Epic Real Estate Investing - Molly Montgomery - Founder's Haven | 384

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Today on Thought Leader Thursday, Matt speaks to Molly Montgomery, a startup growth strategist and the creator of Founder's Haven, the first resource of its kind to help high-performing founders stay connected to their greatest potential. Learn about what initially drew Molly to startups, her big realization after nearly 16 years of advising, and the worst tax strategies she's witnessed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, I'm Matt Terrio of the Epic Real Estate Investing Show, and this is Thought Leader Thursday. Today I'm joined by a startup growth strategist and mentor to high-performing founders and visionary leaders. She helps founders grow or scale their company with confidence and peace of mind. She is the creator of Founders Haven, the first resource of its kind that helps high-performing founders stay connected to their greatest potential while helping alleviate the immense pressure that comes along with being the creator of a high-growth company. So it seems like something that's well needed in today's society. So please help me welcome Molly Montgomery to Epic Real Estate Investing. Molly, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Matt.

I'm happy to be here. Good. Glad to have you too. Before we get into your work as a startup growth strategist, what were you doing just prior to getting involved with that? So I started my career about 12 years before I went off into the entrepreneurial path myself. I spent 12 years in public accounting. And my background, my technical training, my career capital is all built up in public accounting.

I'm a CPA and spent several years of working for the big firms. I did a nice long bout of audit work and then went and got my master's in taxation and then got involved in doing a lot of forensic investigations and litigation support. So I eventually got to a place where I, the entrepreneurial bug was constantly nagging at me through that entire 12-year journey. And I eventually decided I saw in the companies that I was working with, all this transactional work that I was doing, I was always the one that was sitting at the table after the fact,

after all these things had already happened. And then something was going on that people were trying to accomplish, whether it was a sale or in the case where there was fraud or something went terribly wrong, I was the one sitting at the table looking at all the past saying, okay, well, now here's where you are. It's not quite where you were hoping to be right now. So if you would have done A, B, and C years ago, you would be in a different place. I mean, that was the perspective I constantly was seeing. And so there was just this gap, this gap for companies a lot earlier on in their life cycle,

that I started to have this real passion for wanting to help companies earlier on. And I really started to see the need and the desire for it. So that's when I ended up leaving the corporate path that I was on and started up my own consulting practice and doing just that, working with companies that are younger, getting things going, getting that foundation set early on in the game. And one of the things I realized at this point, 15, almost 16 years of advising, I really got connected to the actual, the personal side of what people were going through and why why people are making certain decisions and just helping support the personal

journey they're going through while growing their business. So I mean, especially as it relates to a lot of the real estate investing and doing your wealth and expanding, I mean, why are, why are we all doing what we're doing? There's the business aspect of why the business exists, but then there's the whole personal side of what's going on behind the scenes with, what is your personal drive of why you're even doing this. So you have all of this, I don't know, kind of this hindsight where you're really able to clearly see of where they could have made some different decisions and ended up in a different place where they wanted to end up. And so you went out and you went to take that on. Give me a story or an example of when you realize that,

wow, I'm really good at this. I can really make a big difference here. It started while I was doing the advisory work. I mean, when I was working in the public accounting world, I worked for four or five different accounting firms. I mean, it wasn't something where I went and I started working for, you know, I worked for Inston Young for a couple years. And then I went off and did, I actually did a first round of, of entrepreneur, an attempt at entrepreneurship, left the audit world. I went and started to get involved with real estate investing,

trying to navigate through a lot of different things. I became a personal trainer. I started my own accounting practice and I was just doing all this small business advisory stuff. And at some point, that's when I really started to make the connection between to see the personal passion and the personal drive behind the business owners that I was working with. It was in that small business setting. And when I got into the forensic work, so once I went back to school, got my master's degree and got into some of these really big forensic investigations, getting into the conversations with people seeing the psychology behind what was

happening and all of the challenges, the emotion, the relationships, the navigating through all of that while doing the actual forensic work, that's what really, I really connected to that part of what was going on in those situations. Every time I hear the word startup, I always think of Silicon Valley for some reason. What specifically, how do you define a startup? Is it just someone that's starting a company? Is that how you define or do you have more narrow definition of that? The way I define it, the way I look at it is what is the intention behind the business that's being started? What is the growth trajectory that the company, the founders are aiming for? What is the ultimate end goal of what they want to be doing?

with this business? And are they seeking investment? Is it just different factors that come into play of that really start to define, it separates out, is the money that this company generating, is it intended to be more of a family-owned business or a lifestyle business? Are the earnings intended to be withdrawn for the company, or is this truly a company that is intended to be built, a whole separate entity grown into something that is separate from the people who started? What are the biggest mistakes that you see founders make when starting a company? There are a couple. When starting it or when growing it, I mean, there's what I just described of the distinction between what is the intention with the business and the cash and the profits that

going to be generated with a company. If there's investors involved, that creates a whole certain type of environment versus if someone is starting a company and growing it organically or getting it off the ground organically. It's quite common that I'll go in and see a company that is having cash flow problems, which most businesses that are just a couple years old are having cash flow problems. I mean, that's just part of what you deal with. Looking at the financial statements compared to what they are saying, they want to be doing and what the founders are saying they are creating. Because you can tell by what people are saying versus what the actions are of what they're doing

with their finances. If those are out of alignment, then the whole company is going to be a mess. So that's one thing. And then another thing, just really understanding that to grow a business, you have to have the systems in place to grow the business. You can't grow a business on the shoulders of people running the business, running those systems. Absolutely. You know, as an educator, a consultant, a strategist, an advisor, myself, there's all types of crazy advice out there that kind of gets on my nerves when I hear it and I hear over and over again.

It just irks me as like, oh, don't say that or don't follow that. What's one piece of bad advice in your world that you see or hear frequently that really bothers you? Since I have a background in the accounting tax finance world, it's always interesting to me how people talk about the different types of tax strategies that their advisors are doing for their company. And they go off and they tell their friend, they call somebody up and say, this is what my guy is doing for me. Why aren't you doing it? And so then there's, then people start taking action on advice that they're getting from their friend without talking to their advisors. I see so many messes or people try to do their own tax planning, which there are certain foundational things that, yeah, they start to become kind of, as you learn about them, they become more standard and quote unquote basic when it comes to tax planning so you can start doing that for yourself. But my gosh, don't take tax advice from someone who's not a tax.

advisor. Oh, there's actually, like you said, there's so much bad advice. That's all right. No, just the fact that you have multiple answers, I think is fantastic. And what would be the best way for them to reach out to you? So you can come find me online, LinkedIn. I'm pretty active over there. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. So that's Molly Montgomery. You can also come find me on Facebook or Twitter. So Facebook, Molly Montgomery there as well. And then Twitter, it's Molly MCPA. And, uh, Foundershaven.com. Yeah, getting ready to,

you're going to be putting out a lot of content out there as far as those moments when you're in, those make or break decisions of just comes down to needing to navigate through what path to take. Some really common conversations that I get into. I'm going to be helping people navigate through that, through that.

Super. Well, I'll make sure all of that is really easy to find inside of the show notes and everywhere else that, that we're present online. So I'll make that easy for them. And it's been a, absolute pleasure. Let's do it again sometime. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Matt. You bet. Okay. All right. That's another episode of Epic Real Estate Investing,

specifically Thought Leader Thursday. We'll see you next Thursday again. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.