Pathways with Amber Stitt

Masterminding Business Success via Strategic Financial Mastery with Colin Sanburg of FinElevate

• Amber Stitt • Season 1

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🎙️ Welcome to another insightful episode of Pathways with Amber Stitt, where we explore the journeys and expertise of passionate individuals who inspire and lead in their industries. 

💼 Today, we're joined by Colin Sanburg, the founder of FinElevate, who brings over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience and a profound understanding of the financial frameworks that drive business success. 

📈 Colin's journey from stepping into a struggling family business to owning that very company and creating other successful ventures is nothing short of inspiring. 

💪 In this episode, Colin shares his unique approach to financial management through FinElevate's tailored strategies, emphasizing the importance of community, mastermind groups, and the power of leveraging one’s strengths. 

💰 We also dive into the intriguing concept of fractional executive roles and explore actionable ideas for business owners to enhance financial performance, all while keeping their and their team's eyes on the prize: financial freedom. 

💡 Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to refine your financial strategies or someone seeking inspiration from tried-and-tested business insights, this episode packs practical wisdom. 

📻 Tune in as Amber and Colin navigate the pathways to entrepreneurial resilience and financial excellence.

📽️ To watch the video podcast: https://youtu.be/plw8zncrCpg

💻 Resources mentioned by Colin:

📲 EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System: https://www.eosworldwide.com

📲 Entrepreneur Strategic Coaching Program: https://www.strategiccoach.com

🔗 To connect with Colin Sanburg:

📲 Website: https://finelevate.com

📲 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinsanburg

🔗 Connect with Amber:

📲 Website: https://www.amberstitt.com

📲 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amber-stitt-acp-chfc%C2%AE-cltc%C2%AE-clu%C2%AE-gallup%C2%AE-1b186821

📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberstitt_

#pathwayswithamberstitt #amberstitt #colinsanburg #finelevate #timelessvitalitypodcast

Don't forget to visit www.AmberStitt.com for more resources and information! 

And remember, let's take action today!

📻 Thank you for tuning in to Pathways!

🔗 Connect with Amber on Social Media:

📲 Be sure to visit Amber's website:

www.AmberStitt.com

And remember, let's take action today!!!

Amber Stitt [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt. And today we welcome Colin Sandburg to the show today. Welcome, Colin.

Colin Sanburg [00:00:07]:
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Amber Stitt [00:00:09]:
So you are the founder of FinElevate and you help people in business. Well, you've been an entrepreneur for many years, but let's talk about what FinElevate does for people and for your clients.

Colin Sanburg [00:00:21]:
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So, you know, from my experience, like you said, I've been an entrepreneur for 20 some odd years at this point. And knowing a lot of entrepreneurs coming up through that myself, I know how many entrepreneurs, almost all of them are good at sales and maybe they're good at the offside of their business, but many of them have this kind of skeleton hiding in the closet that is their finances. They just don't enjoy it. Maybe they're not math people. Yeah, and that's fine. That's natural. But it is part of being a pro, right? It's part of being a legit entrepreneur.

Colin Sanburg [00:00:51]:
And so that's what we help. We like to say we're kind of the "financial who" behind some of these clients that we work with. And that's a bit of a strategic coach reference. But in EOS, maybe it's like, hey, we help support the financial seat, but the idea is that we're someone else who has a seat at the table. Not like from the perspective that a banker would, where they're just trying to get you in certain products. Not from the standpoint that a CPA would, where they're more focused on helping hopefully save you money that you've already made. But we're actually helping figure out how to make more money for our clients. And that's really kind of what we're in it from the perspective of another business owner, which is what I really am first and foremost before I'm a finance guy.

Amber Stitt [00:01:30]:
So you started in the family business and did that make you want to be an entrepreneur or did it make you run like I did for a little while from the actual idea?

Colin Sanburg [00:01:39]:
That's a great question. So I actually had a weird situation. I was in a job interview and I was 20 years old and I was waiting in a conference room and I actually read a magazine. It was an old Inc. magazine, which I used to read religiously for a long time after that. But it was the first time I'd ever come across Inc. Magazine and I learned about entrepreneurship and it was just kind of like one of those things, the thunderbolt that hit me at that right moment in life. Kind of between things, I was trying to figure out who I was and I just realized, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. This is what I'm going to do. And so I looked around and the person nearest me who was in that world was a family member.

Colin Sanburg [00:02:14]:
And so I went and said, "Hey, I'm going to come work for you for a year and then I'm going to go do my own thing."

Amber Stitt [00:02:19]:
Oh, nice.

Colin Sanburg [00:02:19]:
And 22 years later, I own that company and have for many, many years. So that's just kind of funny how life works. But yeah, I went that path. Now I will say people ask me all the time because I'm in a multi generation kind of environment and I've got another partner who's a third generation business owner. And people always ask, "What are you going to do when you have small children?" Like, that's a natural question. And I'm like, absolutely not. They can do anything in the world...and I'll help them,

Colin Sanburg [00:02:49]:
but I always just say it's one of those things where there's a thousand ways to get it wrong and maybe one way to get it right. It's such a hard needle to thread to do the family business thing and pull it off. People do, more power to them. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a good Plan A.

Amber Stitt [00:03:04]:
Okay, so do you think that people are born into that entrepreneurial brain or do you think it can be the experiences that can extract it from people?

Colin Sanburg [00:03:14]:
That's a great question.

Amber Stitt [00:03:15]:
Well, I mean, it's like family. You're like, okay, I'm not letting family members work in my company until they have some experience because I'm not letting them cut their teeth on learning from me and then getting upset with me when I'm rigid and responsible, which I've heard that before.

Colin Sanburg [00:03:29]:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think...I love that old quote that says, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." And so I love that kind of concept and I think that's true of like the entrepreneurial mindset and that sort of thing. And I think the challenge, to your point, when somebody says, "Hey, I'm gonna have my kids in the business, that's just gonna be how it is." It's like you haven't allowed them to develop that student mindset. And to me, that's a huge part. So I don't know if people are born with it.

Colin Sanburg [00:03:55]:
I know that for me, looking back on my life, I'm like, well, obviously I was going to be an entrepreneur. You know, I was terrible student in school, didn't like everybody else's rules.

Amber Stitt [00:04:04]:
It's like a common denominator with us.

Colin Sanburg [00:04:05]:
Yes.

Amber Stitt [00:04:06]:
We don't tell our kids that, but...

Colin Sanburg [00:04:07]:
No, I finally have started telling my oldest and he's 12 and he's a great student. Mom is an amazing student, top of her class. I was bottom of the class. Now, we both have very high expectations for our kids. But, looking back, it makes all the sense in the world that I became an entrepreneur. But I think I didn't have the maturity and the things align until I was in my early 20s.

Amber Stitt [00:04:27]:
Yeah.

Colin Sanburg [00:04:27]:
And that's when it finally kind of clicked into gear and it almost, I mean, frankly for me personally, felt like I was kind of going down this path of being a little bit of a loser. And I was like, this doesn't feel like me, but it did't feel like I fit in the old model.

Amber Stitt [00:04:41]:
It's like I gotta go above and beyond here. That's funny that in insurance planning, let's just say if I go to conferences and I'm hanging out with other planners, or whatever they do, their kids never wanted, they never want to do financial services. "That's not fun." And maybe the same for your industry, too. If they just see what it could be, it's not as glamorous. So you want them to approach it in their own way if they're truly interested.

Amber Stitt [00:05:04]:
And I want my daughter to be around it, just to get acclimated and see where she could plug in. But I always talk about focusing on talents and not everyone loves that industry, so maybe they shouldn't be in the business, but they should be happy with what they're doing or at least get the experience and then they can come in if it makes sense. But yeah, giving them that chance to see if that's something that they want.

Colin Sanburg [00:05:21]:
Yep.

Amber Stitt [00:05:22]:
So then I've heard you say 20-22 years. I wasn't going to ask if you're about my age. I don't know, I think I might be older than you now. When did you go back for the executive education level that you did?

Colin Sanburg [00:05:33]:
Yeah, so I was 26, about to be 27. I'd been in the family business for about five years and I basically decided I'd gone through the company and originally was a turnaround. It was a really rough situation. So I came into the family business knowing nothing about anything. They were struggling from a financial standpoint. Again, I had no financial background, but I kind of liked math. I liked the basics of math. And so I just gravitated to that part of the business immediately took a look under the hood and was like, "Wow, this is a disaster."

Colin Sanburg [00:06:02]:
Like, this is really scary. I don't know anything about what it should look like, but I know this can't be right. And so as I kind of navigated to the first few of those, really just saying, "This can't be right. What would better look like?" And getting a mentor, getting into some mastermind groups, sort of kind of painting a bigger picture for myself of what I thought was possible. And what I ultimately wanted to do with my MBA was to learn what big companies had figured out. I mean, I knew that no small business is going to make it to be a medium or big business if they haven't figured out the financial side their business. And so if I could go learn kind of what was really best, bring that back and distill it down into a small business environment, that it would give me a huge edge. And so that's what I did.

Amber Stitt [00:06:42]:
You've referred to Strategic Coach. Do you guys actually implement that as a framework, EOS or combination?

Colin Sanburg [00:06:48]:
Yeah, so I'm in Strategic Coach. So is one of my business partners. I'm trying to get the other business partner to join. But I love Strategic Coach. Strategic Coach helps a business owner with, I would say, their mindset around kind of what their role is, understanding exactly like you're talking about, it's okay to play to your strengths. It's just not okay to play to your strengths and not build an organization that compensates for your weaknesses.

Colin Sanburg [00:07:10]:
And so if you're just doing one of those without the other, you know...

Amber Stitt [00:07:14]:
Just hiring a bunch of you. So much fun.

Colin Sanburg [00:07:16]:
Exactly. Yeah. Or a bunch of people who will just sit around and kind of like tolerate you and your own particular brand of crazy. We all have that. Right? And so that's what I love about Strategic Coach. But I always joke that Strategic Coach is like the perfect fit. They're creating more EOS companies every day because they're telling all these entrepreneurs, "Hey, your brand of crazy special." And that's great.

Colin Sanburg [00:07:36]:
And it is. But EOS is the framework for the company that helps the stability and helps the rest of the team engage. And so I love them as a compliment. And we're a huge fan of both.

Amber Stitt [00:07:47]:
Well, you're a perfect guest. I feel for our show because I am a big advocate on people taking action, participating, investing in their own lives, having the ability to build a framework, to have resilience in life as we have curveballs that can come our way, but really going and heading towards financial freedom. There's 5 steps in my framework. The ending is focusing on community. I kind of want to start there with you at this point because I feel that you have said before, there's businesses that have come out of the ability to work with other people and strategic partner, not because of the framework, but can you speak to that? Because I feel that that's helped you build other business and real estate opportunities.

Colin Sanburg [00:08:27]:
Yeah, absolutely. So, to your point, and I know you call it community, I've always been in mastermind groups. Which is another form of the same thing. And so that was one of the things that really changed my life. When I was 23 years old, I got introduced to a mastermind group. I went into a group, I was half the age or less than some of the people in the group and felt really kind of inadequate and like I didn't really belong. And so I tried to keep up by being incredibly eager, working really hard to learn.

Colin Sanburg [00:08:53]:
When somebody would tell me about a book and we came back a month later, I'd read the book, I wanted to talk to him about the book and so I took on that attitude of like, I had something to prove. But that was my mindset at 23. What I now realize, looking up, is that we all need to be supported by that community. Like you said, we need to have an environment of people who have similar thoughts and similar mindsets to us. And we need to hold each other accountable and push each other, push each other around what's possible. And not just collectively what's possible, what's possible for each of us to become and to grow. And so I love that.

Colin Sanburg [00:09:26]:
And to your point. So one of my partnerships that I have came from, really, both of them came. One came directly from a mastermind group, in other words, another member of a mastermind group I was advising on the side going through some similar challenges that I'd already been down in my first company, and we ended up partnering together. And that's my partner in the cabinet...it's a cabinet manufacturing business.

Amber Stitt [00:09:46]:
That's so interesting. It can be anything. You don't have to physically show up to that. But if you are both interested in building something out, that can happen with anyone, really, anywhere in the globe these days.

Colin Sanburg [00:09:57]:
Absolutely. And that's where I just tell people it doesn't matter where you are in your journey, it doesn't matter where you want to get to. It doesn't matter if it's doing small business, or whatever it is. Get a group of peers. It could literally start with you and one other person, but start to kind of like create that. I mean the mastermind group that I've had I'm actually going to go to after this recording. I'm going to today. I formed it in 2008.

Colin Sanburg [00:10:20]:
In October of 2008, me and three other people and we said, "Hey, we're going to do this and we're going to figure out what we are and we're going to grow it from there." And it's just a real band of brothers in terms of the commitment and the collective belief in each other. And I mean I've had literally gone home and had champagne when one of my mastermind friends had a big transaction.

Amber Stitt [00:10:43]:
And that's interesting.

Colin Sanburg [00:10:44]:
It's like I wanted to celebrate.

Amber Stitt [00:10:45]:
Yes, reciprocating. And it's interesting as I get older that I see sometimes it's the mastermind grouping that's more interested in your success than sometimes the closest people to you. And it's really mind boggling. And you just have to be okay, have that awareness, but build those pockets of...pick your partner, you can't always pick your family. But like the friends group that you might have grown up with, always known. There could be a shift if somebody is just not in that brain space with you that just wants to grow and be open-minded and continue on.

Colin Sanburg [00:11:14]:
And I love when people in that environment challenge you too, right? I mean I always say like, hey, when someone gives me advice in a mastermind group, one third of it I'm going to agree with, one third of it I'm going to vehemently disagree with, and one third of it's just going to have me scratching my head. And each of those provides value and sometimes different members conflict with each other and it gives me that really interesting perspective. But they all are just coming from a great place and want you to win and that's really powerful.

Amber Stitt [00:11:40]:
And it can be rooting you on and there's not always great days. So sometimes people are going to lift you up and give you that confidence boost, not that you even knew you needed it. There's a menteeship/mentorship happening now. Did this grouping of people, or different groups help you through any financial times that were tougher in business to get you out of anything specific that helped you grow.

Colin Sanburg [00:11:59]:
Yeah, so for me, I've always been in most groups that I'm in, kind of the financial guy. But we've definitely been there for each other in all those kind of areas. In fact, one of the things that led to my new business was when we went through Covid. Everybody went through Covid. That group that's a monthly group, as I just said, we started talking weekly and it was like, "Guys, this thing is moving too fast. Nobody knows what's happening. It's all rumors and hearsay." And as an entrepreneur, you really have to manage your mindset.

Colin Sanburg [00:12:25]:
And I mean, like the positivity and what you're thinking and what you're exposing yourself to. And so, yeah, we started doing that weekly. And that really, when the government was releasing, like, the details of PPP and what that was going to mean for everybody. And it was like I found myself even outside of that mastermind group, within my network of a lot of people coming to me just asking, they knew I was a financial guy, "What do you see? What are you thinking? What does this mean? What's, how's it going to apply?" And so it just kind of planted the seed that I could do that beyond, just in my mastermind groups and really help people out with it.

Amber Stitt [00:12:55]:
So with your current business, let's talk about how are you helping clients really see a difference of how to participate in money within their business, accounting, et cetera? Let's touch on that and how you can help elevate their financials, as the name states.

Colin Sanburg [00:13:10]:
Yeah, so I love that, I know you're a big fan of structure and frameworks, as well. I'm a huge framework person, and so what I've seen in the market is that some people might have like a fractional CFO, let's say, that's going to give them a bunch of big ideas and a list of things to do. Or, maybe they've got a bookkeeper, or even a tax person who kind of has some ideas, but don't necessarily know how to make the rubber meet the road. I've tried to solve the same problem for my own businesses. What I discovered was that that's the gap, is that you have to have a plan that has a framework to how it's addressed, or else you just end up spinning your wheels and not going anywhere. And so our framework, we figure out what the goal of the entrepreneur is, and it's usually one of four goals. They either want to grow their business, they want to make more money in terms of profitability, they want to improve their cash flow, because if cash is a struggle, then nothing else matters, or they want to exit their business. And usually it's one of those first three, and then it's the last one is kind of an ultimate goal.

Colin Sanburg [00:14:04]:
And so with that in hand, we do what we call the "Fin Score," which is basically a report card for your business. And it tells us, based on your four goals, which of those goals are your priority, where you're at. Now, once we know what your goal is, we know where you're at, then the playbook is pretty obvious. And we've built a playbook that's over 450 different potential things you could do. And I think that's where people get overwhelmed, is like, "Well, if there's 450 things I could do, how do I even begin?" But again, that's why we have to start with that end in mind and we build that framework. And then with that framework in place, the right next play kind of is dictated through the rest of the framework. And so that's what we do with companies. We help implement those plays, help advise on those plays, help coach their team on how to look at the financial part of the business.

Colin Sanburg [00:14:47]:
And as that's happening, you start really moving these little small needles, and collectively, the big needle starts to really shift.

Amber Stitt [00:14:54]:
You mentioned fractional CEO. This is something that's happening now I see more than ever, and I had to pause and ask. There's a friend of mine that's doing evangelism. She calls herself "The Fractional Evangelist Brand Ambassador." Can you explain, I don't know that everyone really knows what a fractional CEO, CFO can be for somebody. Are you taking place of that role by working through the playbook?

Colin Sanburg [00:15:18]:
Yeah so, to your point, I think that's becoming a very common trend is this fractional concept, and it is still like, it doesn't really quite mean anything, yet. In general, what I think it means is that you've got a very high caliber person, a person who's working only a portion of their time. So you're paying a lot, but not a ton, and you're getting a slice of this person. And so I've used that in my own businesses. We've got a great fractional COO, but in my mind, in a small business and let's say a $15 million business and below, the bulk of the work that needs to be done in those businesses is kind of COO work. It's managing the team, building out the systems, making sure that the trains are running on time.

Colin Sanburg [00:15:56]:
Everybody knows what their role is. Marketing is clear. Those are all kind of COO tasks. And what I don't think makes a ton of sense is going and getting a really high powered financial mind who's going to come with this really big, complex, sophisticated concept. Frankly, the finances of a small business, they're not complicated, it's just hard work. And so that's really what our playbook is intended to replace, the need for that. Now if you're going through an M&A transaction, if you're doing some sort of, of major fundraising and that kind of thing, there might be a point to that high powered person. But in reality you just need somebody who knows what needs to be done and is willing to roll up their sleeves and get after it.

Colin Sanburg [00:16:34]:
And so for me, that's what I advocate for the financial side for the business. And the CEO, the founder, is usually the big idea person and the big idea person hopefully is helping rally the troops and get the market. But they're not going to be in the weeds doing the financial...

Amber Stitt [00:16:49]:
And they're not always leading the best they can. Because I use a reference, the little balloon floats up into the sky, they come back down, the team's down here and people are like, "Where did they go?" Because they're having fun. It almost looks like too much fun. But no, that's part of the deal. Like they have to be creating those futuristic ideas. But that's where that, like you said, the COO, the playbooks can help keep everyone managed and happy and engaged.

Colin Sanburg [00:17:14]:
That's critical. And I think that's kind of what EOS does. EOS is almost like a COO framework for your visionary who's kind of chasing the balloon, or living like the balloon. And so the rest of the team has this kind of constant glue. And what we found even from talking to a lot of different EOS implementers is that the financial seat in the business is usually the most neglected. And that's really what we want to provide is the support. And we can do that from the outside, with our playbook and helping advise people. And they know their business,

Colin Sanburg [00:17:43]:
they just need to learn how it relates to the financial side and how to make it tick.

Amber Stitt [00:17:47]:
So you've talked about money. Let's talk about how working with your team shines a light and has a focus more on keeping more money available to the business. Efficiency with taxes and so on, how is that different than just working with the CPA?

Colin Sanburg [00:18:01]:
Yeah, so a CPA, I don't want to pick on a CPA, ironically, my earliest mentor is my CPA and he's a fantastic guy. He's pretty old school, but he really helped me shape my mindset. But the reality is 99.99% of CPAs are not wired around helping you make more money. In my experience, the really good ones are helping you save once you've already made a ton of money. Let's say you've got seven figures worth of net income and you're trying to figure out how to save that money. They can help with that, the really good CPAs, but most of them are not there in February, in March, in August, to help you improve the finances of your business.

Colin Sanburg [00:18:38]:
And so that's kind of of the role that we like to play. And we want to coordinate with great CPAs and help implement. A lot of people go to their CPA once a year, twice a year, get a list of things they should be doing to get more tax efficient, and then they go back to living the rest of their life and they are selling and they're building their product and managing their team and forgot all about that list. And then it's like, "Oh, shoot, I've got the meeting with the CPA next week..."

Amber Stitt [00:18:59]:
And under there, somewhere among the things...

Colin Sanburg [00:19:02]:
Exactly.

Amber Stitt [00:19:02]:
Yep.

Colin Sanburg [00:19:03]:
Yeah. So we're kind of in the business of helping make that happen.

Amber Stitt [00:19:06]:
Is there anything that people really need to be focusing on? Just first and foremost is just like everybody listening today, start here, if anything.

Colin Sanburg [00:19:17]:
There's so many, but I'll tell you the simplest one: focus on your pricing, okay? No one wins by having low pricing. And I'll say that because the people listening to our show today, we're not running Amazon. This is not Walmart. We are not winning on a massive billions of units model. And we'll just make a tiny sliver off of each. Those companies do that and they almost trick small businesses into thinking that that's a reasonable model. The reality is we have to be premium priced and we have to learn how to justify and earn that premium price.

Colin Sanburg [00:19:49]:
And as we do that, it's amazing how much your life changes when you're in a more premium model. Because think about it, we're not only making money. Everybody thinks about like, "Oh, I'd be able to make more money if I raise my prices." You'd also be able to reinvest more you also wouldn't feel the need to cut corners everywhere you turn to kind of keep your costs low. By no means am I saying don't keep your costs low, but people don't figure out where the investment is.

Amber Stitt [00:20:12]:
And the logistics to, like you said, keep the train on the tracks earlier. There's a huge system, almost like an airline system that's happening where there's so many pieces. When it comes to Amazon, establishing your worth, I think that if you go too low, people won't take you seriously either.

Colin Sanburg [00:20:28]:
Exactly. And yeah, and it's been proven, right. There's been studies that prove that weirdly, as humans, we associate value with the price that's been assigned to the offer. So it's exactly what you're saying. The lower I price myself, the lower people think I'm worth, whether it's true or not. We don't even get to that point of. The psychology's pretty locked-in. So look at your pricing.

Colin Sanburg [00:20:47]:
That's one of the most immediate things you can do to improve your financial performance is to increase your prices.

Amber Stitt [00:20:54]:
Well, we have April looming. Are there any concepts that you're going to tee up and give people a little bit of a nibble on? These are things you need to be thinking about as a business owner. I know tax time is, individually for people earlier in the year, but you're talking about this as like a monthly checkpoint. What should people be thinking about? Any cool concepts to share?

Colin Sanburg [00:21:13]:
Yeah, I mean, from a tax standpoint it's just really understanding your write-offs. And what I tell people in most smaller firms is get your mind right about whether something's a business expense. There are ways to justify the business nature of something. But I see people fall into that trap before they're making a lot of money. Maybe they're starting to make good income, but it's not yet at building the company. And they start going like, "Well, I could take this and I could do this and oh, it's a write-off." As if that makes it.

Amber Stitt [00:21:39]:
They should just spend it because it's a write-off.

Colin Sanburg [00:21:40]:
Yeah, making it a write-off is not for you. Cracks me up.

Amber Stitt [00:21:43]:
My husband might be one of them, "Oh, just a write-off." Well, do you need to spend those dollars?

Colin Sanburg [00:21:48]:
Exactly. I mean, really, again, I'm more focused on getting you to the point where you got seven figures of income, that your great CPA is going to help get your effective tax rate as low as possible. That's more my mindset. And so the beginning of that path is we don't want to have lazy habits around on how we spend money.

Amber Stitt [00:22:04]:
Yeah, I agree with that. And there's a bit of that with the financial institution mindset that we grow up with that you just put money in accounts and then you just put it there and then let's just see what happens for later for retirement. And if you can understand money and taxes, there's more opportunities that we can do right now.

Colin Sanburg [00:22:18]:
Exactly. Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:22:19]:
Participate in today.

Colin Sanburg [00:22:20]:
Yeah. And so one of the things I do I'll just advocate real quick for is put those kind of owner's extras, we call them, put those in a separate category on your P & L, do not keep those...so if there's a little bit mixed in with travel, there's a little bit mixed in with some sales costs, there's a little bit of mixed in with meals, there's a little bit mixed in with vehicle, or whatever, put those in one place and take a hard look at it like you would your personal budget and just ask, "Am I getting the value out of these behaviors that are really justifying them?" And if they are and everything's great and your company's making great money, hey, no worries, by all means you should do that. But I think when somebody goes, "Well, I'm just not able to make money. It's like the operating business isn't working." And then you take a deeper look and you're like, "Well, actually it'd be making this if you weren't taking a bite at the apple every chance you got."

Amber Stitt [00:23:04]:
I mean, let's just face it. Let's go to our Amazon and Target history and see if it's all necessary, you know, but every business is similar.

Colin Sanburg [00:23:12]:
Yeah.

Amber Stitt [00:23:13]:
Okay. So people can find you at, is it: www.FinElevate.com that's correct.

Colin Sanburg [00:23:17]:
Yeah, or you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm always on there. And so, yeah, reach out. And we like to offer, I'll hop on a call with you for 45 minutes. I'm not going to hard sell you. I'm not going to try and pitch you anything. We call it the Deep Dive 45.

Colin Sanburg [00:23:29]:
I'll take a look at your situation. I'll give you as much advice as I can come up with. We'll try and help you in a quick little box to hopefully put good karma out in the world. And we know that we'll generate enough opportunities out of what we're trying to do, but yeah, just love helping people and connecting with entrepreneurs.

Amber Stitt [00:23:44]:
Do the right thing. It all works itself out.

Colin Sanburg [00:23:46]:
There you go.

Amber Stitt [00:23:47]:
Awesome. Well, it's been great to hang out with you today, and I know our audience is probably thinking about money goals a little bit more with a magnifying glass. We're talking to you, everybody. All of us need to reflect, do the work. Right?

Colin Sanburg [00:23:59]:
That's right.

Amber Stitt [00:24:00]:
Okay. Well, thanks for being here again. Thanks to the listeners, and have a good day. Have fun at your mastermind.

Colin Sanburg [00:24:05]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Amber Stitt [00:24:07]:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, the blog, and so much more, please visit my website at: www.AmberStitt.com and remember, let's take action today! Thank you for listening!