[00:01:20] A.J. Lawrence: Now he can do a lot more than just talk accounting, and this is what kind of makes it interesting because he brings in a lot of good business experience to bring the reality of what we have to go into. I enjoy talking with Kevin because I really do like his focus on the foundation and the type of work you have to do before you can do the more cooler and interesting things that I think a lot of us find coaches to talk about.

[00:01:47] Sometimes we get, oh, it’ll be so cool if we can do X, Y, or Z, but we don’t have our financial foundation in order. And Kevin really does, as he’ll talk about here in the interview, really focus on a lot of that. I think another thing we can really kind of enjoy is talking about the types of things that help you focus on what’s the right thing, the type of questions you ask.

[00:02:08] We’ll jokingly talk about a quote around smart people have great answers, geniuses have great questions. We’ll play around a little bit with that. So look, I think Kevin’s an amazing guy. I think you’re really gonna learn a lot. And let’s go listen to Kevin.

[00:02:24] Hello Kevin. I am so happy to get you on my podcast. Thank you so much for coming.

[00:02:30] Kevin Bees: Hey, it’s a pleasure to be here and you did such a great job in our conversation on the Life Changing Questions podcast so it’s exciting to be here and be in the other role.

[00:02:39] A.J. Lawrence: Well, I really do love your podcast and I love sort of the depth of the questions that you ask and just how important they are to kind of help entrepreneurs and myself sort of focus where they’re trying to go. So hopefully my questions today will be at least passable. I love, and I was just sharing with the audience a little bit about your background you know, this great sort of progression through various levels of financial work to working with Tony Robbins in Tony Robbins’ company and doing all this stuff to then your own efforts to now working with clients in profit maximization.

[00:03:22] I will say that 10 times fast so I can practice it, but where do you see yourself as an entrepreneur these days?

[00:03:29] Kevin Bees: That’s a really great question. Where I see myself right now is coming from a place of service. It’s how I’m asking myself, you’re talking about questions, I’m asking myself all the time: how do I use my skills and abilities to the highest advantage of others?

[00:03:42] And when I ask that question, there’s so much knowledge and experience I’ve got from the past, which in and as entrepreneurs, we can kind of ignore the things that we’ve done and kind of diminish them or maybe not think that well of them cuz we’re so excited about where we’re going and where we need to be.

[00:03:55] But actually, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are in your life right now. You’ve got years of experience, you’ve created things that other people would love to have those skills and would love to have those abilities. And so for me, I’m just focusing on how do I use my skills and abilities to help others.

[00:04:09] And as you mentioned, my background originally was in finance, and then along the way I’ve done a lot in terms of psychology and mindset. And so I have this amazing tool set to really help other entrepreneurs to grow and maximize the results in a business. And so my focus isn’t so much on where I’m going as an entrepreneur, but it’s how I can serve and help other people.

[00:04:29] A.J. Lawrence: Well, I mean, to be able to serve other people, you have to have skills and capabilities to do that because anyone can walk out and say, Hey, let me lift that for you. But the sophistication, as I’ve said before, your podcast but then also your company and then the program you run, that’s not just something you pull off a shelf.

[00:04:53] You didn’t just go buy Entrepreneur for Dummies and just sort of copy, copy and paste this. You’ve built a pretty sophisticated business here that is really helping a good amount of clients and watching sort of what looks like the growth over the past few years, it seems like you’ve had to develop a stronger message to go out and to communicate what you’re doing to help this audience.

[00:05:21] Do you find it that you are having to sort of refine and continue, what you’re doing to be able to better serve these people?

[00:05:30] Kevin Bees: Yes. It continually and we’re guided by the marketplace, right? So maybe in the beginning, given my accounting and finance background, I was very skilled in going into organizations and helping identify the problem and work out how to turn it around.

[00:05:44] And so, my messaging along the way to business owners was, Hey, you’ve gotta know your numbers. Know your numbers. And I’ve recorded a TV series in a studio and I’m teaching business owners how to know your numbers. I think it’s one of the most essential skills. But typically you say that to entrepreneurs and the idea of knowing the numbers is great, but as easy to say that’s the accountant’s problem, or the thought of going through and understand profit loss and balance sheets, it’s like, it’s not the most exciting thing in the world.

[00:06:08] And so when you talk about messaging yet, a 100%. If I go out and tell people, Hey, I’m gonna help you know your numbers. Maybe some people get it, some people don’t. If I tell them the benefit or the result of that though, hey, I’m gonna help you maximize your profitability, that sounds more interesting. Who doesn’t want more profitability?

[00:06:23] A.J. Lawrence: Oh yeah.

[00:06:23] Kevin Bees: Or given the mindset background, if I wanted to say a message I may have used in the past, Hey, I’m gonna help you uncover your limiting beliefs, or I’m gonna help you shift your mindset. That’s okay. But if I say we’re going to help you change your beliefs that are holding you back from making more profit in your business, it’s tied to result.

[00:06:41] So yes, continually changing the message and I think keeping the message more so in alignment with the result that business owners want and business owners desire.

[00:06:49] A.J. Lawrence: Well this is, I would like to almost dive in more of that because one, profits are kind of important to what we do for a living here

[00:06:57] Kevin Bees: like a little bit

[00:06:58] A.J. Lawrence: But I literally was having this conversation cuz I was talking with another entrepreneur about the type of financial system that they’ve been running and they’ve been sort of realizing they gotta graduate from their combination of bookkeeper and tax person to now actually having a more robust financial system.

[00:07:17] And I know like in my process, I stuck with a bookkeeper too long. I then stuck with my CPA led sort of. I knew my financials, but I didn’t really know what it meant from an operational point of view. I just knew what it meant overall, specifically for my taxes, until I spent a good amount of money getting a fractional CFO.

[00:07:39] And then he built a very, I don’t wanna say overly complex, but a complex system that allowed me to see a lot of things. But the moment he left, after I sold the company, all of a sudden then, you know what I had left after I sold most of the assets, what I had after I was like, oh, how do I keep this as?

[00:08:00] I’ve found it very difficult to understand what I should be building, the type of system. From a financial point, I know I like certain things. I know I like having the rolling cash flow. I know I like looking at this. I know I like understanding my cash cycle times and all that, but .I don’t know how to do that.

[00:08:21] Where do you find your entrepreneurs coming in? Where are they usually in sort of this period? Are they, Hey, we have a good business but I don’t know where to go? Tell us more about where they are in their mindset coming to you.

[00:08:35] Kevin Bees: Yeah, okay. So typically the conversation that entrepreneurs have with me, we start off normally they see me a presentation like this and I explain to them, look, if I look at your numbers in your business, I’m going to find, I’m sure within 45 minutes, at least a $100,000 in additional profit for you.

[00:08:50] And I can say that with confidence cause I work with so many business net business now, I’ve seen so many patterns and so many challenges. Having that outsider’s perspective looking on someone’s business, you can often see a very different way, you know, where we can tweak a strategy here or a sales process there, or identify how do we get more recurring income. And so it’s very easy to see those things.

[00:09:07] So the entrepreneurs I work with often get excited by the numbers, and then we can work through what metrics relievers do we need to have in place. Now, as you said, accountants can make things complex, or what I see with a lot of accountants is actually they don’t provide the management decision-making information we need.

[00:09:25] A lot of accountants are in more of that role of that compliance position, where it’s their job to take what you’ve done in the business and turn it into numbers and then submit it for your taxes. Typically, your year one, and then they may submit that six to nine months later. So by the time you read that data, one it’s out of date by year, year and a half, and two it’s not structured in a way that’s gonna help you, as the entrepreneur, understand, well what does this mean? What action do I take?

[00:09:46] Cause that’s your job. Your job is to read those numbers and then understand, well, what do I do differently? And so typically in the beginning, I help them set up those systems and get the relevant bookkeeper, accountants start producing you know, just monthly management accounts.

[00:09:58] Having that information and seeing what is the profitability in the business, what is my profit by different products, what is my profit by different services, it is amazing. So many entrepreneurs don’t look at this, they don’t understand this. But once we look at it and we can say, Hey, well this product or service is providing way less profit margin than this product or service.

[00:10:15] What if we put more of our energy into this one? What would happen to your business? And simple questions like that can often just unlock something in them that they already know, and with that slight tweak or change to well, what are we looking at? Whaat’s the best area to focus on? The business can go very quickly from there.

[00:10:32] And I’ve seen this in so many businesses. I mean, I learned this. At the very beginning, I worked fresh out of university, I got mentored in Intel Corporation. And I hadn’t done any of my accounting studies by that point, and I just thought I was the lowest of low in the organization, getting mentored there.

[00:10:49] And I was producing some analysis, some charts, and I’d passed them amongst my boss and think that was it. You know, no one else ever saw them. But then one day I sat in a meeting with the head of the EMEA region, the European region, you know, Europe, Africa, Asia region, and he was explaining why they were gonna change strategy and why they were gonna be doing things differently in the region.

[00:11:06] And he put up my graph to explain the reasons why and what was going on. And I had one of these moments where you knew where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, like, oh, oh, that’s my chart, that’s my analysis. I never knew it would get all the way up to them. I thought it was just going to my boss.

[00:11:21] And that’s where I had the realization that it doesn’t matter the size of the business- I mean Intel being a multiple $30 billion business at the time, or even the 6, 7, 8, 9-figure businesses I work with now- knowing that data and having the right analysis at your fingertips can really help you make the right decision, right choice.

[00:11:39] If an intern with no knowledge or skill can find the right information, then I know every entrepreneur listening to this with the right bit of guidance, with the right focus, we can really get get you there.

[00:11:50] One of the most important things, you spoke about rolling cash flow. Cash flow is so key. Your working capital, that’s key. Even simple things like key KPIs. What are the key performance indicators? Maybe we focus on one or two levers in your business and it makes all the difference. I’ll give you one more example. I worked with a business that were hiring Ag plant and machinery. And there was a simple KPI.

[00:12:09] We knew that if the machinery was out 50% of the time, on higher 50% of the time they’d be breaking even. If it was out less than that.,So my yard was forward machines, then we’d be losing money. But if it was out 60, 70, 80% of the time, then we’d be making good money. So this business had seven or eight different depots in the country, and that was the metric we gave them.

[00:12:30] Look, your machinery needs to be out on higher, at least 67% of the time. They can measure that on a daily, right? And they could see every day. Now, if they were focusing on that every day to make sure that the machinery was out at least 70% of the time, and if it wasn’t, we’d be having a conversation like now.

[00:12:42] If they were focused on that every single day, then each week, each month, each year, we knew we were gonna be making good money. If their yard was full, we had a problem. We better focus on it.

[00:12:49] So I wonder for the entrepreneurs listening, what are the key performance indicators there? What are the key metrics that if we put our focus in, that would actually drive your results in a different way?

[00:12:58] A.J. Lawrence: No, I love that because I’m a proponent of sort of agile marketing. And when you talk about the KPIs, it’s having a system where you know consistently what the data means so then you can do experiments off of the data and from a marketing point of view, but the same thing in a sense from finance.

[00:13:20] It’s like, okay, consistently looking at the data over time so you understand what that means when something does X or Y goes up, goes down, left, right center, and then say, do we put more money in this or do that? I mean it’s one of those things that I think so many entrepreneurs like, well, it sounds so duh, but it’s so hard to consistently develop that process.

[00:13:50] Obviously you guys are trying to move this forward and you have ways of getting it, but how long do you usually see for customers in your program, how long does it take for them to kind of start moving into that system? That nice, consistent flow of data?

[00:14:06] Kevin Bees: Yeah, it’s interesting. Different people move at different speeds. I’ve got some entrepreneurs who are completely urgent and get things done. I was surprised by a new client. Two weeks ago I explained some of these things and what we need to change in her accounting, in her system, and the next day she emails me and says, here it is.

[00:14:22] It’s all done. And she’d had the bookkeeper set up a new financial system, get it into the cloud, reorder, see things in like voilà done, then and there. Now, once the system’s structure is set up in place, each month we can review those financials together very easily. And then, of course, we can start setting up the KPIs around so it can happen real fast.

[00:14:42] I mean it’s something, it’s not complex. A lot of people have negative associations with numbers or money or finances, and they get scared of them. And it’s unnecessary. It’s just we weren’t really taught in a very good way through our school system. People got all sorts of fears, we can move those away quite easily. I’m very skilled now at helping people to just really get to grips with, well, what does it mean and how to understand it.

[00:15:06] And once we do that, within a period of weeks of getting things set up, we can easily have the reviews coming in once a month and have a review and understand it. One of my clients, he’s been doing this regular now. We probably did this three, four years ago, he got himself a bookkeeper out of the Philippines who is costing next to nothing.

[00:15:23] This bookkeeper produces all the things we needs to do. He doesn’t ever need to get involved in the production of this or the creation of this . He just gets the end report, which gives him the dates that he needs, and then we can discuss what needs to happen, what decisions do we need to make.

[00:15:36] Now, the upshot for him, of course, once we started looking at his P&L in a different way, we split it, we could start to see- he’s an IT guy and he has money he makes from selling licenses and money he makes from doing web development with people. Now it was interesting, we could look at the different margins between the two and we could begin to see, hey, well if we had your team being more productive and they were doing more billable hours in his web development area, you know, you got a higher margin there.

[00:16:00] We put more effort into that and then your profit’s gonna jump very quickly. And sure enough, because we can see that on the report, we made that decision. He starts having more conversations with clients about what services they actually need. They needed all these services, but they weren’t asking for it.

[00:16:12] Once they started asking, Hey, do you need this? Say, Hey, we can provide this for you. Sure enough, customers started saying, yes, we need this. And so he got to serve his clients more. And then as a result of that, his profit, his revenue jumps one and a half times, but his profit went up like 8.9x.

[00:16:27] And I think that’s the interesting thing for entrepreneurs to get. Sometimes when you’re at that breakeven point where you’re just marginally profitable, small increases in your revenue can have very large increases in your profitability. That’s where the exciting things come in. Once we start looking at those numbers, we find which levers to pull to help that grow quickest.

[00:16:42] A.J. Lawrence: No, and it is fascinating because I’ve had those experiences, acqui-hiring a team that had its own cost covered. But then being able to cross sell them into my other service, or cross sell their clients into my services and then their services into my existing clients, all of a sudden was like, oh, I spent X, but I’m getting four times X back just by having this capability set up correctly.

[00:17:08] But it took a lot of work to be able to get there, so that’s what I think is really interesting. Getting in and having the understanding of what’s available and what’s smart. Maybe before we go into sort of where you’re going to sort of make sure you’re able to service these clients, what is it that you tell folks who are thinking about it is going to be the most important thing that they’re gonna be looking at? Or what do you think is among the most important things that clients should be looking at?

[00:17:37] Kevin Bees: Big question, and it depends on the stage of their business. Some are at the stage where they need to be looking at bringing on more team or developing or expanding their team. Some are at the stage where actually they need to be finding some more cash flow to be able to afford things and fund things.

[00:17:54] Some are at a place where actually we can just, we have a proven model here and we can just scale it. I’d like to approach most businesses from the perspective of, I think there’s only seven or eight things if we’re gonna maximize the profitability. There’s probably seven or eight things if I run through as a bit of a checklist, then we can identify the core areas and the areas to focus on.

[00:18:14] I know we won’t have time to go through them all on the show today, but if I just rattle off the seven or eight, the number one is leads – do we have the relevant amount of leads and qualified leads coming into the organization?

[00:18:25] Now, I know with your experience and expertise, your team have been amazing at helping people do that. I think a lot of people, a lot of business owners think they need more leads. But really I think a lot of business owners, they don’t need to do a lot more marketing. I think sometimes they just need to focus more on maximizing what they have, so they can get more profit and more peace of mind.

[00:18:46] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah.

[00:18:47] Kevin Bees: Yeah. And with that example, let’s think about the next stage. And the next thing I think about number two is conversion. If we already have this opportunity in front of us, how can we help convert more of those? To give you an example, had a guy who was manufacturing and installing kitchens, and we looked at his conversion ratio.

[00:19:02] So every prospects he spoke to, how many of those did he convert into client? And his sales team were converting 20%. So he was getting 1 in 5. And I asked him, cuz he was the owner he’d been in the business 30 years, I asked him when he was doing the sales, what was his conversion?

[00:19:14] He said, well, I used to get 80% cause I’m the owner, I’d get 80%. I said, ah, okay, so you used to get 80, but your guys are getting 20. So what happens if we set the standard in this team to be 50% and we tell ’em, Hey, we’ve gotta get 50% conversion to be in the team. And we focus on that together. We do a bit of training with them, give them some support, give them some additional scripts, help improve the closing process, maybe put a guarantee in place.

[00:19:33] So we did a handful of things and sure enough, over three to six month period, we got their conversion from 20% up to 40%. We didn’t quite get to the 50%, we got to the 40%, but that’s the doubling of the business, right? So that, just changing that one process, the business doubled. So, what would that mean for your business?

[00:19:48] If you’re listening right now, what’s your current conversion ratio? And what would happen if you double that? Like, how would that change for your business? So that’s the second thing -conversion. The other one is average dollar sale. How do we help your clients increase the amount of money they’re spending with you each time?

[00:20:03] Going back to the IT example, that’s what they did. They started offering bigger packages, bigger solutions that the customers needed. The obvious thing in average dollar sale, a lot of entrepreneurs, and this is a big thing, is that a lot of them, discount. They give away so much profit margin because they’re not confident in their products or their service or experienc, so they choose to discount to win business.

[00:20:26] And it’s one of the biggest challenges, I think. I was in New York and I was walking down the street and there was this queue around the corner and I wondered, why is there such a big queue? And I got to the front of the queue and I looked, and it was hairdressers. And there’s a sign in the window and it said $3 haircuts. I was like, wow, $3 haircuts.

[00:20:44] And I looked across the road, there was another hairdresser and their prices were normal range, $40, $50, something like that. And I went across the owner and said, well, he’s doing $3 haircuts, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna drop your prices? And he said, Nope. And he gets out his pen and a bit of poster paper and he writes on it and he sticks it in the window and I look and it says, we fix $3 haircuts.

[00:21:04] It’s a bit of an old story, that one, but I think it kind of shows the point. It becomes about Experience. What’s the experience that we can give someone? Can we show them our quality? Can we give them better experience?

[00:21:17] When I’ve had clients really work on the experience and show clients the value that they’re adding, and then we look at increasing prices, well, very frequently, customers are happy to pay the higher price cuz they’re getting a good quality product or service. Now what happens if you increase your price 10% or 20%? It could be quite remarkable because all of a sudden, if you’re already at that breakeven point, most of that additional gross margin or all of that additional gross margin drops straight into your pocket. Had one client tell me recently that he’s now making 10% more money and you can take an extra day a week off of work to be with the kids.

[00:21:48] So leads, conversion, average dollar sell, and I’ll just quickly wrestle through the others. I’m not gonna have time to go through alll of them in detail, but if it is okay, if you wanted to hear the rest, I’ve got an ebook with this or a report. And if you went to profit.gifts, so like a gift, so profit.gifts, it will show you 125 free and easy maximizing opportunities.

[00:22:09] And so the other ones then is how do we get your customers to do more transactions with you? How do we get them to buy more frequently? Okay, that’s a really critical one. How do we help them maximize their profit margin? A quick example on that, had a jeweler and they were selling a range of different stones and we looked at the profitability of each type of stone and we found out that, I think it was the sapphires we’re more higher margin. So we started positioning more sapphire sales.

[00:22:35] And of course, even though we made the same revenue as before, there was actually more profit margin dropping through. So basically there was less work being done, so less products being done. Just made it more efficient.

[00:22:46] Cash flow, you spoke about working capital cycles, so key. When it’s Amazon, I mean Amazon’s success is, one of the key reasons is because its working capital cycle. I can’t remember, I think it was like 125 days plus, meaning they get paid by their customer, okay. And then some point later, they then pay the supplier for delivering the product. So they get all this cash up front and they don’t have to pay until later.

[00:23:08] A lot of businesses have that switched. We pay all of our costs all of our money.

[00:23:12] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah.

[00:23:13] Kevin Bees: Then collect later. So that in itself, is not to be underestimated. And that could really be the hand break on your business.

[00:23:19] A.J. Lawrence: This is good because I do think these are things that, once again, I’m gonna keep saying it, and it sounds dopey, but it’s so important. Everyone talks about this but I think in the heat of the moment, the fog of war, however you wanna call your metaphor of choice for being an entrepreneur, we lose track of these things.

[00:23:41] I know from a marketing point of view, when I work clients, it’s almost same type of discussion. But you know, from the marketing point of view of like, Hey, let’s look at these. Let’s isolate these things because then we can find incremental opportunities throughout. And I love that you keep hitting on it because I get scared sometimes when I come across programs that are like, oh, we find this, or since I’m spending a lot more time in the acquisition, sort of the entrepreneurship of acquiring and looking to go buy a company, all the money down folks, it gets scary. Because it’s sort of like, yeah, it’s doable, but the degree of difficulty is so much higher.

[00:24:26] Why don’t you just help me figure out how to do this in a good way? Because overall, what I’ve seen from your program and from listening to your discussions is you’re not offering something that is so out there that it’s like, yes, we will find rainbows that will then go to the pot of gold.

[00:24:45] You’re like, no, you go do the work. These are the things, these are important. And you’re gonna go get more money because you do the right things. And I think at times in this space, so much entrepreneurs like us are looking for people who can help them understand where to position and how to get better at finances and stuff.

[00:25:08] And too often it does get to be that story without the substance behind it. And here you are, you’re hitting, what do you need to do? Well, you gotta go chop the wood, carry the water . You have to do the right things for the right reason. So, no, you doing great when you talk about this stuff.

[00:25:27] Kevin Bees: Hey, thank you. And here’s the reality, there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If I stood next to any business owner, every business owner I’ve met, it doesn’t matter whether they’re the billion dollar companies, the 9, 8, 7, 6-figure companies, anyone that I work with, they’re all leaking profit. So, that pot of gold is right at your feet.

[00:25:44] And what I’m saying is, it’s here at your feet, let’s just bend over and pick it up. Like it’s there. And I really genuinely have a passion for every business owner and entrepreneur to be picking up more of that profitability because everything we have in our world right now, everything you look around, whatever you can touch in front of you, this device that you’re listening to, maybe the car that you’re driving and the seat you’re sitting, that’s come from an entrepreneur who’s worked to create that and create that idea and bring it to reality.

[00:26:07] And I think too many entrepreneurs I see are doing amazing things for the world, but then not keeping that profit and then of course, unable to continue or unable to serve and support their family the way they want. And I really have a passion to help them pick that up. There’s that opportunity all the way around, and I think that probably my job is to help them see that and show them that there’s a way to pick that up and do that.

[00:26:27] You mentioned before about my background with the psychology and the mindset, and I think that’s something that I kind of really can’t emphasize enough on. If we can get that right perspective, right mindset, everything changes. Had a client say to me this week that her business doubled because of, and she pinpoints in one specific activity we did, where we shifted her mindset.

[00:26:50] She was seeing things in one way, and we helped her reframe it and see it in another. And she said, because of that shift and that change, I went and did some different things and got different results. Now, I didn’t have to give her the strategy in that example. We shifted her mindset and she already knew what to do. But she had that hand break from her own way of thinking.

[00:27:07] So we gotta get that psychology right and that mindset right. And that’s part of my fascination with the life-changing questions that we spoke about. Cuz if I can go and understand the questions that someone asks – questions that someone’s thinking – at the heart of it, if you ask a different question, you get a different answer, well, you’re gonna get a different result.

[00:27:23] One of my mentors, Keith Cunningham, he frames this in a really great way. And I wish I’d framed this before I heard it from him. He says, "Smart people have great answers. Geniuses have great questions". And I really love that framing.

[00:27:36] So part of what I’m doing with the whole mindset piece then is really helping people to ask the right questions and be focused on the right things that are gonna allow them to keep serving clients at a high level, but in a way that allows them to keep more of that profitability in their pocket and not let it slip out.

[00:27:53] A.J. Lawrence: Oh, that is really cool. And I think tying it to those questions is so cool because yes, you may know like, to take a little bit out, I know I shouldn’t go have another drink. Or I know I should go to the gym. But it’s like, sometimes we cut corners or sometimes we don’t do the things we know.

[00:28:13] So why is that? And then bringing it into a business. It’s sad, but I’ve had moments where it’s like, I know I should do it, I know I should do it, and then someone gives me a different reframing or pushes me on something and then all of a sudden I’m like, oh yeah, why was I doing that? And then all of a sudden something is so much easier.

[00:28:33] It’s like, it’s so dopey, but so important. We get lost in that.

[00:28:37] Kevin Bees: We can’t see the label on the bottle from inside of the bottle, right? So it’s good to have someone else to be there and to make some metaphor, to hold that mirror up and, you know, it’s called a blind spot for a reason. So that’s why it’s good to have external party to really help see that from those perspectives.

[00:28:52] A.J. Lawrence: With your focus on service with ProfitHive, and with your speaking and your other efforts, how are you going about defining what success is for yourself? I mean obviously ProfitHive, you must have some beautiful KPIs given your specialization here, but what’s success gonna look like for you?

[00:29:14] Kevin Bees: I always have loved the definition of success by Earl Nightingale, and I think he described it as success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

[00:29:24] A.J. Lawrence: Very cool.

[00:29:24] Kevin Bees: And so succession isn’t something that’s in the distance, it’s not something that I’m never gonna obtain. One of the challenges I see with a lot of clients I work with is they want to get this amount of money and then this amount of money, or this goal and this thing and trouble is they get there and they’re like, oh, is that all it is? And then they go for the next, and they’re continually reaching for something beyond themselves, and they’re never happy and never satisfied.

[00:29:43] And so this is why I love Earl Nightingale’s definition. Definition is this success is a progressive realization. What are we doing to continually move and edge forwards towards that bigger vision?

[00:29:54] Now, of course, my vision is to help every entrepreneur make the profit that they really wanna make so they can have more impact, more profit, the more impact they can have. And I really want to help them have more impact. And so for me, it’s am I helping my clients to make more of that profit?

[00:30:12] That’s the number one KPI. Are they getting the results? And I can see that in the numbers. Either their profit and their revenue, or more importantly, their profit going up or not. If its not, then I’m not being effective in my work that I’m doing. So that’s number one metric. And then number two of course is, how many people am I able to reach and help.

[00:30:29] And that’s like my focus personally as an entrepreneur right now. I’ve worked with groups, I’ve helped people with groups for the longest time I’ve helped people one-on-one just so I can be really close into the nuts and bolts of the business and really serve people with the specifics. As I’m going further in my career and know I’ve got a system that really works and it really helps people, my next focus is on how do I reach a wider audience.

[00:30:54] One of the things that I’m working on right now, I’ve set myself the intention I’m gonna declare it here publicly so I know psychologicaly I’ve said it. So my birthday is coming up, the mid of December 18th of December, and my commitment between now and then which is about six weeks away, is to have written a book on this topic.

[00:31:16] I know all the knowledge and IPs here, I use it all the time with my clients. And now in over the next six weeks, I’m gonna get that out on paper so we can actually get that out and help assist more people. And I just wanna declare that publicly right now cause I know once you declare things publicly, all sorts of things start to happen.

[00:31:30] One, you feel this pressure cause you’ve told other people and you wanna be consistent to your word. But two, sometimes other people listening get an idea or a thought, and an opportunity comes up that helps you with that. So that’s my progressive realization is how do I get this IP into a system, into a book, that can help more people.

[00:31:48] A.J. Lawrence: Okay, since we’re recording this ahead of time, I will make sure to help you on the support just to add that little bit of extra kindling underneath. We’ll make sure we call out that you were working on a book and obviously it won’t be released on the 18th, you know, and all that-

[00:32:05] Kevin Bees: It’ll be written by then.

[00:32:07] A.J. Lawrence: Yes, it’ll be written. Editing takes a long time, but we will call that up because I do think that would be really cool to see. And we’ll make sure we have this in the show notes and everywhere, so everyone can check where you are with your progress there.

[00:32:28] I know that you know you’re an Australian company, profithive.au. Au,is that right?

[00:32:35] Kevin Bees: Yeah. Dot com dot au. That’s it.

[00:32:37] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah. But Iwas looking and you work with, you’ve talked about European clients, I see this. Do you also have American? Where are your client? I mean, obviously probably mostly Australia cause that’s where you are, but where are your clients?

[00:32:53] Kevin Bees: Yeah, I have a real mix because like you, I lived in Europe for a while. I lived in the UK and I lived in Netherlands for a while. And I’ve worked with some US partnerships. I have clients in US, Canada, Europe, not so much in Asia right now, and then Australia and New Zealand.

[00:33:12] So I’ve got a bit of a mix all over the place. The challenge of course is time zones. So I try to align myself probably more so with Australia and US time zone, I think they’re easier to fit clients in. But sometimes, exciting opportunities come up to work with people in Europe, and we find a way to make it work.

[00:33:28] If I need to get up early sometimes or step little later sometimes for those clients, then we do that. So yeah, clients are aware. And this is the joy of the technology we have right now. I mean, I’m sat in one country, in one continent, you are sat in a country in another continent. And then we’ve got listeners that probably in every other continent. I mean, the technology’s amazing. Providing someone has a good internet connection, we can work anywhere in the world.

[00:33:50] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah. I started playing around with technology in the 80s, did not date myself that much on something called a bulletin board systems way, way back, sort of pre-dial up internet and all that. And I used to play online chess, and I remember playing with someone in Australia for a while, doing this. And it would literally be, because of how they had to route things, it would be a day or two between just a single move we’d get from one player to the other.

[00:34:20] And here I’m having a conversation with someone-

[00:34:23] Kevin Bees: Real time. Incredible.

[00:34:24] A.J. Lawrence: Technology’s come a little bit so it’s fun. This is real time.

[00:34:29] What’s the best way for someone listening who’s interested to get in touch with you to learn more about your program?

[00:34:38] Kevin Bees: Number one, visit the gifts that I offered to share. Go to profit.gifts, and then you’re gonna be able to access the gift and you can contact me there. Or if you did want to come to my website, you’re most welcome to profithive.com.au.

[00:34:54] I’d be delighted if you are at a position in your business where you want to maximize your profitability, you see there’s some opportunity there, I’m more than happy to have a conversation. And then my thoughts there, if I can help, I would really love to.

[00:35:07] A.J. Lawrence: Great. We will have everything. I was just actually calling that up. We will have all the links in the show notes for everyone. We’ll make sure they go in the newsletter when this comes out and we’ll put that up on the socials. Cause I really do like you know, everyone, I’ve been checking this program out.

[00:35:26] I’ve been going through a lot of his YouTube video, his materials, there’s a lot of really great stuff. And like I said, having seen a lot of people make promises that don’t really, or maybe more marketing sizzle than actual focus on the realities of business. I always appreciate someone who’s doing the work of calling out the hard work for the right reasons to get the type of profits that we can get if we work hard.

[00:35:54] So I really do like a lot of what Kevin’s doing. So thank you so much for coming on the show today, Kevin.

[00:35:59] Kevin Bees: Thank you so much for your kind words. And yeah, I think that’s a challenge for all of us. There are people out there shouting louder and marketing louder, and not doing as good a job as us. So, if you’re doing a great job, then we need to increase that visibility and get it out there.

[00:36:13] And some of this work doesn’t have to be hard. I think it’s just we’re thinking a slightly different way and things can happen a lot quicker and a lot easier than maybe you even imagine. That pot of gold is around your feet. Let’s bend over and pick it up.

[00:36:26] A.J. Lawrence: All right, let’s go find some pot of golds. All right. Thank you Kevin. I can’t wait to talk to you again.

[00:36:32] Kevin Bees: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

[00:36:34] A.J. Lawrence: Bye-bye.

[00:36:40] Kevin Bees: This episode of Beyond 8 Figures is over, but your journey as an entrepreneur continues. So if we can help you with anything, please just let us know. And if you liked this episode, please share it with someone who might learn from it. Until next time, keep growing and find the joy in your journey. This is A.J., and I’ll be talking to you soon. Bye-bye.