Clarity, Cash Flow, and the Unsexy Decisions That Win with Bryan Guadagno

0:02John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down clarity, cash flow, and the unsexy decisions that win. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought Bryan Guadagno into EO Fire Studios. Bryan is the founder of It's That Simple, brand builder and operator turning contrarian food ideas into scalable businesses through positioning systems and relentlessly simple execution. And today we talk about simplicity as a growth strategy, the hidden cost of complexity, doing more with less, simplicity and profitability, what to remove to scale, winning in noisy markets, and oh, so much more.

0:41John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sparsing today's episode goes to Brian and our sponsors. Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier built from the ground up with security as the priority. If you care about protecting your digital life without giving up your smartphone, Cape makes that possible. Visit cape.co4 slash fire and use code fire for 33 % off Cape for six months today. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:19John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Brian, say what's up to Fire Nation and share a key to success that a lot of people might agree with.

1:34Bryan Guadagno:What is up, Fire Nation? A key to success that people will probably agree with. You need to care enough about what you're doing to navigate the hard times. Because hard times are coming and they're coming fast. And if you are not purpose-driven, if you're not mission-driven, if your why is not meaningful enough for you to pull through that and navigate the hard stuff, you will quit. And there's nothing wrong with that if you don't care about what you're doing. But if you really want to pull through, then the best way is to only do things that you actually are motivated by or passionate about or incentivized to create some kind of change.

2:28John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation clarity, cash flow, the unsexy decisions that simply win. And I want to talk about simplicity as a growth strategy, Brian, because there's just a lot of leaders out there. I mean, they treat simplicity as this branding choice. You actually believe it's one of the most powerful growth strategies that exist in business. So please tell us more.

2:50Bryan Guadagno:I do. I learned this through trial by fire, honestly, because it wasn't always that way. When we started this company, we were very distribution-led, and we chased opportunity. And I think this is normal when you're first getting out there. You don't necessarily know where opportunity is going to come from. You have an idea, and you're largely running in the right direction, but you don't fully know if what you're doing is going to drive meaningful value. but when you find something that works the best thing to do to amplify it is to focus only on that one thing and to block out all the noise and do the small things the repetitious things that are not sexy but they scale and um and and that drive uh real value it's it's the laser principle right like um you know you focus on one thing very intently and you're going to do a lot more damage than if you broaden your attention and push everything an inch versus pushing one thing a mile.

3:56John Lee Dumas:I also want to talk about the hidden cost of complexity because that's kind of the flip side of things. So how exactly does unnecessary complexity, not loudly, but quietly kill momentum, kill focus and kill execution inside of these fast growing companies?

4:13Bryan Guadagno:It's in everything. Take our business, right? We're a consumer goods business. We sell an item into grocery stores. We also sell quite a bit online. People don't realize that those are two completely different businesses. Are we selling the same product? Yeah, but we're selling it in different case pack online than what we're selling in retail. There are different price points. There are different supply chains. Different teams within our overall team that focus on different things. Different marketing engines that drive sales. different data that we're tracking in order to review the metrics of success or the different KPIs.

4:50Bryan Guadagno:So every different thing you do is like a different business. And there's an opportunity cost, a capital opportunity cost, and a time and bandwidth opportunity cost, a team opportunity cost. and um so the the the complexity and it's not even you know this stuff can quietly creep in it's it's yeah there's opportunity on tiktok shop so so let's let's start selling on tiktok shop and it's very simple in theory it's very simple in concept but then you realize okay well this is a completely different channel how are we going to fulfill to our consumers well now we have to go through tiktok fulfillment well can we reach the moqs in order to get through tiktok fulfillment.

5:29Bryan Guadagno:Well, we don't really have that much of a following on TikTok, or if we do, we don't know if we're going to have a customer base to reach adequate scale to, you know, ship in to TikTok shop. So it's on the production side, can we produce enough? Now we're also producing different quantities or a different selling unit. You know, maybe like in a perfect world, if you did this absolutely right and you had the foresight, you've got a selling unit from Amazon or your website or retail that you can translate over to TikTok shop. But often that's not the case because there's a different, there's a different goal.

6:02Bryan Guadagno:There's a different target. You're also marketing differently. Now you're doing most of the stuff on affiliates. So you're selling, you know, you're offering affiliate commissions. So how are you getting in front of affiliates? So there's, there's a dollar, you know, a dollar allocation to that. There's a time allocation to that. There's a learning curve allocation to that. Now, all of a sudden you're focusing on TikTok shop and you're deallocating resources from things that are, that are working. is retail working is dc working is amazon working um so it's it's these are the things that can kill businesses these are the things that seem very simple they seem like opportunities they seem like no-brainers and opportunities for expansion but at the end of the day oftentimes they create complexity and can be a massive drain on cash and resources there's one phrase that i always have

6:49John Lee Dumas:love to say, which is make hay while the sun is shining. And what that really means to me is like, when you find something that's working in your business, you just keep doing that thing. Don't get distracted. Don't try these other things like at this time when that thing's working in your business. So well, like for me, that was live webinars for like nine years. I was crushing it on live webinars, selling my course podcasters paradise. I did a live webinar every single week. And guess what? Eventually that did kind of slide away as an opportunity and the sun stopped shining, so to speak. And so I stopped doing it, but guess what?

7:22John Lee Dumas:I kept the pedal to the metal for as long as possible that made sense to do that because it was just working. I didn't distract myself with other things. And that kind of comes back to like doing more with less, Brian, because we have to move fast in this world. So how can founders simplify products, pricing, and also decision-making to move faster and win when they have fewer resources?

7:45Bryan Guadagno:Well, I think having fewer resources is the rationale for simplifying. So if you have fewer resources, what you just said is exactly what you need to do. You need to make hay while the sun is shining. If you have something that's working, you need to amplify it. And it doesn't matter if you have what you consider to be not meaningful enough traction. If you have traction, like I talk to people all the time who've got$100 ,000 in sales,$500 ,000 in sales, a million dollars in sales. And they say, you know, that's not, that's not inconsequential. They might say that's not enough, or they, you know, they're, they're trying to go from a hundred to 200.

8:16Bryan Guadagno:They're trying to go to from 500 million, trying to go from a million to 5 million. But the reality is you've got, you've got something that's working. You've got enough people buying your product at that point that you have proof of concept. So you need to be talking to consumers, talking to them about why they're buying it. And you need to be amplifying what's working. So if they're buying it, because, you know, take, take your example with, with, um, live webinars, what was working about the live webinars? How do you, how do you continue to amplify that? How do you get bigger audiences? How do you, how do you increase revenue?

8:47Bryan Guadagno:How do you decrease costs? How do you make your messaging more resonant versus, oh, live webinars are working. Why don't we also try doing, you know, in-person live seminars? It's a completely different thing, completely different audience, completely everything's different. So I think having minimal resources is the exact reason that you would do that. And there are so many things you can do that don't necessarily scale that drive meaningful impact. Like picking up, this is a lost art. Pick up the phone and call people. I love doing this. Pick up the phone, call people, ask them why what you're doing is working, have a real conversation.

9:23Bryan Guadagno:Oftentimes that's directionally accurate. You talk to 10 people and you have a really good idea of what's working and why. And then you tweak, you iterate, you keep getting better. Everything is the scientific method.

9:34John Lee Dumas:I mean, I've actually been on the receiving end of one of those phone calls, Fire Nation. Brian will pick up a phone and he'll call you. He'll just be like, hey, let's talk and the conversations are always fascinating so you need to understand what is going to work for you and then when you find that thing again keep that pedal on the metal we want to we want to talk about simplicity with profitability that combination what to remove to scale winning in noisy markets and we're going to do all that when we get back from thinking

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12:30John Lee Dumas:Plus, award-winning 24-7 support so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack. A 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap and more. Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Brian, we're back. And I want to get into simplicity and profitability. That's a great combo, obviously.

13:08John Lee Dumas:So what's the direct relationship between simplicity, margin expansion, and a healthier cashflow?

13:14Bryan Guadagno:So we talked a little bit about it when we got into the cost of complexity. the hidden cost of complexity is you have you have a learning curve that you need to manage and the learning curve creates an efficiency in your supply chain it creates an efficiency in uh you know you know marketing uh um economies of scale up to the point of purchase or wherever you're trying to meet your consumer and so all of these inefficiencies creep in they eat away market so if we're trying to increase margin then simplicity is key focusing on one thing doing it well um and finding out ways that where you can do the same and be more profitable in doing it a great example of this in in consumer and retail is um so we we fulfill through distributors uh distributors sell into retail stores that's um for the most part how it'll work when you get large enough you can start selling direct and then you get a lot more in a lot more efficiencies but a great example here is when we sell to that distributor they're they're essentially our customer they house it in their warehouse and then the customer take you know publics or heb or shop right or wherever you're buying your groceries kroger um they will they will pull it from that distributor the distributor then will deliver it to a particular store a particular receiving center for that grocery store and they'll stock it on the shelf.

14:42Bryan Guadagno:And if we're late in shipping that product or if we're short on product, we get fined. So not being on top of our business literally eats away at a margin and a profitability. And the best way to not be on top of your business is to have way too many things going on. So focusing on different channels. So driving simplicity, focusing on a single thing, going a little bit deeper in very few things make you on time, make you deliver in full and avoid fees. So and that's meaningful. If we're talking, let's say we're talking five percent on a 10 million dollar business, that's real money. That's that's five hundred thousand dollars, half a million dollars.

15:26Bryan Guadagno:That's real money.

15:30Bryan Guadagno:Let's take economies scale at the point of purchase. I have limited dollars to spend. If I'm going to spend those dollars to try to attract customers or consumers, rather, where are those dollars going to do the most value or do the most damage? Is it going to be building awareness through digital marketing campaigns? Is it going to be running CTV ads? Is it going to be in store with some kind of shopper marketing, a demo, sampling, and cap where you have the product at the end of the aisle because you have to pay for all that? So where are we going to do the most damage? If we're focused on cross-channel marketing, then we're diluting our effort versus if we focus on one thing, then we're getting much more economies of scale.

16:14Singular channels, singular focus, improved margin.

16:17Bryan Guadagno:It all trickles down. It's the whole supply chain. It's the point of purchase. It's everything. It's time, resources, money. so best way to improve cash flow is to be really good at one thing once you're really good at that one thing you can expand i'm not saying horizontal expansion is not not valuable i'm not saying it doesn't drive uh growth but it's important to know when the right inflection point is for that

16:44John Lee Dumas:growth hey brian let me jump in here what's one thing that you're great at with your company i'm

16:50Bryan Guadagno:really good at creative problem solving you know things come at you fast in this business and really in any business, entrepreneurship. A lot of people have talked about this, you know, if you, if you read or watch videos on entrepreneurship, but which I'm presuming this whole audience does.

17:03John Lee Dumas:Oh yeah.

17:03Bryan Guadagno:Everyone, every day is a knife fight every day. Someone's trying to kill you. Um, uh, what I do really well is focus on positive outcomes, positive outcomes tend to compound. Um, and I'm really good at taking negative things and turning them into positive things. Um, cause the reality is you got to take everything in stride. Nothing's as bad as it seems. Um, nothing's as good as it seems. Everything happens a lot slower than you think. If you think all is lost, you're still wake up the next morning and the sun might be shining. Maybe it's not, but you're going to wake up and you have the choice of whether or not it's going to be a good day.

17:35Bryan Guadagno:It's on you. It's on you on how you attack problems. Um, you can't avoid them. You have to confront them head on good, bad, ugly, whatever you got to confront them because if you don't, they just get bigger. Um, so I'm good at, I'm not saying it's easy. It's, it's a lot of times it's hard. Um, but I'm very good at waking up in the morning, resetting. And, uh, and I get a lot of support from my wife and I got a lot of support around me that helps me do this. Um, I've got an amazing team around me that helps me do this. Um, but, uh, it's my job to hold a vision. It's my job to think creatively about how to solve problems.

18:09Bryan Guadagno:And, um, I would say that's probably my superpower.

18:12John Lee Dumas:What would you say about winning in noisy markets? Cause I mean, you're in a very, very noisy market. I mean, you have a unique special niche within a noisy market, but it's a noisy market. So how can simplicity actually become an advantage when everyone's adding features or adding messaging, they're adding complexity. Talk about how you specifically do it. Like talk, this is where I want you to talk a little bit about your company specifically, like where, what you do, who you are, like what niche you're filling and then how you're winning in a noisy market.

18:37Bryan Guadagno:We sell a low carb pasta product or low carb pasta, low carb rice. We also do a low carb mac and cheese. people for the most part don't really everyone's different some people go to greater depth like John you and I talked about you know most high value consumers or consumers that are shopping like higher value prop items like healthier items are not necessarily looking at prices you look at prices and you look at them on a price per ounce basis that's very unique not a lot of people do that um most consumers are shopping with very basic intentions they know what they want they know what they don't want they know that they want organic items or they know that they want low carb items or they know they want non-gmo items and it's your job to understand why your consumer is shopping and to not have too much attribute creep because you can't be everything to everybody because then everything that you are gets diluted and um i heard this said by another founder I won't say names because, you know, that's it's for him to tell that story.

19:41Bryan Guadagno:But the essence of the message was nobody knows why they they are most consumers. I say 90 percent of consumers don't know why they shop his product. They just know it's the best. They know it's the best because people who know know it's the best. And that for most consumers is good enough. And so you don't have to have all these call outs. You need one call out that really wins because the people that want to do the diligence and the research are going to do it behind the scenes. There's there's like there are tiers and layers to awareness and people's attention span. Primary objective is to get people's attention at shelf.