Episode 17
Season 2
Improving Business Cashflow & Profit
Welcome Alvin Narsey, Business Consultant, to Saturday Soundbites!
Alvin is a successful entrepreneur who launched his amazing coaching business after he walked away from a success career as a pharmacist. He took his extensive knowledge of retail business marketing and now supports other entrepreneurs build systems and processes that support a healthy financial infrastructure.
Alvin shares the mistakes that business owners make that prevent them from improving their business cashflow and profit. He believes in monitoring and reviewing financials on a weekly basis to stay on top of your business.
Join Alvin and Veronica as they talk about how important it is to keep the cash flowing to manage a successful business.
Be sure to follow Alvin at www.facebook.com/alvin.narsey.7
[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello. Hello and welcome to Saturday soundbites. I'm your host, Veronica Sofer. And I'm thrilled to be here with another episode of Saturday soundbites, where we take talk about all things, visibility strategy. We talk about your branding, your networking, your market. Advertising or public relations and how all of those things work together to help you grow your business.
[00:00:22] Now, I know we have a lot of listeners and Watchers who are entrepreneurs, who are transitioning from the corporate space to the entrepreneur space. And then I've got some who are veteran entrepreneurs who are going to love our guests today because we're going to be talking about cashflow. And that's so important in the mistakes that people make.
[00:00:40] Pitfalls you can avoid. This is an episode. Everyone is going to want to take notes on. So make sure you drop us some comments. If you were watching on Facebook or YouTube, and if you are listening on our podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We don't want you to miss any episodes of Saturday soundbites.
[00:00:54] If you're listening from one of your favorite podcast platforms. So with that, I don't want to waste any time. I want to bring on my amazing guests. I have Alvin NARSAD coming. Joining us, Alvin is going to be sharing his origin story, the successes he has had on his business. And you are going to want to take notes, Alan, welcome to the show.
[00:01:15] Alvin: Thank you, Veronica. Thank you so much for having me such a great pleasure.
[00:01:18] Veronica: Oh, great. So tell me, first of all, where are you joining us
[00:01:21] Alvin: from? Yeah. So right now I am in Southern Germany,
[00:01:26] Veronica: Southern Germany. Excellent. So tell us a little bit about how you got into this space, your origin story, and your journey is inspiring.
[00:01:35] And I want everyone to know.
[00:01:37] Alvin: Fantastic. Okay. So right now at present, I am a retail business coach. So I help retail business owners improve their cash flow and profitability in their business. But I wasn't always a coach. My origin story goes back a little while I actually studied as a pharmacist at university in Melbourne Australia.
[00:01:59] And then as you do, I became a pharmacist and I got pretty pretty bored of sort of working for somebody. And eventually I was able to buy my own business or get into a partnership in a pharmacy business, the pharmacy landscape in Australia anyways, a little bit different, I think from the rest of the world and that to own a pharmacy, you have to be a pharmacist.
[00:02:21] So so I got it because I was really young. I was 26 or 27 whenever. Into my first business. I had two other business partners were a little bit older than me. And I guess, cause I had all the energy you know, I was sort of driving our businesses forward, not to say they weren't doing anything, but they were there as well.
[00:02:37] And so, you know, eventually we bought and sold shops over the next few years, w we had like four or five large pharmacy businesses at one point. And then, you know, We decided to sort of go our separate ways. So we sort of split up the partnership. And you know, I was left running one shot. And then you know, COVID came the pharmacy game got really, really busy as as it did in most parts of the world.
[00:03:02] And you know, my wife is from Germany and so, you know, her, she usually flies back and forth every couple of months to come to Germany to see her parents and her dad was getting pretty old and unwell. And so we just saw. Do you know what? The only way we can leave Australia is to say we're going for a long time and not coming back.
[00:03:22] So I decided to sell the shop. My wife decided to quit her corporate job. So we sold up everything. Put a few things into storage. And can you.
[00:03:34] Veronica: I love that story because I think that it's not unfamiliar during COVID, but more importantly, that it took a great amount of courage and a great amount of faith to just take that leap. So I love that. I love that you did it. So tell us a little bit about when you're working with clients, especially people who maybe are used to structure and processes, and, you know, you, you talked about having.
[00:03:59] Businesses and business partners. So it usually comes with an accountant or an attorney, and there are safety nets built into the, but when you're in the entrepreneur space that doesn't always exist. Tell us about some of the things that you see.
[00:04:12] Alvin: Right. So yeah, there is, yeah, it's almost like a lone ranger, right.
[00:04:17] When you're running your own business and yeah, there is no safety net in having somebody else to sort of lean on that in, you know, when I was running my businesses you kind of had to, you know, work out what you wanted to do. And I was very fortunate in that I always got help and I always leaned on business cards.
[00:04:37] And mentors to provide me with the advice that I needed very early on, fairly early on in my piece, you know, any businesses I sort of knew, like, I didn't know what I'm doing. Like I didn't go to business school. They didn't teach you this stuff in pharmacy school. So very early, early on, I was able to get help.
[00:04:53] And that was, that was really, really important for our business. And sort of kick-starting everything and moving us to the next level. I wish I had gotten help earlier and however, that's, that's the way it works out in hindsight. So with working with business coaches and with mentors, we were able to grow our businesses really, really quickly.
[00:05:12] And in fact, what I'm doing now is very similar to the people. That first helped me CYO what I'm doing now. My very first business coaches who sort of, you know, helped me pave the foundation. And that's what I'm trying to do now with other retail business owners.
[00:05:27] Veronica: And let me ask you this. So there's a dis distinction between a retail business owners and maybe service providers.
[00:05:35] Yeah. Do you see that there are some similarities in terms of not having the infrastructure in place or do you feel like there's two distinct challenges? No,
[00:05:46] Alvin: I think they're very, very similar. I think the infrastructure when running the business is, is very, very similar. You look at the basics like cashflow profitability, systemization human races, all of that is essentially the backbone.
[00:06:01] So I've just chosen to niche into reach out because that's my thing. I've always been in retail. I speak the language of retail, a retail pharmacy, and I've always sort of been working in that space even as a junior. Other jobs that I had. So. That's just my thing as the people I connect with, however, the fundamentals of business are really exactly the same.
[00:06:23] I mean, if I wanted to, I could change space and work with SAS providers or service-based businesses and, and roll out the same fundamentals.
[00:06:31] Veronica: No, that makes sense. So tell us, what are some of the mistakes I know you've got four or five that you see continuously, and I think that's what our listeners really want to get to so that they can learn and grow and avoid
[00:06:43] Alvin: them a hundred percent.
[00:06:44] Absolutely. So, so these mistakes that I see business owners making and what my clients are making, I'm in fact the same mistakes that I actually made earlier on in my business career. Right. So. You're right there. There are many mistakes, but I'll just touch on the main ones is the first one is a lot of us business owners sort of don't really understand their cash flow or what cashflow is.
[00:07:10] So what are the major mistakes I see business owners doing is sort of not tracking their cash. Or not forecasting their cashflow. Quite often we wait for our bookkeepers or accountants to give us a cashflow statement at the end of the accounting period, whatever business or whatever part of the world you're in really for you to make accurate financial decisions in your business.
[00:07:32] You should be looking at your cashflow statement weekly. So, so that's, that's what I've always been doing. And that's what I work with my clients to do. The other mistake I see business owners making is we have no we have no metrics set up in our business in the form of key performance indicators or KPIs.
[00:07:49] And I'm a really, really big fan of KPIs because I believe as a business owner you know, our long-term goal is to step away and work on the business, not in it. And you can only really do that if you have some meaningful set of KPIs. So, you know, Driving your business forward. So in theory, you can do what I used to do, which is travel a lot and just sort of work the leavers on your business and you know what you're tracking and you know what the team should be measuring so you can see what results you're getting basically.
[00:08:23] Yeah. Cause quite often we, we often run as a business owners from strategy to strategy. But, you know, we might listen to one grew or do one marketing initiative, but really we don't really give it enough time to, for it to work. And two, we don't even really know it's working because we're always looking at top line sales.
[00:08:39] So that's really important.
[00:08:42] Veronica: And let me ask you this about KPI and, and I've often had this question go through my head. How many key indicator performance indicators do you need? And in other words, you know, you talk about what, looking at your books weekly. Is that something that should be considered for two or three KPIs for five?
[00:09:01] How do you coach people to determine that
[00:09:04] Alvin: great question because it can get overwhelming if you Google KPIs and you can see so many KPI dashboards and maybe. SAS companies and service companies, you can see, they have like 10 to 12. Really, I think we need to keep it really, really simple. And I work with mostly businesses between three to six KPIs because what I want to do is we want to create.
[00:09:25] A dash, I want a dashboard, but we've got to be really technical and use a piece of paper and there's gotta be something that we can draw up and keep up on in our office or in, in our retail store, the back room. And it's going to be something really simple that your team can fill out in the beginning.
[00:09:41] You, as a business owner will be filling it out, but really we need to delegate these to our teams. So three to six is the magic number I think, and that, and that's what I've always been doing. And that's works really well for our client. You know, we, we can always over-complicate things and then it just becomes a burden to track and measure.
[00:09:58] And then you've got analysis paralysis because you've got too much information too much.
[00:10:03] Veronica: Yeah. Yeah. No, that absolutely makes sense. Thank you for that clarification, because literally I realized as you were talking about it, my hands were starting to get a little bit of nervous. You know, I was getting nervous and my hands and I thought, oh, let me just ask, because I get overwhelmed just thinking about all the data that has to be reviewed.
[00:10:19] And so I loved how you synthesize it into a really simple. Way of looking at it on one sheet. So, so I didn't interrupt. We've got, you've got more tips for us. Go ahead.
[00:10:26] Alvin: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so I think KPIs are really, really important. The next, the next thing I often work with my clients is doing is in most businesses, there is something called an average value transaction or average dollar sale or some sort of, you know, form of.
[00:10:44] And the easiest way to get runs on the board and increase your cashflow and profitability is just to look at that metric. So the first thing is we need to figure out what it is. I am often astounded in as business owners. We sort of really don't know what this metric is. We don't know what our average sale per client per customer per order is.
[00:11:04] So once we identify that we can start to implement some simple strategies just to increase that, and it doesn't need to be. 1, 2, 3, 4% increase. In our average order value can just flush your bank account with cash with, without spending any money on marketing. It's just coming up with some little, little things that we need to implement with our team or with perhaps our sales process, different way you're thinking about it.
[00:11:30] So that's one thing that's really important. And one of the other things that we are all scared to do and which I can hold my client's hands to do is to simply raise our prices. It's you know, you're laughing because it's the
[00:11:45] Veronica: hardest thing to do. It is it absolutely is. I was like, wow, you saved the best for, you know, towards the end there
[00:11:53] Alvin: it's really had to go through that mindset of raising our prices because certainly.
[00:12:01] You know, one, there's a whole worth issue. If you're a service-based business and you're providing services to clients on a one-on-one or a coaching level, like, you know, should I really be charging that module? And then you're thinking can somebody for that? So there's all that in the retail space you know, quite often the trend is and if you look at online retailing and you know, shopfront retailing, there's a trend in the marketplace for discounting.
[00:12:25] So, you know, we, when somebody comes to you and. You know, Veronica, we need to raise our prices. You get a little bit scared, but you can't because of the shelf down the road, he's selling it like much cheaper. So, you know, there's a process that we go through, correct? You can't just raise all your prices across the board.
[00:12:41] You've got to be strategic. There's a process that you need to go through and it's with respect to the market, the product and services that you, that you're selling. You know, and there's a methodology behind it, but you really need to increase your process and. To confidently increase your prices.
[00:12:59] You've just got to be aware of the value that you provide to the marketplace. Once we've worked on that piece, it's going to be, it's going to be a lot easier for you, the business owner to be okay in raising your prices. When should they got value that you're giving your clients and.
[00:13:15] Veronica: And I like the comment you made about without doing any marketing.
[00:13:19] Tell me, tell me a little bit about what happens when you do market. And here's an example I want to give you a, you know, we've seen a lot of price increases for everyday products and oftentimes the vendor will have a sign out that says due to supply chain issues or due to X, Y, Z, our prices have increased be patient with.
[00:13:40] I had never seen that approach as a marketer and you know, my, my twenty-five plus years career. And I'm wondering now what your perspective is because people are now being a little bit more transparent about their prices going up. Do you feel like that hurts or helps the city herps hurts or helps the situation?
[00:13:59] Alvin: Yeah, I think it's a reality of the marketplace now, certainly with everything that's happening around the world, I've got no issue with marketing. I think it's great. It's definitely it's definitely something you need to do, but I think as a business owner, we tend to jump to the marketing phase before we've laid the foundations for our business.
[00:14:17] And I think with the clients I work with and definitely for me, I found once I laid the foundations, I could understand. But cash was going. What's really driving my business forward and I can actually record track and measure. Then we can start to play. With the marketing and workout exam and be really scientific with our marketing workout.
[00:14:37] What's giving us the return on investment. Most small business owners spend money on marketing and, you know, I guess we're so involved in the day to day, we really don't necessarily have the skillset to be thinking, okay, I've got to track this. I've got to somehow monitor this and work out what my ROI is.
[00:14:53] It's not that hard, but when you're a business owner and you're putting out fires and you're wearing so many hats, it can get a little bit, yes. Yeah.
[00:15:01] Veronica: And so let me ask you this. When someone does feel like they're ready to bring on a team member to help them with that skill. I know we talk a lot about the CEO not being in the work, but really managing the big picture.
[00:15:15] How do you work for someone to help you analyze the data and try to make decisions based on real real-time data?
[00:15:23] Alvin: Yeah. How do you go about that? Okay. Well, It really depends. So we need to look at what kind of business we're in who appliance. And it might just mean getting in a third party marketing company to help us with that.
[00:15:40] So they can, they can carry all that out. If it's a really simple business. Really try not to keep it too complicated. We can hire VAs. We can hire, we can, once we identify a plan, we can perhaps look at other members of our team who can execute most of that plan for us. And then as a business owner every week or every month, every couple of weeks, we can go back and look at the numbers of that.
[00:16:03] So I think it really depends. I haven't got a clear cut answer for all businesses. But yeah, we just, we just need to assess a business by business. My preference is always, if we can to outsource it, find a really good third party, let them, cause if they're the experts, we make sure that the experts first, they can focus on their stuff.
[00:16:21] We can provide them with the information so we can go on growing our business and that marketing piece, you know, hopefully will be. Yeah,
[00:16:29] Veronica: no, that makes a lot of sense. And I know there's a lot of talented people out there who can help you with that. What are some of the other challenges? We talked about, you know, mistakes people make, but what are some of the challenges that you see your clients facing today?
[00:16:42] That maybe part of the transition coming out of COVID and as we're getting towards the end of it in their businesses, what are some of the challenges you're seeing.
[00:16:52] Alvin: Yeah. So one of the major challenges I'm seeing is especially in the retail space is the way, you know, that word again, the pivot, so to speak, you know, how we had to change our business models from pre COVID COVID and then to now.
[00:17:08] And in fact, how many of those now that we're slowly getting out of COVID in most parts of the world, those COVID days are sort of. So, for example, a couple of other, you know, a lot of us are now using a zoom or streaming out or, you know, meeting like this, and this is now totally normal, and this is actually the way to do it.
[00:17:25] I would, we would never go back to you know, where we might, but not usually go back to meeting a person. And this is really, really accepted and it's a lot more efficient. So I see that happening a lot in our business introduction of new services, especially in the retail world where many. You know, high street shops, weren't offering a delivery service and you had to figure out how to start a delivery service.
[00:17:48] And then now you're sort of hopefully optimize your delivery model. The other thing is payments. I think payments has become a really, really big thing, you know, before you used to go in and pay by cash. Maybe Cod gotta to be a lot of business owners, a little bit more savvy now in taking payments, you know, we've got Stripe square, all these other things that we can integrate into our business.
[00:18:09] So. Yeah, I think in that sense, it's, it's made us a lot more efficient in the way we do business. And if you were able to adapt early and go through that pain and trying to figure it out for your business I think you set up set yourself up well for the long-term.
[00:18:26] Veronica: I would definitely agree. And I really like the delivery model example that you gave used to be.
[00:18:32] You know, if you were hungry late at night, you would just have to hop in your car and drive through a drive through fast food restaurant. Well, now you've got six choices on your app that someone will drive through it for you and then bring it in, drop it at your doorstep and you don't even have to see them.
[00:18:46] They'll knock and leave. And so I think there's been a lot of innovation, but it's. Translated into the space that you're in with just a little bit of tweaking, I think.
[00:18:58] Alvin: And I'm not sure how it is in your neck of the world, but in Australia and in Germany, people are happy. Like the person that's ordered the food we're having to pay for that service.
[00:19:07] So there is margin in there. Yeah,
[00:19:10] Veronica: absolutely. I that's. That's how it is here too. So there's a little bit of incentive. So I think that's, that's a really good so Alvin, tell me how it is. You work with your clients. We are meaning virtually you can connect with people all over the world this way, instead of hopping on a plane and waiting and taking four or five days to go meet with somebody.
[00:19:30] Tell me how it is. You work with your clients. Yeah.
[00:19:33] Alvin: Thank you. So I work with my clients. So I run a group coaching program with so basically clients come work with me. They worked through the. You know, the, the exercises or the modules that we sit together and then we get on a group coaching call.
[00:19:50] So some really good advantages here. So clients can be all over the world. They get access to me. I get access to them. We've got the time zones worked out. We have a couple of calls a week at different times zones to cater for that. But one of the things which I think is so fantastic is the community that I'm able to do.
[00:20:09] As a consequence of doing business like this. So what I mean by that, because if you, if you're a part of any really group coaching program, you're. Be part of this network of other entrepreneurs or other people in the like-minded space. And having that, you know, that Tony Robbins says something about a tribe or, you know, you are the 10 people, you surround yourself with all that stuff.
[00:20:31] It's so awesome. And you know, you just find that you can help each other with your business. So that's, that's how I work through group coaching.
[00:20:38] Veronica: That's fantastic. And we're going to make sure that we put all your contact information on the show notes so that people can connect with you, Alvin.
[00:20:45] How do you prefer people to reach out to you? What's your preferred way of communicating? Absolutely.
[00:20:50] Alvin: The best way really believe in an audience, actually, Facebook find me on Facebook. Add me, send me a message. It's just nice and smooth. Yeah. I love
[00:21:00] Veronica: it. I love it. Alvin, you have been such a pleasure to have on the show.
[00:21:04] I w I, I knew you were going to be a good guest when I had butterflies in my stomach because profits and cashflow are not my favorite things to talk about. And I know that listeners really struggle with just identifying those key concepts that you talked about. So you have been so helpful and I've enjoyed having you on the show.
[00:21:21] Alvin: Thank you so much for having me. I really.
[00:21:24] Veronica: All right, everybody. This wraps up another episode of Saturday soundbites. I love talking to Alvin. He has got so much information. You are going to want to check out his social assets and connect with him. All the information you need to know about him is going to be in the show notes.
[00:21:39] So if you are listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We don't want. Any episodes of Saturday soundbites. And if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube and you want to drop us some comments, just hashtag replay and Alvin, and I will go back and connect with you. So with that, I am going to send you lots of positive energy and light until next time.