them into clients and customers. So that you hit the summer, again, that happens in the spring, usually right off to the winter. So not only will you struggle with cash flow in the winter, where are you going to get the capital from? To get all those things in place, you're going to probably hire people. You got to pay outside services. So where does that come from? Right. So you have to have a plan for that. So you have to have a proper cash flow management plan, figuring out how much cash reserves you need to build up and set up for yourself. And we have a strategy that we teach of how to position it so that you can access it, to use it at any given point in time, instead of going begging to a bank constantly. Because that's what happens to a lot of people before they talk to us. It's great during the summer, then the winter comes and the spring they're back sitting with a bank or placing assets as collateral for more lines of credit, or getting unsecured lines or really maxing out that spark, you know, 2% cashback credit card. So you got to have that in place. The other thing is a massive challenge that we see, and we see this all the time. When you started your business, it's blood, sweat and tears that you pour into it. You took that leap. You, you, you you went all in. Yeah. You know, and I'm speaking to this specifically to people. You're all in on you. You're not getting money from family. And you don't have a rich uncle. It's you. So you build that business. And at that time, because you're all in and you're using all of your resources on paper, you prob probably look like a broke person. So you don't have a lot of advisors, whether it be tax, legal, financial advisors, bank or at that run. Right? They know they're you're totally not their avatar at that moment. But then the business starts to take off. You become profitable, you generate capital. And now you're really starting to get some growth in the business. And they're all trying to bang down your door. And what are they telling you? What are a lot of financial people telling you, let me take some capital outside of your business and diversify it for you in the financial markets, it stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Sounds like it sounds like a great idea. But what you did right there is he took money that you used to reinvest in your own business, which there's no investment that will ever be investing back in your own business. It's impossible. Then you're either doing it wrong. If you can find anything else that beats out reinvesting in your own business, you're doing it wrong. So at that point in time, I love Apple. We're I'm recording this on Apple. Apple products. Right I love Apple Tim Cook's great. But Tim Cook and Apple doesn't need more of my money to grow their business. My own business does. So it all becomes about positioning capital at that point to always, always have access to liquidity to either hire other employees, invest in technology, and grow your business and fuel that growth. There will be a time for diversification, and there's different ways to do it at the right time. And then also that helps you then to manage these cash flow cycles, as I shared about better. So where a lot of leaders get into trouble and CEOs, especially as a CEO, you cast the vision, right? You build the you set the culture in your organization, in your company. You are in charge of strategy. It's you. The buck starts and stops with you. And then of course, you got to find the financing. What I always try to share with people is you want to have multiple sources where the financing comes from. Even as a smaller business owner, you don't have to be, you know, the CEO of a corporately listed traded company, fortune 100 company. When you when you're a small business owner, it's the same thing. You're in charge of getting the capital to grow and scale that business. So you want to have multiple sources to do it. And that's some of the stuff that we talk about. Yeah, it's not it. Also, as I'm hearing you talk, it's not even winter and summer because even if the cash flow is good all year, let's say, and you're doing fine, there's opportunities that come or unexpected expenses come. So it's it's actually multifactorial. You may, you know, be in a position where someone gives you this great opportunity that's going to require a lot of capital to execute it. And that wasn't in your budget or again, or you may have some sort of setback that was also not anticipated. So it's, you know, the winter, summer is the opportunities, the the unexpected. You know, new competitor comes in the market. Some of your business goes away or, or, you know, there's an opportunity to get more business. So, you know, investing in new technology that just popped up, your old technologies antiquated. And, so as I'm hearing you talk, it's it's on many levels. People who are able to decipher that code of, you know, being able to manage their cash flow, have definitely have an upper hand. And, you know, we always hear that often many businesses fail not because they have a bad idea or they're not working hard or they don't have the right people sometimes just, you know, you run out of cash. That is, such a true statement right there. You can have the best idea, best product, and you could actually be crushing it, and you could be crushing yourself out of business by doing too well. Right? Especially if it's a physical product, which you have to order. You have to warehouse, you have to bring it in, you have to fulfill it, right? And so forth. So no cash flow management comes is, is coordinal. And to your point, you got to prepare for anything and everything. You know, we we and how we're marketed to as humans. We humans, we're strange creatures. We're marketed to always about the shiny object kind of like, oh, the the, the the offense in the wealth world and the wall space. But what about defense? So as a young kid in South Africa, I actually took up some boxing. And the first thing they teach you in boxing is, number one, how to not get your teeth knocked out and how to protect your face. Right. And then the second thing is how to go knock the other guy's teeth out and go knock the other guy. But the first thing is to protect yourself. So in business we always and I love I love the aggressiveness of business owners always focusing on the offense. But you got to play good defense. So where realistic strategy comes in is defensive systems with offensive systems because you got to prepare for anything and everything. As you stated you might have a competitor come in and knock out, you know, a product line right away. You know there's a lot of different variables that you that you as a CEO have to have to be on top of and be prepared for. Right. In fact, I did a whole podcast, on one of my favorite topics, which is a good CEO is really the worrier in chief. You know, they got to go home every night and just worry. Like worry what happens? Somebody takes that market away. What happens if we lose that big client? If you're not staying up at night worrying metaphorically, you know, then you're going to get blindsided. So yes, you got to be on the offensive, but you also have to be on the defensive worrying about, you know, what could happen next. eNational Testing makes getting a simple laboratory test as easy as ordering something online. With three simple steps, you can have your test sorted for STDs, general health, allergy testing, diabetes screening, blood titers, and more. You can simply go in for testing the same day and get your results quickly to your email. eNationalTesting.com’s complete health care panels come with easy to understand results at over 2,700 locations nationwide. It’s time to focus on yourself. eNationalTesting.com; easy, convenient, and tailored to your health needs. I want to pivot now and talk about, something that we talk a lot about on this show, which is, you know, building culture. You know, enrolling people into your vision, you know, getting people your, your staff, especially your senior staff, but all staff to view the whole organization as something they own, that they're not just renting, that they're actually owners. And, I know you have some strategies that you I mentioned in the past, but can you speak to that about building culture, enrolling people in your vision? And, you know, you know, improving employee retention and and having people singing off of the same book songbook, as it were? Yeah. Building teams. Right. That building. And there's no shortcuts to that. And the start to it obviously is having people to buy into your vision of having a compelling vision and also having some sort of track record in place of you having executed. And I've had some success that helps, because there's a lot of people with vision out there. So when you have those things in place, when you've got a compelling vision that people want to buy into and want to be a part of it, now, it becomes okay. People are attracted to that. But how do you create a culture that is going to build, build this team, which is the glue, right. So how do you how do you do that? And of course, you know from a there's a lot of different things. But having of course the glue of accountability, having people feel part of the process, having them buy into the entire process of how you're going to get there because you might have a vision, but then with ten people, there might be ten different ways of how they want to get there. So let them buy into that process of how do we get there and craft and map out a plan of, of of how to get there. The other thing is recruiting a top a talent and maintaining a top talent. You're going to have to have some incentives in place. So yes, of course people people say, well, the easiest way to make them feel like an owner is to give them some ownership. But that's not always the case. That might actually in some cases that I've seen, be to the detriment of everybody because it backfires. I've seen that where it backfired. Yes. For sure. They feel like, oh, I've got I've got ownership shares now. Now all I can take my foot off the gas. But what you can do is you can put incentives in place and craft compensation packages where you reward them and, because, because that is in place, there's contracts, for example, to make folks stay, you know, five years, ten years, having that in place and having them continually buy in. And that's going to help, because I've also seen people they buy in to a compelling vision. You have a you have a track record of success of doing that. You've you've included everybody to craft out this blueprint. You know, you get the buy in from everybody, but then somebody else comes along with another vision and they're I like, you know, M.C.’s great. But you know, John over there I feel like, you know, 2 or 3 years into this, I've kind of like the honeymoon phase is over. I gotta go over there. Right? Yeah, I get it. So, yeah, you have to have something in place. So how do you help your clients with that? Like when they come to you and, they're like, you know that this is a I, I my employee retention is not where I want it to be. I kind of feel a lot of people are clocking in and out. You know, I'm not seeing that hunger. How do you help your clients with that? Yeah, you can put together and some of the strategies that we use, one is called a key person strategy. So a key person strategy is a person that's critical to your business a key person and that person that you want to keep and make sure because your business is going to struggle without that person, you can you can create basically a strategy where, for ten years, if you hit certain growth targets every single year, you will contribute a certain amount into a vehicle that we use of life insurance, for them. Put the money in there. Now, why would they stay? Because you're offering them a life insurance policy. Well, it's Jeffrey Immelt for that. Stayed with with with GE and also Jim Harbaugh that was recruited by the University of Michigan. You put money into these policies that's growing tax free. And it's guaranteed in for them. So if they stay for ten years, for example, they could walk away with millions of dollars tax free in a policy. Now that's going to help them buy in every key person. Strategy is different. It's specific to exactly what you want to accomplish, the size of the business, the profit, and of course, the targets that you have. But you can have things in those like those in place because. Yeah, I mean, I like I said, when the honeymoon phase is over, if you have something like that, that little carrot there for them to stick around, they're going to think twice before they run over to, you know, someone. Yeah, we can, but can I give you some? So for someone who's thinking about doing something like that. Yes. Do they ever come up to you and say, well, that's all good and fine, but I'd like something. How do I get more organic buy in? In other words, it's sort of like, well, I'm going to stick around because there's this thing at the end of the rainbow, but, you know, I'm not sleeping, eating, breathing this business. So I you could see how someone could give you the blowback like, okay, you know, like, yeah, you wouldn't want to get married because somebody just thinks, you know, you got a lot of money or they're going to whatever. How do you marry that sort of concept of compensation but get organic buy in, like, you know, I mean, on some level, I mean, wouldn’t the best employee be someone who's going to stick with you, even if they didn't have that hat. So how do you how do you prevent that from being the real and only motivation. You're in trouble if that's the the only the motivation that they have? I think so, yeah. So you need to be you need to select out who you give this to because they've got they should also have some organic motivation. That's why we call it a key person. So this is a person that have proven themselves their key to the business. They've bought in. They're all in I see. And so you're not going to give this to a potential someone who has got potential that's coming along. This is someone who's already done it without the the carrot. And now you're just going to give them the carrot. That's correct. Yes. So this is already someone that's proven themselves for a number of years. This is not you don't offer this to any person that just comes into your world. This is these are people that you select and that you that you look at and say, I, I don't want I don't want my business to operate without them. They're cardinal to what we're doing. So we're going to reward them and put that in place. But I agree with you 100%. It's you know, people do their I mean, listen, there might be some people that do things just for money, but that's not everybody operates. So the majority of people, especially if you're going to spend more time, you know, at a company or a business that you do actually with your family during the week. Right? You're going to need other things to get them motivated. And they would have bought and they would have been all in. And that's why you reward them for this. So instead of, you know, one of the conversations could be because people are like, well, why, why don't you just give them shares or ownership? Do you know that sometimes, number one, it could be a family business? Number two is if you do do the ownership shares, they're not there's there's no immediate financial benefit to it unless you eventually sell the business. So, what security is there for someone else in selling the business, right. When are you going to sell the business? 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now? What's what is it going to be worth? How is that? How is that deal going to look? How is it going to be executed? How much capital is up front? Is there a seller financing like there's so many unknown variables. But if you put something like this in front of them, they know, okay. Directly correlated to my performance. This is financial my financial benefit where sometimes, especially if it's a very small amount of shares of the business and ownership, you're just I mean, it's it's kind of just throwing it up in the air. Right? So I think it's a it's a good way to reward them, with something that they could see every single year, basically if you review it with them. I love it. Okay. So, before I wrap up, I do want to ask you, you obviously in your position get to meet and interview potential clients, real clients that you take on. I and I don't want to pigeonhole you, but what is like 1 or 2 common missteps that you see CEOs make that are just pretty much every time you see a company, if they're struggling, you're like, oh, yeah, that's like a common denominator for a lot of them. How about that? Is there is there any pattern to some of the ones that struggle with the financial aspects of their growth? Absolutely. I can and I could share with you because I did that too, until I called myself. I created my my own prison. So a lot of the stuff that I teach and share is mistakes that I've done first. Okay. Yeah. Well tell us. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things is just not working inside of the business and not on the business. And it sounds very simple, but I can tell you this, you can even have a lot of success and, build your own prison as a, as a CEO or as a leader. If you do. What if you do what if you only work inside of the business? Yeah. And most people say, but how could that be bad? I did that, and then three years in, I'm like, I'm basically in a prison. So working like 20 hours a day and we're very successful. But I, I'm not going to survive at this rate. This is so also also can I give you like my angle on that because it's very interesting you said that and you maybe give me some feedback, but if if your business needs you to come in and literally like handle a client or do this or do that, you know, that business is only going to grow as much as you have time to put in for versus if you're outside the business and you are managing high level direction, it's not stipulated on you. You could I mean, if you had to go to, let's say, God forbid, someone's sick in South Africa and you got to go for three, four months. If you're in that first scenario, your business is going to be toast versus you go to South Africa and you got some Zoom and you got the laptop and you're doing this and you're doing that. So it allows you one a certain level of personal freedom. But also I think it's not predicated on you actually doing the work. And I often think about doctors who who have burnouts and dentists who have burnouts and stuff like that. And that's often not because of any other thing than they actually have to deliver the product. Yes. Right. So, so when you're when you are the one delivering the product, you know it. And also it is you're only as good as how many products you can deliver you. If you want your company to 10x or 20x you can’t 10x 40 hours of of work. I mean you just can't. But go ahead. You you hit the nail on the head at that time. And this was we're talking now. This is this is like yeah, this is about eight years ago. Anyway, a mentor said to me, MC the more you work in your business, the less it's worth and you know that, right? And I'm like, you're right. Right. So, I started to be more strategically focusing outside of the business and looking at inefficiencies, especially when it comes to finance. How do I optimize things? How do I fine tune things, how do I do things better? And you just end what you just said? I smiled because he had the nail right on the head. Yeah, you. Should, you should. You should have me on your show. Then I should tell you. I guess I actually just spent the past month in South Africa. An entire month with my family. So it was funny when you said that because. Yes, now I can. So it's a lesson that I learned like eight years ago because, yeah, you got it. You got to be strategically and you have to you have to look at all of the inefficiencies that you have from. And you can't see it when you're buried inside, you know, when you're making the pizza or when you're flipping the burger. Yep. Yeah. You're not getting the satellite view of the burger joint. No, no you're not. And and you probably haven't figured it out at that stage that you should own the real estate underneath the burger joint. Right. And have the burger joint finance the real estate and add more real estate and more burger joints like right grok. Right, right, right, right. So there you go. So I think we get it. And I think this is a valuable lesson because, if you really want to exponentially grow at some point, you have to disassociate. Like you said, you working in the business versus on the business. You know, it's interesting, but if you follow that strategy, I would argue sometimes you can even work harder not being on your business, not being in your business. So I think a lot of people, oh, you won't be in your business, so you'll have a cushy life and you could but whatever. But but the opportunity for you to work even harder on things that translate into a much bigger impact, right? I mean, if you spend five hours, you know, delivering a product to an end user of your company versus five hours meeting with a strategic partner, that you can somehow join forces together, that those five hours are not the same, five hours in terms of impact. Absolutely. And the very small things that you pick up and realize that while you're standing and looking back at your business, strategically could make I mean, the ripple effect and the exponential effect could be enormous. One of the one of our clients, for example, family owned business, he's he's been working 20 years into it. He's probably going to be like another 10, 15 years. We added one thing just from a cash flow management strategy, and he's eventually going to sell the business to the kids, which was going to be an income stream for retirement. Right. Plan one tweak that he made, maybe now going to walk away with 5 to $6 million tax free and then sell the business and have an income stream from the kids. It's just one thing that he does. And I mean, that's a that's a lot of money for small business owners to walk away with, right? By the way, it's interesting about that one thing that you're saying a friend of mine once told me, when you think of when you come up with your best ideas on how to tweak your own business and write down where you were when you came up with it, you know, because you'd be surprised how many times it's not when you're having a staff meeting, you know, with everyone in the room, it's you're in the shower, you're walking the dog, you're or, you know, you're having a beer with a friend and you're just. And so and that's what I thought about, like, you know, working on the business. Because if all the great ideas happen when you're having meetings and you're on a zoom call or whatever, not to minimize that, but I'm surprised how many eye opening strategic things that were right in front of you, you know, became obvious, at a time where you wouldn't have thought it. Yeah, it's and it's like you said, it's those times when you unplug so you get can be more creative because the different side of your brain is also functioning. And working. Right. A walk in nature. I was on safari. I took my kids on safari for the first time in August in South Africa. I got a lot of ideas on a game drive and my wife's like, what are you doing? You were on vacation. I said, I know, but it's coming to me now. I've got I've got an idea like this. I got an idea like that. I'm just writing it all down. I'm not going to work on it now, but it opens up and it's a different environment too so I. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we have a lot in common in that sense. Well, listen, this has been amazing, I think very helpful for, our viewers and helpful to me to hear it. So tell us about someone who wants to get in contact with you. Learn more about some of your strategies. You know, what's the best way for them to get Ahold of you and learn more? Producerswealth.com/baktarimd/. So I put a page together for your listeners and everything is there. So, Baktari MD, but it's Producerswealth.com/baktarimd/. And then we are actually right now doing a, giving away a free paperback copy of the book Get Wealthy For Sure: The number one financial strategy for business owners to multiply wealth, predictably. So they just pay for shipping that will be on there. And there's a ton of other resources, for all of your listeners and your viewers. Yeah. Perfect. I'll make sure that link is in the show notes. Wherever people are seeing or hearing this, whether it's on Spotify or YouTube or any of the other platforms. Well, thank you so much. I actually learned a lot and really appreciate everything you're doing for all your clients. I wish you a lot of success. And, yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of people that could, be helped by some of the stuff you're doing. So hopefully that will reach out to you and get, the proper push they need to move to the next level. Thank you so much for being on the show, and hopefully we'll see you again. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Be well. Take care. Bye bye.