#48 Exploring cash flow, clarity, and what it takes to build better businesses with Tracy Bech and Kyle McCulloch

TRANSCRIPT: THE bizval PODCAST
Guest: Tracy Bech, Founder — 60 Min CFO
Host: Kyle McCulloch, CEO and Co-Founder, bizval

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[00:00:07] Kyle McCulloch: Good. Thank you. Cool. So today, I’d like to introduce Tracy Beck, serial entrepreneur author and the founder of the 60 min. Cfo. Tracy. I know you also mentor hundreds of business owners around the Us, especially as it relates to financial literacy so welcome.

[00:00:26] Tracy Bech: Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

[00:00:28] Kyle McCulloch: Alright cool so maybe. Maybe. Why don’t we start with your background and your your journey into entrepreneurship like you know? Tell tell us your story.

[00:00:37] Tracy Bech: Sure my background is truly a serial entrepreneur. I started my 1st business when I was 25. I didn’t really mean to, or think of myself as an entrepreneur, but more just interested in solving problems and doing things a better way. And I now know that I’m also that’s kind of the

[00:00:58] Tracy Bech: the the dictionary definition of an entrepreneur. But when you’re 25 it just more felt like the next right thing to do. And that was that company was a service based business. We it was 2,003. So it was a long time ago. But we built websites. So you know. Imagine a world before Wix and Squarespace where you anyone could build a website. So we did. Pretty complex database driven we were really focused in on search engine optimization and things like that.

[00:01:28] Tracy Bech: We built that business and we were a small agency size and kind of realized that agencies run on people and projects, and you’re either you’re always looking for more people or more projects, and that I think that repetition and we had done it for enough years just started to kind of wear on us. And when I say us myself and my business partner.

[00:01:54] Tracy Bech: and so right around 2,007, 8 we started to think about diversification and moving in a new direction. And we did. We pivoted from services the beautiful, simple world of services into products unknowingly, again, kind of just doing what felt like the next right thing maybe haphazard is a key or impulsive is a key word along these lines of my story. And

[00:02:23] Tracy Bech: began our own e-commerce website. So because we had all of our own skills to build websites in house. It felt like a very easy thing for us to build our own e-commerce website. And literally, our famous last words were, all we need to do is find something to sell.

[00:02:39] Tracy Bech: So little did we realize we were actually going from a service based very simple, especially with regards to finance, financials and financial accounting to a product based inventory, based retail model which anybody who is in retail knows. It comes with a whole new level of

[00:03:00] Tracy Bech: financial fluency required. And that’s really where cash flow hit me right in the face. Because before, when you’re just making websites, you don’t have to invest in inventory

[00:03:10] Tracy Bech: and on a e-commerce inventory platform. You are.

[00:03:16] Tracy Bech: you know. You come to the table having to purchase inventory, and then you have to manage your profits in a way that allows you to reinvest in all the inventory that you just sold.

[00:03:25] Tracy Bech: and then also have enough cash to pay yourself, which was a rude awakening honestly, the lucky piece of this puzzle is that we were able to grow the business really fast, and we saw a real reason to exist. The unlucky piece of the puzzle is, we grew it so fast we almost grew broke. So again, cash flow became a really important tool for me to learn.

[00:03:48] Tracy Bech: We also learned all about valuation and exit because we were getting in way too deep trying to run 2 separate businesses. So we exited the Web Development agency

[00:04:00] Tracy Bech: just kind of its own story and and set of learnings there to focus in on this big, shiny, new multimillion dollar e-commerce project. Once we realized that we were growing broke. We had some decision making to do, and I honestly thought

[00:04:16] Tracy Bech: finances, you know, finances for accountants, finances for bookkeepers, finances for not people who are creative and and business dealmakers like myself. Someone else should be in charge of all of that

[00:04:29] Tracy Bech: until until I realized this was my problem to solve, and that no one was gonna care about it as much as me and my business partner right like we were the ones sitting here growing this business to the moon, with no money in the bank, because we had tons of profits, but no cash. Anyway, we figured we sat ourselves down.

[00:04:50] Tracy Bech: had a real heart to heart with ourselves about the the real need to understand what was going on here. And the good news is we figured it out, and we we ended up again unknowingly. Just kind of being problem solvers.

[00:05:03] Tracy Bech: Again, I think. Kind of like a dictionary definition. Entrepreneurs. We just were like, what do we need to know? And we ended up writing our own cash flow software. And we started to understand the relationship

[00:05:16] Tracy Bech: between how fast we grew the company. How much we reinvested in inventory, and what that looked like for our actual cash position, how profitable we needed to be was something we really understood innately, because that’s something that you do on an agency side in services so like a lot of business owners, we understood the income statement. It was really understanding what inventory looks like on your balance sheet.

[00:05:41] Tracy Bech: and how quickly you can grow, and what your liabilities might look like if you choose to pay in cash, or if you choose to extend that out on terms. And all of these things started to come into focus for us. And when I say light bulbs went off it. It really was life changing because it allowed us to finally have confidence

[00:06:04] Tracy Bech: and feel a lot of freedom within our business. We understood what it meant when we placed a purchase order to bring in more inventory, and how long that inventory sat on the shelf, and how long it took for us to get paid. When it sold, all of these things became very, very clear, and we had this beautiful dashboard that we built ourselves to manage it.

[00:06:26] Tracy Bech: All this was really fun until it just wasn’t. And we had arbitrage being these web developers who understood how Google and email marketing worked and all the things worked. We had this nice head start. So we had this kind of like blue ocean to play in until we didn’t. And

[00:06:45] Tracy Bech: what happened is Amazon Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom came breathing down our necks. We sold designer jewelry. So

[00:06:53] Tracy Bech: all of a sudden a whole bunch of new competitors came online, and not small ones, ones with with way deeper pockets and and bigger, fancier balance sheets than us. And it just was again. It was kind of a reckoning. It was a personal reckoning, as much of anything. To decide. You know

[00:07:09] Tracy Bech: I’m a risk taker. I understand what it means to be in business. But do I really want to be in business with these guys? Who’s who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t think twice about putting me out of business by a few, you know, a few strategic plays, so that that then.

[00:07:26] Tracy Bech: through a series of decisions, brought us to a second exit. So we then exited from the commerce business kind of right in the nick of time. Before, you know, it really looked like we were just kind of a commodity. Another company selling jewelry.

[00:07:41] Tracy Bech: Then in comes my dad, who has a background in finance. Right? Funny kind of irony. There, in that I was struggling on some of the most basic financial principles.

[00:07:54] Tracy Bech: but because he had a way more traditional understanding of retail. He never equated what we were doing online to just a true old fashioned, good old fashioned standard retail model. And I would ask him these questions, and he would just go. I can’t help you. He just didn’t. He did not have the confidence in his understanding of what I was doing. Technical, just technology speaking

[00:08:19] Tracy Bech: so the irony is that he comes to me after I exit this second business, and I I truly exited with no plan. B. Like I did not know what I was going to do next. I just knew I was going to do nothing for a while. It was honestly like kind of a delayed maternity leave. I just had my second kid. I, of course, had no maternity leave as an entrepreneur

[00:08:39] Tracy Bech: hate to say. Of course it doesn’t have to be like that, but in my world. It didn’t happen, so I was just going to take a minute.

[00:08:45] Tracy Bech: and he said, Well, while you’re doing that, would you do me a favor. I just wrote this book. It’s called 60 min Cfo, and it really is. You know, it’s the 40 years of my teaching small business owners finance all in one handy book, and I read the book he goes. Will you help me sell it online?

[00:09:02] Tracy Bech: And I said, Sure, let me, you know. Let me do some research, and I read the book, and it was almost like a How dare you? Moment, you know I’m like, How dare you know all of this, and then have me figure it out on my own.

[00:09:15] Tracy Bech: Learn it all the hard way when you had all the answers. And it. You know, it’s funny how life works. It couldn’t have been a bigger gift to me to have to have figured it out on my own, because

[00:09:25] Tracy Bech: I now know every single funny little road. Your brain wants to go down as an entrepreneur to to understand these concepts. And then he came in with the actual

[00:09:38] Tracy Bech: book knowledge. The book smarts the you know, all of the jargon, all of the names, all of the principles that have existed, you know, on back to like the Romans for finance. So when we met the when we married the 2 up, you know his, his, his school learnings, his academic knowledge of finance, plus all of his 40 years of working with entrepreneurs, plus my dislike

[00:10:02] Tracy Bech: case study of being, you know, a real real. I had my heels pretty dug in, and then I had to come, you know, overcome this. It it became what we didn’t know would be just a really cool partnership. So I was like, yes, I’ll actually help you sell this online. And I will actually help you teach this because I am passionate about the light bulbs that go off. When people finally realize they A can understand this. And B, it’s gonna really change the way you play the game of your business.

[00:10:32] Tracy Bech: So here we are today we teach. We teach the stuff. My dad is actually now fully retired. So I am carrying the torch forward with 60 min Cfo and and really dedicated towards helping business owners have those same Aha! Moments that that I had. That that bring you a lot of peace.

[00:10:49] Tracy Bech: So yes, that’s my story.

[00:10:52] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah. So I think a lot of business owners, obviously. And and you can, you can likely attest to this in dealing with them on a day to day basis. But a lot of business owners go through the same sort of struggles like, what was your?

[00:11:07] Kyle McCulloch: I guess it’s I guess it’s a really confusing point to be in. You know you’re making all these profits, and you know you still kind of feel broke. But what was your process. How did you unpack all of that? And if you were, if you were advising.

[00:11:21] Kyle McCulloch: you know very generically, I know it differs per business, but you know. How would you go about breaking that down? And you know, did you use like 1st principle approach? Did you think about it differently where you just resilient. And

[00:11:34] Kyle McCulloch: yeah, let’s talk about that.

[00:11:36] Tracy Bech: So the the moment we realize our error in our thinking was then I remember it really well, and this was a white knuckle ride like we built this business so fast, so I don’t fault us for not figuring it out sooner, because we were busy. But we had our little Web Development Agency. We had this little conference room.

[00:11:55] Tracy Bech: and we had turned the conference room into our warehouse for our jewelry. Luckily, jewelry is small, so we fit a lot of it in there. And so we had this whole wall of little boxes that held all these little pieces of jewelry.

[00:12:08] Tracy Bech: and we would order, and we would. We would receive our jewelry, and we’d put our jewelry away in our little like Mini warehouse system. And then, when it was time every day to run the orders we would. You know. We’d print out all of our packing slips and our shipping labels, and we would pick, pack and ship our orders.

[00:12:27] Tracy Bech: And so we were doing this, and we were tired. Kyle, like we had already done a whole day of web development, and then we would save this like 1 h of the day, our special hour to work on our side project right, and we were hustling, and I remember my business partner looked at me, and she’s like, God, how much money’s in the bank like we gotta have enough money to finally pay ourselves from this side hustle.

[00:12:48] Tracy Bech: and maybe like not do all this web development. We were looking for that inflection point. And I said, I know it’s really weird. There’s like no money.

[00:12:56] Tracy Bech: I don’t know where it is, and she goes. Well, where’s all the money? And I was like, Oh, shoot! You’re actually the smarter one. Here she was the computer programmer. And so I always was like, I’m I’m the one with all the creative ideas like, you’re the one who’s supposed to know where the money is like. And I just kind of, you know, like, do some of these business mechanics around the money. But like, Don’t you shoot? Okay? So we don’t. We both don’t know where the money is, and we’re literally like talking about this as we are pick packing and shipping these orders.

[00:13:22] Tracy Bech: and I was like looking at the stuff in my hands, and then I looked at the wall of jewelry.

[00:13:29] Tracy Bech: and I was like, Oh, my God! There’s the money! Money is in the inventory

[00:13:36] Tracy Bech: right like, and I didn’t know that because you do in accounting you track inventory as an asset on the balance sheet. And remember, I’ve been running a Web development company. The only assets on our balance sheets were like a couple of computers, monitors.

[00:13:54] Tracy Bech: and and they’re like ancient, like the you know you. You booked them like 2 years ago, and you haven’t thought about your assets since.

[00:14:02] Tracy Bech: and I was like, Oh, my God! And every time we sell a bracelet we buy 2 more bracelets.

[00:14:10] Tracy Bech: so we took all of our profits from the bracelet. and we used it. Luckily we had a really nice markup margin, and we went and bought

[00:14:18] Tracy Bech: everything we could buy because we were growing so fast. We didn’t want to leave money on the table, so we weren’t. We weren’t doing a 1 to one. We were doing a 1 to 2, and that because we were growing so fast right in order to grow. You got to have all the inventory to sell. You can’t sell something you didn’t buy, and I was like we have been putting our profits right back into the

[00:14:39] Tracy Bech: jewelry, and she goes, well, when are we ever gonna make any money? And I was like, well, I don’t know but people do this right, like Nordstrom’s, exists for a reason, and I was like, I don’t know. We have to figure this out like we’ve got to there. At some point we got to be able to get ahead of this right like, and she’s like, Oh, and so we were doing this while we were touching our jewelry right? And we were like shipping this stuff out. And then I was like realizing, you know you can when you’re doing it all yourself. You get these really cool, tangible moments where you’re like.

[00:15:06] Tracy Bech: you keep track of the funniest little things. And I remember one of the people who was ahead of us in the e-commerce game, he said. Are you still keeping track of the dailies? And I was like, what does that mean? And he goes the number of orders. You’re getting a day. And I was like, Oh, yeah, we’re definitely keeping track of the dailies. And he’s like, well, it’s really exciting. When you start going to the monthlies right like you’re zooming out. And so the dailies were going from like 5 orders a day to 6 orders to 7 to 10, and we were. Now we’re in like the double digit orders per day, and I remember thinking like

[00:15:33] Tracy Bech: to get from 5 orders a day to 15 orders a day. We had to spend a lot of money on inventory to have that inventory to sell. So it started to kind of like the light bulbs started to go off, and as soon as we realized the money was in the inventory

[00:15:47] Tracy Bech: we started to. We started to be able to backtrack into yes, just financial principles. Okay, so where does inventory live? Oh, it’s on the balance sheet. These are like desks. But we’re selling desks. And so we have to, you know, and I and I can’t remember Kyle, like I’m trying to remember

[00:16:04] Tracy Bech: some of the nitty gritty, because it’s a lot of that knowledge is now replaced. By the way, I teach it for 60 min. Cfo, I didn’t know this stuff when we were figuring it out, but we came up with this very cool understanding that what was in our inventory was what was related to what was on our purchase orders.

[00:16:23] Tracy Bech: So you always took inventory minus what you sold, plus what you’ve ordered. And so we started to understand that this inventory number was going to be one of our our most important numbers.

[00:16:35] Tracy Bech: and that the larger this got you could be sure the less cash you had.

[00:16:41] Tracy Bech: So we started to understand that if we felt the need to start paying ourselves, we had to find a way to still have enough inventory to sell

[00:16:49] Tracy Bech: without having so much that it took up all of our cash. And that was the relationship that we started to create. I still remember the screen. It’s like emblazoned in my head. But we had this very cool custom website. We’d build ourselves, and every time we sold something it would immediately subtract from our inventory level, so I could watch the inventory level go down, and I remember we had a threshold that we knew we had to always be at almost like a stock portfolio. You know you’re like, I have to have this much investment.

[00:17:18] Kyle McCulloch: Stop loss effectively.

[00:17:20] Tracy Bech: Yeah. So we had that number. And then we knew like, Okay, but going into key retail times. Mother’s day, Valentine’s day, Black Friday, you know the holidays.

[00:17:33] Kyle McCulloch: Kind of tracking seasonality.

[00:17:34] Tracy Bech: Yep, that number needed to go up here. but then we could let it go no farther than to down here, you know. Let’s say I had to get to 500,000, but could not go below 100,000. So then you said, Okay, now we know. And then we would. Then we built out the cadence

[00:17:50] Tracy Bech: for ordering, and how big the purchase order should be, and for each purchase order we built in the time it takes to get it back in stock so like how quickly that vendor delivers

[00:18:01] Tracy Bech: plus the terms we had with that vendor. So we knew when we would go out of pocket on the cash, and what we started to do was we optimized the window

[00:18:11] Tracy Bech: so that we could sell the inventory before we had to pay for it. That was that was another key piece is selling inventory before it’s due. Now you start to catch up right? You start to build yourself a buffer of cash before

[00:18:27] Tracy Bech: that cash you brought in cash before you had to spend it, and that makes a huge difference as well. So these are all metrics now that I have like well laid out in these beautiful dashboards for 60 min. Cfo. You know, days, inventory days, receivables, days payable like. Who knew these were actual financial metrics. But this is how our brains work as entrepreneurs. We think

[00:18:47] Tracy Bech: I have a store, and I’m literally touching the things in the store, and today I shipped 5 things, and yesterday I shipped one thing. I’m growing right, it doesn’t it? You know you’re growing, and the rate at which you’re growing is definitely going to determine how much cash you have.

[00:19:04] Tracy Bech: And the catch is, especially if you’re selling things inventory items. The more you sell the less cash you will have if you want to keep that stuff in stock. So it’s just it’s it’s such a fascinating game to play real time when you don’t know what you’re

[00:19:19] Tracy Bech: yeah, I committed. Yeah, I mean, there’s like.

[00:19:22] Kyle McCulloch: It’s almost like running through a maze filled with like gotcha traps. And I think that I think the sooner you can, you can realize that sometimes, like I think, as an entrepreneur, it’s very important to to move quickly, but sometimes you have to pause and kind of like climb the hill and look down and go like, okay, if I climb this hill it’s gonna take me an extra hour, but maybe I can see where the traps kind of lie, and I can. I can try to avoid them.

[00:19:50] Kyle McCulloch: You know we I had a a similar experience with a small business that that I work for, and I helped out in California, and it was that same sort of thing the business was doing well, but they had no idea where the money went, and

[00:20:05] Kyle McCulloch: you know it really comes down to like, you know what’s in the balance sheet? What does the cash flow look like? And

[00:20:13] Kyle McCulloch: you know, I think I think just understanding the unit economics as well. And and really getting into those micro factors makes a big difference. And then, of course, you know, touching on what you brought up is the seasonality aspect of it. You’ve got to know when you’re going to be spending like if you’ve got a big tax bill coming out. Make sure you can cover that tax bill and don’t

[00:20:31] Kyle McCulloch: go into the red because it’s gonna crush any future growth, especially if you need entry. Moving forward with that.

[00:20:38] Tracy Bech: Yeah, if you. And then if you bring debt into the picture, so I’ll share this fun. Anecdote is, we ran the whole company, and we were doing 7 million in revenue. We. So we you trade roughly in 3.5 million in inventory, all of which we purchased with credit cards

[00:20:55] Tracy Bech: that we never, ever paid a late fee or interest on, because we would turn them like twice per cycle. So we would pay them off, you know, like mid cycle, so we could put more on them, and we had 14 credit cards.

[00:21:08] Kyle McCulloch: That’s stressful.

[00:21:09] Tracy Bech: But but, Kyle, I will tell you. We had a lot of rewards. Points like I flew for free for years on that, however. If you go the traditional route with a line of credit which I would always threaten to do. I was like, we’re this is, last year. We’re doing this on credit cards. This is maniacal. But if you start going, the line of credit route interest payments become a real

[00:21:31] Tracy Bech: player in the game, right? And especially because if interest starts showing up as a real expense in your business to the tune of one or 2% of revenue which it easily can.

[00:21:43] Tracy Bech: That’s that’s right off of your bottom line, right like that is profit margin like whatever you thought you had subtract one.

[00:21:51] Kyle McCulloch: This side, yeah.

[00:21:52] Tracy Bech: Yeah.

[00:21:52] Kyle McCulloch: So that. And then if you add inflation on top of that, I mean you’ve you’ve really got to be growing quickly.

[00:21:58] Tracy Bech: Exactly. Yeah. And you have to find a way in which you either get out of that cycle or you account for that interest that you’re spending right like, and that has to be found in either other savings, or you have to accommodate on the pricing side. So it’s just

[00:22:13] Tracy Bech: like you said those micro things that you do, getting your hands around the big picture, you know, understanding at a foundational level. Why, the balance sheet matters is really, truly step one right. It allows you to unlock a whole new level of the game that you are playing, and then, once you’ve got that, you then can go drilling down, and then it gets really fun. Because you’re now you really understand the key parts and pieces that you’re dealing.

[00:22:43] Tracy Bech: Yeah, you’re now you’re optimizing, and you’re fine tuning and and it all starts to really add up right? It really does give you more profits, more security, less debt. And these are things that we like as entrepreneurs. We love risk, but we also like to to have a little.

[00:22:58] Kyle McCulloch: And that I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs, I think the fear almost slows them down in a sense like at least least creatively and in terms of, say, creatively, like, problem solving wise. If you’re really stressed out, I mean, you’re focusing. I think there’s that there’s a famous.

[00:23:18] Kyle McCulloch: yeah, there’s a famous experiment. I think it was in the sixties and seventies, and I think Stanford did it. But, these guys were told there was a sample group of people, and they’re told to count how many times a basketball was thrown back and forth between between 2 people and call it 20 people that were in the sample all came up with the same number. And then they were asked, did anyone see the gorilla dancing in the background, and nobody saw it.

[00:23:44] Kyle McCulloch: And so they replayed the video. And there was actually there was a gorilla dancing in the background. But the point being, is that? Yeah. A guy. Well, a guy in a gorilla suited.

[00:23:55] Tracy Bech: Yeah.

[00:23:55] Kyle McCulloch: But yeah, what you focus on often kind of consumes you. And so I think when you, when you constantly stressed out and you’re constantly worrying about. Where’s cash coming from? You end up overlooking a lot of a lot of opportunities that can be right in front of you, or potentially even easy, even easy problems to solve.

[00:24:17] Tracy Bech: It’s so true. And also we, it sort of starts to feel like you’re you’re in a car, and things are just coming by you so quickly, right? And all you’d like to do is put the brakes on so you can get a grip on where you are and what’s going on. What’s around you? And I think that’s another thing, that it’s a trap. It’s a common trap. We get caught in as entrepreneurs.

[00:24:37] Tracy Bech: Because we don’t spend time on getting a real clear idea of what this all looks like for us like. What are the key levers that get pulled in our company that have these known outcomes right? So just like kind of understanding it on a mechanical level. And then we don’t plan

[00:24:54] Tracy Bech: right? So all of these things come as like surprises. And we and we forget that taxes are due. And we forget that there’s seasonality, and we forget that there’s we’re going to run out of cash, and it’s like this bad groundhog’s day, over and over and over again, where? Here we are again running out of cash. Here we are again scrap, scrambling to make tax payments. Here we are again, wondering where our next sale is going to come from, and we don’t

[00:25:19] Tracy Bech: take those times. And this is this is where you know we talk at 60 min, Cfo, that there are 3 key parts to becoming financially fluent. The 1st one is understanding those key ratios. So those are the mechanics. Right? The second one is the one we kind of started with, which is understanding the difference between cash and profits because they aren’t the same.

[00:25:40] Tracy Bech: And then the 3rd one is learning how to plan and forecast. So what’s going to happen? It’s using history to inform the future so that you can actually feel like you aren’t just, you know, going at this like breakneck pace. And you can have that feeling of like

[00:25:59] Tracy Bech: that’s I kind of, you know. I knew we might have an opportunity for that, and that’s cool, but it does come with this risk, you know you give your brain a second

[00:26:08] Tracy Bech: to comprehend. You know what that could mean for our company if we grew? You know. What does it mean? If we shrink a little bit. What does it mean if we stay the same? You know we do scenario planning around it as well. It just brings it makes it again more fun and less reactive.

[00:26:23] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah. And I. And I think it’s you know, I think you’d appreciate this, you and I both. So I mean you clearly a lot better than, and a lot more experienced than I am. But

[00:26:33] Kyle McCulloch: you know you don’t. You don’t go into a storm and then start. You start reefing. You know the full sail right? Look ahead and and figure out what’s coming. And you know, funny story. This is a this is a proper rookie move. When we were when we were sailing in Croatia we were right behind a big island, and it was probably blowing like

[00:26:54] Kyle McCulloch: 1518 knots on average behind the island and saw where the island ended, and I decided at that moment, with the sail fully up the Genoa, fully up. I was like, I’m going to run downstairs and grab some water, and

[00:27:10] Kyle McCulloch: of course, you know the wind. The wind was just completely unprotected at that point, and pretty much flattened us.

[00:27:17] Kyle McCulloch: you know, and ended up like breaking some glass and and whatnot. But it’s that, you know. It’s like having enough of a grip to have that foresight which I intuitively knew, and I think a lot of business owners intuitively know this stuff.

[00:27:31] Kyle McCulloch: but it’s like that. Sometimes that lack of experience ends up kind of causing.

[00:27:38] Kyle McCulloch: You kind of have to learn the lesson the hard way a few times before you can get it right. But certainly, I mean, I think looking forward is really important.

[00:27:46] Tracy Bech: I? Well, exactly, and you know what you just your your anecdote, which is a awesome sailing anecdote. It has happened to all of us is also a good one, because what you’re doing is you’re saying I’m using what happened to me to inform the future like you’re never going to do that again right like you’re always going to be aware of when you’re in the lee of an island, and what that means when you come out of that wind shadow, and that’s kind of the other. The key piece of it, too, is that you took note of it? Right? You’re you

[00:28:14] Tracy Bech: a lot of folks like if we go back to financials. do a bit of a head in the sand, and don’t even want to look back at what happened. You know, it’s like already, over with. But there’s so much learning in what went down, what went on in our company, not just on the year end basis. But even every month, like what did every month look like? What is the seasonality? Is there a seasonality to it, you know, and if you really start to break that down. Now you have a template like if you go back.

[00:28:42] Tracy Bech: you know, recording in 2025. If you were to go back and look at every month’s revenue and profits, and what all of your ratios looked like on a monthly basis.

[00:28:51] Tracy Bech: Now you can actually kind of say, well, there’s a good chance. That’ll happen every month of the coming year, and then we can start to look for trends, and we can start to say, well, it turns out every time we come out of the lee of an island we get flattened right like it’s like, that’s such a great lesson. And then you know what to do. I mean you. Then you say, well, what do we do when we get flattened? Okay, well, we reef the sales. We let them out. We head up a little bit, you know. You start to say, mechanically speaking, there’s so many ways to react to that.

[00:29:18] Tracy Bech: And and then that’s where your forecasting comes in. Okay, I see an island. I see we’re in the lee now. I see. You know it’s the difference between heading out on a road trip with no plan versus heading out on a road trip with like the destination plugged into the GPS. Right? It’s like, okay, this is. Now we we know what we’re doing, we can at least

[00:29:37] Tracy Bech: we have a chance of getting where we want.

[00:29:39] Kyle McCulloch: And if you don’t, it’s also cliche to say. But if you don’t have a plan, then you know you could be going around in circles, and you wouldn’t know.

[00:29:47] Tracy Bech: Exactly.

[00:29:48] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, you’re just you’re getting busy achieving nothing at that point.

[00:29:53] Tracy Bech: Yes, exactly. And it’s those pauses where we never feel like we have time. I will also really acknowledge that for anyone who’s listening, and it’s like, Oh, that’s isn’t that a luxury to plan right like who has time to plan? And when I ask the people that I teach, you know who here plans. Very few of them do. And so you’re not alone here, but the beauty of it is how much time it saves you ultimately, right. So.

[00:30:20] Tracy Bech: taking that time to really think about things ahead of of time is ultimately a huge time saver. It creates way, more joy in what you’re doing, and to your point like

[00:30:32] Tracy Bech: might actually get you where you finally wanna go.

[00:30:36] Kyle McCulloch: Well, I mean, it’s ultimately also a bit of a dance between balancing, short-term gains and long-term sustainability.

[00:30:43] Kyle McCulloch: It’s like you may sacrifice some games or gains in the short term. But you know, long term like you kind of want to build a sustainable model, and you don’t want to just be, you know, front loading everything. I mean, it’s gonna burn you out. At some point

[00:30:57] Kyle McCulloch: that happens. I think it happens to anybody that’s anybody that’s especially very type a and driven, you know. You end up, end up, putting yourself in a hole.

[00:31:07] Tracy Bech: Right? Right? And I do think that there’s a lot of

[00:31:13] Tracy Bech: to the to that point about the type a driven entrepreneur. I think it. And to kind of hidden a nerve here, because, you know you can, you can burn yourself out right so. And I’ve and I did that. I’ve done that. And you think you you’re chasing something that you really really want. But until you put the actual plan in place to get that you can’t be sure that you want it.

[00:31:41] Tracy Bech: Because, had you told me, you know, I said, when we started our e-commerce business, we thought all we needed to do was find something to sell

[00:31:50] Tracy Bech: like. And then I kind of thought my life would be the same. We would just be switching kind of the way we made money. I didn’t understand that I was going into a place where I had an enormous amount of money sitting on a balance sheet right, and I had people like Jeff Bezos, you know, in the ring with me I mean not him personally, but you know I was going head to head with Amazon. I didn’t know that my whole year’s profits we made half of our money

[00:32:18] Tracy Bech: from January to November in revenue, and then the rest of the revenue was made in 15 days between Black Friday and the last day to ship for Christmas. I did not know that that stress would nearly crush me. So I think it’s really important to zoom out and align what you think you want. Sure, Kyle, would you like 7 million dollar e-commerce business. That sounds great. Well, let me tell you what that comes with right, and it’s oftentimes not

[00:32:49] Tracy Bech: we wanted, and I think it was clearly my lack of financial understanding that allowed me to chase that goal, and then, once I got very clear on it, it allowed me to succeed at that goal, and then also realized that I was chasing a goal that really wasn’t aligned with who I? What I wanted as a just as a human right in my, in my life.

[00:33:07] Kyle McCulloch: I mean, I think that’s I think that’s a lesson that’s. you know, probably good to learn earlier. And I learned a similar lesson myself coming out of come out of my life in New York. I mean, it’s

[00:33:19] Kyle McCulloch: it’s almost like you climb the mountain. You get to the top expecting this wonderful view, and you look around. It’s cloudy, and you don’t see that much, and you’ve got no one around you, and you’re like Sheesh. Well, like. Now, what.

[00:33:30] Tracy Bech: Well, and to quote, to quote our friend, our mutual friend, Ryan Tansom, who’s who’s podcast with Graham didn’t get recorded. We’ll just like further push. Ryan.

[00:33:39] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, and thank you, Ryan, for for that. Put it sticky to make sure.

[00:33:43] Tracy Bech: Brian, we’re recording this one. Yeah, he would say. And I’m sure he did say in that interview that we have to be careful

[00:33:52] Tracy Bech: to not be winning at a game we don’t want to play, and we have to architect as the entrepreneurs in our companies as the leaders of our companies. It is our jobs to create the game that we want to play and then win at that game. And for years I was winning at games I didn’t want to play. I was really good at playing and winning at games that I did not like. So. And I know.

[00:34:19] Tracy Bech: yeah, it’s so. It’s common.

[00:34:22] Kyle McCulloch: I think it’s I think it’s yeah, almost. I can only speak for myself. But it’s almost like you’re appeasing kind of appeasing others. And you think it feels good because, you know you, you’re doing what

[00:34:35] Kyle McCulloch: what you’re supposed to be doing. But you but you don’t really like. Take the, and certainly for me, I mean, I was in my twenties and in your twenties. I I think you get a you get a whole person being a bit stupid with things sometimes. But yeah, you don’t actually realize that that sometimes sometimes you do have to kind of figure out like what makes you tick. And what makes you happy?

[00:34:57] Kyle McCulloch: Because, yeah, I mean. I don’t know. I mean the the whole, your whole career. It’s it’s a very central part of your life going forward and you better enjoy what you’re doing because

[00:35:09] Kyle McCulloch: it’s gonna be a. It’s gonna take up a big portion of who you are and what you’re about.

[00:35:15] Tracy Bech: Yeah, I remember Steve Jobs passed away somewhere, right in the throes of the height of our business

[00:35:23] Tracy Bech: on the e-commerce side, and he’s famous for saying, you know, do you find something you’re great at, and that you love, and you’ll never work a day, you know, like he’s his. I think the Commencement speech he gave was really quoting that right. It was really important to do something that you love. And I remember just having this like moment, because that Internet, you know, the quote was going around the Internet after he passed away. And I was like.

[00:35:46] Tracy Bech: I don’t think I love this like. It was very upsetting to me to realize that. And it does. It’s it’s way harder to find something like that. And of course, you know, there’s a lot of things I love that I will never make money at. So it’s kind of a hard, hard way to necessarily live your life to, you know

[00:36:07] Tracy Bech: to every extent, but I think to to not hate. Let’s put it that way or not. Feel like the soul, your soul getting sucked out of you, and to not dread what you are doing, and to be able to find joy in what you do.

[00:36:21] Tracy Bech: I think, is really part and parcel with actually being successful at it. And

[00:36:27] Tracy Bech: I also feel like those vanity metrics that we chase like. I remember my Cpa. When he sat us down the 1st year we hit 7 million in revenue, and he goes oh, my God! You guys are just crushing it! And I had never felt more burnt just just at my low, and I remember it was. It was the end of the year. We were doing tax planning. And I was like we are. That was my response. I was like, show me where we’re crushing it like, what level like? What are you? What are you measuring

[00:36:56] Tracy Bech: that? You would then say that to me like I couldn’t. I didn’t.

[00:37:00] Kyle McCulloch: And see.

[00:37:00] Tracy Bech: It, you know it’s it was very hard to receive that message, because I was like, well, I don’t feel like I’m crushing it like I feel like I’m on the razor’s edge here of like survival.

[00:37:08] Kyle McCulloch: That’s that goes back to kind of something we were just talking about. A moment ago. And it’s those data points and the importance of that experience. And I then I’m a big advocate, like sometimes sometimes a bad decision, and obviously, you know, kind of quoting somebody. I don’t know who it was. But someone once said, like a bad decision, is better than no decision. And the reason being is like you have a data point to know, not to go there again.

[00:37:33] Tracy Bech: Yeah.

[00:37:34] Kyle McCulloch: You know, and it’s it’s just compounding knowledge. And it’s it’s really about what you do with that knowledge once you get it and how it informs your your kind of future direction. So how.

[00:37:46] Kyle McCulloch: when you working with business owners like, how do you kind of figure out whether, like do you speak to them much about this kind of stuff? And do you try to guide them? To not make those same mistakes?

[00:38:01] Tracy Bech: Well, you know, I it’s interesting. I don’t necessarily formally have a piece of that. We talk a lot about leadership. We talk a lot about not being a type, a always on CEO. That work life balance is an important piece. If there is such a thing, you know I hate it.

[00:38:15] Tracy Bech: There’s, you know the verdict is out. The jury is out, but that it doesn’t actually get you farther.

[00:38:22] Tracy Bech: and you’re probably chasing something that isn’t actually the key ingredient to your company. Success, you know. And I, when I do a lot of peer groups right and when we when we meet in the peer groups.

[00:38:38] Tracy Bech: a lot of stuff comes out and we’re typically focused on one member. We do this roadshow, and we go into people’s companies and look at their company. And this one guy I remember saying, Well, what are your goals? We need to know your goals so we can help advise you, and he goes well, my goal is to get to 15 million in revenue. And I said, Oh, okay, well, why? And he goes.

[00:38:57] Tracy Bech: Well, I don’t really know, you know, and I was like, but why like, why would you want that? And he just didn’t know. And so when it comes time for our critique like we, we always reflect back to the owner at the end of our visit. You know what we think is great and what we think needs improvement, I said, I think you really need to dive into why, you think 15 million

[00:39:15] Tracy Bech: is your sweet spot like? What does that mean to you? What does it look like for you? And he’s like, Yeah, it’s a really great point. I have no idea. So I do check people at the door when I’m when I see that kind of thing I’m like, why are we growing to 15 million? I get that you want to grow. But what

[00:39:31] Tracy Bech: you know at what cost? A and B. Why, like what? What gains, what gains do you get from that? You know.

[00:39:39] Tracy Bech: So a little bit, yeah, a little bit.

[00:39:41] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, I think it’s very important to understand your motives behind things. And and that’s also that that comes, and I think can only really come from slowing down.

[00:39:51] Tracy Bech: Yeah.

[00:39:51] Kyle McCulloch: You know, if you if you’re constantly, you know, chasing, chasing the carrot, I mean, you’re not actually gonna be able to pause and see what’s actually going on around you, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs also do get so caught up in the day to day that, you know, like like we were saying earlier. You could just climb the hill, and you could see the you could see where all the traps are laid. But it does take that takes a bit of time like, I think one of the key things that I’m realizing like from our discussion is like.

[00:40:19] Kyle McCulloch: slow down. Understand your motive like. Prepare look forward! You know, and don’t. Don’t just get caught up in the day to day.

[00:40:29] Tracy Bech: Yeah, it’s exactly right. Like, back to your sailing metaphor. It’s like, keep your eye on the horizon a little bit right and like, look around the island and take take it all in and

[00:40:41] Tracy Bech: and and you don’t have to chase certain certain metrics just for the sake of chasing them. I mean, we love a scoreboard, you know, and it always feels like winning when you have more points. But that’s that’s like a that’s an illusion, I think, in business you have. You have a lot of things on the scoreboard that you can’t see, or you need to create a way to see them, and then and then take those in. Yeah, that helps a lot.

[00:41:07] Kyle McCulloch: And do you think just staying on the saving side of things? Do you think that that I believe you were yourself competitively in college as well like, how’s that kind of framed your mindset with with business coaching and and also just your approach to to business.

[00:41:27] Tracy Bech: You know, it’s funny. I should have like a way more like literary approach to the you know business. And then the sea and the ever-changing weather and things. But I think it’s really more about being gritty

[00:41:42] Tracy Bech: and figuring things out, because, yeah, in college I sailed competitively, and I sailed at the University of Washington, and we were really good in our region, but our school did not have funding for this, so we had to fundraise for anything that we wanted. We are a club sport, but when we would go to sail regionally, or like on the West Coast, we would go up against schools that were really well funded, and I remember looking at. We were sailing at Stanford.

[00:42:08] Tracy Bech: and I remember looking at their boats, and ours literally had duct tape tape hanging off of them, and our sails are like torn and tattered, and you know we show up, and we’re like driving like my family’s station wagon with a trailer behind it, and it just looks like, and then they show up with a van, with their school logo and beautiful boats, and but we go out on the water

[00:42:32] Tracy Bech: to sail, and it’s the same the same field, right? And yes, they have, you know a nicer boat does help, but you’re still given the opportunity to make good decisions, to read the wind

[00:42:46] Tracy Bech: to work hard, right? And I remember, like I remembered making a boat repair in the parking lot, and just thinking God it would be nice, you know. But then, thinking about how much I’m learning by not having a perfect fleet of boats handed to me, you know, and what that meant.

[00:43:04] Tracy Bech: And in a lot of ways, I think, that informed my grassroots. Bootstrapping nature. I’ve always done things from the ground up, you know, turned $1 into 10 into a hundred, into a thousand, into a million, you know. And it’s like, Yeah, you don’t actually need to be handed all of the perfect things like you can really find your way, and if it doesn’t seem like there is a way, make a way, you know, and sailing is a great way to do that, I mean. And then, oh, man.

[00:43:33] Tracy Bech: once we kind of stopped doing as much competitive sailing, and you and you go out for longer, you know. Cruises? I joke. I’m like, it’s like, I’m getting ready for end of days. You know. You’re like packing canned food and water, and you know you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to survive on this boat, and and especially when I started bringing my family with me. I’m like, Oh, my God! I’ve got children on this boat, you know, like we really got to survive. And it’s that’s like again. It’s like a planning, and it’s a thinking of like

[00:43:58] Tracy Bech: how to do things like well, if we ran out of water we would go here, and if we you know, it’s scenario planning, you know. It’s like, what are the various ways in which we would find a way to get

[00:44:08] Tracy Bech: where we need to go and eat and drink and live aboard this vessel. It is. It’s like being in a business is a lot like being on a boat, you know, and and.

[00:44:18] Kyle McCulloch: And rationing, let alone, I mean, especially with the family, like rationing your water for showering and for washing dishes. I mean, it’s like.

[00:44:28] Kyle McCulloch: yeah, I’ve done 2. I’ve done 2 2, 2 week, I think one was 3 weeks. One was 2 weeks, one the Seychelles, and then in Croatia we sell. Then it’s yeah. I mean, you basically rinsing because you’re like, well, if I’ve got, if this water is going to last me 2 weeks, like, you know, we get 30 seconds a day.

[00:44:46] Tracy Bech: Yup! Yup, I know I’m like catching the kids, you know, rinsing something. I’m like, what are you doing? Or.

[00:44:51] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah.

[00:44:52] Tracy Bech: The other. I mean, another thing we joke about is, I’m like, even like the gummy worms. It looks like we have a lot of food on board right cause you bring on 2 weeks worth of food. And so they’re like, Oh, my gosh! You know we have, like all of these snacks and treats, and I’m like, – we have just enough.

[00:45:07] Tracy Bech: You would do not. We do not have a lot, you know, and it’s you guys got to put your minds into. I mean, it’s a lot like managing a budget right? It’s like these have to last between now.

[00:45:17] Tracy Bech: Now. So there is a lot of like and then you also learned, because inevitably you do something wrong, right? And something breaks, or you do. You run out of something, and you’ve got to like.

[00:45:30] Tracy Bech: yeah, you gotta be tough.

[00:45:31] Kyle McCulloch: So.

[00:45:31] Tracy Bech: Yeah, you gotta improvise you gotta you have to stay positive. I mean, there are a lot of, I think, putting yourself out there

[00:45:40] Tracy Bech: in business and in on a boat, or it can be very similar. Yeah.

[00:45:44] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, certainly. I mean our 1st night. So we got certified. And I’ve spent a lot of time growing up. I was on the water, probably 10,000 h at least, like from fishing.

[00:45:55] Kyle McCulloch: but I was not a sailor. and so we got certified about 5 weeks before going to Croatia. And so the 1st night we thought, Oh, we’ll go down to. I think it was Schedro. And the guys are like, you know, typical European fashion. They’re like, Oh, you got plenty time, and we had planned on leaving at like one o’clock, when they said we could probably leave, and we ended up leaving at 4 30, when they said we could actually leave

[00:46:18] Kyle McCulloch: difference between the the Charter Company sales, Guy and reality.

[00:46:23] Tracy Bech: Right.

[00:46:25] Kyle McCulloch: And they’re like, No, you can get down there and about halfway down they’re like there’s no way we’re going to get there before the sun goes down. So we pulled into this bay.

[00:46:33] Kyle McCulloch: and bearing in mind in the Mediterranean, saw that Mediterranean mooring where you got to, you know. Tie off tie off the stern as well, and we got into this bay when the sun was like below the horizon type of thing, and there was like a boat in every, in every nook and cranny.

[00:46:51] Kyle McCulloch: when it came to dropping anchor that, like anytime, we were going to drop the anchor. Someone was like. No, no, my lines already there and then, you know, reversing and like we just got on this boat, I know it was like a it was like an 8 foot keel, and I was thinking, like.

[00:47:06] Kyle McCulloch: you know, I have no idea you reversing within like probably 20 feet, maybe 1520 feet of the of the side. I’m like, jeez, I don’t know. Ground this boat on day. One. Yeah, it’s just a it’s a case of you just got to be brave and just face it, and and figure it out, and you may have some sleepless nights like I mean, we certainly that 1st night had a sleepless night.

[00:47:29] Kyle McCulloch: We were just waiting for the first, st the 1st bang luckily nothing happened. But you know, I think running a business is kind of similar to that.

[00:47:38] Tracy Bech: Yeah, I mean, and it it to your point like you. You do stay vigilant, right? Like you, until you feel a real trust and a familiarity with, especially like that boat, or maybe the business you’re running like

[00:47:52] Tracy Bech: you, you save so hyper, vigilant, and and then you also are on guard, or however you want to think of it. For those forces that are out of your control, right? Because you’re probably wondering what are the what are the tides doing here like? Is there a wind that comes up at 3 am. You know? Or is that boat over there going to swing and hit mine. You know they’re just things that

[00:48:12] Tracy Bech: are outside of your control, that then you you monitor for. And then your job is to react in a certain way. And yeah, it’s very analogous. I think it’s very analogous, but well done. I would sailing your 1st day and coming into a crowded harbor at night. I don’t know if you can.

[00:48:29] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, this was a yeah. And it was just my wife. And I, too, I mean, so like 45, I think it was a 45 foot boat. The 2 of us handling this by ourselves, both like pretty much rookies it was. But we do. We do something every year that makes us uncomfortable.

[00:48:46] Kyle McCulloch: That’s a you know. I think. I think when you start facing your fears and you you conquer them and tick them off one by one.

[00:48:53] Kyle McCulloch: It kind of teaches you that, and certainly I mean I can also tie this to to sport. It’s like the most scary, the most scary moment is before the start. Before the the starting gun.

[00:49:05] Tracy Bech: Yeah.

[00:49:06] Kyle McCulloch: You know, because you’ve got an infinite amount of possibilities, and your brain will always jump to the jump to the worst ones.

[00:49:13] Tracy Bech: I totally agree. I mean, when I was in college and when I was just graduating, I was into long distance running, and I didn’t know necessarily why I was doing that, but it was something about

[00:49:24] Tracy Bech: proving to myself. I could do hard things in an environment outside of work, because I remember I would come in after a race, you know, maybe on on the races on Saturday I’d come into work on a Monday, and just think, you know what? I did something really hard. And it’s like, it’s confidence building. As well, you know, you’re like, Oh, yeah, I actually, I actually have a lot of stamina. I have a lot of ways to like, get myself through something, and

[00:49:47] Tracy Bech: I do think you’re doing yourself a favor when you’re when you build in your life like those uncomfortable moments and the things that

[00:49:56] Tracy Bech: push you to. You have to survive, you know, and then it does make business seem a little easier compared.

[00:50:05] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, that’s certainly I mean it. Yeah, I mean that I think it was. Joe Rogan said this. It was quite a. It was quite a simple statement on the face of it. But he said, the hardest thing that’s happened to you. I’m sorry. The worst thing that’s happened to you is the worst thing that’s happened to you. So if you’re born with the silver spoon in your mouth and you kick your toe, and that’s like the literal worst thing. You’re going to complain about it. But if you’re used to doing hard things and you’re used to being uncomfortable, it’s like this is just baseline normal for you.

[00:50:34] Tracy Bech: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it. It is a great way to put it, and you build your endurance. You build your your resilience.

[00:50:41] Tracy Bech: And he said those things someone just yesterday said, you know the Lows are the learnings, and I and I am. I’m like, very good at getting myself into predicaments. I’m very good at it. I’m very good at learning things the hard way, and I honestly prefer it. You know. I mean, it’s hard when you’re in it. But and I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily like, overly risky or reckless. But I just invite it, you know. I’m like that.

[00:51:06] Tracy Bech: They say, no growth comes from your comfort zone like to your wife and yours. Core values. You know, it’s like I’m definitely gonna learn something from this.

[00:51:16] Kyle McCulloch: Yeah, it might kill me. But along the way I’ll figure something out.

[00:51:20] Tracy Bech: It’s okay. Well.

[00:51:23] Kyle McCulloch: So why don’t we do this at like as we wind up? Be curious. The top 3 financial ratios.

[00:51:31] Tracy Bech: Oh, well, I guess it would definitely your on your industry. but I will. I will give the one that no one wants me to say, because it’s the one that’s the hardest to understand. But let me just say it. Anyway. I think number one is your operating cash flow.

[00:51:47] Tracy Bech: And the reason that’s hard to understand is because it doesn’t get spit out to you on a regular basis out of quickbooks. You have to hunt for it.

[00:51:55] Tracy Bech: But I would encourage everyone to do it. Knowing your operating cash flow is really understanding what oxygen level you’re at. The second one would be your gross profit margin, and I would urge anybody who thinks that they don’t even have a gross profit margin level to find it, because a lot of folks who are in an industry that doesn’t have a cost of goods or a cost of sales associated will say they only have an operating profit margin. But you do. Everybody does have a cost of service, sales or products or goods sold.

[00:52:25] Tracy Bech: and we have to understand what the gross profit margin is so. In other words, how much money we make after we provide the service.

[00:52:32] Tracy Bech: Number 3, you know I I love. It’s kind of probably a toss up between

[00:52:39] Tracy Bech: the 3rd one. There’s like a 3 way tie, but I’ll pick one. It’ll be, I guess it would be your current ratio. So your current ratio is your liquidity, and that’s the ease at which you can pay your bills. So when your liquidity is really low, it means you may not have enough money to pay all of your bills on a short term basis.

[00:53:00] Tracy Bech: but when your liquidity is ample, and usually it’s 3, so if you have 3 times the amount of current assets for every current liability that you have. You’re feeling good, and your company has a lot of options, and you’re not feeling stressed or strapped. It’s a great way to quickly understand.

[00:53:19] Tracy Bech: You know how you’re sitting. And it helps people also figure out I get this question a lot like, how much money should I keep in the bank? And there’s never a dollar amount. I never want anyone to think about the number of dollars. It’s a relationship between the amount you have in the bank and the amount you owe.

[00:53:38] Tracy Bech: Right? So in general, 2 to 3, right, 2 to 3 ratio on that. So, having enough in your current assets to pay what you owe 2 or 3 times over, is going to give you a pretty good current ratio pretty good working capital again. It’s going to vary by industry, but I think those would be my 3 if you made me pick.

[00:53:58] Kyle McCulloch: Fantastic cool. Where can people find you and you want to tell us about your book?

[00:54:04] Tracy Bech: Yes, so 60 min. cfo.com 6 0 min. cfo.com has an opportunity to click over to the book on Amazon. The book is a really great place to start for those who want to go deeper and have more interaction we have a membership. So you can. You can dive in. And you, that’s where you get bi-weekly coaching. You get access to all of our recorded materials and

[00:54:28] Tracy Bech: the members who are in there. So you get a little camaraderie as well with people who are in the trenches and dedicated to learning this stuff, too. So yeah, the book. The book and the membership are both available from 60 minutescfo com. So it’s a great place to find us.

[00:54:45] Kyle McCulloch: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

[00:54:47] Tracy Bech: Thanks. Kyle.

[00:54:49] Kyle McCulloch: Cool bye.

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