Adam Torres and TJ Slattery discuss scaling businesses.
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Show Notes:
What are the most common pitfalls or challenges that business owners face? In this episode, Adam Torres interviews TJ Slattery, Founder & Strategic Advisor at Crowsnest Consulting, explores scaling businesses and what it takes to build a culture of care?
About TJ Slattery
TJ is a lifetime entrepreneur, small business owner, and strategic advisor with an insatiable desire to help other small business owners scale their enterprise and gain freedom in their professional and personal lives. With 20 years operating in the world of small business and entrepreneurship, TJ leverages his boots-on-the-ground experience and tenure as a business advisor to partner with small business owners and propel their business to the next level.
About Crowsnest Consulting
Crowsnest Consulting was founded to address a common challenge faced by small business owners—losing sight of the bigger picture. While each business has its own unique obstacles, the underlying issue often remains the same: the owner is not in the “Crowsnest” of their business. By providing strategic guidance and practical solutions, Crowsnest Consulting helps business owners regain control, navigate challenges, and steer their companies toward sustainable growth.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have TJ Slattery on the line, and he’s a founder and a strategic advisor to small businesses over at Crow’s Nest Consulting.
Tj, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam. Happy afternoon. Happy Monday. Great to be here. Good to meet you over the phone. Come on man. That’s what I’m talking about. So just to get us kicked off here, first off when I looked at what your PR team sent in, which big shout out to your PR team.
They’re wonderful. I’ve been working with and with them and , they’re topnotch, but so underpants gnome syndrome, understanding step two of the business plan, first off, underpants gnome syndrome, what is that? ’cause I don’t know. All right, so this one, this one’s gonna take a little bit of context.
So as a strategic advisor, my whole background’s been working in and on small businesses from having my own startups working in some small private equity deals, and really just working in a small business sector and seeing how many different companies get to different stages. And then kind of, steam in there are areas and.
Their ability to grow. So I operate as strategic advisor to help them get over those humps and the growing pains in their first three to five years, where sometimes that initial business plan will, you know, kind of dry up and they’re looking for what that next thing to do is. And I. You know, business acumen kinda runs out of some roads.
So I help be that ying to their SME Yang to continue growing as a strategic advisor. So one of the big things that I see all the time with small business owners, we, there’s a lot of kind of prototypes that we have or personality types in the entrepreneurial and small business world. Mm-hmm. And one is there’s a ton of, you know, dreamers and a lot of visionaries, which is fantastic.
They got a ton of ideas. What a lot of those guys end up developing is what I call Underpant syndrome. Hold on, you did you coin that term? Wait, first thing first, tj. So that’s your coin term? Yes. So I’ve turned it into, I love it. No, this is great. This is your IP right here. Well, no, no, I’m telling you. So I took, Underpants notes from actually an old episode of South Park.
You ever watch that show of Absolutely Uhhuh. So there’s, there’s an episode called Underpants Gnomes. It’s a bit out there, but I couldn’t believe it. I rewatched it recently, or, you know, in the last, you know, five or 10 years. I love it. And I watched him as they go through this explanation. So if you remember the South Park kids, right?
There’s one kid tweak and, you know, he comes at kids and he’s freaking out. He goes, you guys, you guys can’t even believe it. The underpants zones came again last night. They stole my underpants. They go, sweet, that’s fine. You, there’s no such thing as underpants. No. They’re like, well, if you guys don’t believe me, fine.
We’ll go, come, come to my house tonight. We’ll stake out the bedroom and I’ll show you. They go, okay, whatever. Fine. So they go and stick out the kids’ room and sure enough, at the stroke of midnight, come marching a troop of underpants. No. And they turn the kids, you know, dress their drawers into stairs and they climb the top.
They’re stealing underpants, and the kids turn the light on like, oh my God, they caught ’em. And they go, what the heck? Well, first of all. What in the world, underpants, nose do exist. And second of all, why, why are you stealing underpants? And the underpants nose go, it’s simple for profit. And you go, what?
What do you mean for profit? And they pull this whiteboard out to show the kids. They go, step one, steal underpants, step two, step three, profit. And you go, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. What’s step two? And they go, wait, let’s see. Pull it up, pull it back up. Step one, 200 pound, step two. Big question mark on their, whiteboard.
Step three profit. Mm. And the whole point is they, they’re so excited about their idea. They’re still underpants, that’s all they do. And they have this huge, collection of underpants over the years. ‘ cause what’s, you know, the plan’s, the profit. But step two is the biggest piece. It’s the biggest one that so many owners and entrepreneurs and visionaries will get excited about.
That’s great idea or really fun product. And just by having it, we’re going to. Now make a profit. And what I see is, again, this kind of goes into one of our discussion topics. There’s so much that goes into that step two on the operations, on making sure this is a valid business idea and that you’ve got all the plans laid out to actually making make this happen and that you know your underpants will be profitable.
Man, I love this. It’s, great. And I’ll tell you, I’ll, and I’ll pick on myself to start, I had no idea what I was doing. We started this business and , my last book, I call myself the Accidental Entrepreneur and sometimes mm-hmm people think I’m being humble. And I’m like, no, that’s not true actually.
And I actually don’t put myself out there as a person that gives business advice. Like, that’s just not, I’m still learning myself, you know? So that’s the way I look at. Things I’ve only built to a certain level, but there’s other people that have a mind to build so much further and are doing their, and living in their, in their way of doing things.
That being said, what are some of the things that, like, let’s, let’s stick on that step two a little bit longer. I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. , what are people doing? What have you seen? What are the challenges? So challenges are, thinking through every thread of a step. And I’ve tried to work a lot with owners on getting rid of what I also call like magical thinking.
And one really good example of that is I am going to write a book and therefore I’m going to make a million dollars and be on New York Times bestseller and everyone’s gonna come to me for business and like, okay, you just skipped some pretty big steps in the book writing process. Let’s talk about that some more.
And so it’s really slowing down and, helping owners think through. We’re gonna grow to a hundred people next year. Like, okay, why do you want a hundred employees? And what’s your recruitment plan and what’s the cost per employee to bring them on? And what is your retention plan and what does that mean for the development, development of your management system to keep them on?
And what will a hundred, you know, employees empower you to go and do? So it’s thinking, getting people to kind of slow down and really think through the more kind of, as some people call it, the more boring, practical parts of the business that I get excited about because it’s. what makes things tick.
And so it’s the magical thinking of like writing a book. And I do A and I get output B. And it applies to a lot of marketing efforts. And I think a lot of marketing agencies get caught in this where they say, oh, we’re you need to generate leads. We generate leads by doing X, Y, or Z tactics. Work with us and we’ll make it happen.
Like we didn’t really think through. Does that audience respond well to your type of lead gen? Do they read where your publications are and do they spend the will you spend? And is this, you know what actually gonna bring your client? Right? Kind of leads, or is this just gonna be bringing a ton of, you’re churning up low quality leads, but you’re still doing it.
You didn’t connect all the pieces. It goes a lot with improvement as well. We’re gonna build, build, build, and bring all those different people on, but you think through how, what are the psychographics of that new employee that you’re bringing on? How do they fit into the culture? What’s the long-term plan for that person being at the business, and what’s your backup plan if they, fall through?
How are you making making sure we connect with that employee instead of just saying, we’re gonna throw on a hundred new people? What’s the step by step to making sure that’s a, valid plan? And same thing just looking at, you’ll ask owners and say, okay, we, we want to, three x our revenue by next year.
Like, okay, let’s, let’s actually spend time and map this out. I love doing a holistic proforma and say, okay, you did, 5 billion this year. You wanna do 15 next year? That’s really easy. We could put one number up here, one number up there, you know, over 12 months. Okay. What does that mean for each month?
How much do you have to grow in order to get to that? You know, maybe it’s A-R-R-M-R-R. Maybe it’s in unit sales. Mm-hmm. But what does that mean internally? Okay, it’s a big number that looks fun. But what does that mean for your marketing? What does that mean for your sales? Do you have enough salespeople to triple your sales?
Do you have to have a new, a whole new system put in place? does your CRM, is that gonna break? When you add so many leads, that’s gonna generate enough enough sales to get there. Do you have enough people that are trained enough to make that happen? Do you have the capacity internally to deliver on that much sales?
And so it’s thinking through all the four corners of your business to make sure that, okay, three x sounds great on paper with revenue, but what does that mean for how else we’re gonna have to grow? Where do things start to break and pop off? Are we actually thinking through the different departments and components of a business?
This is a sustainable growth that we can have because oftentimes we’ll think through and Yep, we got our sales plan, marketing plan’s gonna do it, we’re gonna push through to a million. And like you guys didn’t look back and think through warehouse space, but that wasn’t even a consideration. And now as a, you know, massive issue and you’ve got a huge block up and you can’t deliver on your product and you’ve grown that much on revenue, but you’ve now died because nobody trusts your liver on time.
So it’s, mm-hmm. Being 360 degree view through having a proma. That is trying to get owners to slow down a little bit and really think through the minutia of what that business plan is. Hmm. You said something about you kind of mentioned culture and I know there’s a, lot that you mentioned, but I wanna circle back to the culture part.
Like how does that play a role in everything? Like, if we can go maybe a step further on that. Yeah, so I think about this a lot and I work with, a lot of owners on it, and it’s, it goes back to like a culture of caring and what does it mean to have somebody on your team and what does it mean for them to be brought onto your business?
And I encourage owners to look at their employee. That’s more than a relationship of, I give you money, you do good work, or you do good work. I give you money. Right? There needs to be so much more because they’re putting. Their creativity and energy and lifeblood into your business. How else are you supporting them besides just, I give you check, you do good work and move forward.
And when I think of a culture of caring, it’s you’re doing a lot of touchpoints and you’re considering this is a you know, a two-way highway, right? This is a bilateral communication on what are the expectations of in a relationship. So they come on and it’s say, okay, need to work for these hours, nine to five.
You’re making this salary, you’re getting, you know, this kind of bonuses and benefits and support. Okay. We’re, we’re giving you all that. What are, you know, we’re getting X amount work from you. What do you want from us? What do you expect from this job? Mm-hmm. And maybe you’re a startup and you’re like, Hey, you might need to be here until eight or nine o’clock some nights.
So you might be on the weekends, like, we’re really pushing. You’re gonna be our ops guy. There’s gonna be some crazy hours. Is that okay with you? Is, you know, is that communicated from the beginning in the interview? Is that communicated in the onboarding? Is that brought up again, you know, three or six months into the relationship that hey, this is part of the job.
Have you agreed to this? Is this work for you as far as how we operate? So we’re not throwing you any, you know, curve balls that you’re not prepared for or weren’t already made aware of before we brought you on. And it’s keeping that alignment with that employee that they are made very clear what their expectations are.
At, you know, from the first interview to day one, when they’re being onboarded to six months and six years in that our expectations are aligned on what we get from you, but also from you, what you get from us. Like we can’t just extend you, you’re a single mom working for us part-time as an accountant. We just can’t suddenly ask you to work weekends.
Like that’s not part of the deal. Yeah. And that was your expectation of us when you came on. And we’re not gonna throw this at you and say, well, you’re not, you know, dedicated ‘ cause you won’t suddenly take on this burden. And so it’s being able to align with people on what their personal goals are and what they want for business and respecting them as, that person more than just the recipient of a paycheck.
Yeah, it makes total sense. And I feel like a lot of the conversation as of light whether it’s, and not to get political or anything like that, but I feel like sometimes people are confusing culture and the importance of it and like a lot of other issues. And I’m like, what are you talking about?
Like culture without the culture of a company, without the culture. And, and I love the way you say a culture of caring. That matters. That matters. ’cause ultimately, I mean, I don’t, depending on what you’re doing, but just in general, you’re like, the people are always gonna make up, the end product.
At some point. There’s still people involved and they’re touching it at some point, regardless of how little, how few working on a project or how many even that culture matters. Like so I’m a big fan of that and I, I, I’m trying to continue to bring that conversation out more and more so that people saw, I mean, I, you know, I’m not hearing enough of it lately that that’s what I’m saying.
Yeah. It’s, caring and it’s, it’s respect. And if you came onto a job mm-hmm. I love using this metaphor. And this is more towards, expectations in the role, but it’s like, you call it tree in the forest. So first day of the job you’re brought on. And, you know, bossman says, all right, meet me at the, bottom of the hill in this valley eight in the morning.
Mm-hmm. We’ll get you started like, okay, weird spot to meet, like, let’s do it. So you meet, the bossman there, and he’s got a big axe. Okay. Go into the forest. Mm-hmm. And when he chopping on a tree and bring it back to the office to see you there later, you’re like, okay, first day, really excited, got the job.
What in the hell? How deep in the forest? How many strokes do I get with the act? Mm-hmm. We got a big tree, small tree, wide tree, fat tree, Palm tree. Elm tree. Mm-hmm. Oak Tree. Mm-hmm. So you’re already setting somebody up with a lot of confusion on what the parameters are of their role, and they’re first day, they’re already wondering like, am I doing a good job?
Do I actually belong here? Do these people really care? Would I put this back? Like, what kind of criticism am I gonna get? Am I gonna just find out six months from now that I’ve been chopping trees the wrong way this whole time? Like, what, you know, what did I spend out for? Versus first day you meet the boss, the bomb of the hill, to give the act and say, Hey, 50 yards into the forest, there’s a big tree with a big red ribbon tied around it.
You’ve got eight hours to chop it down, bring it back to the office, and we’ll discuss how you did. Like, all right, there’s KPIs on my job. It’s really clear. I know exactly what I’m doing. You’re gonna gimme feedback on it so I can do a better job next time. And it’s, giving people clarity and transparency in their job, but it’s a matter of caring.
It’s like, I want you to be comfortable in your job. I want you to know what you’re doing and know where you stand and not have some uncertainty as to do you have a job next month? Because no one would gimme feedback. So it comes from that. Mm-hmm. A little respect. Give them that transparency. But it’s like, yeah, if I was in that position, I’d want you to give me all the instruction that I could, so I know I’m doing a good job.
Tj, it’s been great having you on the show today. I mean, I’ve, learned a lot. I’m sure my audience has as well, but I know there’s so much more you have to give with your business. How do people follow up? How do they continue the conversation? How do they keep it going and connect with your team?
Absolutely. I’d love to hear from any of your listeners have dropped me a line, wanna have a discussion on their business and see what those four corners are that they might be missing in their business planning. My email is tj@crowsnestsmindset.com. Or you can visit the website, which is of the same nature, crows nest mindset.com.
And through the website they can also set up a time to do a short meeting and do some brainstorming on what next steps the business might look like. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on ’em and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience this, this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well.
So again. Hit that subscribe or follow button. And TJ man, until the next one. Thanks again until the next time. Thanks again for coming on the show, Adam, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
Let’s chat.