Emily Davis
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
Yeah, for sure. So we ended up selling in 2001. Okay. And for me, you know, personally, that was a big thing, you know, cause it's like, if you sell, you created something that is proven value and then private equity is coming in and buying. And then I stayed on for a while and then I was, and then I, and then, you know, I've got a great new CEO running it now.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And so I'm able to take time and reflect on it. And, and I would say that there are definitely a couple of things. Like the first one is when you can afford it, like as a business leader, as a business owner, is getting the best people in and getting some skin in the game for the best people. Okay. And then creating a vision and letting them know what that final outcome looks like.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
So for example, you know, early on, I probably would have been, I was more tight, you know, because I'm thinking, okay, if I, you know, how much should I share? And then At later on is, is I, you know, kind of learned the right way to, to lead. And there's a lot to it that I learned, but I'm just simplifying it here.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
It's like when you get good people and you say, Hey, let's, let's sell them three years. And if, and if we do, this is what it looks like for you. Like, yeah, they're going to just run through walls. Like there's a huge, because everybody's motivated by money. Okay.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
It's like, sure, you want people who are just going to always do the right thing, but you got to show them that this is what it's going to look like for you. And they're going to work their asses off and get there if there's a big payday for them. And they're going to do things that you could never do on your own. So that was a big one that I learned, you know, as far as like,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
getting the right people. I realize early on that can be hard. Like if companies don't have enough scale, like they can't hire in, you know, that CFO for 250 or 300, or they can't hire the CEO, but you know, you can still prioritize getting the best people over saving a few dollars is how I would say for most companies. Um, and then, um, just another quick one is just focusing on margins.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
You know, too many companies are, um, they're, they're churning, they're churning revenue, they're churning top line. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're building in lots of, uh, expenses into their business system. Okay. And they're saying one day, you know, one day I'll get scale one day I'm going to get leverage. Uh, And that does work for some companies, okay?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And especially people who've already done it, they're really smart and they come at it round two and they really know how to get to that point. But for a lot of people that doesn't, it doesn't work. It's like make, it's like before you go build like a 10 or $20 million company and then try to figure out how to make money, like make money from day one because the thing is that can actually,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
basically what it's telling you is your brand is not valuable enough to the market like if you're not profitable when you're a couple million dollars at at the transaction level you know there's a good chance that as you're 10 15 20 you still may not be that profitable Because the market's telling you like, this is all we're going to pay for your brand, you know?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And so you want to figure that out early on. What do I need to do with my product or service? How do I add more value? How do I, you know, stretch these margins? And so that's a huge one. You know, right now I do CEO coaching and that's like one of my main focuses. Like, what are your margins? Okay. How can we get creative and really think about your product and big focus on the product?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
Yeah, no, that's why it's important early on. Like, I think it's tough because a lot of times people give up too early. So it is really, really tough to say, you know, if it's not working, you got to tweak this. But I guess you should always be tweaking. But too many people, I would say it's a bigger error is to give up early. So you can't do that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
But it's like at the beginning, you have to be smart and you got to look at your product and, you know, have some way to measure your competitive advantage over what the market is offering. I guess I'd say it like that. Think deeper about your competitive advantage and even use things. I mean, there's all kinds of online tools. You can use SurveyMonkey. You can use your friends.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
You could use LinkedIn. There's ways where you can... vet that. But often what happens is as, you know, you're growing your business, you kind of naturally do that. You know what I mean? The good leaders are naturally, like you're probably not even thinking about it, but you're learning. You're like, oh, okay, I got the sale here. What copy did I use? Or what pitch was I using?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
Oh, okay, this is what they wanted. I thought they wanted this, but they actually wanted this, right? And you're sort of iterating along the way. But if you can do that without making it accidental, like from the beginning, if you could do your basic market research. And if this is basic branding, right? So it's like, what is your position in the market? Okay.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And can you create some sort of emotional connection? Now, not every product, a lot of people think, well, like with us, with fridges, how are we going to do that? You know, but you can do it. You can, you can come up with fun ways to create some emotional connection because a brand is a feeling that somebody has about you. That's literally what it is.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
So how do you make more people feel a certain way about you?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
For the bullshit. I always say, to make this understandable for people, I put this out on Twitter a few times, X. I never met a wildly successful pessimist. And people will say, oh, what about short sellers? I was like, that person's optimistic. They think they're more optimistic than anybody. They're like...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
They're going against the grain and they're willing to risk everything with unlimited downside because they believe that they're right. That's pretty optimistic. Pessimism is somebody who thinks the deck is stacked against them. The system is rigged, all that crap. Like, please, like some of that may be true from time to time.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
But at the end of the day, we all have the power to change our circumstances. And the reason I love why we're drilling down on this is. I talk about this in this book, this one phrase to always anchor me to what I believe in and what I'm doing. Opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence. Right. And that's a simple way of saying like lightning and thunder.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
You know, you always see the flash of light first. That's the opportunity. It travels. Light travels many times faster than the speed of sound. And evidence is thunder. It's unmistakable, but everybody hears it. And so if you want to be wildly successful, you first have to be an optimist or else you won't even believe you saw the light. You'd be like, ah, it's in my head.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And then the ability to act on it is the thing that sets winners apart. And back to your point about belief, it's why burn the boats is so important because the time to burn the boats is when the opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence. When you burn the boats, when everybody knows about it, it's like... Well, it's, you know, it's too late.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
You know, that being said, if you're an innovative and dynamic and optimistic person, when you think it's too late, it's still OK.