57: Get Your Numbers Right

December 13, 2018

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Yigal Adato: 00:00 Hey Pawn family, what’s up it’s Yigal and welcome back to another episode of the Pawn Leaders Podcast. And this episode is just going to be me and I’m going to talk to you about one of the biggest issues I’m finding when I’m working with consulting clients and people in my group that I want you to make sure that you’re not making this error as well. But before that I want to celebrate a huge win today on the alliance call, which is basically managers who I coach. One of the guys who has a store told us that he hit the 300 plus Google mark. So he has more than 300 positive reviews on Google. And of course he’s using podium.com. And when I asked him, so what’s that doing for your operation in your store? He says, Yigal It makes it a no brainer for people to walk in because they already know that we’re giving great service. They already know that we’ve got the best prices and the already know because they’ve seen the 300 plus Google reviews. So reviews matter and the way you show up online determines who shows up at your pawnshop. So I’ve secured a special deal for the Pawn Leaders Podcast Community. If you go to podium.com/pawnleaders once again, that’s podium.com/pawnleaders you get 10% off your monthly subscription. So become the obvious choice between the competitors around you and go to podium.com/pawnleades to get started and save 10%

 

Yigal Adato: 01:27 Hey everyone, my name is Yigal Adato and this is the Pawn Leaders Podcast, a podcast to help you make more money, stress less, and live in epic life all while working at the pawn shop.

 

Yigal Adato: 01:50 All right, so this is the number one issue that I’m seeing and it’s constantly, I’m flying out to do consulting. I have people in my coaching groups and when I asked them, how much money did you make last month? The answer’s always the same. I think around, maybe you see when you’re a pawnbroker, you’re an entrepreneur and you have to know your numbers to the tee. You know, if you were to go walk into shark tank or if an investor came up and said, I’ll give you $1 million, what did you make last month? What did you spend last month exactly? Would you know those numbers? Now, if you know those numbers, congratulations. Maybe you can go back to another podcast episode that you haven’t listened to, but if you don’t know your numbers, we’re going to go through a step by step process that I believe that you should do in order to find those out.

 

Yigal Adato: 02:45 Now there’s a lot of work to find out your numbers and it’s not just about listening to this podcast, but it’s also about asking questions. So if you want to ask questions, please join us in the Facebook group at Pawn Leaders Podcast Community jump in there, I’ll answer as many questions as I can. Obviously I’m not an accountant, but I did the accounting for many, many years in our store that did millions of dollars a year, millions in pawn. So I know you know what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s confusing and what’s not. So here we go. First and foremost, make sure that all of your numbers are going through your pawn software. Now, they’re great softwares out there in the industry and if you’re not running all your numbers to them, all you’re doing is creating a job for yourself and not a business, not a business that you want to grow.

 

Yigal Adato: 03:38 Because if you’re doing a cash sale here and you’re not running the inventory number through here. When you start building a team, obviously you’re going to be scared. You’re not going to trust them because you’ve got so much that’s not on the books and so much that you can’t control. So you have to make the decision. If you want to grow, if you want to have more stores, if you want to bring in more employees, everything’s got to go through the system. I had a conversation today with somebody who told me that they don’t run the inventory through the system or that they didn’t do layaways through the system. Ladies and gentlemen, you got to put everything through your software system. That’s why they charge you the money that they do to make your life easier. So many people say, oh, it’s so expensive software.

 

Yigal Adato: 04:24 No, if you don’t use it correctly, it’s expensive. If you use your software provider correctly, it gives you freedom, freedom to see the numbers when you need to. Freedom to be able to manage employees and have accountability towards having what’s going on in your business. So please, if you’re a Pawn Leader, if you’re listening to this podcast, make sure you’re running everything through your system. Now, once you’ve run everything through your system, find out what numbers that you want to know about all the time, how much interest you’re making, what’s your pawn yield is, what’s you’re inventory turns are, you need to find out those metrics so you can consistently be measuring those on a monthly basis. The last thing I ever want to hear from a client is, you know, I get my numbers at the end of the year and I find out how much I owe in taxes and that’s about it, but I’ve got

money in my bank account.

 

Yigal Adato: 05:21 Just because you have money in your bank account doesn’t mean you’re making money. Just because you have money in your bank account doesn’t mean that you’re growing because you could be losing money in different places. There could be holes that you’re forgetting to plug up or to fix or find out and that’s the worst thing a business operator can do. An entrepreneur like yourself can do is not know where the holes are, where the moneys seeping through. Now the second thing I believe, and this is my opinion, you should hire a bookkeeper or an accountant unless you have a degree in accounting because for so many years in our business, I did the accountant and I did the accounting and I pretended to do what I was doing and not really know all the accounting principles and know exactly where everything needs to go. This day and age.

 

Yigal Adato: 06:17 You can get, you can outsource your bookkeeping, you can get a virtual VA, you can do so many things. I mean, it’s a couple of hundred bucks to get a good bookkeeper and to do the work and then get a CPA form. You know, it might cost you a couple of thousand dollars at the end of the year to do your taxes, but you know exactly what’s happening in quarterly and monthly. You’re getting those numbers. You can’t continue pretending like you’re an accountant. Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it. You know, I had a client, I flew out to the last couple of weeks and they had a bookkeeper next door and spoke to that bookkeeper and we agree that we’re going to do monthly numbers so that they finally know exactly what they’re making. And that’s how you know, that’s how you can get the metric of growth. You know, if you’re growing, if you’re not growing, how much marketing dollars you can spend, you know, if you can get up, if you can up the software

system, if you can get a better sign.

 

Yigal Adato: 07:15 But you have to know your numbers. If you don’t know, get a professional, a bookkeeper, an accountant to do the numbers. Now after you get your bookkeeper, make sure that you give them what is it you want to know on a monthly basis, not a quarterly basis, not a yearly basis, a monthly basis. You need to know how much money you made in November to the tee, how much money you spent, how much interest you made, how much you have in your pawn balance, in your inventory balance. You need to know all those numbers so that you can continue growing your operation. If you don’t know it, you can’t grow it. I’ll say that again. If you don’t know it, you can’t grow it, and once you know those numbers, those metrics, that’s where you can sit with yourself and say, okay, do I want to grow this business? Which I think every entrepreneur does, right? It’s not enough. We want to grow our operation. Unless you’re old and retired and you’re making so much money, you want more money to come through those doors, but you’ve got to know your

numbers, so please stop pretending that you’re an accountant

 

Yigal Adato: 08:22 and start acting like an entrepreneur. What an entrepreneur does is they hire the right teams around them to make them successful. They hire the right people should show them the numbers. You know they hire smarter people than themselves. If you think that you’re the smartest person in the operation, you will fail. Bob Walton said that on his podcast who owns national upon 17 stores, he says, I hired smarter people to grow my operation. If I walk up to you today and I asked you that question, how much did you make last month? How much did you make month to date? How much did you make last quarter? Can you answer those questions? And if you can’t, it’s time to start figuring out the way to do it. And that’s by one putting everything in your software system. Again, great soft. I mean the pawn industry is blessed with having some great software out there to stop pretending like you’re an accountant and get a bookkeeper and accounting that knows what they’re doing.

 

Yigal Adato: 09:26 Some of that you have to pay real money to, and not a kid who’s at college, right? Somebody who really knows their numbers and who can explain to you what you should be booking on that profit and loss on that balance sheet, and then three, have those monthly P and L’s. How’d those monthly metrics have the monthly reports so that you can go in and see them. Nowadays we have quickbooks online where you can get your cell phone and you can see exactly what’s happening. A snapshot on a weekly basis because in order for you to make real decisions, real monetary movements with marketing and consulting and Facebook ads or giveaways, or do I hire a new person you’ve got to know your numbers, not knowing your numbers built uncertainty and it gives you just more anxiety and sometimes if you pretend and you don’t know, it can make your business fail so quickly that you blame it on everything else.

 

Yigal Adato: 10:30 You blame it on the industry, you’ll blame it on the pawns, you’ll blame it on the gold price when that’s not true. We have businesses in the mastermind who are growing $300,000 in loan balances, doubling their loan balances because they’re looking at their metrics. They’re looking at their numbers because they’ve stopped pretending like they know it all. Get rid of the ego. Get rid of the fact that you believe that becoming an entrepreneur means that you have to know every single thing in your business because that’s not true. A real entrepreneur, a real successful pawnbroker, a Pawn Leader goes out there and hires the best there is in order to grow their business. So I’ll leave you with that. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I’m going to do more of these of just me because I’ve got some things inside that I’m seeing on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in the pawn industry. I really want you to change because I want you to succeed. I want you to do the best you can and I want you to leave a legacy for your family. So you can make more stress, less and live that epic life that we always talk about on the podcast. So if you have any questions, please come over to the Facebook group. Join us, the Pawn Leaders Podcast Community and if you want to talk to me, it’s a complimentary strategy session. 30 minutes. I give you my time. Just go to pawnleaders.com [Incomprehensible] call and I’ll see you on the next podcast. Take care.

 

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Yigal Adato

Yigal is a 3rd generation pawn broker, and is now a mentor, coach and educator with the pawnbroking industry.


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