In this colorful episode, Peter H Christian, Owner of PeteChristianBooks.com, shares how he applies his 40 years of experience to bring practical knowledge to solve problems and to help his clients grow and succeed.
You will discover:
– Why does additional production not always equal additional profit?
– Why you should be weary of “investing in the future” if it doesn’t directly produce profitable growth
– How to reduce costs without killing jobs
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I’m here with yet another high demand coach. And that is the one and only Peter Christian. He was a founding partner and president of SP, a business consulting firm in northeastern Pennsylvania. And previously, he was an executive at Crayola Corporation and played a key role in 700% growth of the company. He’s got 40 years of experience in strategic planning and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain management. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost savings and profit improvements, adding and retaining 1000s of jobs. He’s authored Amazon best selling books, which include what about the vermin problem and influences and influencers? Oh, Peter, I’m so excited to dive into some of this with you. With a career like that, and book titles like that this is gonna be a great episode. Before we get that, I’d love to hear a little bit of your backstory. What were you doing before getting into coaching and consulting? And how did you ultimately make the leap?
Peter H Christian
Well I was working in a corporate environment, and got out of that and got into the consulting world to work with other folks and to hopefully help them and leap was because I was looking at what the next thing was going to be in my life, my career. And person who was advising me said, Well, you know, you’ve been in kind of the consulting world, whether you realize it or not through the kind of work that you’ve done in the corporate world. So you should probably take a look at that. Now, I had had that opportunity to do it when I had first come out of school. But I didn’t feel I was ready for that. Not having had a lot of real world life experience in the business world, I didn’t feel I was ready to be the person to try to talk to folks who had 20 3040 years of experience in business and tell them what they were doing wrong and what they should be doing. Right. And for them to say to me, Well, you’re doing that based on what. So after having been in the, in the business world, and had faced a lot of challenges and dealt with a lot of stuff and had been a consultant so to speak. I thought I was ready for that now. So that was when I took that plunge into that world and became a consultant, mentor, coach, whatever you want to label it, all of the above. And, and was fairly successful at it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, Wow, fantastic. So fast forward then to today. You’re working with companies in the US, Europe, around the world, what would you say some of the most important work that you’re doing today?
Peter H Christian
Right now, it’s mentoring folks that are having difficulties with their business, for one reason or another, they may not be ready to close the door, I don’t tend to like to deal with companies like that, because they’re too far gone at that point. Now, it’s into really drastic types of things. And that’s not what I’m looking at, it’s more companies that aren’t or individuals that aren’t getting to where they feel they should be. They’re still fairly successful, but not as successful as they would like to be or could be. So dealing with those folks to find out what the problems are, what’s holding them back. And then to, to help them to move ahead. Similarly, I’m working with a lot of students, I’m involved in a couple of different universities, and to try to help them to get their feet on the ground. So they understand what to expect when they get out in the working world, what their role could and should be, and how they can go about being the most effective people that they can be, once they finally do start working full time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, wow. Now one of the things I mentioned, as I was doing some research for the episode is on your site, you kind of link production and profit. Right. And and you make this the statement that those two aren’t aren’t actually directly linked, sometimes you can have greater production and actually less profit. So why is it that those two don’t move together? And what can we do about it?
Peter H Christian
Ah, well, too often individuals or companies look at just growth, without realizing that it’s got to be profitable growth. Okay, so even while their business is expanding, and they’re getting more revenue, they’re not necessarily making more money. In some cases, they’re making less money. So you’ve really got to pay attention to what it is that you’re getting involved in and what kind of growth you’re having. Okay, and that, again, the profitability is going up commensurate with the revenue growth. If you’re growing 10%, your profit should be growing by at least 10% if not more, if not, then again, you’re not doing things the right way and you’ve got to step back and say What is it that I’m doing or not doing as the case may be that I need to improve upon. And in a lot of cases, you deal with large clients. And it’s wonderful to have them. But if you’re not making money, if it’s costing you money to do business with them, then you got to step back and say, Hey, wait a minute, here, something’s wrong. Either I’m dealing with the wrong client, or I’m dealing incorrectly with that client. And I’ve got to, you know, get things squared away. Otherwise, very successful businesses all of a sudden aren’t so successful anymore. And now they’re, they’re struggling because of that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, I actually saw this happen in the business that I ran before. Before this, we had a legacy line of business. And it was kind of nearing its end of life, we didn’t want it to be nearing its end of life. But it’s like this is this is rough. And what we didn’t realize was not just that, you know, it was costing us focus, it was costing us money, it was costing us a ton of money, we cut over a million dollars off of our top line by by just cold turkey on it ended up having to give back, because of the way that we turned out, we refunded some of our customers around $300,000, something like that in in returns or write offs. And we still added a million dollars to our bottom line the next year. And that, to me was just like, absolutely stunning, because before that they had kind of moved together, right, like they had moved in sequence. And so I think that’s something that if you’re not watching, if you’re not, and I love that you said if you’re adding revenue, your profit needs to go with it. Because if we let those start to slip, that gap just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Peter H Christian
Yes, it does. Yes, it does. So you really got to pay attention to that profitable revenue growth, not just revenue growth.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right! And so one of the things that I had, because you’re working with a lot of really great teams, but one of the things I know from my work, and I saw in some of what you’d written is this idea of kind of symptom chasing, rather, we’re going after symptoms. So my question for you is, what are some of the symptoms that teams you’re working with are chasing that are actually distracting them from the root issues?
Peter H Christian
Well, with any organization, there’s a set of priorities that you need to follow. And when you’re having issues, okay, and you’re not moving ahead, what is it that you’re actually working on? Is it the stuff that is going to make a difference? Or is it just stuff that yeah, it’s kind of annoying, okay. But spending a lot of time on, it isn’t going to necessarily move you ahead. For instance, let’s talk about productivity. There are a number of organizations I’ve dealt with, say, you know, our manufacturing folks just aren’t producing the way they should be. Okay, and we really need to get them straightened out. So go in and talk to the manufacturing folks say, what are you dealing with on a regular basis, they said, they drive us nuts in the office, you know, we just about set up to run a particular item. And they tell us no, no, no, we have this emergency, you need to tear everything down and reset the production lines, or whatever the case may be. So we go ahead, and we do that. We just about getting done doing that. And they say up, up, up, they’ll go back to what you originally got to do. So now they’ve got to reset aligned to what they’re originally going to do. Okay, and they haven’t run anything, and they spend an awful lot of time. And your companies still spending money doing it again, profit over revenue growth. So that there are people that have spent a lot of time have produced nothing in the end, and then they want and then they blame the people on the production floor for not being productive. Well, they’re causing them to not be productive by having them do foolish things. So when you set somebody to produce an item, let them produce it. All right, guess what, somebody else’s emergency is not yours. And if they cause that problem, then they’ve got to wait a little bit. And so you’re ready in order to do whatever you need to do for them. But if you keep jerking your production people around, all right, you’re gonna cause yourself problems, and you may satisfy your customer may satisfy again, may not satisfy them anyway. But in the end, you’re not satisfying your own needs. And there’s got to be that good balance in there. I’ve seen a lot of that, where companies are working on the wrong thing. They want to be so helpful to their client, that in the end, it’s costing them time and dollars and maybe even business by doing so. I had one client where they would hold time for their customers on their line to the point where I Ah, by the time they found out that the client didn’t need that production time, it was too late to get anybody else to do it. So what I said to them is, guess what you charge them for it. And if they don’t use it, then you’re still making money. So that gives them an incentive now to use that production time. Or what you say is, guess what, we will try to fit you in if we can, but we’re not holding the stuff for you. Because you can’t have it both ways you can ask us to hold our production for you. So you can make a last minute decision, and then decided last minute that we don’t need it. And now you’re basically screwed. You can’t do anything with our production. So I started to do it. And guess what, all of a sudden, people were using that time that they had paid for. Okay, as opposed to just kind of putting it away and saying I don’t need it now. Because again, they didn’t character and cost them anything. So you’ve really got to use your head when you’re dealing with clients. Try to be as accommodating as you can, but you can’t be It can’t be all one guide.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, there is such a thing as too nice, right? There is too flexible. And there are things that is a couple of things that come to mind. One is there’s a couple of kind of local vendors around here that I won’t name who they are, because they may not like this or not. But there are people I know who will be very, very flexible, I show up and they’ll take care of me no matter what. I get the sense that it annoys them. But they do it right. And so for me, it’s like, I like the flexibility of not having you know, I don’t know what my schedule is going to look like, I want the flexibility coming in any time. But if they just told me when to hey, you need to schedule at least a day in advance, I would go on their site and schedule, right and they wouldn’t lose me it wouldn’t change anything, it’d be a heck of a lot easier for them to schedule. So there is there is a point where if you’re flexible, people will take you up on that. And they may they’ll probably even like it, but would they be willing to pay for it? That’s what I love about that story.
Peter H Christian
No. Well, even at Crayola and Crayola is a great company, we decided to get into just in time, at the point where that was such a big to do. Unfortunately, some of our executives decided it was going to be Crayola, just-in-time. So we were dealing with the Japanese, so we’re great at just-in-time. Well, what you don’t realize is that just-in-time to them is you put your order in and a month or two months or whatever, then they run it for you. And it’s just-in-time for that. Well, at Crayola, we decided we would take the order and within the next week try to make that happen for them. Okay, that wasn’t just-in-time. All right. So and we weren’t struggling immensely with it, because we weren’t doing it the way it was designed and intended to be. Alright, so be careful when you start put your own spin on something that somebody else has invented and is doing. And you better do it the same way they’re doing it otherwise you’re in for some disaster. The Japanese they didn’t care, you know, hey, we get our stuff, you know, we can place an order and we can change and we can, you can’t do that with the Japanese. And we found that out, we came out with a product. We put our order in three months, we were gonna get it, we decided that we needed to do more. They said Good. That’ll add another three months. Did It Again another three months. All of a sudden, we were up to nine months. We didn’t have any product. Guess what? We pulled the plug on it? Yeah. Okay. So
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah, it’s, there’s, there’s a delicate balance here. Because like you said, you want to be as as flexible and as accommodating as he can. But I, again, I think the kind of genius behind the story that you told the advice that you gave is, are they willing to pay for I will hold this time for you. But are you willing to pay for it? Another story that comes to mind was Walmart, you know, they would do customer service? You probably know this story. And every time they found out what did people think about their stores is too crowded, right? And they don’t look nice. It just every every time. And so they decided to make a store that looked nice, and the shelves weren’t too crowded, right? They had less stuff on the shelves, and it underperformed I’m not even gonna make up a percentage, but it underperformed wildly. And so just because people want it doesn’t mean that they’re willing to pay for it. And if and what I like to tell folks, and I think you’d agree with this is you have to add value in the customers eyes, right? And the wonderful thing about the world of business is that there’s money to define that right? There’s $1 number to define that and it’s not all of everything or the end all be all. But yeah, if they’re not willing to pay for it, do they really value it? Right?
Peter H Christian
You need to value what the cost of doing business with somebody is, and if you’re not making the kind of money that you expect to be making, then either you’ve got to change the value proposition or you got changed the customer. Okay, and sometimes you got to fire the Customer B but they’re just not profitable for you, as tough thing to do. Nobody wants to fire a customer. But when they’re taking advantage of you and you’re not making money, then you better you better make that decision because guess what? Then the next festival, find out the next customer and every battle want you treat them the same way that the our bad one. And now you got a real problem. Are you here?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Another thing that I found as I was getting ready for the episode was this idea. And it was even, there’s even a bit about it in your bio is this idea of cost reductions, right. And you helping teams reducing costs, which unfortunately, in this day, and age is basically a code word for layoffs, for a for a lot of folks. But that’s not the case with you. And you make a point of that. So how is it that you help folks to reduce costs while retaining maybe even adding employee?
Peter H Christian
Again, going back to Crayola days, we did a lot of that. But what we determined was, and we were true, when we said our core, our people are our most valuable resource, we really meant because there were other companies that said that and didn’t need it, okay? Because there was that old saying are, our people are our most valuable resource, like all resources, they depreciate over time, they kind of left that part out. So we, but what we did is when we went to make improvements, if it required, reducing some, some crewing, or whatever in a certain area, we took the people out of there, but we didn’t let them go. Because as a growing enterprise, we knew that in a short space of time, we were going to need more people in another area. So we would find things for them to do that. Were still constructive. Okay. And then as the business grew, we didn’t have to add more people, we had them already available, and they were trained. Okay, and we could utilize. Now finance didn’t like that. And they would go well, you said that you’re saving money, but you haven’t let anybody go. And we were trying to explain it to them. Some of them got it. Some of them didn’t get it. But what it did was it created a loyalty because people knew that their jobs are not at stake. Okay, they were willing to help to find ways in order to make improvements, all right, because, again, their jobs were not at stake. And, again, it makes good business sense because we were growing. So we would always find opportunities, in order to put person that we moved from one area into another area. And it all worked out. In one case, over a three year period, we were able to reduce costs, and not take a price increase. Now how many companies can you say were no of that in make that claim that over a three year period, they saved enough money that they didn’t have to take a price increase or pass costs on to to their clients. And we were able to do that because we were very smart, and we were very good at it. So I am a big proponent of you do not go and cut heads. All right, it’s too easy to do. Like you said, that, unfortunately, is kind of the way it is anymore today. Because work gets out and your people aren’t going to cooperate because they don’t want to lose their jobs. Okay. In fact, if anything, they’re going to slow down a little bit and more assure their jobs. And it’s the wrong way to go about it. And again, it’s because you’re a good company, you’re built on having good people who you’ve trained, and who were excellent at what they do. And the last thing you want to do is lose them because when you need more people, they’re gone. They went somewhere else, they found something else. And also the word has gotten out. Be careful about working for that company. Because when push comes to shove, they’ll let you go if they need you.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, it’s so true. So here’s a question. I like to ask all my guests. And I’m fascinated to hear what you have to say, Joe, but what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody listening or watching today knew?
Peter H Christian
Are you really committed to doing what you say you’re going to do? Too many people say they are that they’re, they’re committed. But when push comes to shove, when they’re faced with the reality of the changes that are necessary, and sometimes it may involve them, okay, when they look in the mirror, they find out they’re the problem? Are they willing to make the changes necessary in order to to do what needs to be done in order to move them ahead? There are a lot of people who are very dishonest about that. Okay. They say that they’re going to be committed, they say that they want to make change, but when they’re faced with it, I would say I’ve run into at least that FFT where they haven’t been willing to do that. In some cases, more than that, and the really successful clients that I’ve have there are committed. All right, they say, and they tell you straight out, they say, We’re crazy not to why would we be Iree? Why would we spend the money that we’re doing? Okay, why would we take the time and the effort and all that stuff? Those are the smart ones. Unfortunately, there are a lot that think that people like myself, maybe yourself, have this magic wand, that read wave and everything is going to be fine. And you know, they don’t have to worry about it. They don’t have to, you know, make hard decisions. They don’t have to make changes. Well, that’s craziness. Okay, if it was that easy, anybody could do it. All right, because wants cheap and easy to get. And it is hard work to make the changes that are necessary. It takes effort. Yeah, every now and again, you’re gonna run across something, you know, where something miraculous happens, and you get a big benefit. But that’s one in a million shot. And that’s not what you’re banking on. You’re banking on ongoing, hard work, effort, paying attention to the business. And as you do, you will put yourself in the problems that you’re gonna get yourself in. And if you do, like what happens, you know, with the COVID deal, or back in 2008, when we had the mortgage crisis and borrowing dried up for a while, companies can survive that. All right, they didn’t anticipate it, but that they’re strong enough that they can survive it, the ones that don’t plan and don’t do stuff up front. They’re the ones that suffer the most and screen the loss about it. So I’d say that’s deep, dark secret is there’s no magic wand. It’s hard work. Okay. And it’s commitment, and it’s doing what you say you’re going to do actually doing it as opposed to just saying you’re gonna do it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. So true. And another question for you here, I’m actually gonna have you take off your coach hat for a moment, put on your CEO hat kind of jumped down into the ring with the rest of us. And that was what’s the next stage of growth look like for you and your business and what challenge we have to overcome to get there?
Peter H Christian
Ah, it’s to reach out to as many folks as I can, all right, through shows like your own, through the teaching that I’m doing. And the school that I’m involved with wants me to teach more and more and more, they told me until it becomes in cop that uncomfortable for me, where I’m saying, Stop, wait a minute, can’t handle all this, to really get out to as many people as I can. All right. And through shows like your own that have many, many viewers, I certainly get to do that, through expanding the teaching that I’m doing. Taking on opportunities with schools, where I’m on some boards that help to make decisions on the curriculum for students actually mentor them and advise them and work with them on their projects, that type of thing. It’s more about giving back at this point. You know, I spent a long time in the business world, both as an executive and then consulting to business people. And now I just want to share the knowledge that I’ve gained over that time to help as many people as I can. That’s what that’s what it looks like.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that, Peter. Well, before I let you go, there’s folks out there that could deeply deeply benefit from getting to know you a little bit better and possibly getting hold of your book. So where can we find more out about what you do and how can we get a copy of your books?
Peter H Christian
Okay, to get a copy of my books. If you go on any of the big book channels on the internet, Amazon, you know, that little company that we all talk about? Barnes and Noble, many of the other book outlets, I think there are 14 or 15 that I’m listed on, but those are the biggies you go on there and look for What About the Vermin Problem?, and Influences and Influencers and my name and you, they will pop up and a lot of cases if you find one, they’ll say oh you like that one by the other one you know, as a set and that so you can do that. To get in touch with me personally, I am on LinkedIn. So look for Peter, Christian and look for those gorgeous face. And there is a if you want to connect if you want to talk if you want to follow whatever the case may be all of the above. I have a website which is petechristianbooks.com or no I’m sorry, Pete Christian books.com forget the first one petechristianbooks.com. And there is a place on there where you can send me a note. You can read all sorts of things that I’ve written articles and so forth and you can comment on them or say I would like to chat some more. Or you can email me and now it’s at [email protected]. Send me a note say I heard you on Scott show and I really liked what I heard and I would like to talk to you about whatever your situation is and we can do that and see where it goes. So [email protected] to any one of those great.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic Well Peter, thank you so much for being on the show. I as a recipient of your giving back, I want to say thank you and for everyone out there that is listening and watching you know, your time and attention means the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Peter H Christian
Peter H. Christian was a founding partner and president of espi, a business consulting firm in Northeastern PA. Previously he was an Executive at Crayola Corporation and played a key role in the 700% growth of the company. He has 40+ years of experience in strategic and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost reductions and profit improvements adding and retaining thousands of jobs. He has authored the Amazon bestselling business books, “What About the Vermin Problem?” and “Influences and Influencers”.
Want to learn more about Peter H Christian’s work at Pete Christian Books? Check out his website at https://petechristianbooks.com/ or connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-christian-2723b69/
Podcast Booking Status: Open
We are looking for podcast guests, and we want to share your story.
Are you a coach, consultant, or advisor for entrepreneurial organizations? If so, let’s do a great show together – and we can promote you to our audience on all our social media channels, website, and email list.
Guest requirements:
- As a coach, you should be experiencing some very good momentum AND be grossing $100K or more annually. We’ll be talking about how you help your clients achieve extraordinary results.
- Consider yourself as equally people and results-oriented in your mission.
- High-authority expert management and independent coaches who work with founder-led entrepreneurial organizations of 40 or more employees. We also encourage guests that are operations/strategy and culture consultants, advisors, and leadership coaches to be guests (no specialties in marketing, branding, sales, or IT, please
- Please, no new coaches (under 3 years), published authors, non-independent coaches, or non-business coaches/consultants.