Choices Create Change

Bobby Mink
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Business

Choices Create Change - A Leadership & Business Podcast with Bobby Mink Choices Create Change is a leadership podcast and business podcast hosted by Bobby Mink of Choice Consulting and Management. Whether you run a small business, lead a team, or are stepping into management for the first time, this channel is built to help you lead with clarity and confidence. Each episode breaks down real, practical leadership, strong communication skills, healthy team building, accountability, trust, and the kind of culture that makes people want to show up and give their best. Bobby draws on years of coaching companies across the country, plus interviews with business owners and leaders who've been in the trenches. If you're a small business owner, manager, or entrepreneur looking to grow yourself and your team, you're in the right place. New episodes, leadership tips, and short clips posted regularly. ๐ŸŽง Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Subscribe and let's go crush it.

  1. 3d ago

    Two Identical Houses, $70,000 Apart (Ep 25)

    Last week was why to measure. This week is how to read what you are measuring. Bobby opens with two houses: same plan, same community, sold for the same price. On paper, at the moment they sold, they were the same job. One closed at 31% gross margin and the other at 17%. On a $500,000 house that is $70,000, and it was not created at the closing table. It was created in a hundred small decisions across six months, and not one of them felt like a $70,000 decision at the time. From there it is a profit and loss statement in plain English, section by section, with the one test that tells you where a cost belongs: would this cost exist if you had not built that job? Then the part that is quietly costing people money right now. Markup and margin are not the same number. Add 25% to a $100,000 cost and you sell at $125,000, which is a 20% margin, not 25%. To actually earn 30% you have to mark up almost 43%. A leader who confuses the two is not making an occasional error, they are underpricing every job by the same amount forever, and there is no bad month that makes them go look. Also in this episode: the six places margin leaks and why not one of them is a market condition, why growing companies are the ones that run out of cash, and break-even, which is your annual overhead divided by your gross margin percentage. Drop five points of margin and a company with $1,200,000 of overhead has to build an extra $800,000 of work to end up exactly where it was. "A number without a target is trivia. A number with a target is a decision waiting to be made." This is part two of three. Next week a longtime CFO joins the show. Chapters: 0:00 Two houses, identical on paper 0:33 Welcome 1:32 You were never taught this 2:26 Reading a profit and loss statement 5:45 The targets: 30, 18 and 12 6:54 Gross margin, where the money is won and lost 8:16 Two houses that look identical 9:25 The six places margin leaks 11:50 Not one of them is the market 12:15 Markup versus margin 13:52 Now do it the right way 15:07 To get 30 you have to mark up 43 16:03 Budget versus actual 17:25 How forecasting actually works 18:15 The monthly review: three columns 18:41 Variance analysis: get to why 20:09 Cash flow, the one that ends companies 20:40 Why growing companies are the ones at risk 21:38 Draws, inventory, receivables, payables 23:28 Break-even, and what a slow month costs 24:40 What five points of margin does to break-even 26:03 Leading versus lagging indicators 28:07 Building your weekly dashboard 29:39 The four questions 32:50 This week's challenge 34:33 Call your CPA and ask 35:49 Close Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Two Identical Houses, $70,000 Apart (Ep 25)

  2. Sep 30

    He Had 24 Houses Going and Was Losing Money (Ep 24)

    Most owners can tell you their revenue instantly and have no idea what they kept. This episode is about the eight numbers that tell you the truth about your business, and why smart, hardworking leaders end up flying blind anyway. Bobby opens with a builder who had 24 houses under construction, the most work he had ever had going at one time, and who was putting personal money into the business to make payroll. They costed out his last five closed houses. Two made money, one broke even, two lost real money. He was not having his best year, he was having his busiest year. From there it is the airplane test. A pilot watches altitude, airspeed, fuel against distance, oil pressure, engine temperature, weather, wind, cabin pressure and navigation, and makes corrections so small that nobody in seat 14C ever feels one. Then the question: what is actually on your dashboard, and what did you look at with your own eyes in the last seven days? Bobby walks through eight gauges, one at a time, and what each one warns you about before anybody else notices: cash, gross margin, sales pipeline, backlog, cycle time, warranty, employee turnover and customer satisfaction. The part most business content skips is the second half. If measuring is this obviously valuable, why do so many good leaders not do it? Fear, embarrassment, never having been taught, being too busy, a CPA who was never asked to teach, a report with forty lines on it, and nobody owning the number. "Volume without margin is not growth. It's just a faster way to find out you have a problem." "Companies do not go broke because they lose money. They go broke because they run out of cash." Chapters: 0:00 Two of the last five lost money 0:35 Welcome 1:05 Forty years, and one question 2:17 Why smart people make bad business decisions 2:45 A feeling wearing a business suit 3:02 Activity is not progress 3:44 Busy and profitable are not the same thing 4:04 The builder with 24 houses 4:51 Putting personal money in to make payroll 5:14 Costing out the last five houses 5:36 His busiest year, not his best year 6:07 Volume without margin is not growth 6:24 He had no instruments 6:44 Feelings versus facts 7:31 Your instinct is a hypothesis 7:53 Restaurants, coaches and doctors all measure 8:52 So do Amazon and Chick-fil-A 9:27 Awareness, decisions, results 10:06 The airplane dashboard 10:19 The captain who flies by feel 11:01 A feeling is not knowing 11:28 What a pilot actually watches 13:18 Small corrections, not heroics 14:09 You are the pilot 14:32 What is on your dashboard this week 15:27 That discomfort is information 15:54 Pilots crash because they ignore it 16:28 The reports nobody opens 17:29 Let us build the dashboard 17:52 Gauge 1: Cash 18:27 Growth eats cash 19:09 Gauge 2: Gross margin 20:09 Gauge 3: Sales pipeline 21:11 Gauge 4: Backlog 22:20 Gauge 5: Cycle time 23:12 Gauge 6: Warranty 23:58 Gauge 7: Employee turnover 24:55 Gauge 8: Customer satisfaction 26:02 Why leaders avoid their numbers 26:42 Fear 27:04 Embarrassment, and nobody ever taught you this 27:55 Too busy, and a CPA who was never asked to teach 28:41 Forty lines on a report, and nobody owns it 29:28 What you avoid controls you 29:58 This week's leadership challenge 30:29 Pick five numbers 31:14 Look at them every Monday 32:07 Say them out loud to your team 32:30 Back to the builder with 24 houses 32:57 Fewer houses, more money 33:22 What is coming next week 34:37 Close Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    He Had 24 Houses Going and Was Losing Money (Ep 24)

  3. Sep 23

    Stop Being the Hero in Your Own Company (Ep 23)

    Most owners think their job is to be the one who fixes things. Mitchell Kasselman learned that every time he jumped in to save the day, he was taking the chance to learn away from somebody on his team. Bobby is joined by Mitchell Kasselman, co-founder and CEO of Ressio Software, which builds construction management software for custom home builders and remodelers. They have known each other since 2022, and Bobby was one of the people Mitchell leaned on when Ressio was starting out. Mitchell has gone from two founders to a growing team in four years, and the conversation is about what that took. Moving from what he calls heroics to systems. Hiring for culture so seriously that a ten out of ten candidate still fails if they do not fit. Letting people go sooner, and finding out that the person and the team were both relieved. Setting company goals and deliberately leaving his own name off them. There is also a practical stretch on AI, from somebody building it for builders: why the owners who get value from it are the ones who check its work, and why that is exactly how trust gets built with people too. "What I'm actually doing is preventing an opportunity for a team member to actually learn how to do that themselves." "Even if we had the ten out of ten best technical candidate, we will still fail someone at the cultural stage if they don't exceed in our values." Chapters: 0:00 Stop being the hero 0:29 Welcome 0:55 Meet Mitchell Kasselman 2:23 How he found the contractor 3:30 Why builders' software feels twenty years old 4:13 Building Ressio 5:22 A hundred decisions a day 6:08 Year two: talent and culture 6:38 From heroics to systems 8:11 Your job is the environment 9:31 Building a company is like a marriage 10:30 What AI is actually good for 12:01 From a customer call to working code in days 13:15 AI built for builders 14:51 Getting past "I don't trust it" 17:04 Decide if this is really for you 17:52 Bias for action 18:37 Getting back off the mat 19:24 Do not go it alone 20:04 Keep reinvesting in your team 21:02 Rock stars and superstars 22:42 People are the competitive advantage 24:14 The castaways who thrived 25:02 How they hire for culture 26:53 Hire fast, fire fast 29:02 Two out of three salespeople 30:16 You already have values, write them down 31:42 Let your values evolve 33:13 From doing the work to managing managers 34:01 Four goals, and his name is not on them 34:42 Teach a man to fish 36:21 Stop pointing at the individual 37:25 Seek first to understand 38:18 Curiosity over prescribing 39:03 Ask more than you tell 39:58 What not to do 40:38 Take advice, but think for yourself 41:38 Hallway decisions that become policy 42:37 You cannot be everything to everyone 43:15 Six dimensions, twenty one points 45:11 What to take away 47:02 Close Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Stop Being the Hero in Your Own Company (Ep 23)

  4. Sep 16

    You Don't Need a New Website (Ep 22)

    Most business owners think they need a new website. Mickey Mellen has been building them for seventeen years, and a lot of his job is talking people out of it. Bobby is joined by Mickey Mellen, co-founder of GreenMellen in Marietta, Georgia, for a practical conversation about marketing when you run a company and nobody on your team owns marketing. Mickey's argument is that almost everybody overthinks it. He gives five things to focus on, website, email, local, data and social, and says a little bit in each one beats a lot in one and nothing in the other four. Along the way: why your website is now the last place a customer goes rather than the first, what your homepage should say instead of how many years you have been in business, and what he found when he ran fifteen thousand WordPress sites through a scanner he built. The back half is about AI, from somebody who uses it daily and is not entirely happy about it. What it is doing to search, to attribution, to pricing, and to the number of people who will ever see anything you make. And then the part Bobby keeps coming back to, which is numbers. Mickey on running his first five years off the bank balance, and the agency owner whose accountant called three days before Christmas to say there was not enough money for payroll. "Google is the reward for doing all your other marketing right, in all the other places." "If you are at all consistent with your stuff, you are the top five percent of businesses right there. The bar is so low." Chapters: 0:00 Where people actually decide 0:37 Welcome 1:05 Meet Mickey Mellen and GreenMellen 2:47 Do not overthink it 3:28 The five things: website, email, local, data, social 5:31 "I need a new website." "No, you don't." 5:53 Lead with their problem, not your history 6:23 Your website is the last place they go 7:37 Perfect is the enemy of good 8:05 Trying to do too much 11:29 Why you should own your website 12:17 Fifteen thousand sites, four thousand broken 13:28 What is your marketing budget 14:46 Consistency, and the content calendar 16:50 What AI is doing to Google 17:28 Why a link costs you most of your reach 17:57 The CPA he hired ten years later 19:02 Lift versus attribution 19:55 Building your own tools with AI 21:30 What worries him about AI 22:08 A thousand pieces of content a day 23:28 I miss the handcrafted days 23:59 Confidentiality, risk and hallucinations 25:44 The Braves score the AI made up 26:44 Hire for fit over talent 27:13 What AI does to what you can charge 28:26 Cookies, a swing set, and fifty AI videos 29:35 Get your books in order 30:05 Forecasting instead of checking the bank 31:25 Three days before Christmas 32:32 Find somebody gifted differently than you 33:41 What makes a business partnership work 35:13 Trust 36:11 There is no such thing as a done website 37:09 Consistency puts you in the top five percent 37:47 The king of shiny objects 38:54 Kobe at five in the morning 39:47 The fundamentals of a top shelf organization 40:53 Look at your site through your customer's eyes 42:47 How AI search actually works 43:47 Close Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    You Don't Need a New Website (Ep 22)

  5. Sep 9

    Stop Looking for Better Employees, Fix Your Hiring System (Ep 21)

    Everybody asks where to find good people. Bobby thinks that is the wrong question. The right one is less comfortable: why would a great person want to come and work for you? This episode came from a listener who asked how to find people to hire, and the answer turned into forty years of hiring compressed into a system. It covers the part almost everybody skips, which is everything that happens before you post the job. Whether you actually need a person or need a process. The numbers worth looking at before you add payroll. Defining a seat properly instead of writing a list of activities and calling it a job description. Then the seven places great people actually come from, and only one of them is a job posting. Your own employees. Your vendors and trade partners. Competitors. Industry associations. LinkedIn. Colleges, trade schools and the military. And your customers. The last third is the part most hiring advice leaves out: keeping people once you have them. "Technical skills can usually be taught. Character usually cannot." "If good people keep leaving you, the market is not the problem. Look closer to home. That is not an accusation, it is the best news in this episode, because the market is not something you control but your environment is." Chapters: 0:00 Why would a great person want to work for you 0:31 Welcome 3:18 The wrong question 7:17 Before you hire anyone, ask this 7:57 Know your numbers before you add people 10:28 When it is genuinely time 12:31 Define the position before you hire 18:16 Where to actually find great people 24:43 Never interview without a process 32:18 How do you know they are the right person 35:31 Keeping great people 42:25 This week's challenge 44:30 Close Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Stop Looking for Better Employees, Fix Your Hiring System (Ep 21)

  6. Sep 2

    Being a Great Contractor Won't Make You a Great Owner (Ep 20)

    Charlie Genin has been building in Lafayette, Louisiana for twelve years, and the hardest lesson had nothing to do with construction: being a good contractor is not the same thing as being a good business owner. He and Bobby get into the hats nobody warns you about when you start a company. Charlie founded The Gen Group Construction in 2014 with his father in law, and today runs residential and commercial, spec and custom. This conversation is the honest version of the first twelve years: the commitment nobody mentions when they tell you to go work for yourself, the day you accept you cannot be the best contractor and the best owner and the best dad all in the same afternoon, and the unglamorous systems that made the difference. Along the way: why you should start writing processes while you are still an army of one instead of waiting until you have a team of ten, why the first thing you hand off should be whatever you like doing least, how to keep your standard without micromanaging the person you just handed it to, why a rainy day fund is a construction issue and not a personal finance one, and the change order habit that prevents most disputes before they start. "The balance is really hard. To be the best contractor and the best business owner and the best employer and the best dad and the best husband. And the answer is you cannot do all of it at the same time." Chapters: 0:00 Cold open 0:28 Welcome 0:59 Meet Charlie Genin 1:50 Founding The Gen Group in 2014 3:57 A good contractor is not a good business owner 4:50 The commitment nobody warns you about 6:31 You cannot be all of it at the same time 7:11 Siloing the parts of your life 9:59 Let the calendar be the driver 11:05 Competing without tearing anyone down 14:01 What you say about a competitor 15:42 Working with integrity 16:32 Surround yourself with better people 17:50 Goals you can actually reach 21:07 Sharing the goals with your team 22:40 Celebrating wins, yours and theirs 25:09 Advice for a new owner: the mindset 26:01 Know your numbers 26:54 Start processes as an army of one 27:26 Do not get over leveraged 29:11 All the hats you did not know about 30:12 Delegate what you like doing least 31:26 Consistency without micromanaging 34:25 Checklists are built from mistakes 37:17 Find a mentor, join your HBA 41:10 Buy time instead of paying for mistakes 43:36 First generation owners have no playbook 48:10 Get it in writing 49:30 Change orders are where people get burned 51:08 If it is too good to be true 52:27 Documentation ends disputes 55:46 Do not compare yourself to highlight reels 56:38 Work on the business, not in it 57:45 What success actually means 58:42 Clients are emotional beings 1:00:34 Give yourself grace Guest: Charlie Genin, owner and general contractor at The Gen Group Construction, L.L.C. in Lafayette, Louisiana. gengrouphomes.com Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Being a Great Contractor Won't Make You a Great Owner (Ep 20)

  7. Aug 26

    Why Good Builders Stay Invisible (Ep 19)

    When your business gets quiet, people notice. And they do not assume you are fine. They assume something is wrong. Bobby Mink makes the case that visibility is the most underrated competitive advantage a business has right now, and that it is not a marketing problem. It is a leadership one. Every week you are either building confidence or creating uncertainty, and silence communicates just as loudly as words. Bobby walks through seven reasons visibility matters, from the fact that your customer's first visit is almost always digital, to why teaching beats selling, to why one viral post will never do what a consistent weekly one will. Along the way he shares the division president who asked him the question that sums the whole thing up: why did we wait until things got slow to start doing this? If you are good at what you do but bad at telling anyone about it, this one is for you. Seven reasons visibility is your most underrated competitive advantage: 1. Your customer's first visit is digital 2. Going quiet looks like you're struggling 3. Visibility builds trust before you need it 4. Teach more than you sell 5. Video makes your business human 6. Consistency beats intensity 7. Visibility creates opportunity "Visibility becomes influence. Influence becomes trust. Trust becomes opportunity. Opportunity becomes growth. And that is how great businesses are built." Chapters: 00:00 Cold open: why did we wait until things got slow? 00:25 Welcome and the seven reasons 01:10 Why most companies are bad at telling their own story 02:06 Visibility is not marketing, visibility is leadership 02:38 1. Your customer's first visit is digital 03:23 Knowing your target market 04:12 Your digital front doors 04:50 The division president who wished he had not waited 05:58 2. Going quiet looks like you're struggling 06:41 The real struggle is consistency 07:26 Confidence attracts confidence 08:09 3. Visibility builds trust before you need it 09:22 The trust account and third party validation 10:29 Start the conversation where they already are 11:02 4. Teach more than you sell 12:11 Every business should become an educator 13:31 Introduce your team, be real people 14:28 Raving fans, inside and outside 15:36 Teach your industry and become the expert 16:04 5. Video makes your business human 17:04 Show the space, show the process 17:33 Perfection is not required 18:32 Authenticity wins 19:14 6. Consistency beats intensity 19:44 One viral post will not change your business 20:25 Business growth comes from consistency 21:44 7. Visibility creates opportunity 22:28 Better employees find you 23:06 New partners and referrals 23:26 Better vendors and better opportunities 25:28 Visibility is leadership 26:22 The state of the company talk 28:38 Visibility is not ego, visibility is service 29:59 The better question to ask before you post 30:43 Influence, trust, opportunity, growth 31:37 Close and how to reach Bobby Mentioned in this episode: Raving Fans, by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles Suggest a topic for a future episode: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Schedule a free coaching conversation: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/contact Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Why Good Builders Stay Invisible (Ep 19)

  8. Aug 19

    Your CPA Should Be a Partner, Not a Tax Preparer (Ep 18)

    Most business owners see their CPA once a year, drop off a folder, and hope for good news. Ryan Mink, CPA, explains why that relationship is costing you money, and what a real one looks like. Bobby Mink sits down with Ryan, a partner at Suttle & Stalnaker in West Virginia and, as it turns out, his own son, for a plain English walk through the questions every owner asks and almost nobody gets a straight answer to. Do you actually need an LLC? Should you elect S corp status because someone on TikTok said so? Why does the money in your bank account tell you almost nothing about whether your business is healthy? Ryan has spent 19 years in audit and tax, and he makes the case that the most expensive mistakes he sees are not aggressive ones. They are the quiet ones: jumping into a structure too early, spending a hundred thousand dollars to save thirty, and never asking why. If you have ever nodded along in a meeting about your own money and had no idea what was being said, this one is for you. "Just because there's cash in the bank doesn't mean you're doing well." Chapters: 0:00 The surprise $30,000 tax bill 0:20 Welcome and meet Ryan Mink, CPA 0:52 Inside a full service CPA firm 2:14 Why the same questions come up over and over 4:19 Do you need an LLC? 5:01 An LLC is a liability tool, not a tax strategy 5:30 Single member LLC: the disregarded entity 6:01 What changes when you add a second owner 7:00 S corporations and how the tax savings work 7:39 C corporations and the double taxation problem 10:50 The reasonable compensation problem 12:14 Why leverage matters before you elect S corp 13:13 The S corp downsides nobody mentions 14:25 The truck, the son, and the deemed sale 16:40 Do not jump the gun on S corp 17:47 The taxes nobody warns you about 19:44 Estimated taxes and the four checks a year 21:12 The restaurant that closed over a tax bill 21:41 Profit First: pay yourself before you reinvest 22:52 Do not outspend your growth 24:56 Your CPA should be your partner 25:43 Why once a year is not a relationship 29:52 What a real quarterly check in looks like 30:32 Cash in the bank is not profit 35:45 The windfall and the Florida property 37:25 Do not let tax savings drive business decisions 39:18 The truck trap: $100K to save $30K 40:42 The Toyota Highlander phone call 42:27 Red flags: when to find a new CPA 48:47 Get your books in order 51:08 Seek to understand why 54:54 Takeaways and how to reach Ryan 55:37 Close and how to suggest a topic Guest: Ryan Mink, CPA, partner at Suttle & Stalnaker, PLLC, a full service West Virginia CPA firm with four offices offering tax, audit, consulting, bookkeeping, payroll, and virtual CFO services. The firm is a member of Allinial Global. Mentioned in this episode: Profit First, by Mike Michalowicz Suggest a topic for a future episode: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Schedule a coaching conversation: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/contact Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change. This episode is for general education only. It is not tax, legal, or financial advice, and tax rules and thresholds change. Talk to your own CPA or attorney about your specific situation before acting on anything discussed here.

See All (26)

Trailer

About

Choices Create Change - A Leadership & Business Podcast with Bobby Mink Choices Create Change is a leadership podcast and business podcast hosted by Bobby Mink of Choice Consulting and Management. Whether you run a small business, lead a team, or are stepping into management for the first time, this channel is built to help you lead with clarity and confidence. Each episode breaks down real, practical leadership, strong communication skills, healthy team building, accountability, trust, and the kind of culture that makes people want to show up and give their best. Bobby draws on years of coaching companies across the country, plus interviews with business owners and leaders who've been in the trenches. If you're a small business owner, manager, or entrepreneur looking to grow yourself and your team, you're in the right place. New episodes, leadership tips, and short clips posted regularly. ๐ŸŽง Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Subscribe and let's go crush it.

Information