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Unlock the secrets to business success and gain valuable insights from local industry leaders. Join us as we delve into the strategies, triumphs, and lessons learned of thriving companies, empowering entrepreneurs to elevate their businesses to new heights.
Sharon: [00:00:16] Hi everyone, it's Sharon with It's Time for Success: The Business Insights podcast. Today's episode is a little different. It's just me. No guest. No fancy intro. Just an honest conversation about what happens when business growth doesn't go quite the way you hoped it would. I want to take you back to 2014, the year I purchased our Lloydminster location. At that time, I was grateful to be recognized in our industry and truly honored when the previous owner approached me about taking over their business. It felt like the right next step. A chance to grow, to serve more customers and to build on what we've already started. It was very flattering and I was so excited. But not long after that, the oil crashed. So go back to 2014. So the oil crashed, and over here in Alberta, probably oil is about 80%... 70 to 80% of our business is oil. So when that crashed, I realized just how unprepared I truly was. I hadn't read their finances properly, so when they approached us, of course, we got their finances. And I looked at the bottom number, so I didn't do it properly. I didn't understand markup at that time. I didn't know who was… who has all been paid on payroll, who was all being paid on payroll. There were so many things hidden in those documents, and all I did was look at that bottom number. That year became one of the toughest lessons of my career, and it changed how I look at business forever.
Sharon: [00:01:49] So today I want to share that experience. The lessons, the struggles, and what I wish I'd known before I signed that deal. Because if my story helps even one other person, one other business owner, dig a little deeper before making a big decision than this episode may be worth listening to. I was excited to take on this next adventure up here in Lloydminster. It came with a team already in place, and from looking from the outside, it looked like a smooth transition. I thought the business could just keep running as it has been. Same customers, same flow, same systems. But I was wrong. Not long after taking over, the oil crashed and everything shifted overnight. The industry tightened up, budgets froze and the phones went quiet. At the same time, I began to realize there were bigger issues inside the business, not just the oil crash. Things I hadn't seen because I didn't fully understand the financials. Our pricing wasn't in line with the industry markups, and our margins weren't where they needed to be. Customers compared our prices to what they used to pay under the previous owner, and many walked away. They were dealing with an oil crash. We were too. And when you mix lower sales with low margins, it's a recipe for stress. I just want to elaborate on that. So when you have say for example, we did undercut other people in our industry to get those sales, your margin goes down, but also your payroll stays up.
Sharon: [00:03:20] So you can see the double-edged sword for that, right? So you've got to be careful with that. We didn't just lose money. We lost most of our customers like… So I purchased this business with the customer base and we lost almost every customer. Oil crash, and because we were not the same company in offering the same dollar value for their items. I wouldn't have survived if we kept that lower cost to our customers. When I took over the business, it came with a team already in place. On paper, that sounded like a blessing. They knew the customers, the systems, and how things flowed day to day, but the reality was far more complicated. They didn't really see me as the new owner. They treated me like I was just another employee, and some act as if they were the ones running the show. And when I say another employee, very disrespectful. That was tough to navigate, especially while I was still learning the ropes. They did have a different system that I wanted to learn, and I wanted to understand so I can make proper steps forward. While that was going on, it was hard to navigate while I was learning the ropes, trying to understand the customer base and learn my new customer base, understand the local market.
Sharon: [00:04:31] It was different up here. And how to integrate this location into our way of doing business at our other two locations. I tried to implement our company's vision, our culture, and the systems that had worked so well in our other locations. Our quoting procedures, communications, expectations, all of it. But it didn't go well. There was pushback at every turn. The tension was astronomical. It was so uncomfortable to be here in these four walls with people that I was paying. Mhmm. It was absolutely horrid. I was disrespected on a daily basis and it wore me down. It's hard to describe how that feels. Trying to steady a business in the middle of an oil crash, while also managing people who don't respect your leadership. It was exhausting. Plain and simple. Absolutely exhausting. With the downturn, we eventually had to lay off a number of employees and in hindsight, as difficult as that was, it turned out to be a necessary reset. It gave us a chance to rebuild the team with people who wanted to move forward together. I eventually had to make some hard calls. I let people go not out of spite, but out of necessity. I needed a team that respected me and respected the business we were trying to build. That was one of my first big lessons. Culture isn't inherited. It's built. I'm going to say that again. Culture isn't inherited. You’ve got to build your culture.
Sharon: [00:05:50] You got to focus on it daily. You can't buy a healthy workplace. You have to grow it from the ground up. Then came the financial chaos. This literally is a storm and it lasted quite a while. We owed suppliers. Not just a little. Our credit cards were maxed out and we couldn't even bring product in. The way our business works is simple. We pay suppliers up front. When we place the order, we produce the orders, and then we invoice the customers after everything's done. So that could be up to anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks from when we put money out. And hopefully the customers pay on pickup. So that's another thing. Sometimes they have up to 30 days to pay, right? So when you can't pay for product, you can't fill the orders. And when you can't fill orders, cash flow stops. That's what we went through. We also owed the government. We had fallen behind on payroll remittances. And that's scary. And at one point our account was even frozen by the government. We were still scraping together payroll, barely, but the remittances kept slipping further behind. It felt like every step forward came with another setback. I wasn't paying myself at all. I had kids at home, but I wasn't home. I was at the shop nights, weekends and whatever it took to try to keep things afloat. The guilt of missing my family on top of the stress at work was crushing.
Sharon: [00:07:05] It felt like everything I cared about was being pulled apart all at once. What kept me going wasn't confidence or pride. It was sheer determination. That quiet voice that says, you can't quit yet. There has to be a way through this. And I want to elaborate on that a little bit, because growing up, my dad used to always call me pigheaded. That was his word. And over the years, I reworded that to determination. So pigheaded, determination, whatever you want to call it, you got to have it through these, these situations. One moment still sits heavy with me. One of my team members back in Provost, a young woman, just starting in her life. She came back from the city to work with us. Had just bought her first house during all of this and I remember laying awake at night, night after night, actually, not just one night, but many multiple nights worrying about her, worrying that if I couldn't make It’s Time work, she might lose that home. She was counting on me. It still baffles me that banks will finance somebody who works for you, but they won't help you in situations like this. It still kind of baffles me on that whole banking procedure. That thought haunted me. Not just her situation, but all of it. My team, my family, the business I believed in. And I really believed in my business.
Sharon: [00:08:17] The stress was so intense that I couldn't think straight anymore. I wasn't crunching numbers. I didn't even know what numbers to crunch. I… just… trying to breathe and figure out how to stop the bleeding. I refused to give up though. I started reaching out for help, talking to whoever I thought might listen. Banks, advisors, anyone who might have a solution. But that came with its own lessons, which I'll talk about here shortly. Here's where I really learned the hard truths. This is… these are the next steps. And I'm going deeper and deeper into stress. I'm going deeper into chaos. I'm going deeper into being buried with everything going around me. And I'm just being lost. But what I did learn is looking at the bottom number on your financial statements that net income line, it doesn't tell you the whole story. You've got to dig deeper. You've got to understand what's really behind those numbers—your markup, your margins, your costs and how they compare to what standard in your industry. When I bought the business in Lloydminster, I already knew that our industry followed a fairly consistent markup guideline. It's something most companies use to stay competitive and aligned. What I didn't know was how to spot whether that same standard was being followed in the financial statements I was given. I later found out that the markups being used before I took over were much lower than what's typical in our industry.
Sharon: [00:09:31] I only discovered that after the fact, when we started losing customers because of our pricing, which was set to the proper industry standard. Our industry standard was higher than what the previous owners had been charging. That's when I realized the markup hadn't been consistent with industry norms, and in hindsight, it cost us a lot of customers right out of the gate. So we lost customers because of the dollars, and we lost customers because of the oil crash. Double hit there. I would have loved to have known how to read those numbers properly, or to have someone walk me through them before I made the purchase. That one step could have saved a lot of heartache and sleepless nights. And I want to elaborate on this a little bit. I did take those financials to the bank. We got funding based on those financials. There's actually somebody who wanted to invest with me. I chose not to, but he looked at it as well and he didn't see any errors either, or anything to be concerned about. So I believe you have to do your own due diligence here. You’ve got to understand those. I'm going to go into detail a bit more of what to watch for. Okay, and then we're going to talk about payroll. And that's part of these numbers that you have to watch. If I could go back I'd ask a lot more questions.
Sharon: [00:10:44] I'd ask for detailed payroll reports showing everyone being paid—employees and the owners. That's one thing I want to stress. Is the owner on payroll? They're in there. They're working in those four walls. Are they being paid? Is everyone being accounted for that's in those four walls? And what they've been paid over the last year. I would actually get that breakdown for a whole year. Looking back, it's easy to manipulate those numbers based on payroll. That report would have told me a lot. I suspect there were people being paid through another company or structure that didn't show up in what I was given, and I didn't know to ask about that. Looking back, I'd make sure that not only every employee is accounted for, but also that the owner is being paid fairly, because that tells you what it really takes to run the business. So ask for those payroll reports if you're buying a business, please. That's something I'd really stress. There's one more thing I'd do differently. It would be to spend more time asking questions. Tough questions, because tough times aren't a matter of “if,” they're a matter of “when.” And being prepared for them can make all the differences. Okay, so I know we got hit by oil. We got hit by, not the correct markups on our products. We lost all our customers. I didn't have any money. None. Banks were frozen.
Sharon: [00:12:02] It was absolute chaos. Now I want to talk about getting out of that situation and hopefully somebody out there can learn from it as well. After hitting what felt like a dead end, I started asking questions. A lot of them. I went to banks looking for help. I walked in and said, I need financial help. The truth is, I didn't even know exactly what I was asking for. I just need knew I needed someone to help me make sense of my financials and my situation that I was in. So do you know what the bank did? I shouldn't… I won't tell you what bank. I'm… hopefully no banks do this anymore. But anyways, if somebody comes in, banks that are listening, if somebody comes in, you need financial help and they own a business and you're there on that, please listen to this. They're not asking for an investment appointment. That's what happened to me. They set me up an appointment with a financial advisor who specialized in investments. I had no money to invest. I was stressed about even paying the bills. Oh, I remember leaving that meeting thinking they don't get it. Nobody knew what I actually needed. I felt alone, I felt scared, and I felt 100% defeated. Around that time. Thank goodness I'm a true advocate for reading and learning and growing. So around that time I was listening to an e-book called You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero, and to this day, it's still one of my favourite books.
Sharon: [00:13:20] That book didn't give me confidence; it gave me a mind shift. It opened a different door in how I thought about business, money, and growth. It made me see things I hadn't seen before, and honestly, things I didn't even know were possible. It opened my eyes to ideas and possibilities I never considered before. It reminded me that I don't know what you don't know, and that's why reading, learning, and staying curious are so important. I thank every day for that book. I thank every day I went for that walk that day with those headsets in my ears, trying to figure out life and how I'm going to get through this. Sometimes one sentence, one thought, one story can shift your entire mindset. In that book, Jen talks about hiring a business coach. I'd never even heard of a business coach. I knew there was coaches for, you know, team sports, that kind of stuff. But I didn't know that a business coach was a thing. It's more common now, of course, but back in 2014, it was still, I think, coming out of the trenches. Or I was just living under a rock, I have no idea. But I'd never heard of a business coach until I learned… until I heard it in that book. I started Googling business coach and I came across Action Coach from Calgary.
Sharon: [00:14:29] I was reading the reviews, as we all do. And if you don't read reviews, you probably should. And realized one of my suppliers actually worked with them. So I picked up the phone and called her. We had an amazing conversation, probably 20 minutes long, and she told me all what it was about. And her final words was, Sharon, do it. He's remarkable. So that's exactly what I did. And honestly, that phone call, that investment changed everything. I was terrified of making an investment for a business coach. Absolutely. Horrendously terr... I didn't have any money. And I like, I was literally drawing my last straw and doing this, but I felt like somebody was finally listening. The banks didn't know what I needed. I didn't know what I needed. Even my mom, who was an entrepreneur herself, didn't know how to help me beyond encouragement and love. And believe me, her faith in me kept me going. But she didn't know the financial mess I was up against. That first meeting with Jared Staton from Action Coach was a game changer. He taught me how to read my financials properly, not just glance at the numbers, but actually understood them. We dug deep, we built structure. We created a dashboard where I could see everything that mattered. Our payroll percentage against sales, sales per employee, our expenses per employee. We focus on our average sale value and how to increase it.
Sharon: [00:15:50] We identified the gross margin number we had to stay focused on and consistent with what we needed to climb out of that hole. Today, I can tell you where we stand at any given time. Not because I'm a financial expert, far from it, but because I was willing to learn and to until today, I still have that dashboard that I complete every month, and those numbers are analyzed critically every month. We built systems, real systems that work. We rebuilt my team and surrounded myself with people who wanted to win. And that doesn't just mean within the four walls of my business. It also meant being intentional about who I spent time with outside of work, surrounding myself with people who were positive, forward-thinking, and supportive, people who shared my values, my drive, and the same pride in what we do. One of the biggest outcomes from all of this was something I never expected. Out of that struggle, we developed our own software built on a platform called FileMaker, which, shout out to the company that I bought. They had introduced me to it. They had just started working with it, so it, so it got me thinking outside. I would have never known about it again. You got to focus. You got to learn from others, right? So I did learn from them. And that's one of the main things, key takeaways that I'm so grateful for from that purchase is a platform called FileMaker.
Sharon: [00:17:08] And from there we put it on steroids and now it runs our whole company. It allows us to run our three locations to communicate in real time. We're all live. Back then, I didn't even know what FileMaker was, so we had to take a course. I learned and I learned and I learned. Can I do it? No, but I know somebody who can. We do have a tech and we can do the basics in it, but I had to understand it completely before I could invest in it, if that makes sense. So I did my research. I did all my studying on it to make sure I wanted to keep investing in this platform, and that's exactly what we did. So the system, which we fondly call ITP, runs nearly every part of the business, from quotes to production to shipping. And it's scalable. So which means we can continue to grow and open new locations, which we're hoping to have five locations in the next five years. So it's incredible to think that something so powerful was born out of one of the hardest times in my career, and the relationships built with our tech and our team based on this is astronomical. And because of this FileMaker program as well, which we fondly call ITP, there's a back end. So everything that goes out of our software, we know our markup. We know what we need to focus on in each of our categories, be it vinyl or embroidery.
Sharon: [00:18:24] We know all that kind of stuff. It's all allocated in there. So it sets us up for success for sure. Looking back, I see so much good that came out of the awful season. It was, I said, so stressful, but there was so much good. I'm a stronger leader now, a more compassionate person. I have a deeper understanding of business and of people, and I'm able to mentor others, share my story through this podcast, and remind entrepreneurs that no matter how bad things feel, you can find your footing again. It took years to pull ourselves out of that hole. We paid down supplier debt. We cut unnecessary expenses. We regained trust. We rebuilt our customer base not just in Lloydminster, but across all of Western Canada. And it happened because we built it on culture, integrity and professionalism and a strong understanding of our industry. We're always learning. We're always going to trade shows. We're always trying to improve what we do for our customers. So I think that's important. We began attracting new customers, the right customers, people who value what we do and how we do it. And for that, I'm incredibly grateful. It didn't happen overnight. It took time, patience, humility. And that is why I've got lots of gray hair today. But I'm thankful for every step for the team who stood beside me and the customers who believed in us.
Sharon: [00:19:37] Some of our customers, since we opened our doors back in 2007, they stood with us all through it. So I'm so grateful to them. Those are the people who carried us through. And to my team. Okay, I'm going to summarize it with some of the key lessons that I learned, and I'm hoping some key takeaways for you that you can implement if you're going through something similar, if you know of somebody going through something similar. Learn your numbers. You are responsible to understand them. You are responsible to understand them. I want to say that again, you are responsible to understand them. Don't rely on someone else to interpret your business for you. Again, I went to that bank. I got financing from the bank, I have accountants, I have all that kind of stuff. But it's up to you to understand those numbers. Do an expense audit regularly, whether it's monthly or quarterly. Dig into where your money is going. Small leaks can sink a ship if you're not watching. Or another key takeaway I got from that one is, you know, you have your suppliers, you use them year to year, phone them up, say, hey, you know what? I've been with you for five, whatever number of years, is there, is there something we can work on to get a better price? And, you know, they're more than willing to do that. You tell them how much you spent with them for the last, how many number of years, they're going to adjust that, they're going to work with you. Compare your markup and margin to industry standards and adjust.
Sharon: [00:20:54] Be competitive, but don't undercut yourself. Charge what your work is truly worth. You can't grow a healthy business if you're constantly selling yourself short. Never underestimate the importance of culture. The people around you, your team, your peers, your friends shape the health of your business more than any spreadsheet ever will. It also will shape you. Stay open-minded and curious. Ask the questions. Learn from others. Surround yourself with the right people. Those who challenge you, cheer for you and help you see what's possible. Surround yourself with those people. Stay open-minded and curious. It's so important to listen to those books and remember to water your own grass. This is actually from a podcast with Gary Kulak and it really stuck out to me. He talked about watering your own grass and not worrying about somebody else's grass. So focus on what you can do differently. Stop worrying about how green someone else's lawn looks. When you nurture what's yours, it grows stronger, deeper and more resilient. Those are words from Gary Kulak from a previous podcast. Go back and listen to it. It's brilliant. Looking back now, I can honestly say that season shaped me more than any success ever has. The stress, so much stress, the resilience.
Sharon: [00:22:13] I think I'd want to call it the want, the drive, the pigheadedness if you want to call that. Determination. That season, that whole year, it's probably been a year and it took us a lot longer to get out of. It has truly shaped me. It taught me that growth doesn't always look like expansion. Sometimes it looks like survival, humility, and starting over with clear eyes. You’ve got to be humble. You’ve got to be humility. You got to ask people. You got to… It's okay to be vulnerable. I'm grateful for the lessons, the people who stuck beside me, and even the struggle itself, because without it, I wouldn't have learned how to truly run a business or how to lead with empathy and purpose. Today, I understand my numbers, I trust my systems, and I'm surrounded by a team and community that share the same values and drive. That's something I'll never take for granted. And that's really what It's Time for Success is all about. Helping others see that success isn't about avoiding mistakes; it's about learning from them, getting better, and staying open to growth. So if you're listening to this and you're in the middle of your own tough season, please know this: you are not alone. Keep learning. Keep asking questions. Keep watering your own grass because we're all still figuring out and we're never done growing. Thank you for listening and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast channel.