September 9, 2026 – Lifetime Achievement Award Experiences Bob Rogers and 5 C’s of M/A Mark Sims

00:04 INTRO 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:29 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. Thank you so much for being with us. We greatly appreciate it. Tell your friends. We are, as always, paying all of our listeners a dollar a show. You just send in your receipt, and we will reimburse you very, very quickly. Got a fantastic show for you today. First up, we have Bob Rogers.

01:03 JIM BEACH: As I say in the introduction, he is one of the people, one of the few people in the world that I’m jealous of, he is building park rides or theme parks and stuff like that. He builds experiences. And if I could get a job there. I would go in a heartbeat. I love theme parks. I just always have.

01:31 JIM BEACH: When I was a kid, we were, I was born in Orlando, when we go every Wednesday, and then dad moved to Tennessee. So like the 1st year that I remember of life, you know, it was 34, 5 around and then we went every Wednesday. I just love it. Anyway, after that, Mark Sims is with us. He is going to give us some great information on buying and selling your business. He’s got 5 Cs to introduce us to.

02:10 JIM BEACH: Great information there as well. And so it’s a fantastic show. Appreciate you being with us. Thanks a lot, and we will get started in just a second.

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02:53 JIM BEACH: We are backing again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce my 1st guest today. Let me tell you this. I’ve been doing this show for almost 15 years. This show is number 2800 and something. I’ve interviewed 5 or 6000 people. I am very, very jealous of my guest. Almost never. I just don’t get jealous of my guess.

03:13 JIM BEACH: Some of them, a lot of them are richer than me, but you know, as an entrepreneur, I don’t have any problem with that. Go and make more money than me, Godspeed, some of them have better jobs and have written better books, but almost none of the guests am I as jealous of as my guest today. Please welcome Bob Rogers to the show. He is the founder and chairman of BRC Imagination Arts.

03:35 JIM BEACH: They design rides and experiences and walk through things. Been awarded over 500 different awards for creating experiences for Disney, Coca-Cola, Ford, Johnnie Walker, NASA, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Grand Ole Opry, Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, Heineken, Jameson, Great Wolf Lodges, which I love, and the Las Vegas Raiders, the World Expo, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Bob started off as a magician at Disneyland.

03:56 JIM BEACH: It took that love of entertaining and surprise and turned it into BRC. He has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the people who, uh, the association basically of theme parks, and also won the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. That’s the Oscar people has won awards there. I could go on and on. But most importantly, he’s author of a new book called Deep Story, a Complete Guide to Chasing.

04:20 JIM BEACH: I’m sorry, to creating transformational visitor experiences. Bob, welcome to the show, how you doing?

04:25 BOB ROGERS: Wow, really, really great after that introduction. We ought to quit while I’m ahead here.

04:30 JIM BEACH: And down here at the bottom, it says world-renowned lover. Bob Rogers. I’m serious, Bob. I don’t get jealous of people. I really don’t. I’m jealous as hell of you. You had the greatest job on earth.

04:45 BOB ROGERS: But why don’t you come out to Burbank and join us on a couple of projects.

04:49 JIM BEACH: I would do that in a heartbeat. Bob. I, uh, I would. I love great experiences. I am a Disney fanatic, but not a Disney adult. I wanna draw that huge distinction. I pay attention to the upcoming rides and the technology and things like that. And I’m absolutely fascinated. Tell us some of the things you’ve done that you’re particularly proud of for Disney, for example, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame NASA.

05:17 JIM BEACH: Give me some of the cool things you’ve worked on.

05:21 BOB ROGERS: Well, for Disney, we just received a Guinness Book of World Records for the longest playing film playing multiple times every day in the same theater. Uh, but this is for uh, Impressions de France. It plays in the uh, in the uh, France pavilion at Epcot. It opened in October of 1982 and it is still playing. Uh, 44 years later, exactly the same way that it opened, no modifications to it. Uh, that is a that is a world record.

05:51 BOB ROGERS: It set a world record a while ago, and then it broke its own world record just recently. So, uh, very proud of that. Uh, and uh, uh, more recently, uh, uh, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Uh, and also uh, for uh, the Johnnie Walker uh, experience on Princes Street in uh, Edinburgh. Very, very successful. And we’ve learned a lot by working from with some of the great brands of the world.

06:18 BOB ROGERS: And we have managed to apply that to all kinds of other areas of our practice. And it’s really, uh, uh, it’s been a very uh, it’s been a ton of fun, a lot of fun. But it all started in a magic shop.

06:34 JIM BEACH: What are your thoughts on the transformation of the theme park industry right now? Disney, I don’t think, has ever been as threatened as it is right now by incredible strides at Universal, but also Disney’s having a huge backlash with their prices and some of their other things. What are your thoughts on the overall shape of the theme park industry?

06:56 BOB ROGERS: Well, you can always, you can look at any period of time and say this is, uh, we live, we’re going through challenging times and each time has its challenge. Uh, I’m going to let the uh, the people that deal with the finances of theme parks. They’ll let them deal with the answer to that question.

07:18 BOB ROGERS: But meanwhile, what we’ll focus on is pleasing people and causing visitors to change in a way that pleases our clients, that is to say, improve the way that customers and visitors relate to your brand or to the subject of your museum.

07:34 JIM BEACH: How important is it for a non-visual brand, you know, for example, The Los Angeles, Las Vegas Raiders. You know, obviously we enjoy watching them, but we don’t care what their logo is. Their mascot looks like, the colors, anything like that. How important are all of these new experiences going to measure up with changing taste and concern for different things?

07:57 JIM BEACH: I’m much more concerned with the experience than a lot of other things I’d rather buy an experience now than a thing? We’re having a lot of changes in the way we consume products and COVID certainly taught us that experiences are more important. What do you see going on?

08:17 BOB ROGERS: Well, uh, with regard to the Las Vegas Raiders. The important thing there is that we did a backstage stadium tour, and unlike most stadium tours, you get this standard stuff about how many tons of concrete or how many 1000 gallons of beer they sell on a Sunday, et cetera. That’s not what uh, that’s what we did with the Raiders. Raiders. Uh, we instead we went into the heart of Raider Nation.

08:43 BOB ROGERS: During that tour, you find out what it’s like to be a Raiders fan, you start to feel the brand love, and we transfer that brand love to you through a series of very carefully orchestrated experiences that are sequenced like a good story to go into a finale.

09:01 BOB ROGERS: The finale is a pep talk in the locker room by one of the former all-star players, after which the doors open and from the locker room, you go straight out onto the field, and that’s the finale to be able to walk on the, uh, onto the field of the, uh, Allegiant Stadium.

09:21 BOB ROGERS: And as a result, uh, the, uh, sales, uh, per capita and the, uh, shop on the way out or higher, if you’ve been on the tour, then if you just walk into the shop off the street, and uh, the brand love is there. Uh, we had uh, one uh, One man showed up in uh, for the tour wearing all Kansas City Chiefs gear, and uh, he was heard heard to say on the way out.

09:48 BOB ROGERS: How the hell are we going to hate these guys now? A sign of success. And that’s the kind of thing that most museums really want to do that with their subject, if you’re the Abraham Lincoln presidential library. You want people to go away far more interested in and more likely to seek out information about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln than when they went in. And if you are one of the brands, like Johnnie Walker.

10:18 BOB ROGERS: Uh, the Johnnie Walker experience. Uh, is uh, in uh, Edinburgh, uh, more than 50% of the arriving visitors say they either don’t don’t care much for whiskey or they don’t like whiskey. But by the time they’re done, by the time they’re done there, we’re getting a net promoter score of now net promoter score. Good is in the 60%. Or the 60s, better is in the 70s. We’re getting 82 to 85 as a net promoter score. So brand conversion.

10:48 BOB ROGERS: Uh, really good is in the 70s. Astronomical is in the 80s. Johnnie Walker’s getting a 91% brand conversion score, and this starts out with more than 50% people saying they either don’t drink whiskey or they don’t like whiskey. So it’s uh, if you really want to make a difference. And how your customers and visitors behave. Uh, there are some techniques and we wrote about these in the book Deep Story. That’s why I wrote that book.

11:16 JIM BEACH: All right. I haven’t heard the term net promoter score in a long time, but it’s good to hear it back. That’s one of the business philosophies that I loved. When it came out. It’s kind of new and it had a huge impact and kind of backed off a little bit. Boy, I think it’s a great way to measure. Bob, I started off in the summer camp industry.

11:42 JIM BEACH: I built in my 20s, uh, the world’s largest summer camp company, we ended up with 89 locations and 4 countries and, uh, had an amazing success, 15,000 kids a day. We were going and teaching. And early on, the reason we had all of that success was because of what I learned early on. We had a core thing that we were teaching at our camps, technology, things like that.

12:10 JIM BEACH: We were not an outdoor summer camp, but an indoor summer camp at Stanford, MIT, Georgetown, UCLA, SMU, places like that. And then year two, I learned that what we were doing was completely irrelevant to our success, that not a single parent cared about what we said we were doing. I said, I’m here to teach your kid how to program. They didn’t care about that.

12:34 JIM BEACH: What they heard and what eventually became our marketing strategy is here’s a place where my kid that’s not a football player, not a cheerleader is going to fit in and feel happy and feel welcomed. And that’s why we were so successful because kids who were not happy. Their parents realized that this was the place for them.

12:55 JIM BEACH: How true is it to experience that there’s always something else going on underneath the main layer of what we see that’s much more critical to a great experience than what’s on the logo or the tagline?

13:09 BOB ROGERS: Well, it’s always in plain sight if you’re willing to look for it. I’ll give you an example. When I was starting out, uh, I was in the magic shop at Disneyland, that was my, that was the, the job that changed my career.

13:26 BOB ROGERS: And one of the hazards of being a magician in the magic shop is that anybody that’s, uh, any of your customers can buy what you’re the, the magic you’re demonstrating, they can buy it for a couple of dollars. Take it around the corner, open it up, read the instructions and then come back and expose you while you’re performing that trick in front of the next group. And I was complaining about this to one of the senior magicians.

13:55 BOB ROGERS: And he stopped me cold and he said, well, 1st of all, Bob, it’s just not about you. It’s just not about you. It’s about them. And let me tell you something. And then he said something that I thought was, wow, is this is this the greatest advice ever or what? He said, we are not the magic temple. We are the magic shop. People don’t come here to admire how magical you are.

14:22 BOB ROGERS: They come here hoping that we will help them to discover some magic within themselves.

14:27 JIM BEACH: Wow. That is what good advice?

14:29 BOB ROGERS: That is the heart of all hospitality. It’s the heart of all salesmanship. It’s the heart of what you were just talking about in summer camp, of a place where they can be, they can find the star quality in themselves and find the, the, the good stuff in themselves. That has got to be the objective of every entrepreneur. I don’t care if you’re running a shop. Or a service business.

14:56 BOB ROGERS: If you are helping your clients or your customers find the magic within themselves, they are going to feel great about themselves. They’re going to feel great about being around you. And that’s, uh, that’s, again, what we’ve been doing for 45 years. And, uh, that’s again, what we, that’s why, uh, I wrote a deep story to share some secrets about how to go about doing that. Uh, for uh, so that uh, other people can enjoy some of the success.

15:26 BOB ROGERS: Now, I got to say, It’s not easy. Deep story outlines a very rigorous approach. Uh, but it will empower your work and it will empower you as an entrepreneur. If you think about every single thing you do as show business. That was the other thing I learned at the magic shop. Uh, it was the perfect introduction to show business. My job was to demonstrate the trick. That was the show part. And then while they were still amazed.

15:56 BOB ROGERS: Take them over to the cash register and sell them the trick. The business part, show business. And there’s a profound lesson in that. And that is that those show and business are 2 sides of the same coin. You, if you’ve got a show, It’s got to be a resulting in business. And if it doesn’t, you won’t have a show. And if you’ve got a business, you’d better be thinking of it as a show.

16:24 BOB ROGERS: You better be thinking of it, not just as the technical thing that you’re providing to people, just what you said about your summer camp. Not just the technical stuff that you’re providing to the client. But the experience and how you made them feel about themselves and how you uh, help them find the best within themselves. That’s deep story. And we could go into how to do that, but that’s, uh, that’s, that’s the idea.

16:53 BOB ROGERS: That’s got to be your goal of every entrepreneur no matter what they’re doing.

16:57 JIM BEACH: All right, so I do want to go into that a little bit. I’m considering creating a new museum about how amazing I am, the Jim Beach museum of amazingness. And I’m thinking about hiring you. Walk me through the process of your creativity. So Johnnie Walker comes in and says, we want an experience. I come in and say, I want the Jim Beach experience. What do you do? How do, what’s the steps?

17:25 JIM BEACH: What’s the process of, you know, ideation that you go through?

17:29 BOB ROGERS: Well, the 1st step is that we’re going to go deep into the audience. And deep into the subject. And what we’re looking for is something an emotional trigger, a positive, constructive, emotional trigger, that is common to both, and that’s not, that’s not one emotional trigger in the audience, and another one in the subject. We’re looking for one that is the same one in both.

17:54 BOB ROGERS: Uh, and then once we’ve found that, we’re going to make the whole storyline of everything about the gym Beach Museum is going to be based on that one emotion trigger. And I’ll give you a, I’ll give you an example. A concrete example. This is a project we did for the Milwaukee Brewers. The Milwaukee Brewers wanted us to create a an homage to Bud Selig, their founder, who had gone on later to be the baseball commissioner.

18:23 BOB ROGERS: And uh, he he was retiring. And they wanted to do a show or a presentation or an experience that was a tribute to him. So we went deep into the audience. We knew that they would be having this project at their stadium. So we knew that a lot of the people would be probably Brewers fans and probably uh, often attending a baseball game that day. Or regularly attend a baseball games on other days.

18:51 BOB ROGERS: So that’s a very specific thing about the audience. And we looked for the emotional triggers in them. Meanwhile, we’re looking through the Bud Selig story. Everything that he ever did. He did some things that were wonderful, like creating the wild card system. And also, uh, he did some things that were, uh, less notable, like, for example, leading the uh, owners as baseball commissioner during the big baseball strike that resulted in a year where there was no World Series.

19:22 BOB ROGERS: But one thing jumped out at us from his story, and it wasn’t necessarily a profound or terribly unusual thing, but he had learned to love baseball, because his mother had taken him to games, because she loved baseball, and she wanted her love of baseball to rub off on him. Well, guess what all the audience is probably doing today.

19:45 BOB ROGERS: They’re either with a young person, that they’re trying to get interested in baseball, or they’re with a young person who’s interested in baseball, and they’re enjoying and they’re sharing that with them. Or the way they themselves fell in love with baseball was that a parent or an uncle or somebody had taken them to games.

20:06 BOB ROGERS: And so the whole idea, it conjures up misty-eyed memories of, of great times and great, uh, uh, uh, youthful experiences from previous, previous years, very nostalgic. And uh, that’s our story. So the story then of Bud Selig, the storyline is, he fell in love with baseball because his mother took him to games, and he spent the rest of his life trying to get trying to share that love with as many people as possible. That’s a great storyline.

20:36 BOB ROGERS: And that is going deep into the heart of the audience. Deep into the heart of the subject, and finding the right story that’s going to connect the heart of the audience with the heart of the uh, uh, the subject. Uh, and notice that this, This is not about what you, they normally would have wanted to talk about. This is a, this is, it’s not about you, it’s about, it’s about, you know, it’s not about the storyteller.

21:05 BOB ROGERS: It’s about the audience and the subject and connecting those two. That’s that’s deep story.

21:11 JIM BEACH: I love it Does every ride, experience, need to have an old IP attached to it?

21:17 BOB ROGERS: Well, the, uh, the money people think so. Uh, but you’re absolutely right. Usually they, uh, usually the, uh, they, they, they, create rides and experiences that are very often founded on are based on IPs that the audience already knows in the theory that this reduces the risk. If you’re going to spend $100 million or $200 million or $300 million or $400 million on an attraction.

21:41 BOB ROGERS: Uh, that, uh, that’s, uh, That’s, you want to have some reassurance that it’s going to work. Uh, If the head of a studio, green-lights a $200 million film that bombs, it disappears uh, in a couple of weeks.

21:56 BOB ROGERS: If that same studio owns a theme park, and commissions a $200 million attraction, that bombs, The way that real estate works is that attraction is going to hang there twisting in the wind for at least a decade before anybody does anything about it. So they want to be very careful. How they uh, what, how they invest in, that’s what causes them to go to the, the safety of known IPs.

22:23 JIM BEACH: It makes sense, but it certainly takes away from some of the experiences, I believe, in my opinion anyway.

22:29 BOB ROGERS: Well, there are a lot of, there are some great, there are some great IPs that have, uh, started out as IPs in the, uh, in the theme park, Pirates of the Caribbean, was a ride before it was a movie.

22:45 JIM BEACH: Haunted mansion.

22:46 BOB ROGERS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Some would say the Matterhorn at Disneyland, but that was actually based on an IP, but nobody remembers the movie that that was based on.

22:56 JIM BEACH: What are they going to do with that ride? I hear constantly that it’s reached its life that it’s just, it’s too old. I think it’s the most uncomfortable ride that I can name. What are your thoughts on getting rid of it? I think it’s past time.

23:14 BOB ROGERS: Well, it’s a funny thing. If you go and read the dedication plaque to Disneyland, uh, that’s at the flagpole at the entrance, It says, uh, uh, To all that come to this happy place, welcome. Disneyland is your land.

23:28 JIM BEACH: Whoa. Disneyland is your land. How the hell did Walt when you put that up? How the hell did he know? Disneyland is your land?

23:37 BOB ROGERS: The, the, the, the guests at Disneyland. Honest to God, believe it’s their park. If you mess around with something that’s important to their youth, especially if you take it away, and that you’re going to hear from them, Tom Sawyer Island. They got rid of the entire water feature. Well, that is crazy. I, uh, and I’m sure that they, they heard about it. I’m sure that they heard about it.

24:03 BOB ROGERS: So with the Matterhorn, I’d watch the line and see when the line starts to not have a waiting time. Uh, then maybe they’ll get rid of it, but meanwhile, uh, meanwhile, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s in the eye of the beholder, if you’re ready for something new there, then, uh, then maybe, maybe you’re ready for it, but I don’t know that the park is ready for it or the, or the guests.

24:29 JIM BEACH: Why do they tear down things when they have land that they could expand into? Why get rid of dinosaur at Animal Kingdom when there’s tons of room for them to expand into and add Encanto next door to dinosaur? Why do they tear down stuff that’s still loved when there’s extra land sitting around?

24:51 BOB ROGERS: Well, probably the show building and whatnot. They’re going to just put in put new things inside of a building rather than build a new building from scratch. And uh, and heaven knows, it looks like land, but uh, until you uh, do a soil survey and find out how much weight it’ll support. In Florida, you do not know whether it is land or swamp.

25:14 JIM BEACH: Yeah, but Then they go ahead and put up a backstage building there. I, I, eh. It’s not a good enough answer for me, Bob. I want more than that.

25:26 BOB ROGERS: Yeah, well, you’re, uh, you’re asking, you’re asking questions that, uh, only the, uh, only the inner circle at, uh, at Disney knows the answer to these things, and that’s a, um, that’s a, that’s a complicated world, and, uh, they’re welcome to it. I’m having much more fun doing the attractions than trying to 2nd guess those guys. Uh, they uh, they have to answer to Wall Street, and I don’t, and uh, that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing.

25:57 BOB ROGERS: I’ll let them do, I’ll let them do their thing. I’ll I’ll focus on uh, connecting the heart of the audience with the heart of a brand or a subject.

26:07 JIM BEACH: And unfortunately, that’s a great way to wrap it up. We are out of time. Bob, I, again, am so jealous of you. I would love to work in this space. It’s just absolutely fascinating. How do we get in touch with you? Find out more. Most importantly, get a copy of Deep Story, a complete guide for creating transformational visitor attractions.

26:30 BOB ROGERS: Well, you can look us up. The name of the company is BRC. Uh, Imagination Arts. Uh, you can find it under uh, BRC. Or you can also look it up under just Bob Rogers. Uh, that’s R-O-G-E-R-S. And that would be Bob Rogers.com is a good place to find out a little bit more about Deep Story. And uh, you can buy Deep Story uh, on uh, Amazon or any of the other usual uh, uh, usual outlets.

26:59 BOB ROGERS: And I sincerely hope the deep story will, uh, allow, uh, the people who read it to, uh, to enjoy some authentic, uh, competitive advantage. Uh, and some real success. In, uh, in shaping uh, customer uh, behavior, in a way that’s constructive and positive.

27:15 JIM BEACH: Bob, thank you so very much for being with us. Congratulations on the book. I hope it sells tremendously well, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

27:26 BOB ROGERS: Thank you, Jim. When you are ready for the Jim Beach Museum, let us know.

27:31 JIM BEACH: Yeah, it’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be all of 400 square feet, Bob. So just huge.

27:40 BOB ROGERS: Well, you never can tell. Size doesn’t matter in these things sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t.

27:46 JIM BEACH: And we will be right back.

27:48 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually.

27:51 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this.

27:55 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Thank you, Jim.

27:56 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Wow, that’s a great one.

27:58 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: You know, that is a phenomenal question.

28:01 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer.

28:06 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question.

28:07 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, that is such a loaded question, and that’s actually a really good question.

28:13 ANNOUNCER: School for Startups Radio.

33:43 MARK SIMS: Yeah, when they originally started, they were only focused on the finance or the financial due diligence. Uh, and then we’ve since expanded into kind of the the human capital as well as the IT and then also expanded into a lot of the transformation work that we do for clients.

34:04 JIM BEACH: So your job is to look at the IT of the business that is being sold.

34:09 MARK SIMS: That’s right. Yeah, so, so, you know, and obviously, you know, nowadays, a company big or small, uh, the underlying technology powers a lot of things, right?

34:20 MARK SIMS: Obviously, it, you know, powers the actual, uh, you know, operations of the business, uh, but then a lot, it also, a lot of times is the, uh, the basis for all the numbers, uh, that people are looking at to say, you know, what is the profitability of the business, what is the, you know, top 5 customers, et cetera.

34:44 MARK SIMS: So, um, you know, the technology and the state of technology is a big piece that we help our clients look through, uh, to make sure that there’s, you know, not a lot of work to be done, uh, either it’s, you know, they’ve got a very antiquated system and you need to take time and and capital to, you know, upgrade those systems or maybe they have a bunch of disparate systems that to really, you know, grow the business and take it to the next level, you might want to, um, You might want to integrate and move to a common platform.

35:26 JIM BEACH: Okay. Gosh, my mind is just racing with all of the small business IT disasters you must see. IT is still in a box. Here’s a box of all of our receipts for the last 2 years. Welcome to IT, Mark.

35:42 MARK SIMS: Yeah. No, that’s 100% right.

35:44 MARK SIMS: And, you know, one of the things that, uh, you know, we always look at, and when we do do, you know, we will do work for, um, on the sell-side, right, as people are positioning to sell their businesses, um, you know, I call it my 5 C’s of value creation, but, you know, one of those is, is always making sure you have a clean and trusted set of financials and KPIs that you can, um, you know, obviously use to manage your business, but also when you go to sell it, you’ve got, uh, a good set of books that someone can actually, you know, see how you make money and see how that’s evolved over time.

36:32 JIM BEACH: You said 3 C’s?

36:33 MARK SIMS: Total of 5 C’s, right? So the…

36:35 JIM BEACH: Yes. All right, give me that.

36:37 MARK SIMS: Right, yeah. [unclear phrase]. Sure, you know, the 1st one is competitive positioning. Um, and so this is just understanding, uh, and again, for, you know, the name of the, the startups, like understanding where you’re going to compete and then how you’re going to win. And if you are kind of out in the market winning, understanding why you win, right? Are you, do you have pricing power?

37:05 MARK SIMS: Uh, are you able to convert uh, customers at a lower cost than your competitors because you have great brand recognition? Um, are you, you know, really more focused on, uh, speed and and that’s the way that you win a lot of deals is because you’re always very responsive, but really making sure that you understand, you know, how you, um, where you’re choosing to play and then how you’re winning is is kind of that first C, that competitive positioning.

37:38 JIM BEACH: Okay, I love it. Makes a lot of sense. Number two.

37:43 MARK SIMS: Yeah, number two, cash flow cycle, right? And so this one’s so important as businesses are starting out and our businesses that are, you know, 100 years old. Um, you need to understand how are you converting cash to cash, whether you’re investing in, uh, you know, products that you’re importing, uh, and you’ve got kind of a long lead time.

38:07 MARK SIMS: What are your, uh, actual, um, you know, terms with with your vendors and then how long does it actually take you to sell and then collect the cash from your customers and making sure that you’re, um, you’re able to manage that and you are managing that effectively.

38:27 MARK SIMS: Uh, and, you know, if you have a cash hungry business, if you will, and as you go to grow, really making sure you understand kind of what those capital needs are, and you’re not constrained because you’re, you’re just not minding the store.

38:44 JIM BEACH: Yes, I I love a good cash flow business where the cycle determines everything. Your Christmas business. 90% of your revenue comes in at Christmas or something like that. I, my very 1st business ever, Mark, was one of those, not Christmas, it was actually a summer business, but 90% of our revenue came in in May.

39:07 MARK SIMS: Yeah, no.

39:08 JIM BEACH: We had earned that. Boy, was that critical that we understood what that meant?

39:14 MARK SIMS: Yeah, and you mentioned, you know, kind of my background. I worked for 15 years at Scotts Miracle-Gro. Obviously, it’s it’s a heavy, you know, spring planting, focused business. So, you know, they they talk about kind of that cash conversion cycle all the time.

39:31 JIM BEACH: Yes. Do they have a winter product?

39:35 MARK SIMS: Um, there’s a little bit of a bump you get in the uh, in the fall as people, you know, take care of their lawns, but for the most part, it’s uh, majority of sales are are in the spring.

39:50 JIM BEACH: Got to think that they’d be able to come up with something winter-based. Even if it’s just tricking us, that actually the best time to fertilizes in the winter, Mark.

40:02 MARK SIMS: That is true. Yeah, late, late, late fall, late fall.

40:06 JIM BEACH: No, no, no. In December and January is the best time to lay loose sod.

40:12 MARK SIMS: I’m in Cleveland, Ohio, so that’d be a little challenging with all the snow on the ground.

40:19 JIM BEACH: Okay. Number three.

40:20 MARK SIMS: Yeah, so we already talked about number three, clean and trusted financials. Um, uh, again, I think this, this one pays dividends, both, you know, even when you’re trying to sell the business, but also as you’re trying to manage the business, making sure you understand kind of what is your profitability on for every customer, profitability on a, you know, whatever, you know, profitability on a specific SKU, and understanding how that evolves over time.

40:51 MARK SIMS: I know we see a lot of, um, you know, kind of companies where they, they have a perception of what their top geography is or their top product line is. And that may have been true 2 years ago, but the market has shifted. And now you’ve got a particular geography and our particular product line that is now, you know, the number one.

41:17 MARK SIMS: And so really making sure you’ve got good financials helps you manage the business effectively, as well as is a key aspect of of helping a potential buyer understand what they’re buying.

41:30 JIM BEACH: So this really makes my mind pull some things together, Mark, if you are doing IT for these businesses, and they’re, uh, you know, number 3 C is about the KPIs and clean books. That’s the best time to throw AI in on most of these businesses, I got to think. You know, I’ve become obsessed with just everything that I can teach my account I am teaching about me in my business.

41:59 JIM BEACH: I put my prescriptions in and asked what time of day I should take each pill and made a huge difference in my life. And I’ve been putting my financials in. And it came back with some things that I had not thought of before. And so I got to think that would be a wonderful exercise for you and your clients. What are you doing with AI that’s cool to look at the finances and KPIs and stuff?

42:31 JIM BEACH: Is that one of the systems? I’m going to put you on me on mute and sit back and listen.

42:38 MARK SIMS: Sure, no problem. Yeah, you know, I think 2 things I’ll mention there. One is, you know, you said the key word. You feed the system your financials. So that, that presumes that you have financials to feed it, right? So that’s a lot of what we’re talking about here on the clean and trusted financials is you’ve actually got a good set of books and a good set of numbers. So that’s the 1st thing.

43:08 MARK SIMS: As it relates to kind of how can I leverage AI. I think the AI does do a great job of finding, um, you know, one, you can use it to actually help visualize, uh, the numbers in a way that uh, maybe you haven’t been able to do before, uh, and or if, you know, wanted to do a lot of work in Excel. You can do that.

43:35 MARK SIMS: But I’ve seen some really interesting things that, uh, some of my partners are doing with AI to visualize the data, uh, in an interesting way. And then the other thing is, as you mentioned, kind of, you know, what are some insights that I can see within that data, uh, what are some correlations and or some interesting, um, kind of trends that may not be evident just by looking at, you know, a bunch of raw numbers.

44:07 JIM BEACH: Right. I think it’s… Go ahead.

44:09 MARK SIMS: No, that was going to say, the one thing to caution everybody on and, you know, this is where I, you know, this is my value preservation hat, I guess, is, you know, if you are going to use some of these tools, make sure you’re using it, you know, a version of the tool that is secure, right? And it’s not necessarily going to use your data to train its models.

44:37 MARK SIMS: Uh, so usually if you have kind of a professional or an enterprise, you know, kind of license for, um, the OpenAIs of the world, the Claudes of the world, uh, you should be okay, but you always want to make sure that you’re not uh, exfiltrating your own data into a system that you don’t know what they’re doing with it.

45:03 JIM BEACH: Okay, let’s translate that into English. In other words, if you’re not paying your… The customer, you are the, the, what does that mean?

45:12 MARK SIMS: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the old adage, you know, if if if you’re getting something for free, you are the product. Right? And so, yeah, no, that’s absolutely right.

45:23 JIM BEACH: Which platform do you prefer? [unclear interjection]. Are you a Claude, or what are you?

45:29 MARK SIMS: Um, Currently, and again, it has evolved. Currently, uh, yeah, I use Claude, um, probably 80% of the time.

45:37 JIM BEACH: Okay. Number 4 C, please.

45:39 MARK SIMS: Yeah, so the 4th one is concentration proof. So making sure you’re reducing any dependence on any single SKU, supplier, geography, channel, or key person, kind of where possible, right?

45:52 MARK SIMS: And obviously that’s, you know, probably easier said than done sometimes and you’ve built your business and and you’ve got kind of a core niche product into our core niche geography, but just making sure that you’re, you know, managing that effectively, uh, especially as it gets into, you know, kind of, you know, uh, customer concentration risk that, you know, 50% of your sales are to a single customer.

46:20 MARK SIMS: Um, you know, that can be a big challenge when you go to sell the business, but obviously it represents, you know, a risk on a day-to-day basis for fear that they, um, you know, aren’t happy with your service and or, you know, competition comes in.

46:38 JIM BEACH: Right. That makes a lot of sense. And I’ve seen a lot of businesses that are 80% one customer.

46:45 MARK SIMS: Yeah.

46:46 JIM BEACH: Nothing scary.

46:47 MARK SIMS: Well, and a lot of times the, you know, the thing we hear from sellers is they’re like, well, you know, this is, you know, maybe it’s not that extreme, but they have a core customer that they’ve really built their business on and maybe the customers built their business as well, and, you know, they’re good friends, the owners.

47:11 MARK SIMS: Um, but once I buy the business, that person doesn’t know me, they know our, you know, the service we provide or the product we provide. And so a lot of times a buyer will see that as a bigger risk because once that founder owners out of the equation, they may not get the same level of commitment and or loyalty, if the business is under new ownership.

47:38 JIM BEACH: Makes all the difference. All right, number five, C, please.

47:42 MARK SIMS: Sure. The last one is around capability.

47:45 MARK SIMS: And so this is, you know, the team, uh, this is standard operating procedures, uh, systems, so this is a big one where, where systems sit, uh, and again, a system could be, you know, some bit of technology, or it could be, you know, just having a set process, uh, in a way that, uh, people pick pack and ship orders or whatever it might be, the way that you deliver, uh, for the client within, within the operation, uh, and so this one’s important because again, restating what I previously had mentioned, you know, buyers pay for the value they can see and transfer.

48:27 MARK SIMS: And so if, again, a founder owner is kind of the key of making everything happen within the business, if I give that person, you know, a big check and then they exit the business, um, how well can that operation continue to, uh, work, uh, and if you don’t have things written down, uh, and or you don’t have a solid team in place, uh, that introduces risk to a potential buyer. Doesn’t mean they’re not going to buy your business, but they may not pay full price for it.

49:04 JIM BEACH: Mark, I heard you wanted to play our little game, the Quick 10.

49:09 MARK SIMS: Yeah, that’d be great.

49:10 JIM BEACH: Are you currently sober?

49:12 MARK SIMS: I am.

49:13 JIM BEACH: I’m required by state law to ask. Do you want to accept the standard wager?

49:19 MARK SIMS: I don’t know what that is.

49:21 JIM BEACH: It’s the bet that everyone else made.

49:24 MARK SIMS: Okay.

49:25 JIM BEACH: There you go. Number one, Mark, your favorite creativity hack.

49:28 MARK SIMS: Yeah, we kind of already mentioned it, uh, but I would say, you know, feeding a scrap of an idea into uh, Claude or ChatGPT and asking it to develop a brochure or a template, uh, as to how that might be a potential offer that that I can have for my clients.

49:49 JIM BEACH: Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick.

49:51 MARK SIMS: Uh, not to repeat myself, but it’s really kind of the same thing as using the, uh, the generative AI tools to help take kind of a scrap of an idea and and really kind of build it out into, uh, an offering that, uh, could be, you know, something I could, I could, um, do a proof of concept on.

50:15 JIM BEACH: Number three, name your top passions.

50:18 MARK SIMS: So I would say family, friends. Um, Business, so I have a big passion for the business world. Cleveland sports. Uh, and which sometimes, you know, leads me to great sorrow uh, and hiking.

50:31 JIM BEACH: Number four, the 1st 3 steps in starting a business are.

50:36 MARK SIMS: Uh, find an unmet need. Uh, Find and or build a way to to meet that need and then execute like hell.

50:44 JIM BEACH: Number five, the best way to get your 1st real customer is.

50:48 MARK SIMS: I’d say talk to dozens, 100s or even 1000s of potential customers, and, you know, you’ll find your 1st real customer.

50:57 JIM BEACH: Number six, your dreamiest technology is.

51:00 MARK SIMS: I would say home humanoid robot that can, you know, cook, clean and organize everything.

51:06 JIM BEACH: Number seven, your best entrepreneurial advice.

51:09 MARK SIMS: Uh, I would say make sure you offer something people want, not uh, something that you think is a cool idea.

51:18 JIM BEACH: Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake.

51:19 MARK SIMS: I’ve committed this one, iterating it on an idea that, uh, again, I think is is pretty slick versus taking it and actually, you know, prototyping it with some potential customers to get their feedback.

51:33 JIM BEACH: Number nine, favorite entrepreneur and why?

51:36 MARK SIMS: So mine would be Mark McCormack. He started a company called IMG Sports, uh, kind of one of the original Sports Agencies. He’s written some books like what they don’t teach you in Harvard Business School. So early in my career, I really enjoyed kind of his books and all the advice that he was able to impart about organization, communication, business, et cetera.

52:02 JIM BEACH: Number 10, favorite superhero.

52:04 MARK SIMS: I would say Iron Man.

52:06 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. While we calculate your answers and find out the winner of the wager, Mark. How do we get in touch with you? Find out more about Consult MSG.

52:17 MARK SIMS: Sure, people can email me directly at sims, S-I-M-S, at consultmsg.com, or they can go to our website, consultmsg.com, and see what we are all about.

52:28 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. Mark, we are just getting… Oh, gosh, I’m, oh, I’m so, so sorry for you. Uh, you got a 94, which is an excellent score, but you have to have a 95 to win the wager. We had someone who voted outside of Cleveland sports and really dinged you some points there. Apparently, Cleveland sports is what cost you, Mark. So you owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla. And Mark, I swear to all I hold true.

53:01 JIM BEACH: I went to lunch last Friday with a past loser and he gave me a Tesla. I swear. So…

53:08 MARK SIMS: [unclear brief response].

53:09 JIM BEACH: There you go. That’s right Mark, great, great conversation. Love what you’re doing. Love the C’s. That was great content. Thank you so much for being with us. Fantastic stuff.

53:21 MARK SIMS: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jim.

53:24 JIM BEACH: We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back. Be safe. Take care. Go make a million dollars. Bye now.