Shownotes
This week we dig into a topic every business owner deals with but rarely talks about openly: cash flow. Not revenue, not sales volume, but the actual timing of money moving in and out of a business, and why that timing matters more than most owners realize.
We talk through what strong cash flow looks like in practice, invoicing quickly, collecting on time, and knowing predictable expenses well before they hit, so a business can plan ahead instead of reacting.
We share a story about a client who tracks a simple weekly ratio of receivables to payables as his single most important number, and another example where speeding up invoicing turned a 45-day backlog into same-day billing, freeing up serious cash without adding headcount.
We also get into why collecting payment on the spot, rather than waiting weeks for a check, can change a business's entire financial position.
We also cover what cash flow means during a business transition, especially when handing a company to a family member, and why having a financial cushion matters when new leadership means mistakes will happen. Brad shares a personal story from early in his career about a costly supplier mistake and how owning it directly, rather than hiding from it, became one of the most important lessons of his career.
Highlights
- Why predictable cash outflow and unpredictable cash inflow require different strategies.
- A simple weekly ratio one business owner uses to track his cash position.
- How speeding up invoicing turned a major backlog into a same-day process.
- Why cash reserves matter most when selling a business to a family member.
- A personal story about owning a costly mistake early in a career, and why it built long-term trust.
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Transcripts
Welcome back everyone to this episode of the Blue Cower BS podcast. I am your award winning co-host, Brad, along with my other award winning co-host. There you go. Hit your cue. that's right. Hang on. Well, hang on. We'll give you an extra second to do it over. Okay. How about we do that? Should we re should we put another second on the clock so you can try it again, Mr. Michigan?
Doyle (:Steve. Got it. I
Doyle (:I mean, go ahead, put another second on the clock. I mean, we still hit it, but you know what? If you want to be generous with your time, then by all means give me another second. I'm okay. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever.
Brad Herda (:Yeah, okay. Yeah. What that was a bunch of horse shit. That's all I gotta say.
Doyle (:Okay.
Brad Herda (:But anyhow, your soup de jour today of Mr. Doyle came prepared with two potential topics. So let's see what see what topic he's gonna pull out of the barrel.
Doyle (:Mm.
Doyle (:Let's spin the roulette wheel. Let's get things down here. I'm thinking let let's talk cash flow today. Let's talk some cash. Let's talk cash options.
Brad Herda (:All right. Like how we put cash from one pocket into the other pocket and think we're think we're doing okay, or what are we talking about here?
Doyle (:I'm I'm thinking we just put some cash in a pillowcase and then beat somebody with it and then just take the cash and walk away. no, let's let's talk cash flow strategies to thrive in any economy. What?
Brad Herda (:Cool. That's nice.
Brad Herda (:Ash is always king, that is for sure.
Doyle (:Well cash might be king.
But let's talk about the flow of your cash and why that matters.
Brad Herda (:'Cause 'cause you always need it to flow in order to pay your bills.
Doyle (:but you know, I mean
Brad Herda (:And pay your employees and to have capital improvement opportunities, to have opportunities to invest elsewhere that you it it's being opportunistic. Having good strong cash flows allows you to be nimble and opportunistic.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Okay, but what does that let's let's break that down. What does that really mean to have strong cash flow?
Brad Herda (:simplest way I can think about is a your AR doesn't sit out there for a hundred and twenty days.
Doyle (:Okay.
Brad Herda (:Right. So you're invoicing you're invoicing timely and you're collecting timely and you're managing your ins and your outs timely. You're getting your jobs done on time. You're getting shit out the door when you say it's gonna get out the door. So it's predictable and repeatable, which then creates opportunity to know what it's going to look like. So you can actually forecast and say, Hey, you know what? I'm gonna be pretty cash heavy here come July and cool. Let's do this next.
Doyle (:Point. Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Hmm.
Doyle (:Hmm.
Brad Herda (:I can give bonuses. No, I can't give bonuses. I we can shut down for the week of fourth of July and not have to worry about it and pay the guys or whatever. Correct.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. I can give a raise. I can do other things. I can put more in savings. I can s put away money for taxes. I can do other things when I can predict what's going on.
Brad Herda (:Yes. Cash flow and and how your revenue is are two different things, right? Like cash flow and more sales are different things.
Doyle (:Well, yes.
But how I manage some I know this happens in some businesses. How I manage is I open up my bank account, I see what I got, and I'm good. Either I'm good or I'm not good.
Brad Herda (:Mm, that is how it typically works. For most most home service construction, that's
Doyle (:Right. So if I
Doyle (:Right. So if I see I got money in there, what what is what is cash flow? What does that really mean to me? I my bank, my I got money in the bank. Okay. Well, I don't know. I just know today I got money in the bank. And I got these jobs coming up that I won and you know they'll they'll be paying out.
Brad Herda (:For how long?
Brad Herda (:Right.
And and what and so so what what's your AP? What's your payro accounts payable coming in? What do you got for payroll? What do you what do you got for payroll taxes? What do you shit, guess guess what? Our insurance is due this quarter. okay, good. and our our website renewal comes up this quarter. And shit, my auto insurance. my workman's comp.
Doyle (:A P
Doyle (:Okay, yeah.
Okay.
Doyle (:Doyle (04:25.384)
and you gotta renew your auto insurance.
Brad Herda (:It all plays out and and those are predictable outs, right? Those things are very predictable.
Doyle (:Yeah, you know they're gonna mm-hmm. You know they're gonna show up. So why
Brad Herda (:Right. Correct.
Your outflow is typically your most your outflow is probably the most predictable thing you have. Your inflow is not.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Correct. So from let's let's kind of talk about this in in two different terms. First term I kind of want to talk about it is why does cash flow matter when we're looking to either kind of a transition the business or be you know transition slash sell the business? Why does cash flow actually matter?
Brad Herda (:Because it helps determine what your s like seller discretionary earnings and things are. It allows you the opportunity to use that cash to do things with it. Where, right? So if if you're an LLC and you're running your life through your business, like most do, right? If I have a strong position of cash flow, I can plan to take my kids to Disney World for spring break. Because I'm in a strong position to do it. I don't have to worry about.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:I really got to get that next. I I gotta land these next four jobs in order to make that happen so I can keep my promise. Because you pissed it away to go do whatever because you overran a job and you paid your guys what they were supposed to be paid, or you forgot about your insurance that's coming due, or you had a workman's comp claim that you knew was coming, but you forgot about it. All those things now go, okay, great. That that's gonna have a massive impact into what's happening. So understanding where your money's going in and out.
Doyle (:Right.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:is your most important thing you can do as a business owner.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:So when times are tough, you know, people are kind of delaying those decisions to do things, right? If we're talking home res, you know, home builders and residential construction, you know, people are taking longer, they're they're kind of waiting now to do things. They're taking longer to make decisions. So what are
Brad Herda (:Hundred percent, yes. It's horrible.
Doyle (:Yeah, I know it is horrible, right? Everybody's kind of like, I don't know what the economy's gonna do. I don't know what the world's gonna do. I don't know about this. I don't know about that. I'm gonna I'm not gonna spend any money. Blah blah blah. Okay. So as a business owner.
What are some things that you would suggest or potentially have them look at to help them with their cash flow strategies to remain positive?
Brad Herda (:So I learned this one from one of my very early clients. And it is an absolutely genius thing that is so simple that it's like, okay, great. he looks at they had four numbers on their on their dashboard, but the one that was vitally that was really important to him was taking his ratio of accounts receivable versus accounts payable every week, right? So he could see what he had going out and what he had coming in.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:And if I had more going out than coming in, that was a potential problem because he'd then go down, he'd go down to the next thing, which is what's his backlog look like? What's his on order number look like from that perspective? So it's just a a hey, we had to prepay. We we we bought a bunch of things for inventory. So we had a big outflow for a big invoice we had to pay. So therefore that's why it looks that way, or what's going on.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:That was what he that he put that in place for many, many years. And even when we started doing some other things, that was his number. It was his number and it's his n and and that with cash balance and what was going on on the order or sales on the sales volume side or to be shipped or to be you know backlog piece to it. He ran his business by those three numbers. And it was very successful for him, and it has been very successful for him. We kind of got into we got
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. That's good.
Brad Herda (:kinda into a little thing about his cash on hand at one point. And it's like, why do you have all this cash on hand? And then COVID hit. It's like, okay, great. You're in a great spot then. Yep, no problem. It worked out well for ya. Who knew?
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. And then you found out why. Yeah, yeah, then you found out why. Yep. Yep. Okay. So that's that's one thing. What what else would you recommend for people to look at to enhance their cash flow strategies to thrive in an economy where people are kind of more holding on to their money right now, delaying decisions.
Brad Herda (:so well that's a g if they're delaying the decision they're not making the purchase, right? So you have you you so w it is, but it still impacts the cash flow, right?
Doyle (:Well, correct. I mean, but it's that's a different problem. But it
Correct, it does.
Brad Herda (:So so if you're not winning the orders, you have to go win the orders in order to receive the inbound inbound cash flow, right? So how are you how is your sales process working? How often are you following up? Are you people are buying if if if the perceived cost perceived value is greater than the cost that you're providing, they're going to buy. So how you sold the past three years, four years where
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Right.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Right.
Brad Herda (:You just had to go give them a number and everybody said yes. Now you actually have to position yourself to know where your value proposition is to get them to say yes sooner than later. Right? Yeah, we were talking with the who were we talking with? Let me find him. Plug the biggest hole guy. Where was that? That was Jared Mylar, right? Talking about plugging the biggest hole. You know, when I bought when
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:The story I used in there is when I bought my pool and they said, Hey, you know what? It's our pool. You just get to use it. Just call us whenever there's a problem. That was his value prop. And that's what made him go. So what is your value prop to your customer? Other than everybody else down the street is the same thing. I can fix your toilet. I can put siding on your house, but okay. if you're not the if you're not competing on price, how are you competing elsewhere?
Doyle (:Right.
Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:for them and if you got a price buyer, maybe it's not your buyer. You need to change your market.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:I'm okay.
Brad Herda (:You might need to look at different zip codes in order to go and find the folks that are willing to pay for your services at the value that you are bringing to them.
Brad Herda (:Those are all strategies that come through if you're not winning the orders if consumers aren't buying.
Doyle (:Okay. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. So if you're looking at your cash flow, right, that orders in obviously is one thing. But when you use kind of that first example, right, what are some things that people need to look at from kind of like those ongoing
Those ongoing expenses that are kind of like, are they a nice to have or a need to have?
Right, 'cause if you look at your ratio, yeah, if we use your your initial example there of
Brad Herda (:If you are giving your crew
Brad Herda (:gas cards to use and you've not ever said, Hey, you know what? it's no big deal if you're going to get your soda and donuts while you're in as you're getting gas. If you've made that a habit of making your extra I'm going to the gas station every morning and every afternoon for an extra ten to twelve dollars or twenty four dollars a visit times how many people you have, that's an area of opportunity to get eliminate some waste, so to speak. That is
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Correct.
Brad Herda (:Right, an employee it's an employee benefit, so to speak, but are you willing to is that twenty four dollars a day? which equates to a couple hundred bucks a week per right? Depending on your fleet sizes, is that worth it or not worth it from a retaining perspective and different things. So you gotta weigh those things out. Is it is that benefit a perk that's gonna keep somebody there, or is that just wasteful spending on your side 'cause you just didn't want to deal with auditing your fuel your fuel cards?
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yep. I mean, there's a ton of stuff to kind of quote unquote go look at. But the I also want to explore kind of like that, why cash flow matters when you're transitioning a business to a family member? Like why why we kind of both smirk because we know there's some things going on with this. why why is that a
A positive thing that people should be mindful of when transferring businesses to a family member.
Brad Herda (:there will be mistakes. There will be work, there will be problems, there will be errors, there will be things, and it just puts that buffer in there to allow the education to be paid for. It's just not in a five right, instead of it being in a five twenty nine waiting for you to go to college, it needs to be sitting over there in a working capital account somewhere or or a slush fund account for your educational opportunities as a as a new leader, as a new owner, as a
Doyle (:Hm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Right.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:New whatever, cause maybe you came in as the new owner and pissed off the guy that was your best welder. He walked out the door and now you gotta do some outsourcing and you're gonna lose extra you're gonna lose margin on those orders because you pissed the guy off. and now you gotta readjust. you know, cause they got rid of the cancer, but he was the best guy. But
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:The shop's much more palatable. Everybody's everybody's happier now. Okay, cool. It's just gonna take time to overcome that. And you have to have enough to do that.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. So in this last year with your clients, you've had and even you could you could throw in some things that you've learned in the past, but over the past year, what have you seen people do to strengthen cash flow?
Brad Herda (:Get the invoices out faster.
That was the biggest opportunity for them is to to improve the flow of cash was eliminate the five to fifteen day delay to send the customer the invoice. our H so one of the HVAC companies I'm working with, they would typically go out, do the thing, they wouldn't get their tablet out, they wouldn't I'd say, okay, great, and then they'd have to come back to the office and wait ten, fifteen days to go get the checks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Doyle (:Okay.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:they are now almost ninety five percent collecting on the spot.
Doyle (:Wow.
Wow.
Brad Herda (:Right. So they're collecting the dollars and margin and profit on the spot when they leave. baking into their pricing structure. So we're not, well, you're paying the card credit card fees. No, we're not gonna no, you're just gonna bake it into your price. It's a cost of doing business. Just figure it out. Don't turn it into a well, because you don't want your drivers handling cash. You don't want them holding checks. Just build it into your pricing model and have a nice day. but that won't be too expensive. No, just trust me on this. And so yeah, they're close to ninety-five percent.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Yep. Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.
Doyle (:Nice.
Brad Herda (:site collection, which now puts that money into the opportunity where if they're doing a large commercial job, they may not have to tap they may not have to tap into a line of credit to buy materials. Because now all those those dollars are now into their pocket, into their accounts.
Doyle (:Yeah.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. Correct.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. Yeah. And I and I can't stress enough the getting your invoices out quick enough. So one of the one of my clients, we ran into that that that concern at a period of time where, you know, they they were only able to get out so many invoices a day. And what it really meant was
You know, let let's just talk numbers, just raw numbers. Let's say it they could get out two hundred and fifty thousand in invoices in a day. Their backlog to get out invoices was forty-five days.
Okay. So if you really look at that, one of the things that were that was able to happen wasn't s so let's just talk the fundamental numbers or fictitious numbers, going from two hundred and fifty thousand a day in invoicing to one point two million in a day in invoicing.
And reduced reduced the full time equivalent to one instead of three.
Doyle (:Right. How big of an impact could that have just in any business freeing up that much? Right. I mean, you you right. It's massive because you're not holding on.
Brad Herda (:Massive.
Brad Herda (:Yeah, I mean I would I would try to hope hopefully we're leveraging the knowledge and the skill of those FTEs elsewhere in the business versus trying to fix, you know, create busy work that those FTEs were kept elsewhere.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Correct. Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:that's that's always the downside of things is we don't want not a big fan of losing FTEs unless it's truly necessary because that's knowledge that's things that are there. We always can always rearrange the the the chairs on the Titanic, not the Titanic, but you know what I'm saying. We can always rearrange it we can always rearrange the deck chairs to to find people where they fit, you know.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Yes, I do. Yep.
Doyle (:Correct. Yep. Yeah. And in this example, yeah, the like the the FTEs were used somewhere else, right? It it was just more of the holy crap. There's a ton of savings and operational efficiencies that could be achieved just by looking at the operations you're doing differently, right? To improve your cash flow. And on it, what did it cost?
Right. I obviously it cost this company, it cost a consultant time to come in, a coach time to come in to help them with that. But the return on the investment was within a month, you already had within one month, you had your return on investment. Actually, it was within a week. You already had your return on investment in that.
Brad Herda (:Arguably. We could we could we could argue potato potato. We could argue Because 'cause the return on investment would be the the net mar the net income that would be coming from the increase of revenue coming in faster, not the not the gross increase of sales of of invoicing.
Doyle (:You could. Potato potato, but I mean you're reach
Doyle (:Correct. Yes.
Correct. Yep. FYI. So what's
Brad Herda (:Just as an FYI.
Right. So I mean so back so back when I was working at Busaris very early on, probably this is probably two thousand two. Early two thousand two. So just after nine eleven, ironically, you know, we had a little s another small recession and the organization came out of bankruptcy in ninety nine, two thousand time frame, did a large capital investment into Y two K converting over from
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:mainframe into software that would be server based, things like that. and business was horrible. We we sat weekly as a purchasing group when our
Our CFO controller would give our director of procurement here's the dollars you have this week to pay your suppliers. We had suppliers that we owed millions of dollars to in rears that we couldn't pay, but we would get that and say, okay.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:How who are we what do we need? Who do we need to talk to? And what are we on C O D with that for things that we need to have in order to get some of the parts orders out so we can generate more revenue and find more cash?
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:So we had to strategically go through and determine who we're gonna pay, why we're going to pay them. Right. Sometimes it was like, yeah, can we just get them like two grand just to say, hey, we got we we didn't forget about you, but here's something. just so that they continue to produce and take our purchase orders and and know. and we made good on every dollar that we owed everybody over time as the when the economic conditions changed. it was
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:That was one of those things that was you y relationships matter. It wasn't transactional. And those the suppliers that were very transactional, like, you guys aren't paying on time. So you're C O D. Well, get we didn't do we didn't do work with them. We found the we found the partners that wanted to be with us.
Doyle (:Yes.
Doyle (:You were yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Interesting. So knowing knowing what you know now and the things that you've learned on on this planet, what do you what's what are some things you wish you would have known earlier about cash flow strategies?
Brad Herda (:some of the automation things that are there that are available based on your technologies that you're using, you know? I'm not gonna lie, or I've probably have in this soon to be ten year arena, I've probably allowed myself to get into a situation where probably a hundred K total of uncollectibles that
Doyle (:Yeah.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:know those first few years of things or continue to work, continue to work, continue to work. It's gonna happen, gonna happen, gonna happen. And then finally, yeah, no, we're I'm done. I'm just whatever, and had to walk away. You know, all the promises, all the things. Did it did it hurt? Absolutely. Did it kill me? No. But it was lessons from from that. understanding that for myself, right, typically sign a new client, I'd reward myself with something, but this year
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Yep. yeah.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:lost some cli graduated some clients, lost some clients at the end of last year, put some new ones on early this year. Did I go out and say, hey, I need I'm gonna go celebrate? Nope. Because I didn't have the I didn't have the resources the the cash flow to say, hey, I'm gonna go spend the four hundred dollars on whatever.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:I'm going to wait so I can build up my reserves and do the things that I want to have so I understand what my safety net looks like. And that's the biggest thing most organizations don't do and pay attention to their cash flow is build up their reserves for whatever that looks like. You know, whether it's three months, six months, a year, depending upon what how what your risk tolerance is and risk profile. You should be building up reserves to support.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:whatever it is that you you believe is correct to if I had zero sales for X number of months but I had to keep everything running, what does that what do I need without laying people off because the first thing people do when sales get, we gotta cut people cut heads. And then all of a sudden the sales come back and they go, we gotta hire people. And you well you c why couldn't you plan couldn't you plan to keep how how what you
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:so the guy that knows how to do the job that you let go six months ago that would be great to have him back that's not gonna come back because he found something else and he's happy with it. Mm, yeah, let's think about that some more. So so cash flow planning into your human capital strategies is really, really important.
Doyle (:Correct.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Yes. Yes. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Mm-hmm. On the whole
Brad Herda (:But I can say, you know, through my career I you know, going through seventeen of eighteen different opportunities, making it through seventeen of eighteen different org structures and things like that over a twenty year period of where it was. Right.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:Challenging people to do the right things and find the right things and exhibit the right behaviors to maximize or put yourself in a better cash position, is great. And it's important. And you know, I know I don't know if I've told this story before, but that same time period in that 2001, 2002 time period, we just bought our new we just moved out of Milwaukee out here to Sussex. We're gonna put windows in the door, windows and doors in the house and all that stuff, right?
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:And we're we're struggling, right? And I get this large rack gearing rack system for our Marion Marion shovels. get the order, get it out, get the forgings, get it to the supplier, do the thing, gets to inbound receiving, and they're soft. They're junk. These racks are scrapped because the supplier who typically right in Chicago area would be right next to
Doyle (:How
Brad Herda (:Right. They're right next to Bodycoat, Lindbergh back in the day. Bodycoat, Lindbergh. They knew they had to be heat treated. I'm like, okay, great. So they're gonna take care of all this. Awesome. their quote said, No, we're not gonna take care of the heat treating.
Doyle (:Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
Doyle (:Hmm.
Brad Herda (:And then when they received the material, they didn't ask if it was heat treated either. So it's so I read that quote, I've got sixty thousand dollars of scrap on a two hundred thousand dollar parts order essentially.
Doyle (:Yeah.
Doyle (:Hoo
Brad Herda (:And we're tight and I'm and I'm new, new to new to roll. I I scrambled immediately talking to our forging buyers, talking to our suppliers, seeing what we can do, what can we make happen? Here's the recovery plan, blah blah blah blah, all the things. It's like, yep. I had and because it was a slow period of time, I was able to get everything accomplished in six weeks.
Doyle (:Okay.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Nice. Talk about Pucker.
Brad Herda (:And and I s truly believe that that experience of owning up to the mistake and explaining it and having a solution to it is why I was able to stay there as long as I was in those first few years when there were changes happening.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Hundred percent agree.
Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:But getting your invoices out, sending out reminders when things are past due, right? Nobody wants to make the follow up call.
Doyle (:I hate that's the thing I hate the most. It's like, this one's past due. I'm like, here, this is past due. This is past due. And it's like this is just annoying as all get out.
And it's like, ugh.
Doyle (:so
Brad Herda (:Yeah, yeah, just yeah. Hey guys, it's passed and most of it because all of email it's electronic, it goes wherever, it gets lost, it does all the things. Most of the time it's very simple mistake and it's okay, great. No big deal.
Brad Herda (:So it's like you just send out the reminder and away you go.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:I had one invoice, it took me like nine reminders before I got paid, but I knew they were paying attention because I could see they opened the notices. I could see that.
Doyle (:Exactly. You can see how many times they've opened it. It's like, listen.
Brad Herda (:It's like why don't you just call me and tell me what's going on? That's all I need you to do. Just call
Doyle (:Exactly. And then but you know what? Even when you call them, they don't even answer your call. You're like, come on. Drives me absolutely nuts. It's the thing I loathe the most.
Brad Herda (:You can create the invoice, but you're not getting paid on the invoice.
Doyle (:Correct. Correct. So. All right, sir. Well, thank you for indulging me on this this cash flow strategy. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:cash flow this cash flow journey. Ride the flow. It is it is vitally important. and if you're if you don't have the ability to run cash flow projections or do those things, just go to your AI tool and plug in what your things are that have cash out, cash in for columns and where things happen and know where it is. Build your own calculator if you're not using if you're not using a QuickBook system or something like that or
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Brad Herda (:using and because my guess is you're not pinning your insurance payments inside QuickBooks anyhow. So build your own cash flow calculator and and keep it active and living so you can kind of see what's happening and know know what's there. Know what your break even is too. If you don't know what your break even is, if you don't know what it costs you to wake up every day, that is going to kill your cash flow a thousand percent.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Yeah.
Correct.
Brad Herda (:If you don't know that it costs six dollars an hour to just wake up and get out of bed for your organization or how many of our hundreds a day, you're you're riding a very thin line of success.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm.
Doyle (:Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Brad Herda (:So, sir, you enjoy your your alma mata and teach them how to count. You know, you're an engineer, you should go back and teach them how to count and and count to zero. Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
Doyle (:Well it you know, they had nothing to do with counting. They had nothing to do with counting. Completely out of it. They're completely out of it. They're victims as well.
Brad Herda (:I know. Sure they didn't. Yep. Yep. They're innocent. They're victims. Yeah. my, the victims of Michigan Wolverines. They're so victimized. Yeah. Whatever.
Doyle (:I figured you'd like that. All right, sir. You two.
Brad Herda (:All right, sir. Have a awesome weekend. Thanks.