December 1

Episode 102: Keys to Growing Your Business with Ryan Niddel

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Ryan is a principal in a private equity group, the CEO of two eight-figure companies, and sits on the boards of several other companies.

Ryan Niddel‘s Biography

Ryan Niddel is a CEO, Board Member, and Entrepreneur. He is also the leading authority on improving the revenue of companies by improving EBITDA through increased operational efficiency, lean manufacturing principles, and more. He has helped with the acquisition or exit of more than 11 companies while seeing their collective revenue surpass more than $237M. Niddel has successfully tripled the revenue of more than 5 companies in under 2 1/2 years, adding an extra $950M in valuation to these companies.

Niddel began his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 10 with a local lawn mowing operation which led to being taken under the wing of a local businessman while being mentored starting at the age of 14. He currently is a principal in a private equity group, the CEO of two 8-figure companies, and sits on the board of directors for several other companies. He has built a reputation as Ohio’s top business growth specialist and as someone able to rapidly improve the profitability of a company in order to achieve a higher valuation and sell for significantly more revenue.

Ryan Niddel contributes to multiple charities, including Big Brother Big Sister, Operation Underground Railroad, The Buckeye Ranch, and other causes he cares about. He is in the process of launching a foundation focused on the education of the youth of today to help with the practical application of business, entrepreneurism, and capitalism.

Information in This Episode

Disrupter in the areas of:

  • Rapid Revenue Generation
  • Business Model Enhancement
  • Strategic Restructuring
  • Business Makeovers

Links & Resources Mentioned…

Read The Transcript

Mike O'Neill: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Get Unstuck and On Target podcast. I'm Mike O'Neill with Bench Builders, and we work with growing companies, especially manufacturers, to improve their people process and planning systems so they can scale faster and scale smarter. Joining me today is Ryan Niddel. Ryan is a business growth specialist and he's the founder of Ryan Niddel's Strategies. Ryan is a principal in a private equity group, the CEO of two eight figure companies, and he sits on the boards of several other companies. Ryan has helped with the acquisition or exit of more than 11 companies while seeing their collective revenue surpass more than 237 million. Ryan has successfully tripled the revenue of more than five companies and other in less than two and a half years. And in doing that, he also added an extra 950 [00:01:00] million valuation to their companies. So you can see why I wanted to invite Ryan on the podcast. Welcome, Ryan.

 Ryan Niddel: Thanks Mike. Great to be here. Appreciate you inviting me.

Mike O'Neill: Ryan, I have got to know you, in these conversations. And one thing that kind of stuck out with me is something that you write, and that is if our topic is keys to growing your business, you write large numbers of prosperous companies are actually successfully stuck content with above market performance when an order of magnitude of higher profit is frequently possible. Share a little more about that.

Ryan Niddel: I would love to Mike. So in my experience, there's, there's this beautiful place of happy contentment that a, a CEO may arrive to. And what I mean by that, if I'm, if I'm a first generation ceo, if I'm the founder of a business and I've, I've given birth to this really another child, for most the individual I could spend [00:02:00] time with, and they've seen this child grow and mature, you know, from the idea of a startup to maybe your first million, to the staffing, to the, to the growth. There becomes a point to me that I typically see in between year five and year 10 as a generalization where we're, we're past the hurdles, right? There's always new challenges, but there's a stable business. Now there's a, a, a lifestyle which allows for good travel and good income. I'm a car guy myself, so maybe a nice, nice car to maybe country club membership, and you've got, you've got a lot of people around you supporting your mission, vision, and value, and by the nature, It's like, I, I see these, these first time CEOs, it's like their foot comes off the accelerator a little bit.

They're not coasting, but they, they've lost the fact that, that that accelerator can go all the way to the floor. And by the nature of that, the business is no longer while it's still growing. Right. To me, these, you still have brilliant business owners, entrepreneurs, CEOs that have, [00:03:00] have grown this business. Again, we're, we're talking two, three times, a factor of inflation, so it's still outpacing the market. They've lost sight of the fact when they started, they were seeing 50 to a hundred percent growth year, every year start buying into this story that well, we're, we're too big to do that now. It's not possible to do that now.

And that starts to put this, call it filter or cap on the way that they not only view business, but to potentially life. Where there's a nice sweet spot that I've found in conversations with CEOs or, or businesses that I'm fortunate to acquire in. Those are great places, but let me come in and show you that if someone comes in with new eyes, someone comes in with a new, bigger and passion for this, and someone comes in with a larger destination than the owner currently might have, you can just jump right back into that exponential growth very rapidly. Um, again, so brilliant what you share and what you coach on, what, what you consult on, right From, from the people of the processes to to the, to the systems that. [00:04:00] It doesn't seem to matter to, in my experience. Mike, I'd love to know your thought. It hasn't mattered which business that's in. Right. For me, it's, I go from manufacturing to an educational based business to, fortunes, to be part owners in the bank.

They're all the same, right? That there's, there's the people, the processes and some level of scalability to support that. And it, it, it's really fascinating to me to, to see the correlations between them and just coming in with a new set of eyes quite often presents incredible.

Mike O'Neill: Ryan, you are asking about the industry. You're exactly right. It seems as if the issues that I see, are universal. It really doesn't matter what the industry is. But you have found kind of a, a theme and the theme is business owners or CEOs. Business is good, but what you have found is if there's a tendency to sometimes take your foot off a little bit of the accelerator. You're trying to point out, hey, this, the potential's far [00:05:00] greater. What do you find really gets the CEO's attention to say, Yep, I wanna start working with Ryan and, and his teams?

Ryan Niddel: So for me, my, my process Mike, is just generally like to get to know an owner. There's not a position, there's not some sort of, Hey, I'm coming and I'm gonna change the world for you because I don't inherently know if that's gonna be true in the business. I typically spend a day or two just getting to know the, the history of the business, the CEO himself, maybe, maybe the C-suite executives. Typically, it lends itself nicely to an onsite type of visit, and then it's just a presentation of what I found, and that presentation to me is not o obligatory. It's right here's, here's what I'm seeing.

And these examples, whether there's, you know, books to support it or trainings to support it. An MBA to support it, whatever, whatever the pieces of parts are to help support that level of, of, understanding in the business. Then it leaves the, the owner with the opportunity. I like to give them the [00:06:00] playbook, but I, I laughingly use the analogy, a sports analogy, right? I can, I can give you the Dallas Cowboys playbook, but it doesn't mean you can call the plays, execute 'em or win the Super Bowl just because he ended up with the playbook itself and. It's not even that give and take, it's, Hey, look, I'm, I feel very comfortable and confident that there's a very clear path for this much growth and I like to treat growth.

Mike, I'd love to hear your perspective. It's not only top line, but it's bottom line. So many people in, I think our space or spaces that we might have played in at different times in our life come in and say, I'm gonna grow your top line by 500%. Well, if I just spend 700% more money, I can probably do that pretty, pretty linearly, right? It doesn't. Increase the, the net margin of the business or the overall value of the business. So that's typically what leads me down to down the road of, you know, why would someone work with me? And then it, there's a, a morph that happens, whereas I'm helping a, a, a CEO or COO, really a [00:07:00] C-suite, go through their process.

Occasionally they say, I just don't have the appetite for this. I don't, It's been really fun over the past 10 years to get to this point, but I'm realiz. When I founded my business at 45, and now that I'm 55, I don't have the same appetite for the hunger to, to drive it as beautiful. This is happening. What can I do now? And that what can I do now is starting to have the, the exploration into whether it's, you know, selling off some equity, selling out the company, having some sort of transition, whether it's to a next step can or someone inside the business itself with an owner finance deal or, or potentially someone like myself coming in and being.

To buy up a large portion of the business to still execute the same plan. I like to then show those business owners that they can win twice where depending on the potential growth of the business, if they were to sell off, you know, conversely, 80% of the business to me, and they retained 20%. Cause if I can grow the business value five times over, they, they get [00:08:00] to, I'll call it double dip. It sounds, you know, potentially not, not as attractive as, I mean it. But they win now and they win probably in three to five years later. Plus they're, they're still getting their distributions dividends, right? They're still along for their journey. They just have removed themselves from the necessity of having to be the one to decide how hard to push the gas down.

Mike O'Neill: You made a comment a moment ago about maybe losing the appetite, and one thing that kind of caught my attention is you're pretty open about your method. As I understand it, one of the first things that you do is you help the business owner, the CEO, identify, at least one core competency that can create big results with the least internal effort. Tell me a little more about that. I love that there's a lot of power in that one sentence. Yeah. Break it down.

Ryan Niddel: So it's almost, what is it? Our comedians, right? Give me a lever long enough I can, [00:09:00] I can show you how to lift the world. And I feel like in most businesses that that is actually very truthful. Where, I think an example might be the valuable here where I came into a company that is a, I'll call a sales and manufacturing based company of a consumable good. And this, this company had been around for, gosh, 10 years or so when I came on board. Two founding partners, Beautiful business, beautiful. But the owners were in that, I call it, in that, in that gray space. And, gosh, I, it's working. My life is good. Could it work better? Maybe, I don't really know. I'm kind of, I'm kind of past my skill set, but I don't know if I need to go get a new skill set because the business is good and coming in and, and just spending, Gosh, you might have taken me four months to get to this point with them.

So this was more of a, consulting type of agreement with these individuals. Mm-hmm. , I started to really pull. Not only their sales methodology, but their pricing and, and kind of the regional way they were selling their products and realizing that in a, in a very base [00:10:00] level, they were having their sales team focus on very small accounts. So it was a lot of effort for very small yield, and the business had just morphed into that over 10 years. And no one thought to look there. Now it's, there was a sales manager, it's an established business. One of the founders is a pureed salesperson. I. I don't know what your experience has been like, but for me, a lot of the CEOs I get to spend time with their, their sales professionals.

By nature selling is, is part of the, the makeup for, for a lot of these individuals. And they've just been over, you know, that eight to 10 year time period, they just took their eye off the ball as to where they were focusing. So, you know, getting on suck and on target there's, their target got small and they, they didn't remember how big the target. And so we created just a very simple process.

We took the, the top sale, top two sales professionals, and we had them hunt for what we called whales, right? It's, it's okay that, you know, people out hunting for, you know, tuna or minnows or whatever other analogy we'd like to make. Other metaphor. [00:11:00] But we had, we took the two bests and helped, you know, go out and cultivate leads for them, helped open some doors.

The CEO and myself were involved in a series of conversations where all of a sudden this. By literally just taking a step back and looking at what made them successful at a different season in life. Putting two salespeople in that, that key role business that year. Mike grew, Please don't hold me too, but somewhere between 110 and 150% by doing nothing else than refocusing something that, that the owners knew and thought in their soul was happening real time. They didn't even consider the fact that for some reason the best sales guys were now going after accounts that were yield. You know, 2000, $3,000 a month versus now the same company that I'm, I'm fortunate to be an equity partner in, and that's one of the companies that now gets operated as ceo.

And right now, those same, some of these same, same customers, same clients, they're, you know, high six figures, low seven figures a month, right from, from the same sales, from the same sort [00:12:00] of methodology, from the same products that, and it's really sitting back and saying, Gosh, what? It's almost. How much of a, a change can happen with something that's so painfully simple and obvious? We've probably just overlooked it. And it's like the, the stain on the carpet that you don't even notice is there because you've walked by it for six months and it's the only thing when you go to sell your house, it's the only thing that somebody sees and they walk in is that stain because it's so painfully obvious.

You just, you build up that calcification to the systems that you've built, which why I think for any thriving and growing business or business that wants. I think it's imperative. For me, it's at least once a year, even in my business, it's bringing in outside eyes. It's taking capital outta my pocket. It's investing in a consultant, a mentor, a specialist, somebody, because I can't see what I've been running into for so long because it's very normal for me. And I see [00:13:00] that again, like with business owner, after business owner, and brilliant individuals. These aren't, you know, slouches. These are, these are men and women. Very accomplished. Multiple degrees, tons of track record and success, great income, great family life. They're just static, right? They're growing, but the business is static. New eyes really present. Great opportunities.

Mike O'Neill: You know, your response actually answered the question that I typically ask of, all the podcast guests and as shared example where a client got. And you give us a great illustration there of how they were successfully stuck. So I appreciate you kind of elaborate on that. You mentioned the spot on the carpet. You may not know I'm speaking to you from the floor curving capital of the world. So anybody listening, if you got a spot of the carpet, there's only one solution.

Tear it up and replace it. Help help our, our regional economy, if you possibly can. [00:14:00] You know, Ryan, you mentioned that kind of the approach you take with businesses is you bring in a fresh set of eyes and you look for perhaps one thing that can have the most impact with the least internal. And you kind of by your description says, and you really focus on the example you just gave is pull your two top sales performers. Everybody else keep doing what they're doing, but pull those and kind of redirect them to targeting those wells. As you step back and look at how you have worked with clients, you said that you help them look at top line and bottom line. Do you, obviously you wanna do. But it sounds to me that you have seen the biggest return on top line, but maybe I'm wrong.

Ryan Niddel: I wouldn't say that you're wrong, Mike. I think that it's, some of these are situational case by case. I know about [00:15:00] your findings, but mine are, Take a CEO again. First generation ceo. I have found that there is a deficiency in their understanding of more mature accounting and finance princip. and the bus, the, they're great at logging the bank account and pressing refresh and seeing there's more money there, right? So for them, things are working well and their income has one up. So things are working well and there's distributions. So things are working well. But what I found is if I, if my entry points in the business are specifically around finance and accounting and really diving deep, I have, I found that to be most successful for myself to, to earn someone's trust first, and with the fact that these, these CEOs typically have a, a sales background.

They were the ones to help, you know, get the company up off the ground and that maybe were vital in, in the sales in early years. Pretty simple for me to, to lean into that sales side to start with while growing top line, but top line without additional expenses. Right? I think it's important [00:16:00] for me as well, when I spend time with these, these brilliant business owners. It's not to say that what you have built is broken. I think that's an inefficient and inappropriate way for me to approach any business. What you're doing is working. It becomes my job through our conversations and through analyzation of the business to see what are the things that we could do to test against the control that you have.
Because it's not everything you're doing can't be wrong because you have a very successful business that's been here for years and years. They're typically growing, but a little static. And so by the nature of that, of course the top line becomes something. To me, revenue solves a lot of shortcomings for businesses. But as that's ramping up and someone can see and okay, this, this guy might have some idea what he's talking about, track record. You never know until, you know, I like to earn someone's trust, not, actually like to borrow their trust first and then earn it over a period of time. Hmm. And, and as we go, go through this together, then I can start po pointing out.

Okay, let's, [00:17:00] let's start looking at your cash to cash cycle. Let's start looking at your, your utilization, how many turns of capital you're able to get. What, what's a free cash flow? And then how are you deploying that capital? Right. Again, my, my, that sweet spot for me. These typically aren't hyper sophisticated individuals. They're, they're successful. But as far as, I think, as, as CEO's main job is, you know, capital allocation comes, comes really high on the list. I think that, a level of culture and a level of growth in strategic accounts becomes vital for a ceo. And I find that the capital allocation side sometimes is a little murky, right?

It's, well, gosh, I've got 20 million in the bank and I don't need any more equipment because my equipment's working really well. I, I don't need a bigger. And so I just get to hit refresh and see 20 million, go to 21 million, go to 22 million and realize like, okay, well what if we went after market share? What if we went after starting to, to acquire some of your competitors? What if we started to consider becoming vertically integrated? Let's just open up dialogue [00:18:00] for the what ifs that could happen. And so by the nature of that, to me, we, we do see the top line focus. Then it steps into a little bit of the bottom line where start.

Again, what are, what are some of the basic things? What's your, you know, average age of receivable that might be on your books? What can we do to tighten that up? Are there things that we can do to enhance the, the, the net cash flow and, and shorten down that cycle? And then it gets into more strategic growth initiatives? To me, at some point, it, it's fascinating. If you, if you're familiar, the work of Bryce Pritchett or not, but brilliant individual to me and his book U Squared. At some point you can't do more of what got you to this point expecting exponential growth. Almost have to sit back and say, Gosh, this is really scary, but what got me here is probably not going to get me there.
We have to almost reevaluate where we're focusing our time and the CEOs, again, that I'm incredibly fortunate to spend time with and, and maybe as you're listening, you're one of them that things are good and [00:19:00] it, the business is growing. Revenue's coming in, there's. But there's this whole other game to be played where you take that skill set and you go after acquisitions. You take the same salesmanship that a CEO has that got their business to this point, and you start looking at competitors and start looking at supply chain. You start looking at distribution arms and start selling those business owners on why it might be beneficial for them to partner with you or be fired by you.

You start selling banks and, and financial institutions, right? Private equity groups. Any number of individuals, even mezzanine debt on why it's valuable to, to stay here with some capital. Because again, if my business is running at a 25% net margin, hypothetically, I'm able to raise debt for even 14 to 15 points. And as long as the repayment terms are appropriate and I can see growth on the acquisition, the justification for that, for that debt service is, is there. It's there if you can lay it out to someone and then. In my side, Mike, I'm [00:20:00] reasonably intelligent, but I'm not all that smart. I like to take complicated things and make 'em really simple so people can understand it, and I find if I can, if I can draw something up on the back of a napkin, say, Hey, you might wanna consider this instead of the crazy complicated spreadsheets and right.
This kind of cash flow analysis and doing all these things that many CEOs, their eyes kind of glaze over and does, if not that important to them. Those things create a new perspective. , which gets someone into, to me that you squared type of situation from price. It's just, okay, what I, what I did worked really well to get me here, but to get me there, I might wanna focus on this stuff. Now maybe I do have that vigor for the business again. Maybe I don't wanna press a gas down to grow what I've built. Now. Maybe that's a chief of staff coming in. Maybe that's, you know, removing yourself as ceo, back filling with the CEO and moving into more of a chairman of the board type. Like, some of these things are, are just right on the precipice.

It's, it's just outside someone's awareness because maybe they haven't considered it, Someone hasn't showed it [00:21:00] to 'em before. They're unfamiliar with the, the principles. They think it's too challenging or too scary, they're gonna get eaten alive. It's, another fascinating point is almost every CEO that I've spent time with has heard a horror story of someone losing their business in a private equity transaction. Hmm. They've heard of one of those and they lose sight of the 35 people they know that have successfully exited or acquired more businesses and increase their net worth, but they hold onto that negative emotion of the one guy or gal that just didn't, didn't hit the nail on the head.

Mike O'Neill: Ryan, you've given us a great overview of the kinds of things you help your clients with and the term exponential. It kind of kept coming up. That is the goal of, of course, But with exponential growth, what new challenges does that present to a business owner? To a leader? [00:22:00]

Ryan Niddel: Oh, Mike, what a brilliant question. To me, it's, it's almost always personnel. It's almost always staffing first. And it's that fact of when you start to see the exponential lift, especially after a season of stability, but consistent growth there. Fairly good probability in my experience that the brilliant people that helped you get here are gonna be slightly deficient in their skill set to get there. Yes, but you've got loyalty to them. You've got history with them. They're, they're good people. They, they've helped you make a really good life for yourself, and they probably have a really good look for themselves during that time period as well.

And so the, almost always the first challenge is a personnel based challenge that I see. People becoming uncomfortable. It's like, whoa, this is scary. Now we're, we're going really fast again, and what was wrong with how we were doing things? And that speed starts to then flush out to mean more deficiencies in the operating system, right? It almost always gets into an op space conversation of, gosh, we [00:23:00] weren't set up for this sort of, this sort of potential rapid growth. And so even the ops conversations, right? That's gonna be more the process side of things that you. But I still backfill into, into people a people conversation first where you, you might have to start going to market and looking for a different CFO and a different, different COO or controller or however the business is structured and not because you don't care.

It's actually one of the, the shifts that I work on with, with the business owners is you caring about someone wholeheartedly, is allowing them the opportunity to learn from someone that has a greater skill set than. It's if you bring in a CEO or a COO or CFO that has a massive track record in history, the CFO you might have now, that's helped you get from starting point of whatever the number is in this moment. If he or she is open to it and is more of a growth mindset type of individual and isn't at the end of their career, there's a lot of ifs. Mm-hmm. , it's wonderful to have [00:24:00] someone come in that's, that's traversed the next season of life that's been through. You know, some, some debt raises or a private equity exit or something along those lines.

Maybe a level of compliance and oversight, maybe an audit based history that are just new and being able to, to help a business owner really pour into what it means to be a, a champion of your people. Right? It, it just almost always, that's the first, that's the first linch bin. That's the first bottleneck. Every time, Mike, I, I can't, I can't come up with one example. In the past, gosh, I mean, even my first company that before Consulting Before Exits was a web hosting company that just kind of a lot of right place, right time, Mike. But we took this thing from 10,000 clients and I came on board as a sales professional to 580,000 clients in about two years.

Mike O'Neill: Goodness.

Ryan Niddel: And it, it, it's an order of magnitude of chaos everywhere, all around [00:25:00] us. money is coming in so rapidly that we almost don't know what to do with it. Mm-hmm. . And it was the people, the people, and I can sheepishly raise my hand. I was one of the people that was not qualified to be in the business as we grew.

I mean, we were, you know, trending for 3 million a year in revenue when I came on board. And inside of, uh, 12 months we were at 55 million. Goodness. And it was instant. And I go from sales professional affiliate manager specifically to ceo and. They, they were just, I'm a twenty seven, twenty eight year old, I'll call it. Boy, at that point, maybe even child, I can, I can be a little more disparaging with the skillset I have now versus them. And man, it just, it, I was a people problem. It was, it was me.

Mike O'Neill: I readily acknowledge sometimes what you have to do is, is bring in the capability because you can't build it in house. What is your thought? When you've got [00:26:00] folks who have the right skills but need refreshing, what is your thought about developing managers, professional development, growing them as leaders?

Ryan Niddel: I think it's paramount. I think that one of the core competencies in businesses that I'm a part of or, or one of the pe edic that I like to help say, install or suggest is I believe it's our responsibility to lead people better than we found. And I don't get to decide what that means for someone that works with me. For some people, for some of our employees, it might be more money. Maybe that leaves them better for a lot, I hope it's more education, it's a deeper skill set, and having a level of continuing education be a part of their, to me, quarterly objectives, which tie to their bonus outcomes.

I mean, I, as we get into comp structure, I support all of these things collectively together. That it's not just, what are you doing? Drive the business for, to enhance your, your income? What are you gonna drive yourself for? Cause. I want growth minded individuals that, that want to enhance their skillset. And so to me it's paramount to lean into that consistently. And to me that's, that's the, [00:27:00] the challenge and the struggle back and forth that I personally go through. Mike and I would selfishly having you on the call, would love your insight in it because it is a real issue for me. It's, I have brilliant people that are trying to grow.

They want to grow. They're, they're doing the continue education. They're signing up for courses. They're, they're complet. But the rate in which some of these businesses are growing is still outpacing the rate that they're able to grow their skill. They're not doing anything wrong. They're incredible individuals. They love them as much as I could love a coworker appropriately, right? It's, it's, they, they just, they're two years behind where they need to be for the speed at which we're running, and it's saying, Okay, I'm navigating these waters and I see some things coming up. You know, we're, we're going from 50 million year in revenue to now 120 million to, you know, through a couple acquisitions.

This company I'm referring to, reasonable to hit, you know, 200 million in revenue next year. And it's, it's just a really different company when you get a board [00:28:00] of directors and, you know, P C O B audits and some things that really are required for, for an ipo, it's a different world, like a team's trying to catch up, but Mike, they are, they're just not catching up on the speed at which we're growing like. I don't wanna let 'em go because generally care about these people. If I need someone with a bigger skill set at the same time. What, what do you, I'm, I'm borrowing your time right now. What do you do in that situation?
Mike O'Neill: Well, what you're describing is exponential growth, and most of my experience has not been with clients that are experiencing exponential growth. It's been incremental growth, and so you have a little more runway to do what needs to be done. Based on what you've kind of described, If an organiz. Has brought you in, embraced the ideas that you have introduced and it's taking off.

I think you have to change what you have to do and so I, I tend to agree with what you des describe, and that is [00:29:00] when a company's growing that fast, it opens up a whole new set of issues that many people have never seen before.

They are clearly, In over their head, if you would, that if it's done right and you bring the right person in, that can give a sense of relief if that would be the right term. And if it's done right in that same person stays on and learns from, then all everybody wins in that scenario. But it requires adaptability, it requires nimbleness. And so I, I'm glad we kind of got into this aspect and. , taking your foot off the gas might be a natural tendency for a CEO of a successful company. Might even be for highly successful, but you're introducing that with a a few things. The potential could be in place to really. Open things up, [00:30:00] and though we only briefly touched on it, the ceo, who is the founder or is the owner, it opens up so many new sets of questions and that that could be yet another whole podcast episode and that is preparing for exit.

And there's so many different aspects of of that. And so whereas you are helping address an issue, it creates new issues, but it's very exciting. But it takes work and it takes someone with expertise like yours to kind of help shepherd that process. You know, Ryan, as you kind of reflect on what has been shared today, if you were to summarize what you hope our viewers and listeners have as takeaways, what would they be.

Ryan Niddel: Summarization of, of what I would hope that you're getting as you're listening, especially if you're in that business owner's seat is two. , it's one I'm, I implore you to get outside counsel on the [00:31:00] business with a fresh set of eyes. Again, someone like Mike, someone like myself, some, someone that, that their job is to show you something greater than you've seen before. What I don't suggest it is, is your next door neighbor, a good friend, someone you've been around for a long time, needs somebody in that spot of authoritative confidence that you can, you know, lend, lend your trust to for just a moment in. Instead of having, you know, putting up your, your, your hackles for a moment and saying, Gosh, I built this.

Don't tell me it's wrong. Oh, can you look at it through a slightly different set of eyes, Especially when nobody else in the world's gonna know other than the individual that's sharing with you the potential. I think that's a, a valuable part. And the other part, Mike, to me, is that we're all capable of so much more than we realize no matter how great life is in this moment. And, and to me, life is, I call it, there's four quadrants to life, right? You have your, your fitness quadrant, you have your faith quadrant, whatever that means to you. You have your [00:32:00] family quadrant and you have a finance quadrant, and that just, I keep things really simple in my life and that each one of those you're capable of more than you're realizing in this moment.

And if you can realign that target might not care about six pack abs and being able to, you know, have 21 inch arms, that might not be your. But maybe it's the fact that you want to be able to crawl around on the floor with your grandchildren and not have any pain in your joints, or have that be the target. You can, you can absolutely make that a reality effortlessly if it's, you know, I want to grow this business to, to 50 million, but why not make it 500 million? Right. There's, there's a, you're just as capable. It's the order of magnitude and difference is surprisingly, not that, not that much to me. Right. There's an extra zero of course, and there's a slightly different skill set. What's that target you're shooting at? And I think if someone were able to, to really hold those two things from this, from this episode of, gosh, you can do so much more than you give yourself [00:33:00] credit for, and you might need to bring somebody else in for just a moment in time to show you how much more you're capable of. I think those two things would be great, great values to be well as as, as we're listening to us have our conversation.

Mike O'Neill: Ryan, for those listening to this episode who said, Gosh, I want to learn a little bit more. What's the best way for folks to reach out to Ryan?

Ryan Niddel: Yeah, thanks, Mike. So just as, as simply as ryanniddel.com, that's R Y A N N I D D E L. Looks like middle, certainly been called way worse in my life, but that's, it's, it's consistent on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or my email list. It's just everything's Ryan Niddel.com. Well, I have a team of people that support me. Any of those social handles, I take pride in the fact I'm actually the one that's responding to any message or any sort of direct conversation. And like my, my thought process is, you know, be, be a humble servant. If there's something I do to help you, please feel free to drop me messages. [00:34:00] Not gonna try to sell you something or pitch you something. It's information is information's free. Let's just, let's see how we can help each other.

Mike O'Neill: Ryan, you have an excellent website. You have a strong online presence. We will include that information in the show notes. I wanna thank you for sharing just a bit of your expertise and your passion for helping business leaders think bigger and act accordingly. Thanks for sharing your thoughts today.

Ryan Niddel: Yeah, absolutely, Mike. Thank you. And, and Mike May, May I trouble you if I, if I may, Who is your ideal client? Right. What's, if, if, you know, taking off the podcast side and talking more to the business side mm-hmm. , the part that I'm at in life. I'm always looking for people that are brilliant, professional, proven, track record. Right. What does that, what does that client look like for you?

Mike O'Neill: I guess the short answer is in an ideal setting, I have [00:35:00] had the good fortune in my career to work, in fast growing manufacturing. And therefore I have an understanding of the challenges that that presents as a business owner with Bench Builders. I would much prefer to work with companies that are growing, but are beginning to realize that they're experiencing the growing pains. And that's in large part why I opened this podcast by describing that the problems that most typically that they're experiencing.

Usually start with people problems, something related, and I describe people, process and planning. The process, issues that most typically need to be addressed, usually center around people, processes. How are you bringing people in? How are you developing them? How are you plugging them? How are you giving them a sense that they're plugged in and that they can set sites on a future and come enjoy and stay and [00:36:00] thrive within your company. So an ideal client for me, would be an organization that is growing, but has started to kind of hit some of those roadblocks. And if you were to step back and look how I most typically help those clients, it's really focusing on the fundamentals. It's primarily focusing on training and coaching, coaching one on one leaders and leadership teams. And training more often, not. It's the people skills training that is needed most. So that's kind of the niche that we most oftentimes fill, training and coaching, and it's tailored to their specific issues, whereas everything that we're doing together is designed to build a culture or establish a culture that has elude.

And so as I've been listening to you share kind of how [00:37:00] you come into an organization is if I had my druthers. I love working with entrepreneurs because they understand that you have to be willing to take a risk, but, but investing in your people through coaching, training, by developing your business, you sometimes you're having to just and ask, Am I investing properly in my people? Whereas you're asking questions, Am I investing in the business and other aspects? So I see the two as very complimentary. How does that answer your question?

Ryan Niddel: Answers it very well. I mean, I, There's something like, again, whether without to get too, too much into religious conversations, there's sometimes I connect with someone and there's, there's this voice of, there's something else and I, I don't know what that is and I'm not trying to, you know, project what it could be, but the businesses that I am, that I own physically, [00:38:00] not nothing I'm consulting for, but that's also very relevant. The businesses that I own, because of the growth, these things are breaking consistently and I'm, I'm going back and forth with, okay, I can see it more growth and my job is to keep the growth going, but I'm looking for people to help me keep the culture growing at the same pace because.

There's only so much of all of us to go around, and I believe in those four pillars of life. You know, you gotta have a level of balance, right? I guess balance is also a little bit misnomer, but it's very easy for me to put, you know, 22 hours a day into a business and not think twice for, for months on end. It doesn't, wouldn't bode so well for my, my wife, my daughter, or for any other part of my life. And so I share that with, there's just, there's just something here to have an ongoing conversation I feel of, of what it might look like to have. You know, consult, come in, coach, whatever the proper terminology would be for, for one or two of the businesses that I have, I have, two supplement manufacturing [00:39:00] businesses out of Salt Lake City, Utah, that are a company called re Manufacturing.

Like there, gosh, conservatively will do 15 million in revenue, still in the growing pain phase, right? Accidentally became an owner of that business. It wasn't intentional. I go through a. Long dissertation on what that is, but short story, invested capital, thought the CEO was a little different than he was ceo, decided he didn't wanna run a, a really clean shop, right? I'm GMP compliant and want FDA compliant. Like there's, there's just no, there's no gray in that space. To me, if someone's putting something in their body, we need to operate at the, at the highest integrity that that exists. I don't care what, what we can do, I care what we should. and so that individual decided he didn't want to be partners with me any longer.

So I'm, I'm now the proud, proud owner of this manufacturing business. It's on the other side of the country that is, is going through some cultural pain points right now because the, the [00:40:00] staff is, we're getting into what I call a performance oriented type of type of business where there's clear KPIs, there's clear expectations, there's, there's clear bonuses to support when someone needs or achieves their object. It's a cultural shift and I, I'm unable to potentially unwilling to probably some of both at this moment focus my attention into helping cultivate that culture because I'm looking at the dollars and cents saying, Okay, until I get to 25, 20 6 million, it's just not as profitable as I need it to be. With the CapEx that went in to get it to this point in time and the depreciation cycle on the, on the machinery and some of the overhead allocations that we have, it's, it's, I need it, I need the top line to, to. And so I, I share that a little sh I don't wanna say sheepishly, but candidly with you, Mike, that I, I'd like to explore what it could look like to have you spend time with us.
Mike O'Neill: Well, I appreciate now we are still recording and this may very well stay in the, the finished episode. I'm flattered by what you say. What I would say to [00:41:00] the listeners who've kind of listened in on this conversation, this is a very good illustration of being a podcast host. What this does for me, I learn from the guest each and every time.

I hope you the listener you, the viewer, are also learning. And so what I would like to do, if you don't mind, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up the podcast itself, but be assured, I would love to continue that conversation. The four pillars that you shared, I personally, adhere to the same, as an ideal. You made reference to balance. It seems as if many people and many organizations are outta. And writing that sense of balance, adds real purpose to what I get a chance to do. So I'll go back to saying thank you for being a guest and I also wanna thank our listeners for joining us today and I appreciate you li us just kind of have that additional conversation. But that's how life works. You, [00:42:00] you build relationships and you don't know where they might would go. We upload the latest. Every Thursday to all the major platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

So if you've enjoyed this episode like I have with Ryan, please subscribe. Now, this is the typical way in which I close these podcasts and it reads, are you trying to grow your business and you wanna make sure you've got the right people, processes, and planning systems in place to grow smoothly? If yes. I invite you to, let's talk head over to unstuck.show and schedule a quick non sales call. We're gonna talk about your growth goals and explore practical steps that you can take now to make sure that that growth in fact does happen. So I wanna thank you, the listeners for joining us, and I hope you have picked up some tips from Ryan that'll help you get Unstuck and On Target. Until next time.[00:43:00]

This Quiz is Going to Assess you in 3 main Areas...

PEOPLE   .   PLANNING   .   PROCESSES

People

People is about making sure that you have the right people in the right positions in your company, and that you have a plan for how to retain and train your top talent.

Planning

Planning is all about knowing where you're going and having exact steps that you can take for how you're going to get from here to there.

Process

Process is about having efficient systems in place to help you get ahead of your competitors faster and with fewer mistakes.

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