Founder's Story - How to Lead with your Heart and See Consistent Success | Ep. 47 with Serial Entrepreneur Vinnie Fisher

Episode Date: April 4, 2021

Vinnie Fisher is a serial entrepreneur with over 3 8-figure businesses. His latest company Fully Accountable is an outsourced full-service, cutting-edge accounting firm that helps eCommerce and Digital business owners through fractional CFO and accounting services. He is also the author of 3 best-selling books and has guided Fully Accountable to the Inc 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies in America twice among many other awards. As a listener of Inspired by Her Podcast, Vinnie is giving away his latest book, False Profits: It’s Not the Top Line That Pays You, for free! All you need to do is click this link and follow the directions to get your free copy. Please rate, review, subscribe, and share with a friend who will be inspired. Visit KateHancock.com for insights into guests and future episodes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ibhshow/supportOur Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Inspired by Her, the podcast that will give you the inspiration, motivation and tips for success from some of the top executives, CEOs and influencers from around the globe. With your host, serial entrepreneur and named one of the most influential Filipina in the world, Kate Hancock. We are live. Hi everyone, this is Kate Hancock and today I have Vinny Fisher. Hi Vinny. Hi Kate, how are you? I'm great. I love all that books and awards in the background. It makes me feel better about myself. No, you're amazing. Everyone, Vinny is an entrepreneur and a best selling author who has over 20 years of experience growing and scaling multiple eight-figure companies. Now, his most recent mission is helping e-commerce, tech, and digital business owners improve their financial fluency and operate their accounting

back office as a profit center. Benny has has been awarded digital market of the year multiple times and has been featured in many top national podcasts and other media outlets, such as business insider Vinny. I'm so honored for you to be here. Oh, I'm, I'm honored to be your guest. So thank you for having me. And I love what you're doing for your community. Like you just put out so much good energy, like, and then the bonus is you have some really cool people to talk about stuff.

So I recognize you're a little desperate and you had to go with me, but that's okay. I will fill in like your other guests. So we'll do it. Oh my God. No. Vinny, tell me about your company fully accountable and why did you create it? You know, most people, some people know the backstory. Most don't. Tell me about your company, Fully Accountable, and why did you create it? Some people know the backstory. Most don't. I am not an accountant. I am not a qualified expert. Now, interestingly, I am a tax attorney, but when it came to the idea of understanding financials and the whole language around finance. I don't have any of that. Over time here, I've picked up some of it, but I am not qualified to hold basically every position

besides marketer or CEO in our company. Fully Accountable was created to fix a problem I have. And I would worry more about gross revenue than I did about profit margin. And so I had no real relationship to my own financials, so much so that I was afraid of the terminology of finance, which is really the language of business. And so one day while running, we had a health supplement company that we've sold back in 2013. And in 2014, I was running at an 8% profit margin when a business of that type should have been running at a 20% margin. Well, through the journey of being really frustrated, somewhere along the way, I woke up and realized it's not about how much money I drive at the top, it's how much we keep. And I know that sounds really basic, but it had to hit me at that level. And from that day on, we started doing what today is fully accountable inside of our health company.

And what that gap between 20% and 8% became a burden. I needed to get to 20 and no longer be happy with 8%. Wow. I'm actually guilty of that. I was selling e-commerce in 2012 right around your time. Yeah. And were you selling it direct to your website or Amazon or where were you selling your supplement? Both, right?

So Amazon was at that time for more of an exit strategy for us. So I would say most people who know me in the marketplace know that I'm a direct to consumer marketer, first and foremost. The channel dictates the message, but I would drive people to our own shopping cart most of the time. You know, I've had the privilege of putting north of $300 million through our own merchant accounts. And I just, that's where I live. I've never really been a dial-in all on Amazon. But I've actually had some good revenue, including some of the companies we own now that have Amazon revenue.

But I've never actually had a fully exclusive Amazon business. That's amazing. Now, Vinny, tell me, what was your journey like to get where you are? Bring me back to the beginning. I love that because, you know, so many people want to focus on the current season of some entrepreneur and be that person when you have to look at the other seasons and understand which parts of that you where you are and so to put a little definition to that I believe a season in someone's cycle is five years I also believe that

you have two halves to a season they might look like three years and three years I know that's six but I say you have a first and a second half season first and the second half to a season and so that's really important. So back at our original season, when I started in the internet, which would have been in 2007, I didn't even know what a URL was, which is just a fancy acronym for a domain name. I didn't know any of that stuff. I set out to learn direct response. One is how to position offers. I think I have a really good acumen for behavior of people. And so that has translated well into me being a good leader of teams. That's translated into me having a high emotional equivalent.

I wouldn't say that I'm usually the smarter person. I'm just probably just less bright or not bright enough that I don't give up. And so if you look at my journey, my journey is tenacity. My journey is perseverance. You know, I could go all the way back to the poor kid story, but I think that's a little tone deaf. Like I think we all have our struggles we go through, but I would have broke out of corporate professional law firm world and partnered up with a whiz bang internet kid. And my entrepreneurial spirit came alive when I took my legal prowess as a corporate M&A attorney and dove into the internet world. And that's what started this journey for me. Me in 2014, opening up a service company, everyone was like, why would you open up that super boring company

when you're really good at all this other stuff? And that kind of gets me back to where we are versus where we are today. Wow. I love it. Now it's amazing. You're an M&A attorney. I think I met you through Roland Fraser, who's an amazing guy. And I was actually listening to your talk. To be honest with you, last night, I was scrambling all my numbers. So I need to figure out I have all my figures. But I listened to you a lot. And so Vinny, what are, you know, things that most entrepreneurs should do? You talk about we are obsessed about the growth metrics, which is true. We all worried about we need to do 10X when the average net profit across industry is about 10%. Yeah, a little more, about 11 and a half.

But you're right there, right? And so a couple of stats, I think people are shocked about the first time they hear. When you normalize revenue over a year, less than 7% of all businesses make a million dollars in revenue in a year. Right? So it's a smaller category of people that make a million dollars in revenue. With that said, when you take over the top that most businesses in the median average make 11% of their margin, that means a bunch make under and some make over.

Right? 11% is their margin. That means a bunch make under and some make over, right? And so for me, I think one of the dangerous things of an entrepreneur is, you know, if we resonate with that term as an owner, as a leader, as someone who jumped out and we went out to solve a problem or we believe we are solving a problem and we want to sell a product or a service to help people. Well, now looking back as the old guy, one of the things that I think is the most destructive are the agreements we make with ourselves. So for example, one that I hear a lot by our fellow colleagues would be, I'm no good at operations. Let me get this straight. You grew a business to seven figures and you decide you're no good at operations.

We make these agreements that we almost self-prophesize, when in reality, what he or she is meaning to say is there are certain parts of operating the business that they're not good at. Whether it's managerial, whether it's financial, whether it's process and system, there's certain things that you're just not good at, and they lump it into this big category. Another one is, I don't want to have a big payroll. Well, isn't the size of the company dictating the size of how it grows? We make these rather unusual agreements. I've noticed one of them be in the category of a back office and finance, where someone says, oh, I'm just awful at that. And so what we'll do is we'll give that work to somebody else, and we'll avoid every bit of knowing enough of it to actually run our business. My buddy, Ryan Dice, who is, you know, well, says, you know, napkin, he uses this napkin

template for how to create a very basic marketing strategy. I think the same thing is true in finance. I think if a leader has enough napkin math. He or she can really do great leadership in their company. And when I look back at my own career, I avoided everything other than affiliate sales and gross revenue. I never really paid attention to the other things. And most of that, Kate, had to do with my mindset, not my acumen. I still have like struggling with reading financial statements and I'm not the guy you're going to go to to do a due diligence package. Someone on my team is and one of our CFOs is great at that. But I also know the five indicators that are the most important in our company and I live there. And one of them is the profit margin we make every month. If it's off, if the person who owns most of the company is not willing to speak up about why the margin's off, why would you expect anyone else to? Exactly. And so I would say when I look at a leader, I don't think we signed up for all the pressure and anxiety that goes along with running these things. And so a journey I'm on right now is the idea of anxiety and boredom. And as a leader,

both of those are real. And what we'll do is when either anxiety or boredom kick in, we'll find something new to distract us or avoid the anxiety or boredom we need to deal with. And what I'm learning is that in anxiety, it's not getting rid of it, it's managing it. And boredom is a compliment, not a bad thing. And so if I can have a business that can be kind of boring, then I take silence, pay attention to what our next move is not go create a new company because I need to shake things up. Or if anxiety comes in, what do I do to get silent to really know how to deal with it? Not go hide in a shell and avoid my business because it's harder than I thought it was going

to be. And I'll tell you, I think when we set out to go kind of run our own race as an entrepreneur, like those indicators of anxiety and boredom, they never go away. I think we need to maturely know how to address them, not avoid them. Yeah. I mean, I am so guilty of like that financial fluency. Now I go and dive into business with at least 20% net profit. Like I don't go below that. So I'm like so excited. Like I care about my net profit. That's my bottom line.

Yeah, I don't even want to look at a business that's like, now, by the way, I used to own a nursing home. You know, when I was in my law practice, we invested in building an end stage renal facility, kind of first of its kind in the United States. By the way, I lost a lot of money in that business. But a nursing home, when it's really humming, makes like 5%. But it makes it every day. So there are businesses that fall in the category.

Manufacturing may not have higher margins, but if they can grab scope to it, they can do quite well. So you and I just live in tech and digital world. We're like, if it's not 15%, don't waste my time. Right. But the reality is there are other businesses. And if you're one of those people listening, like I want to encourage you that you want to maximize the profit you have of the industry you're in, not against other industries. And so sometimes that false guilt can set in and I would encourage you to get rid of that. Like if your business industry is designed to only on a good day, make 12%, well then gosh darn it, if you're making six, let's get you to

12. Let's not, I just, I'm like you, I try to focus on 20% businesses. And that's just because you and I are spoiled in the digital world. But there are other places that maybe don't have those kind of margins. Okay, so, Vinny, that's really awesome. What are the things that we should know daily, reporting we should do daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly? Things that we need to know in our finances. You know, sometimes we can get two things. We can get too stuck in the weeds and we can get a little bit dashboard envious, someone's dashboard, like somehow that gives us the answers. But I want a report to me in my inbox, depending on the frequency of the business. So for example, I actually only look at a report for fully accountable once a month as it relates to the health condition of the company. It doesn't have enough transactions to justify me looking at it sooner. Now, inside of a department, I

am always going to be involved in the growth department, sales and marketing. And so there I get a report issued to me weekly, and I probably look at it bi-weekly. Now I'm the chairman of a health company where we sell supplements. And in that particular business, there's a daily report that goes out to the COO and then a weekly report that comes out to us. I will look at certain parts of that. As transactions go up, the need to look at it daily goes up, making sure you're getting deposits. Now, I'm not in charge of running the business. I work on it one hour a month, so it would be rather unfair to position me as it relates to that company. But if you're closer to the operating of a business, my general rule of thumb is more transactions, more frequency of reporting.

But if I have large revenue, I want to see daily deposits coming out of my merchant accounts. I want to see, for me, in the digital world, something that has me always amped up, and it makes me think about a gift is the cost to acquire the customer. The most expensive thing we do today on either first purchase or repurchase is the money we as a business spend to acquire the customer. And so early on in that health company I spoke about, I came up with this formula for myself called solving for X. And so I'd love to add in the show notes, a gift page for everybody. And so we built it as fullyaccountable.com forward slash Kate. Well, we can change that and redirect it to whatever you would like it to be. What would you like that forward slash to be for the show?

Inspired by her. Inspired by her it is. So at fullyaccountable.com forward slash inspired by her, I want to give away gifts to our community. One, because you're just a badass and I love you. And so because of that, I want to give you things that succeed in business. Like one of them would be a book I wrote called False Prophets. And in there, in the first chapter, the reason I put the most important things in the first chapters of my books is most people don't get out of sight of the first chapter. And the best principle in this book is in the first chapter. And it's about how to reconstruct solving for X. Solving for X being how much money can my company afford to spend on marketing to acquire the customer. And so

that is a critical indicator that you need to know living in our world. Why? Because with all these transactions rolling through, you and I as business leaders, we get channel envy. We see our friend running YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Google AdWords and native and display and email. We want them all. When in reality, we need to win at one, two, maybe three of those at a high level. And so each of those have their own tolerances for what you can spend to acquire the customer. In addition, this formula takes into account the industry's profit margin you should expect from your business backing into what you should spend on acquiring the customer. I think it's important. I tell you a story here. I'm walking up on stage at traffic and conversions with Perry Belcher and

Ryan Dice clapping for us winning marketer of the year for our really large web hosting company we had. And I leaned over to my partner at the time. And I said, wouldn't it be interesting if this entire audience knew when we were half our size, we made more money. When you make gross revenue, you're God. You could do things to grow it and blow your margin. I'm convinced that in direct to consumer, in the digital world, so many of us entrepreneurs are just only caring about acquiring the customer, and we blow the margin. Now, businesses that are sufficiently capitalized, that have outside investment, or have enough capital to acquire the customer, okay. But basically, those are unicorn businesses.

Everyone else should be first focused on profit as they expand their business. And the shame is I think we're buying into the old school direct to consumer, acquire them at zero and just disrupt the market. That's what leads to almost 600,000 businesses a year closing because they run out of cash. And so I would encourage you to go on that page at fullyaccountable.com forward slash inspired by her and go get these resources. They're free. The only thing we're going to get from you is an email so that we know you downloaded these things, but Only the businesses that want to outsource the expertise to someone like us will come to us. Everyone else, I just want them to do these things. Yeah, I love it. That's amazing. Like, oh my God. I think the last three years I started focusing into changing my mindset instead of growth. I'm like, I care about the bottom line. That's makes me happy. And I get to travel. I don't care about the rest.

Right. Yeah. By the way, my tagline, it's not the top line that pays you. Ah, so that's kind of stood the test of time because one of my buddies in our space, the guy named Hubert is always like, good for you making all that gross revenue. Did you keep any? Everyone's like, uh, uh, uh, uh. Quite honestly, here are some things back to that napkin math that I would do as a litmus test, as a leader to a leader. If you don't know the type of margin of the industry you're in, that's an indicator that you're a little removed from your industry. If you don't know the current profit margin of your own company, that's an indicator you're removed from your own finances. If you don't know how much money's in the bank

versus how much money could be in the bank, it's an indicator that you're a little removed from these things. You shouldn't take them as the shame to stay away. You should take them as an encouragement that like, wait a minute, this is not take a lot for me to lean into that. And so it starts this journey where they'll become more like you, where you're like excited about what's in your personal checking account, not just the business checking account. And so I'm on this mission to help my friends get paid twice. Can the business pay you now and then pay you later when you sell it? Not just pay you later when you sell it. If you can't get a business to pay you twice, then why would you expect someone to buy it from you later? Absolutely. I love it. That's really amazing advice. Now, Vinny, what are the most challenging experience you've had to overcome

while running your business? Well, each of them are different, right? So in a product and first off, 100% it's people. Let me start right there. I was going to give you examples of people in each one of those, but let me just start out with, in all respect, I will always default to people over systems. I am people over process. I believe if you've got good people and you give them good process, you make a better company. But I don't think good process without people works. So the hardest part of business is herding cats. I'm sorry. I want to tell you the best part of business is people. The hardest part is people. Every day, me leading others is the most rewarding and hardest part of what we do. It leads to the best part of our company where things grow beyond my shadow, and it requires me

to lead. Because in the absence of leadership, people will follow anyone and your business left without leadership will be a disaster. But the reality is a business only run by me pulling all the levers is equally a disaster. It won't grow past my shadow. And so the hardest part of business is also the most rewarding parts, people. Absolutely. Wow. Now, now vinnie what is the top three advice would you give for a starting um entrepreneur startup invest in self-awareness that looks and acts differently depending on the way someone hears that but i believe that a house that is not built on a firm foundation will fall. And so a small, by the way, gift number two,

I wrote my first bestseller, a book called the CEO's mindset. And in there are great nuggets about you and people. First chapter, super important. And why I'm, I'm not peddling you to buy it. I'm giving it to you. You just have to take me up and read the first chapter. Hopefully that'll wake you up to want to do more. But back to where we were on that, like there's few things that like,

I think that you need to be equipped with 70% of the information to make a good decision. I also think you need to be equipped with 70% as a general motto to believe if someone is at least 70% capable of doing what you could do, give them the freedom to go do it. And if you can do that, you can start to build an enterprise that's far bigger than the over controlling freak you are. By the way, I'm looking in a mirror, kind of talking to myself. I know that I can do quite well in the category of whatever I'm doing. I also know that I can't expect everyone to have the wisdom, acumen,

and process that I have after this many years. So I have to learn to be okay with a 70% version of that and give them the freedom to go do it. And I'll tell you, I'm most thankful of all of it for that, because I will talk to good, sharp, intelligent professionals who need that to be like 90, 95, maybe even 100% before they let other people fly. Love it. Vinny, where can they find you? Very accessible. If they want to know more about our team at Fully Accountable, you can just go to fullyaccountable.com. We have an email. We care at Fully Accountable.

We answer questions there all the time, helping people. Not everybody should work with us. We're a fractional CFO and controller company that runs the back office of seven-figure e-commerce tech companies. That's where we live. Everyone else, we will answer. We care and try to send you in the right spot. If you want to just communicate with me, my social handles are very active.

Maybe the first connection might not be me. It might be someone in my media team, but I'm very accessible and happy to be available at any time. Thank you so much for your time and honored for you to be here. I'm so excited to catch up with you soon. Okay. Thanks for having me today. And I love what you're doing. So thanks. Thank you, Vinny. Have a good day. I appreciate you. Bye. We hope you enjoyed the show.

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