Writing the Book on Successfully Growing Your Small Business featuring Barry Moltz

After successfully selling his last operating business, Barry Moltz has branched out into a number of entrepreneurship-related activities.  He founded an angel investor group, an angel fund, and is a former advisory member of the board of the Angel Capital Education Foundation.  His first book, “You Need to Be A Little Crazy: The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Business” describes the ups and downs and emotional trials of running a business. It is in its fifth reprint and has been translated into Chinese, Russian, Korean and Thai.

His second book, “Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success”, shows what it takes to come back and develop true business confidence.  It has been translated into Korean and German.  His third book, “BAM! Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World” shows how customer service is the new marketing. People now buy experiences and relationships, not products. His fourth book, Small Town Rules: How Small Business and Big Brands can Profit in a Connected Economy shows how when every customer can talk to every other customer, it’s like living in a small town: Your reputation is everything! His fifth book, “How to Get Unstuck: 25 Ways to Get Your Business Growing Again” focuses on how to get small business owners making more profits in their company.

 

Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Barry Moltz about writing the book on successfully growing your small business.

 

Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:

– How opening for an established speaker can open different doors in your life.

– Why getting paid well to speak is the ticket, and everything else is a bonus.

– How the audience will have fun if the speaker is having fun too.

– Why most people need to make changes in their lives and businesses to be successful.

– How many entrepreneurs don’t know how to read their basic documents and why that needs to change.

 

Connect with Barry:

Links Mentioned:
barrymoltz.com

Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@barrymoltz
Instagram
@barrymoltz
Facebook
facebook.com/SmallBusinessUnstuck
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/barrymoltz

 

Rob Kosberg:

Hey. Welcome, everybody. Rob Kosberg here. I’m excited to bring you another episode of the Publish Promote Profit podcast. I have a great guest, very prolific author and content creator. Barry Moltz has written six bestselling books. His most recent, Small Business Hacks: 100 Shortcuts to Success, which was a hot new release and number one release on Amazon. Barry’s a national speaker on small business, has given hundreds of presentations to audiences as small as 20 and as large as 20,000. He is a member of the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, adjunct professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, many TV shows, radio programs, Donny Deutsch Big Idea, MSNBC business, NPR, Travis Smiley. You have your own radio show, and now after all of this, finally, the Publish Promote podcast. So, great to have you on.

 

Barry Moltz:

Finally. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity.

 

Rob Kosberg:

We finally got you on. Great to meet you, my friend. I’m excited to chat with you today.

 

Barry Moltz:

20,000 was not as exciting as you think. I was speaking at the arena in Atlanta. I was opening for Mark Cuban and had to interview him on stage. They gave me 15 minutes to warm up the crowd. Everyone gets quiet. They introduce me and as soon as I start speaking, everybody starts talking. No one’s listening to me because they weren’t there to see me. They were there to see Mark Cuban. I would say it was exciting and easily the most humbling experience I’ve ever had in my life.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Thank you for sharing that. That’s both interesting and it does give an opportunity too. You could be Motley Crue opening up for AC/DC and blowing AC/DC off the stage. So, you never know, right?

 

Barry Moltz:

You just never know. It didn’t quite work out that way for me, but it was great to meet Mark Cuban.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Do you do a lot of speaking still?

 

Barry Moltz:

I did before the pandemic. The key to my happy marriage is being gone two or three nights a week. It was a challenge during the pandemic. I’ve started to speak now in the fourth quarter, and it’s picking up, but it’s confusing. The rules are different at all sorts of conferences. People don’t pay attention to the rules. So, it’s still pretty unsettling.

 

Rob Kosberg:

I completely understand that. Tell me, I want to talk about your books and your expertise.

 

Barry Moltz:

I have a new one coming out in January. It’s called, Change Masters: How to Make the Changes You Know You Need to Make. That’s coming out January. We can talk about that.

 

Rob Kosberg:

So, that’s not a small business focus. That’s more self-improvement, would you say?

 

Barry Moltz:

It’s about small business. The way this book really got started was that people would hire me, consult their company, how they can change it. We figure out what was wrong. We put together an entire plan about how to make the changes step by step. I would leave and nothing would happen. So, I got interested in why people pay a lot of money and then never change. What holds them back and how can I help them with that change? That’s the focus of it for business and for self-improvement.

 

Rob Kosberg:

I’m very excited. I want to talk about that, but I want to ask you this question about speaking and what you’re seeing as far as speaking and how it creates more business. Can you explain that a little bit? Is it about attracting and consulting clients? Is it about selling books? What is your model and plan around speaking in general since you do so much of it?

 

Barry Moltz:

Well, my model really is to get paid well to speak. Anything else that comes from it is a bonus. Remember, since I’m being paid well to speak, I’m not there to get consulting gigs. I’m not there to sell books. I’m there to give a good educational performance to the people that are assembled. Anything that comes from that is a bonus. Now, things always do come from it, but it’s not my primary focus. I’m not the kind of speaker where I go out and I speak for free hoping that I’ll sell books and hope that I get consulting games. In fact, I never sell books at the back of the room. I never really like to sell books at the conference because that’s not the focus. I’m not trying to get someone to hand over 20 bucks. I want them to learn one or two things that they can implement in their business and hopefully change their direction.

 

Rob Kosberg:

What a great model. How long have you been doing that? I imagine you’ve seen your fees go up with all of your books and your content that you’ve created as well.

 

Barry Moltz:

I’ve been doing it for about 20 years. I tell you, being off the road for year and a half, it was really hard. The first time I got back on stage after a year and a half, it sure felt good, but I sure was rusty. It takes time to get back into form.

 

Rob Kosberg:

What do you have set for next year? How many engagements already and what’s that look like?

 

Barry Moltz:

I’ve already got several dozen set for next year. Quite honestly, I’m really evaluating each and every single one of them because I’m not quite comfortable being up on stage, having an autoimmune disease, speaking in front of a group of unmasked people. So, we’ll see how things develop.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Obviously, you reach a large audience with the content you’re creating, with your radio show, and all of that as well.

 

Barry Moltz:

I did find a really good wrap-around face shield that looks like an astronaut’s helmet. When I get up on stage, no one’s wearing masks. So, the first thing I say is, “I have an autoimmune disease. I’m wearing a shield to protect myself as much as I can but if it fogs up, it means I’m not getting enough oxygen. If someone could then rush on stage, rip it off my face, but don’t give me mouth to mouth resuscitation for obvious reasons.” It gets a laugh and puts people at ease in this crazy, strange situation.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Well, you obviously have a great sense of humor and you have a great stage presence, so I’m sure you have a lot of fun with it along the way.

 

Barry Moltz:

Listen, if you have fun, the audience is going to have fun. I really believe in edutainment. Unless you’re someone who’s really famous or has a really great TV pedigree, you better be entertaining as well as interesting or you’re just not going to keep people there. Honestly, I bore myself sometimes, so I have to keep changing it up and I’ve got to make up new stuff, so it keeps me interested and engaged.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Let’s go to the book because that sounded very interesting. Tell me the title again. You said it’s coming out in January.

 

Barry Moltz:

It’s called Change Masters: How to Make the Changes You Know You Need to Make. The purpose of the book isn’t to convince you that you need to make changes in your life and your business. It’s to help you make changes that you know you need to make. We did a lot of research on why change is hard for people, and mostly because your brain is a pattern-making machine. Especially as you get older, you don’t want to change. You go to work the same way every day. Your brain likes to go on autopilot. When you have to make a change, it’s hard and it’s scary. A lot of people would rather the devil they know rather than the devil they don’t know. People only change, I believe, if they’re in an incredible amount of pain and actually have no choice. I mean, look at small businesses during the pandemic. Most of them did not want to get online. They didn’t want to put technology in. They were kicking and screaming but when they had no choice, they actually did it. The change was forced upon them.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Well, I saw that in my own business. I had been looking to go more virtual for a long time. We had a big office in Pasadena, California, and had a long-term plan to go virtual because we did have employees all over and we have a good size team. I never pulled the trigger on it. I was afraid when we were forced to pull the trigger on it because we were a non-essential business in California. It was honestly one of the best things that could have happened that came from a terrible situation. I wish I would’ve pulled the trigger earlier, but again, I guess to your point, it was being forced to pull that trigger that actually made everything better for us. Talk to me about the specifics then. So, you saw this happening in businesses that were paying you for consulting. You gave them the solutions. You showed them the changes. They didn’t want to make those changes. What are the steps then that you lay out? What’s the magic of Change Masters? Maybe walk me through that.

 

Barry Moltz:

Let me give you another example. I sell a lot of online courses. One of the things I was really surprised is that 90% of the people that buy this online course where they pay anywhere between 99 and $297, 90% of those people never open up the first module and never ask for their money back. That blew my mind. What I realized was that people think they’re changing, they have the intent to change, by buying the course. It doesn’t matter if they go through it or not, but they think they’re changing. That’s another thing that just totally shocked me. People buy stuff and just never use it. Where these 20 steps really start is that first of all, you have to understand why you’re making the change. What’s the problem? What’s the pain behind it? What are you doing now? What’s going to happen if you don’t make that change? You almost have to have the fear of not making the change, and then you need to start with a very, very small step that you can achieve. People try to solve problems with really giant leaps. In fact, when people retell the story, they talk about how they took this giant leap over to the other side and they were successful, but really it starts with being forced to and then celebrate when you’re able to achieve that step and also have a mentor or some kind of support person to help you along the way. So, it takes you through roughly 20 different steps, but that’s the crux of it. It was funny when I was testing out this worksheet, 20 steps to change, I gave it out to a bunch of my clients, people on my list and I gave it to my wife and I said, “Honey, would you fill this out?” The first thing it says, “What thing do you want to change?” She looks at this. She goes, “I don’t need to change anything. I don’t have to fill this out.” So, there you go. I don’t think I’m going to get a reader from my book from her, although she’s never read any my books. She says, “Barry, I live with you. I don’t need to read your books. I hear it all the time.”

 

Rob Kosberg:

Well, my wife hadn’t read mine either. We’re on the same boat there. That’s great. “I don’t need to change here.” I’m a little surprised. Maybe she didn’t fill out two or three things for you, though. You mentioned this in passing. Do you have a good bit of neuroscience around this idea and how the brain works? Is that something that you go into a little bit within the book?

 

Barry Moltz:

Yeah. Your brain wants to keep doing the same thing over and over again because it figures if you survived up to this point, whatever you’re doing is good because all the brain wants to do is survive. It’s hard to create those new pathways. In fact, your brain really fights against it. It wants to survive. It wants to keep doing the same thing over and over again. As I said, it gets harder when you get older because your brain gets lazy. It’s harder to form those new pathways in your brain. It’s not just your fault. It’s basically your brain’s fault.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Give me an exercise or two that somebody could maybe go through. You mentioned about really looking at the thing you should be afraid of, which is not changing. Is there any kind of exercise that you put together to stimulate that kind of thought?

 

Barry Moltz:

Well, first, as I said, I want people to go through what’s the problem? Why do they have to make the change? What are they going to do? What’s going to happen if they don’t make the change and then what’s the first step you need to do in order to make that change? For example, I find that a lot of entrepreneurs can’t read their financial statements. As I drive around the country, about 50% of people don’t understand a profit and loss statement. Twenty-five percent can’t understand a balance sheet. Five percent can’t read a cashflow statement. So, let’s say you want to start understanding your profit and loss statement. What’s the first step you should do? Well, I always say the first step you should do is take a look at sales. Let’s not take a look at sales, and cost of goods sold, and overhead expenses, and net profit, and depreciation, or whatever it is. Let’s just look at one small part of that and do that first and get something out of it, and then go on to the next one. I think that we really have to break these things down to very, very small chunks. I remember when I was learning to meditate, I would go to my Zen master and I would say, “Listen, you taught me to meditate for two minutes. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years. I really want to take it to the next level. What should I do?” He said to me, “Well, next year, try two minutes and five seconds.” In America business, we want to take these giant leaps, but progress is made by slow and steady. I mean, one of the reasons why most people join health clubs January 1st and quit health clubs January 30th is the first week, they go five times the health club. Then the next week, they go four times, then three times. Try something small and see if you can sustain it, and then go on to the next one.

 

Rob Kosberg:

That brings up my next point, and maybe in general regarding your small business knowledge. You mentioned about reading your financials, balance sheets, et cetera. What do you see are some of the biggest problems that small business owners need to address, that they’re not addressing, or that are urgent, and they are beginning to address? What, in general, do you see?

 

Barry Moltz:

Besides cashflow, because all businesses go out of business for one reason, and that’s cash. People understand cashflow. I would say it breaks down to four other errors. One is sales and marketing. People don’t do marketing on a consistent basis. They don’t keep their pipeline full. They only do marketing when they have no business. As soon as they get business as a result of that marketing, they stop doing the marketing. It’s a stop and start. Also, they don’t really know how to create other leaders in their organization. When they start, their organization chart is basically hub and spoke. They’re in the middle and everybody works for them, and every major decision goes to them. That’s a problem because if your business is only about you, then you have a job, not really a business. The third thing really is about the customer experience. People really need to understand that whenever you’re selling a product or service, people can get it anywhere. What they can’t get anywhere is the experience they have with your company because now people want to form some kind of personal connection. They want to get invested in doing business with you. That’s what you got to focus in on. The fourth thing really is productivity. People keep complaining. There’s not enough time but it’s not about time. It’s about you don’t focus your attention on doing the things that day and you let all these interruptions get in the way. In fact, if there are no interruptions, we actually go looking for interruptions, so we don’t have to do what we want to do. Those are the four areas or the five areas, including cashflow, that really small business owners really have a difficulty with.

 

Rob Kosberg:

The productivity thing seems to be a red flag these days with employees now mainly working from home. I don’t know that working from home means that people are generally less productive. I imagine that there are studies on that. Can you speak to that a little bit? What do you see now in the last year and a half that this has been a pattern, and how can you help people to be productive in that home environment?

 

Barry Moltz:

I think that we have to get past the industrial mindset of people have to have their butt in the seat for a certain period of time. I think we should focus on value. I think some employees are incredibly productive at home and some employees aren’t productive at home because they get distracted. I believe that you have to figure out with the person that’s working with you what has to get accomplished in a certain period of time and do they get it accomplished regardless of how much time it really takes? We should be tied to value and contribution, not time. That’s the industrial mindset and that’s an old mindset. Figure out what kind of results this person should achieve and really focus on that, and then audit that. That’s the important part. It’s like when my kid was little, I’d say, “Hey, go clean up your room.” Well, if I never looked to see if the room was clean, he would never do it. So, as they say, people respect whatever you inspect. Set up the goals and then review it with them.

 

Rob Kosberg:

That’s good. That’s a gem right there. Are there certain ways to think about KPIs and setting up goals when it comes to employees working from home? In the past, they were in the office doing their thing and you just expected, and things progressed along. I’m even thinking of my own business. I can see certain times where we were really lazy about KPIs because we always saw that people were in there and working on their thing, and sometimes their thing just took a little bit longer.

 

Barry Moltz:

Well, I think that it’s good that we’re shifting over to KPIs because again, just because someone was sitting at their desk doesn’t mean they’re working or working effectively but it’s comforting for the business owner. As they walk through the office, they see people there. At least they feel like they’re getting something for their money. Now, they can’t see the person. So, it’s really hard but that’s why I say at the beginning of the week, at the beginning of the day, whatever fits the task that person’s doing, figure out what’s got to be accomplished, then review with them sometime later. As you said, focus on the KPI, not the butts in seats. I know that a lot of people still have a hard time with that. I do believe that we lose something by people not being in the office because there’s a certain amount of culture and a communication that really happens if people are all in one place. I still believe that we work probably best when we’re physically together. I think that being in the office, unless you’re a retail store or a manufacturer, being in the office five days a week is probably a thing of the past. I’m still hoping that most people can do it two or three days a week and really focus on those meetings where they need to be together.

 

Rob Kosberg:

I was a little surprised, to be honest, the number of our team that really missed the office environment. That surprised me. I thought that they would be so happy and thrilled to be able to work from home and all of that. We have a very conscientious group, which is encouraging. Have you noticed that as well? Is there a sense in other businesses that people are missing that comradery and exposure to one another?

 

Barry Moltz:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I think that people do want to be in the office at least two or three days a week because they want that comradery. They also want that separation that comes between business and personal life. It was all meshed up together. If we weren’t good at focusing our attention before, it was really hard during the pandemic because we had families to deal with. We had health threats to deal with. I think people are looking for the relief when they can separate things out. What studies show is that people were actually working longer hours, most people. Now there were those people like with one of my clients, they found out that one of their accounting assistants actually was holding two full-time jobs working remotely. They eventually let her go, but I mean, you can never do that if you’re working in the office.

 

Rob Kosberg:

That’s an ambitious person right there.

 

Barry Moltz:

It’s not that they did two great jobs. They actually did both jobs really mediocre.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Talk to me about the other parts of your business. You’re a speaker and you speak for a high fee. You make a difference, but you do get other opportunities. I imagine you do consulting, things like that. So, what do you do for small business? What does that all look like, your magic?

 

Barry Moltz:

My two other areas, well, I get small business owners unstuck, and mostly, these days, I’ve been focusing on family businesses because they’ve got real issues. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve watched the TV show Succession about the family business now. Most people I consult for aren’t that rich and they’re not that dysfunctional, but people are trying to figure out how do they transition from the relationships and roles they had as a family to being operating effectively as a family business. I mean, for me, I work with my wife for a day, she wouldn’t do what I told her to do, so we stopped working together. So, we figured it out really quickly, but a lot of families are on first, second, third generation. It’s hard because 50% each generation it goes through, 50% aren’t successful in passing it on. That’s one area of focus. The other area of focus is I do a lot of selling small businesses because now’s the time, especially if you have any kind of cloud-based business, things are really hot, and you can get a lot of money for your business. I have a lot of folks exiting right now, taking their marbles and going home onto the next adventure.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Define a small business in that regard. What’s your definition of that?

 

Barry Moltz:

Well, I mean, usually I’m working with businesses that are at least 3 million to 50 million in size. I don’t usually work with startups because if I’m going to get people unstuck, people that are smaller or just starting out, they don’t know what they don’t know. I like them to be in business three or five years before they realize that. It’s usually got to be a business that’s doing at least $3 million in sales.

 

Rob Kosberg:

I have heard the same thing. I mean, there’s a lot of money sloshing around in the system right now. Valuations, I guess, are really high for that reason.

 

Barry Moltz:

We’re seeing valuations of anywhere between 7 and 15 times annual recurring revenue. It’s just nutso. We’ve got a lot of people walking away with 50, 100, $150 million, so it’s a good chunk of change.

 

Rob Kosberg:

That’s fantastic for those people. Congratulations. I want to talk about your book in just a moment, but talk me through how you take somebody that has, say tech business or a small business of 3 to $5 million and you help to position them for that sale because most are not prepared or ready for that kind of thing.

 

Barry Moltz:

The first thing I ask them is, “What are you going to do the day after you sell your business? Because if you’re not ready for the day after, you’re not going to sell your business.” I usually get some kind of success fee. I want to make sure if we come with a deal, it’s going to go through. Many years ago, I had a situation where I was selling someone’s business. A week before it was going to close, the youngest and favorite daughter of the owner said, “Mom, I don’t want you to sell this business,” and that one fell apart. I really want to know what they’re going to do the day after. The second thing is number are power. I really want to understand how solid their financial statements really are. Are there any skeletons in the closet? I asked that question to one business owner and she says, “Well, let me show you my closet.” She went to a closet in her office and she opens it up, and there’s all this money. She goes, “Well, this is the $3 million I skimmed off of the business over the last 20 years.” Okay. I don’t think I can take this thing on here. This is not going to work here. Numbers are power. If your numbers are solid, you’ll have an opportunity to really retain the price you decide on. Remember, when someone goes out and due diligence, it’s basically a colonoscopy, right? I mean, they’re going to go in there. They’re going to reach in. They’re going to find whatever they can. They’re going to call your baby ugly. You got to be ready for it.

 

Rob Kosberg:

That’s good. That’s good. I love it, Barry. What a story. Let’s switch gears and let’s talk about your books. You’ve written six books. You’re a prolific content creator, not just with books. You have your seventh book coming out here in January. You continue to write books because they’re doing something for you, your speaking career, your business. We know that the hope is that they’ll make a difference in business owners’ lives. How have your books made a difference to your business?

 

Barry Moltz:

Well, I think first of all, you write books because you think you have something to say. You think you have something to really contribute on a certain topic. It also is a big fat business card. Even today, when you write a book, people think you are an expert in this area. That’s why I think as much as people like to read eBooks, it’s still important to have a physical book that actually goes out there so people can actually hold it, touch it, feel it, whatever it is. I think it’s a big marketing tool to show that you’re an expert. For me, the reason I keep coming out with different books is for people to invite me back to their conferences because I have something new to say. That usually works out really well. It gets you repeat customers in a time where maybe someone invites you once to their conference. They never invite you back.

 

Rob Kosberg:

That’s a great strategy. I’ve never heard anybody say that directly. I’ve always thought it indirectly, but that’s a great strategy. So, following up with that, does that mean that every year or so, you’re trying to write something new?

 

Barry Moltz:

I would say every two to three years. It’s hard. There’s only so many things to write about and you want to come up with something that inspires you, that you can write 30 or 60,000 words about. I’ve started books and never completed them because I couldn’t flesh it out or I just lost interest in it. It takes a lot of time. Now, fortunately, during COVID, we had a lot of time. I see a lot of books coming out because people are doing a lot of writing.

 

Rob Kosberg:

Obviously, it really is making a difference in the industry. Where can we direct people to for someone that maybe is interested in your books or interested maybe in working with you?

 

Barry Moltz:

Yeah. So, you go to my website, which is www.barrymoltz.com, which is B-A-R-R-Y-M-O-L-T-Z dot com. You can go to Amazon and you can buy any of my books. If you like my books, I’d appreciate it if you leave a very favorable view. If you read the book and don’t like it, just keep it to yourself.