The 60 Second Podcast
Big insights. One question. 60 seconds.
Hosted by TEDx speaker and 3X founder Matt McCoy, this podcast delivers fast, punchy interviews with the world’s top leaders — from billion-dollar CEOs to bold startup founders.
Each episode asks one powerful question to uncover the mindset, tactics, or story behind game-changing success — all in under a minute.
Perfect for ambitious listeners who want real answers, really fast.
The 60 Second Podcast
Cary Prejean - Founder & Business Advisor, Strategic Business Advisors
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What happens when business owners stop being the bottleneck in their own company?
In this episode of The 60 Second Podcast, Matt McCoy sits down with Cary Prejean, Founder of Strategic Business Advisors, to discuss how systems, dashboards, and operational clarity can completely transform a business.
Cary shares the story of an e-commerce company that grew from $5.8M to $21M in revenue after the founders stopped spending their time fighting fires and started building processes that could scale without them.
The lesson? Growth doesn't come from working harder. It comes from creating a business that can run without you.
00:00:00 - Question
Matt McCoy: Through your profit acceleration and well-oiled machine processes, you've helped owners regain time, freedom, and profitability. What's the most dramatic transformation you've seen when a business finally gets the right systems in place?
00:00:14 - Answer
Cary Prejean: I gotta think about an e-commerce client that I recently helped. Starting back in 2022, they were at $5.8 million in revenue. It was a couple that owned the business.
What I noticed was the husband was spending about half his time arguing with his accounting firm out of India about accounts payable.
00:00:31
The other half of his time, he was being vocally disapproving of his warehouse operations.
His wife was caught up in getting more inventory and bringing different product lines into the business, which wasn't really the highest and best use of her time.
00:00:40
So we implemented some systems including cash projections, daily sales reports versus budget, and several dashboards.
We also put better processes in place, hired a warehouse manager, replaced the accounting firm with a better fit, and improved their accounts payable process.
00:00:58
They went from $5.8 million to $8.3 million, then to $12.6 million, and by the third year after implementing these changes, they had reached just over $21 million in revenue.
00:01:12
It was mainly because we got the owners out of their own way.
In our very first conversation they told me:
"Look, we know we're the bottleneck. We just want to get out of the way."
00:01:22
The way to get out of the way is to have processes run the business rather than having the owner running around trying to save everything and fix everything.
00:01:31
So yeah, that was a pretty big transformation.
And we recently helped them sell the business for 13x EBITDA, which was a nice chunk of change.
