John brings over 35 years of Strategic Business Development with proven results and experience to help entrepreneurs navigate through business challenges and optimize growth opportunities. John is passionate about transforming the lives of small to medium business owners using his successful “Profit by Design” program resulting in improved financial freedom, more personal income, with less stress, and a balanced lifestyle. John’s strength is in assisting Business Owners to advance their business and themselves to the next level by understanding their Business Model and then helping Business Owners fine tune or even overhaul their Business Model to catapult their business to perform at a higher level of profitability and efficiency with consistency.
Company: Waters Business Consulting Group
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
John Waters: My name is John Waters; I have been doing Business Consulting with my own firm for 16 years, focusing on small to medium enterprises. Before that, I was consulting while doing other businesses. I elected to focus on business consulting because I wanted to help multiple businesses rather than just one. I have owned nine different businesses and have worked as a C-suite Executive in more. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My dad owned restaurants and services businesses, so I grew up around businesses and was always fascinated by learning about them. I owned many lemonade stands and ice cream wagons in my youth. At Waters Business Consulting Group, we help business owners create a blueprint and then work with them to implement it.
What were the most significant challenges you faced during the scaling process, and how did you overcome them?
John Waters: To scale up requires people, strategy, the ability to execute, and capital. The biggest challenge is when they are in that area of below $3 million in revenue. The business needs to add people to scale, and it has limited capital resources. The difficulty of upscaling is balancing when do you hire more people and when do you have enough capital? You can’t wait until you have customers to hire the wait staff. When do you bring on resources/people and if I bring them on too soon it will hurt my business. I have to time the people I hire with the business I plan on getting. The biggest challenge is knowing when to hire staff in relation to revenue. The way to overcome this is establishing a business forecast that helps you better predict revenue growth so it aligns with your hiring needs.
How did you ensure that your company culture remained intact as your business expanded?
John Waters: The simple answer is you, as the leader, must model the core values. Establish your core values and model them. Hire people that match those core values. That means if other people are hiring for you, they must also live out your company’s core values. If you care about quality and integrity, you have to hire people that match your commitment to quality and integrity. As you grow you as the owner have to continue to model those values and remind people in your team meetings how important those values are. Go around in your meeting and have companies repeat your core values. Core values must be discussed in every team meeting and actually talk with the team and include how they are meeting those values in team reviews. We tell our employees what integrity looks like, and we tell them repeatedly. Because we do this, we know that our employees know how we define our values.
What strategies did you employ to maintain quality and customer satisfaction while scaling rapidly?
John Waters: Basically, it is establishing processes, procedures, and control measures. The control measures are key because they help ensure the job is done correctly. For example, when we do reports, all of them are reviewed by a Senior Business Consultant before they are sent to the client.
Can you share a specific turning point that was crucial for your business’s successful scaling?
John Waters: The biggest thing was getting an operations manager who could handle the daily, repetitive, but essential functions of management so I could focus on new and existing clients. Delegating is a key to success in business. Most business owners don’t trust the people they hire, so they can’t delegate. You have to take that leap and find people you trust.
How did you manage the financial aspects of scaling, particularly in securing funding and maintaining cash flow?
John Waters: You are constantly projecting where I saw the trends of the business going. A process takes place, and business ebbs and flows. You grow for a quarter, then slip back. You have to find the flows and look at them as a chance to hire and keep that flow going. This means brining on the personnel so you can continue to work with your current clients while still putting bids out and marketing for new clients.
