Kristopher Hart on Why Most Business Owners Are Working Harder Than Anyone and Still Not Getting Paid for It

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codaspoti and today’s guest is Khristopher Hart, senior business analyst at Cogent Analytics, a business management consulting firm based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Cogent serves small and mid-sized

mainstream companies in 36 states using data and leadership coaching to lift profits and streamline operations. The firm’s profit platform method has helped more than 3,800 owners, earned an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, and landed Cogent on the Inc 5000 list three years running. Chris brings more than two decades of hands-on experience to his clients. Before joining Cogent,

He managed private, military, and medical flight operations around the globe. And he later built and sold several ventures during the height of COVID-19. He holds an MBA plus bachelor’s degrees in business, clinical psychology, and occupational safety and health. At Cogent, Chris designs KPIs, drives cultural change, and mentors entrepreneurs on sustainable growth.

Chris is a senior executive analyst and diagnostician. drives cultural change and mentors entrepreneurs on life saving changes. But before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Advac Benefits Agency. If you run a business, you’re likely stuck in the cycle of rising insurance premiums. You’re paying more, but your team is getting less.

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Kristopher Hart (02:34)
Thanks for having me on. excited to talk to you.

Anthony Codispoti (02:36)
All

right. So I want to talk about some of your previous work before we get to present day stuff at Cogin Analytics. For 10 years, you were a master operational specialist at Universal Weather and Aviation. What kind of work were you doing there? What’s going on?

Kristopher Hart (02:54)
Yeah. So ⁓ I worked for a company out of Houston, as you just mentioned, Universal Weather and Aviation, but we basically handled private military medical and charter flights on a global scale. No commercial. Essentially, if you were a celebrity, a government organization, a Fortune 500 company, and you had your own private fleet, we handled the logistics, the flight planning, the operations, everything from tip to tail.

Anthony Codispoti (03:18)
Okay, can you give us an example of some of the folks that you work with?

Kristopher Hart (03:22)
Yeah, I’ll give you an example. So ⁓ I want to tread lightly on some of this, but ⁓ there’s a very famous celebrity boxer who ⁓ is undefeated, I believe. ⁓ oftentimes these celebrities will travel to Hong Kong, China, whatever the case might be, and do tours and whatnot. So if… ⁓

They say, they pick up the phone and say, hey, we’re going to Dubai, we’re going here, we’re going there. We would handle the flight plans. anytime you travel from one country to another, there’s permits all along that route with our cold over flight permits, as well as landing permits in many countries. And this particular example, he says, hey, I’ve got eight people, we’re going to Hong Kong. This is what I need. When can we leave? We’ve set up everything from, like I said, from tip to tail. A lot of interesting stories come from that. I mean, as I,

kind of alluded to beforehand. We handled all the Jeffrey Epstein flights before we knew exactly what was, ⁓ you know, we were based in Houston. So we didn’t, we were not there on the plane, but we basically handled ⁓ Obama’s flights, ⁓ Harrison Ford, John Travolta. If they’re famous and they have a plane, we handled those operations.

Anthony Codispoti (04:35)
Interesting. Of course, here we are in February of 2026. The one everybody wants to talk about is Jeffrey Epstein. You guys weren’t on the planes, you didn’t know what was going on. ⁓ But I don’t know, like, have authorities come to you and ask for data like looking back? Is there like anything you can provide that helps connect dots?

Kristopher Hart (04:41)
That’s right.

Yeah, so actually when Trump’s first administration, the FBI came in and confiscated those records. I think it was 2015 or 2016. So when they talk about releasing those records, they already have them, which of course up until very recently, they’ve started releasing them. there’s not news here other than the fact that I’ve been saying for quite some time, yeah, we know who was on those flights ⁓ and now you’re seeing everyone was. The big issue here is unfortunately,

Rich people share their planes. So I thought for sure they would never show these documents because the reality is if I charter out my plane, if someone leases my jet, they’re not gonna know who’s on, they don’t know who owns it. They don’t know it’s Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. They’re just leasing a jet from a third party. So I thought they wouldn’t release the documents largely because you wouldn’t be able to tell a difference between those who were going there specifically to the island or those who just rented his plane.

Anthony Codispoti (05:52)
interesting. And so have these particular records been released because that means a lot of like very innocent people’s names are going to get thrown in the dumpster here.

Kristopher Hart (06:01)
Well, as you’ve already seen, I think very recently, Pam Bondi released an actual alphabetical list of everyone who’s in the records. So that’s been released in the last week or so. ⁓ And of course, everyone you can think of is on as in those records. The problem is, and this is the real issue is the public is not, especially these days, they’re not going to delineate between those who are in the records and innocent and those who specifically went to the island or those specifically.

Like you’re making a leap of faith that they’re going to tell the difference and they’re just simply not going to.

Anthony Codispoti (06:34)
No, wow. So there’s a whole bunch of people whose lives are getting upended. Some of them, rightfully so. And some of them had nothing to do with anything.

Kristopher Hart (06:44)
⁓ 100%. mean, there’s no new information other than the fact that these people were involved in those records and that list is pretty long. I mean, everyone’s on it. Mark Zuckerberg, Trump, I mean, you name it, they were on the planes.

Anthony Codispoti (06:55)
Hmm.

Wow, that’s wild. Who’s somebody that you met there? Let’s set aside all the Epstein nonsense because we could go down a big rabbit hole there.

Kristopher Hart (07:09)
Are you?

Are you?

Anthony Codispoti (07:13)
Can you not hear me?

Kristopher Hart (07:13)
Did I

cut out or did you cut out?

Anthony Codispoti (07:16)
I can hear you.

Kristopher Hart (07:17)
Yep.

You may need to edit that. Did I freeze? Yep. I can hear you. I can hear you.

Anthony Codispoti (07:19)
Can you hear me? No?

Okay, you bet you lost me for a minute.

Kristopher Hart (07:27)
I lost you for a second, but it looks like your video’s all blurry. Is it me you?

Anthony Codispoti (07:32)
⁓

It’s okay if the video gets blurry because it’s going to upload as bandwidth allows for my side and your side, each side of our video clip. But if you can’t hear me or I can’t hear you, that’s where it gets problematic.

Kristopher Hart (07:50)
Yep. It mind showing uploaded and I did a speed test beforehand that showed we were at 300 megabytes. So I think we should be pretty good on my end, but if not, it could be, it could be intermittent. Just let me know.

Anthony Codispoti (08:00)
Okay, all right, so we’ve got an edit to make right about the 22 minute mark.

Okay, we’ll start up again. Okay, so I want to set the Jeffrey Epstein stuff aside.

Kristopher Hart (08:13)
Sorry about that.

Anthony Codispoti (08:16)
Okay, so I want to set the Jeffrey Upstein stuff aside, because we can go down, you know, some pretty gnarly rabbit holes there. And I want to get to more of your story. But that time that you were there, 10 years, can you think about a challenging experience that you went through from a work perspective that really helped to shape how you approach business going forward?

Kristopher Hart (08:39)
I mean, absolutely. I I come from, I come from nothing. My background is as poor as it gets. mean, just middle of nowhere, ⁓ Southern Houston, nothingness. ⁓ That job is, was the launching pad. mean, you start off that job many, many, many years ago when I first started, started off at like 15 bucks an hour. I had to work 93 days straight to pay for my wedding when me and my wife got married. It was the most humble of humble beginnings possible.

And that job, it didn’t matter if I worked 80 hours a week or 90 hours a week, I did what I needed to do to launch my passion project, both Gammon Spirits and TWS Entertainment. So the side businesses that became the main businesses that led to a show on ESPN radio that led to us selling those businesses all started from the aviation company.

Anthony Codispoti (09:31)
Okay, so let’s talk about those two businesses, Game and Spirits and TWS Entertainment. What was the idea? What was the problem you were trying to solve?

Kristopher Hart (09:41)
Well, it’s a funny story. So many years ago, I was dating this girl whose dad was not a fan of me whatsoever. And I found out that the man was a whiskey man. I had never really drank whiskey and I got invited to Thanksgiving one year and I said, I’m going to go buy myself a bottle of scotch. I’m going to bring it to Thanksgiving and I’m going to get this man to break bread with me and get to know me. And I ended up marrying that girl 20 years later for kids.

⁓ And it was the launching pad for our business. So after we got married, my wife and I spent two weeks in Scotland and Ireland visiting distilleries. And that led to us starting the state’s largest whiskey festival, the Houston Whiskey Social. And as you see behind me, there’s quite the library of spirits. ⁓ You can’t see it full in frame, but somewhere north of 350 bottles. And it just was the, was a, it’s both an emotional thing. I’m now the favorite stepson, definitely.

Out of the seven kids, I definitely won. I got there. ⁓ But it launched our business and then we sold both companies right on the cusp of completely coincidentally.

Anthony Codispoti (10:50)
So, but help us connect the dots, right? You had never had whiskey before, but you’re a future father-in-law, big whiskey fan, so this is the first time that you’re sort of delving into that realm. But how do you go from there to starting your own whiskey business?

Kristopher Hart (11:04)
Yeah, so when we went to Scotland and we got back, we started visiting other whiskey festivals all over the country. So whiskey festivals have been around for more than three decades. ⁓ There’s a, you know, people come together, brands come from all over the world to show their spirits. And I said, you know what, I, I w it started off as an idea for a dinner of just 20 people featuring a tasting of spirits. And that 20 people dinner idea ended up launching into a

2000 person event, 400 different spirits. we even, we got a little creative with the laws in Texas. And we found out that if we didn’t pull a permit, we were able to bring in vintage spirits. And so we brought back spirits from every decade going back to World War II. And we found a bottle of scotch that has been in the glass since 1945, the year we entered the war. And then I tracked down Winston Churchill’s great grandson,

Kristopher Hart (11:58)
Yeah, so we tracked him down and brought him in and you got to actually try a time capsule. The whiskey has been in the glass for the last 80 years, a little more than that. And you got to drink whiskey with the surviving grandson of Winston Churchill, the prime minister during World War II. It was an incredible experience. And from there, the event just blew up to the largest event in the state and the only one featuring vintage spirits.

Anthony Codispoti (12:22)
That’s really cool. So, but how did you get into bottling spirits for celebrities?

Kristopher Hart (12:28)
Yeah, so that’s ⁓ it became a I guess one led to the other, right? So from the ⁓ whiskey festival, then it led to marketing, working with other brands globally, ⁓ marketing efforts, that sort of thing. And then we got approached by ESPN here in Houston and they started they wanted us to do a ⁓ show basically interviewing celebrities over drinks.

And we got enough celebrities on Matthew McConaughey, Bryan Cranston, a couple of big names that would come in and got to drinking and saying things that their media marketing manager was like, maybe we should cut that out. ⁓ then we just kind of segue this, hey, do know anyone who could help launch a brand? And so we ended up launching Sam Morell and Mark Norman are two ⁓ celebrity comedians based out of New York. ⁓ We’ve worked with ⁓ the company that ended up buying us out.

They currently bottle Beyonce’s whiskey here in Houston. It was kind of a one thing led to the other and it just kind of evolved and grew into something beautiful.

Anthony Codispoti (13:35)
So you were running this whiskey festival, the largest of its kind in the state of Texas. But why does ESPN approach you and say, hey, why don’t you interview some celebrities?

Kristopher Hart (13:46)
Yeah. So, so the thing is, is that radio, as you can imagine, has had to evolve quite a bit over the last two decades. Radio, ⁓ they came up with the idea. said, Hey, we’d like for you to do something kind of like hot ones. I don’t know if you’ve seen hot ones in on YouTube, but essentially interviewing people over, hot wings. And we would put spirits in front of them. and it just kind of evolved and grew. And then once you become associated with certain, publicists, then they,

They represent other celebrities and they say, Hey, you should go over here and do this. So Sam Hewan from Outlander has been on the show. ⁓ Matthew McConaughey produced his book, Greenlights, came on the show to talk about that. And at the same time he was working with Wild Turkey during that same period. So it just, it grew into one thing after the other. And then all of a sudden we realized that we could go buy parcels of our own liquid and bottle it. So in business, people typically have to project out the next few years, but in spirits, you have to project out the next decade.

And so we found some, uh, so what tends to happen is you put rum and whiskey down and you hope that in 10 to 15 years, it was the right call to put it, put it in a barrel during that time period. And then you’ll bottle it for the future’s demand, but things ebb and flow. if whiskey drops like it is now, which again, totally coincidental, we got out of the industry at the right time. Um, cause whiskey is definitely hurting right now. Uh, but we would, we bought, we,

came across a parcel of 25 year old rum, 15 year old rum, 15 year old bourbon. And we decided, okay, they needed to liquidate it. We’ll take it. And we bottled it. didn’t adulterate it. We also, there’s a huge push in this industry right now for transparency. A lot of people like to lie on their labels. So we took the unadulterated, honest approach and just didn’t add any water to it, didn’t flavor it with anything.

kept it clean and straightforward and didn’t have to lie to the consumer about it. And it was a very big success for us.

Anthony Codispoti (15:48)
Okay, so why the decision to get out? Why the decision to sell?

Kristopher Hart (15:54)
Uh, it’s exhausting. You know, I’ve got four kids and, uh, you know, uh, the, the demand, know, typically your nine to five would be in an office, but a lot of people in the spirits industry, their meetings are at bars and restaurants in the evening. Uh, it was just, it was a very high demand thing. And my wife and I wanted to have two more kids before we, before we were done having kids. And so when the opportunity came up, someone came along and made an offer and we just couldn’t say no to it.

Anthony Codispoti (16:22)
Okay. And then how, actually, I’m gonna back up before we get to cogent. Where does one go to acquire liquid, as you put it?

Kristopher Hart (16:31)
yeah, yeah, juice. ⁓ So there’s a couple different ways to do this. Oftentimes brokers are involved. So what happens is, like I said, you want to project out ⁓ my demand. So maybe you put down 500 barrels now, hoping that in 10 years, the demand will be there to meet that demand. But sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes 10 years from now, you’re left with excess liquid. So in order to alleviate cashflow concerns, oftentimes what they’ll do is they will simply call a broker and offer it available or call other people they know that are buying.

So it’s called sourcing and sourcing has been around longer than distilling. mean, right there with it. Johnny Walker is sourced from multiple distilleries. ⁓ Most brands you find on a shelf are sourced. It’s a very common practice. ⁓ And we went to brokers, went to distilleries. We said, hey, I love this liquid. If you would like to sell it to me, I’ll give you some money for it. And they said,

Anthony Codispoti (17:24)
So you were doing this on the side while still working at which job? Was this the weather and aviation job?

Kristopher Hart (17:33)
Yeah, that’s exactly my point. mean, I worked a job that was tough and demanding and bizarre in so many different ways. And we launched this other business on the side, as most entrepreneurs do. They start off as we call it guy in a truck. And it just grew from there. once we started the business in 2015, sold it.

Five years later, we grew the company to 72 million in sales in all 50 states, three countries in less than five years. And it’s hard to say, I need to work at the aviation company for the rest of my life.

Anthony Codispoti (18:14)
So you exited, you probably did pretty well. How did the opportunity to join Cogin Analytics come

Kristopher Hart (18:22)
They gave me a call. They found me. They had a recruiter. Cogent’s a Swiss army knife of companies. They’ve got ⁓ an accounting services company called Advocis. They’ve got a marketing agency. They’ve got a private equity side. Well, they’ve also got talent solutions. And their recruiter reached out to me and basically said, hey, we need your help diagnosing businesses. I said, I can tell you a lot about manufacturing. I can tell you a lot about whiskey. And they said,

It’ll translate. I promise and so they brought me in and I’ve been there now four years I am now a senior executive analyst for the firm and ⁓ the youngest in their history

Anthony Codispoti (18:59)
wow. So what was it that they saw in you in sort of this recruiting process? Why did they initially reach out? Because of the alcohol business that you had just exited? They’re like, Okay, this guy’s got some skills.

Kristopher Hart (19:06)
⁓

That’s a good question. I don’t know what was the impetus for the reach out. ⁓ I would say that I’ve had an interesting life, as I said, from the aviation side to the spirit side, things have just developed ⁓ largely because they seemed interesting at the time. And then you end up becoming obsessed with something. think obsession is important when you’re an entrepreneur who in their right mind would want to go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to start a plumbing company if you weren’t obsessed with it.

So, ⁓ or a whiskey company or you pick it. mean, entrepreneurs in general tend to have some level of obsession. ⁓ But they reached out to me and they said, we’d like to, and I said, yeah, let’s give it a go. And my very first client was a 49 year old printing company in Atlanta. And it has been an incredible love story. I truly, truly, I’ve said this, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a company. And that’s in a job, in a company, you name it, in a hobby.

because I’ve sat with celebrities, I’ve had booze with celebrities. That’s all great and dandy, but the most fun I’ve ever had in a company in my entire life has been at Cogent. And it’s been saving mom and pop businesses all across this country. And for the past four years, I’ve had 200 clients, give or take, and it has been a love story of seeing these people, their families. Some people, they have nothing in retirement. Their hope and dream is to sell the business so that they can retire.

⁓ Single mothers, I’ve got a tragic client in Dallas who’s her husband, unfortunately she wasn’t in the business. She was a stay at home mom and her husband had a stroke and died. And now she’s got a business on her plate. She doesn’t know how to run it. And the first thing she did is reach out for help. It has been the most rewarding job I’ve ever been in.

Anthony Codispoti (20:54)
Can you walk us through a case study, one particular client example?

Kristopher Hart (20:58)
Okay. Oh, there’s a couple of great ones. So the beauty of this job, and you can do a whole podcast on this, is the stories you find. You’re talking embezzlement, infidelity. You know, I’ve got a client whose ex-wife worked in the business, his new wife works in the business, and his secretary is driving a Lexus. So his girlfriend works in the business. So you see everything from murder. There’s been murder plots. There’s been arrests, embezzlement, theft, everything you can think of.

A great story is a company out of Atlanta. I don’t know that they have signed a media release. I won’t say their name, but it’s a 20 year old kid and he got a full ride scholarship to baseball in college. And his dad in November of 23 gets diagnosed with colon cancer. He’s running a construction company. And from November of 23 to January of 24,

Dad dies. He’s got two months to transfer all of his knowledge to a 20 year old kid who’s trying to go to college to become a baseball player. So the kid has to drop out of college. He wants to save dad’s business and dad dies in January. Son’s 22 years old. Immediately reaches out for help. Evil stepmother. As soon as dad dies, she empties the bank account. She moves to Florida, changes her name back to her maiden name and the son’s just like, good luck.

22 year old son, figure it out. that construction company, dad’s best friends are his clients. And the clients go, I love your dad, but I can’t trust my $5 million construction project to a 22 year old kid who doesn’t even have his general contractor’s license. So it is just heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak. And that client, if it wasn’t for us, he would have lost everything. He would have lost his scholarship for nothing. And he would have lost his dad’s business. So he ⁓

The story is like, so here’s the thing. It’s surprising when I say that the average entrepreneur is a guy in a truck, means I’m an employee. I don’t want to work for this for someone. I don’t like the way that they run their business. I’m going to go do this on my own. They know how to turn the wrench. They know how to build the thing, but they don’t know how to run the business of the business. And there’s a saying in business consulting that you can’t work on the business if you’re stuck in the business. And so

Anthony Codispoti (22:51)
So what did they bring you in to do?

Kristopher Hart (23:18)
This guy reaches out to us, we come in, he’s not doing job costing, he’s not properly estimating, he doesn’t know the difference between gross margin and markup. That is more common than you think, by the way. You’ve got businesses that have been around for 10, 15, 20 years and the owner oftentimes doesn’t know the difference between markup and margin. So it becomes a, it’s not a competency issue. It’s a knowledge gap. They don’t know what they don’t know.

And so we have a very, very structured process where we come in and we diagnose things within our four pillar system, our profit platform. And you can boil everything down in a very, very simple way and then build up from there. Right. So your four pillars are your marketing pillar, your, your people pillar, your process pillar, and your measurement pillar doesn’t matter to the company doesn’t matter to the industry. All companies have those four pillars, your people, your process, your sales and marketing.

and your measurement, your financials, and all of them touch each other. Right? So if you have a sales guy who goes out and makes a promise, yeah, yeah, we made 5 % on this. So we made money for sure. Well, not if you don’t account for your overhead. So it’s all just a, it’s knowledge gap. So we were there. ⁓ we do something called a discovery and that is where they sent in the analyst, which would be me or one of our eight other partners. ⁓ there’s I think eight or nine of them now.

but they send us in for two or three days to do a discovery. We find everything that’s wrong with the business in two or three days. Sometimes it’s very painful, very brutal. And if we can find enough issues.

Anthony Codispoti (24:49)
Why, why,

why is it, I know, but I want you to tell you, why is it so brutal and painful?

Kristopher Hart (24:52)
Yeah.

Because it’s an honest self-reflection of what you don’t know. And oftentimes, because there’s two major issues. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s the number one problem. the number, actually, that’s the number two problem. The number one problem is you. Oftentimes clients like the guy whose ex-wife works in the business, his new wife works in the business, and his secretary, his girlfriend works in the business. I can tell him what he should do, but he’s not going to listen. He’s not going to stop sleeping with employees.

Anthony Codispoti (25:09)
Hmm.

Kristopher Hart (25:22)
So it comes down to, we don’t tolerate ⁓ bullshit, right? So when we come in, we’re going to tell you what’s wrong and we look for something we call the portrait of life. The portrait of life is why are we doing this? What is the purpose of you working as an entrepreneur? Is it because you want to JLB or is it your retirement or is it your legacy? Right? Many people want to pass it down to their kids and their kids. Is it your, ⁓ you know, I got a client who works in crime scene cleanup and he’s

24 years old, his company does 500K, but his Facebook says CEO and he drives a used BMW. For him, it’s ego. There’s always something, a portrait of life. What is it they truly want? And then you figure out what’s wrong with the business and tell them how they’re not gonna get there. Look, if you want that second beach house, if you wanna pay for your kids’ education, if you retirement, you’re gonna have to stop doing this. You’re gonna have to start doing that. And the problem with that is they don’t have to do anything.

They can keep their crazy. We call it cogent crazy. So about six out of 10 of the times we don’t take the client because if they’re not going to be honest with themselves, we look for agreement, acceptance and accountability. Agreement is.

Anthony Codispoti (26:37)
So when you come

in to do that analysis, they’re interviewing you just as much as you are interviewing them.

Kristopher Hart (26:45)
I would argue we don’t work in sales. I’m not here to sell you a service. I’m here to figure out what’s wrong. This is what diagnostician means. Whether or not you get it fixed is your choice. It’s not my business. I don’t work on a quota. I don’t have a sales goal. I’m here to diagnose your business. you truly, like I said, agreement, acceptance and accountability. Agreement is I can agree this is wrong, but I’m not going to change. Acceptance is I’m not going…

I can’t continue to operate this way and achieve my portrait of life, which is retirement or what cell of the business, whatever the case might be. And lastly is accountability. A great example of this, and I tell this to my clients all the time, is my Meme-all smoked cigarettes until she died. And they would say, Sylvia, you’re going to get cancer if you don’t quit smoking. And she would say, I know, I know. She would agree. I have to quit, but she wouldn’t quit. And then when she finally got lung cancer, she said, well, I already have it now. I’m not going to quit. And she smoked until she passed.

I can lead a horse to water. can show you what’s wrong. I can tell you how it’s going to affect your family, how it’s going to affect your business. But if you don’t make the choice to take ownership of it and truly change your behavior, it’s not going to work. That is the discovery process. What’s wrong with the business and how do I get my dreams to where they need to be?

Anthony Codispoti (28:04)
So is what you just described to us, Khristopher, what you call the profit platform, these four pillars, or is this something different?

Kristopher Hart (28:11)
You’re correct. The profit platform are those four pillars. You can boil any business down because oftentimes what happens, one of the number one things I hear from clients is, we’re different. Well, you we’re not like Walmart and Amazon. Cogen doesn’t work with Walmart and Amazon. We only work with small businesses, small to mid-sized businesses. So our entire raise on debt, our purpose as a company is helping small companies. So you telling me you’re different is true, but it’s also not true.

A great example of this is those four pillars, you can boil any company down to those four pillars. And the common issues you run into are very common based on the industry. So for instance, if you’re a contractor, that means roofing company, foundation company, plumbing company, HVAC company, any contracting, they run into the same issues, just a different flavor. Right? So for instance,

You don’t pack up everything first thing in the morning. end up having your guys end up making extra stops at Lowe’s and Home Depot to pick up tools at retail versus planning ahead. ⁓ If you’re, ⁓ you know, oftentimes they pay subcontractors a daily rate. Well, a very common issue with that is subcontractors say, okay, well, I want a clock. We got like one or two things left. Let’s just roll it to tomorrow and then we get paid an extra day. So the issues are very, very common, even though the flavor is slightly different.

And if you start off with those four pillars and then go from there, you basically it’s like planting seeds. you’re you build. Well, actually, it’s not like planting seeds. It’s like building a house. Right. You start with the foundation. The four pillars are the foundation of any business.

Anthony Codispoti (29:55)
Got it. I know that back during ⁓ COVID, you were helping a lot of businesses through this really turbulent time. Which strategies or mindset shifts do you think proved most helpful in guiding these businesses to a beneficial exit despite all the turbulence that was going on?

Kristopher Hart (30:17)
Yeah. So the, the, would say the mantra of that time period is to control the controllables. So the Z-scores come up quite a bit, but essentially economic downturns happen every 10 to 15 years. You know, the fueling crisis of the 1970s, the housing crisis of 2007, COVID, and every time that happens, it lasts about three years. So what I would tell clients when I go in and we go to diagnose,

And I look at their financials during that time period and they got slaughtered. know, they didn’t, largely what happens is they say, well, that’s not my fault. It’s COVID’s fault. And I would say, okay, well, do we have a sales team? No. Okay. So you’re expecting the phone to ring? Yes. Okay. Well then yes. If, if the, if something happens beyond your control, then the phone’s going to stop ringing and well, it sucks. But the reality is.

If you had a sales team, we call them hunters and farmers. If you go out and you hunt, now don’t get me wrong, you can still be affected by COVID, even if you have hunters. But what I’m getting at here is you have to control what you can control. If you were hurt or damaged during that time period, then I would say what about that time period could we pivot and change for the future to offset the next economic surprise? You know, a great example of this, I was just at a automotive

company in Detroit that’s been bending pipes for the automotive industry for 50 years. Well, the moment a guy with a blue tie got elected, all of these incentives went towards electrical vehicles. Their businesses dried up. And then the moment the guy with the red tie gets in office, all of a sudden those incentives goes away. The combustion engine industry picks up a little bit. All of a sudden they’re bending pipes again. So I would say to this client, and this is exactly what I said to them,

we’re relying too heavily on automotive industry. What other industries rely on bent pipe? Well, we’ve got aerospace, we’ve got the roller coasters, we’ve got, I mean, there’s a million different companies out there that rely on bent pipe. And they also did some other things. They’ve got cutting, bending. They can basically function as a job shop. So what are we doing to prevent that exposure? That client in Atlanta I told you about.

45 % of their business came from Delta Airlines. That’s a tremendous amount of exposure. So if they lose Delta, it guts their business. Okay, then we need hunters. We need to bring another, what other major corporations are based in Atlanta? Chick-fil-A, Home Depot. If we’re handling everything we handle for Delta, could we also handle it for those other companies? Control the controllables is what I’m getting at.

Anthony Codispoti (33:04)
When you sense that a client’s overwhelmed, maybe they’re on the verge of burnout, you know, like, because part of what you do is obviously these strategic things. And okay, yes, we need to get more hunters out there. But like, I think I get the sense that part of what you do is like a mindset thing, like, how do you bring folks back from the verge of burnout, reignite their motivation, get them excited again.

Kristopher Hart (33:29)
Well, burnout is largely tied to not seeing the light at the of the tunnel, right? They feel like this is going on forever and I can’t do it anymore. And this happens quite frequently by showing a client a path forward. That’s simple, but dedicated, right? The difference between motivation, dedication, motivation is I’m going to start my gym membership in January, but that’ll fade by February. Like most gym memberships do dedication is following through on it.

So being able to show a client that there is a path forward, that there is hope. You know, I’ve got a client here at Houston, 70 year old, ⁓ welding supply company, right? Just mom and pop that the owner has been, he works seven days a week. Every time I see him, he’s sweating. I’ve never seen a guy not sweating, not working. He doesn’t get any days off and he’s 64 years old. So to him, he’s, he’s to the point of just.

shutting the whole thing down. And so he spent and he thinks that this is gonna go until he dies. So you have to show clients that there’s a path forward in saving and achieving the dream that they wanted at the beginning. Why are you doing this? Well, he had kids, he wanted his sons to take over. It was a prodigal son situation where the son didn’t wanna be in dad’s business. So he just kind of that coupled with the fact that he’s working seven days a week and constantly sweaty.

Anthony Codispoti (34:30)
He spent, he’s got nothing in the tank.

Kristopher Hart (34:56)
He thinks that there’s no hope inside, or rather just give up and shut the whole thing down. So first you got to make the company more profitable. If Sun’s no longer on the table, well, what do you want to do? Do you want to shut down? Do you want to sell it? He’s like, I’d be open to selling it if my son doesn’t want it. Okay. So then the problem with that is there’s something called marketability discounts. When you value a company to determine what it can sell for, they’re going to look at a multiplier of net profit.

Anthony Codispoti (35:01)
And so you come in and do what?

Kristopher Hart (35:26)
or EBITDA. And if that company is barely getting by, there’s a lot of men out there, a lot of hardworking men and women who’ve given their heart and soul to a company for 60, 70 years. And the company’s barely getting by. And if you actually were to value the company, it isn’t what they would sell it for. Their perception, because that company owns a piece of their soul, is I had a client this week, Bending, Pipe Bending, he wants 10 million for business. It’s not worth three.

And so you have to show them their path to getting to 10. Right. So if you, if you want that valuation, if you want what you want, okay, well, we’re not doing job costing. We have no marketing. You’re the only, you’re the main sales guy. You’re the main estimator. So you have to hire, you have to put structure in place. You have to put accountability in place. You have to drive profitability and then you can reach evaluation that you want. But if you don’t do those things, it’s not going to happen. It’s called profit engineering.

How is a house built? On purpose. Houses don’t get built by accident. It has to be on purpose. It has to be with intention. And so you have to find the fight in them before they completely give up. If I’m there, if I’m there to diagnose, I have to believe they’ve not given up completely.

Anthony Codispoti (36:29)
And what are the biggest levers that you like to pull for that profit engineering?

So what are the biggest profit levers that you like to pull in that profit engineering?

Kristopher Hart (36:49)
I have a theory on this. The vast majority of clients take it on the chin. And what I mean by that is that printing company, when I go look at a printing company, the top two or three things I look at are what do we charge for business cards? What do we charge for funeral pamphlets? Those are like the real common things that printing companies deal with a lot of. And they were charging 25, $30 for business cards and they were charging, I think $140 for funeral pamphlets.

I called around and did a massive market analysis of what they’re pricing. And the next nearest competitor was at $350 for those funeral pamphlets versus their 150. What happens is, and this speaks to the entrepreneurial spirit of most American business owners, they’re loving and they’re caring. They’re not greedy. I can’t tell you, I have a client in Madison who

His client needed something on a Saturday when they’re closed. He’s like, I’ll take it to him. It’s two hour drive each way. Didn’t charge him a shipping fee. Didn’t really charge him for one thing that he added on at the last second. Most business owners don’t hold the line and they end up eating their costs to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Same thing with bad employees. Sometimes you have bad employees. They’ve been there 20 years. They’re good at their job. So I’ll tolerate their behavior because good people are hard to find.

And if I run their labor utilization, they could be at 50%. That means they are 35 % unproductive. The amount of times that business owners just decide, it’s fine, I’ll eat it, is more than you could possibly imagine. We’ve got a garbage company in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Their garbage route starts at six. Guys were getting it at three o’clock in the morning, standing around, smoking cigarettes for three hours. That’s three hours of overtime times 45 drivers times five days a week. It was over a million dollars of overtime just because. And on top of that, you the mortal sin in garbage is not, you know, no one’s going to call you more upset than a housewife if you forget to pick up the trash. So the mortal sin is what they call missed pickups. And you start to look at.

who your biggest issues are and truly put costs associated with it. So we’re not talking about raising your printing prices to 350, but by golly, 150 versus 350, you’re not even charging market rate and 12, they’re 12 employee business, all of them were underpaid. So it’s not just the business owner taking on the chin, you’ve got an entire company of people who are barely getting by paycheck to paycheck.

My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher and he would say there’s no, a man is not a man until he has someone who depends on him. And he’s talking about being a wife and kids. But the one example of that, that’s heavier than that is a business owner. Because you’re not just dependent, your wife and kids are not just dependent on you. You’ve got 12 employees or 50 employees and their wives and kids who depend on you. And if you don’t run that business healthy and profitably, they all suffer, not just you.

It’s not just your retirement at risk. It’s your employees retirement at risk. The vast majority of the time of employees complaining about underpay isn’t because the owner is selfish or jumping in his, you know, his gold coin vault like Scrooge McDuck. has to do with the owner simply not keeping up with pricing, holding people accountable. And it’s, it’s, and it’s across the board. see 80 companies a year, me personally, 80 companies a year and

They’re all exhausted. They all work more than anyone I’ve ever seen and they’re not getting paid for it.

Anthony Codispoti (40:40)
So they’re not holding their folks accountable. So there’s a lot of labor waste. Their rates are not even close to market in some cases. And then, you you just spend a lot of time talking about those two, but previously, we’re talking about, you know, hey, let’s go out and find new business. Let’s diversify, right? New accounts.

Kristopher Hart (40:55)
100

% many of them are dependent. The pipe bending business I was just at is a $10 million business. I take that back. Four years ago, they were $10 million. Then they went to six. Then they went to five. Last year they ended at 4.4. This is the common issue. We don’t have sales and marketing. You know, and some people say, well, we can’t really do marketing. No one’s going to. Okay, fine. But you can have sales. You know, sometimes it’s even harvesting your current client base.

You know, oftentimes one of the biggest disconnect I see in businesses is I’ve got no salespeople. People call me. And if my client, if that person goes on maternity leave or that person quits their job and someone else comes in, maybe they already have a supplier in mind. So they, I just lost the business because I didn’t stay up. I didn’t stay in contact with them. I didn’t manage that relationship. I didn’t use a CRM. It’s this you’re constantly putting out fires and yet.

nothing, the structure is not there to help get you to a point that you don’t have to always be put out fires and drive business for the organization.

Anthony Codispoti (42:03)
So a lot of consulting firms, they promise or insinuate, hey, we’re going to get you measurable ROI. But Cogent validates results through what you call the assurance process. What is that?

Kristopher Hart (42:15)
A cup.

So we do things a few different ways. One, my favorite thing that we’ve been developing is something called an MFR, a monthly financial review. So when I go in as a diagnostician, I look for two things. I look for, is there a reason for us to be there? Is there an ROI for us to be there? We look for at least two to one. So if there’s a million dollars worth of problem costs, great, that for sure will absolutely, there’s a reason for us to be there.

The second thing is absolute acceptance of the issue. So the client has to truly, truly be willing to change. we do something. All right. When I come in, I look at the past four years. This is a four year financial review. This is where you’re losing money. These are all the problems with your business. We move forward with a project to come in and fix all the things I find that’s wrong. And then after that project, we do something called a monthly financial review. Cogent does something that to this day, I don’t think any other

consulting firm does, we do something called life cycle. So let’s say we’re here for eight to 10 weeks, then the consultant or project director leaves site with the client. We stay involved unbillable for the next 12 months. We want to make sure every everything we put into place is fine tuned that there’s a measurable ROI that it sticks because habits can take 90 days to change. So if we change 15 things in a business, I want to make sure

that when we leave all those 15 things work and that there’s a tangible ROI. And then when you look at that monthly financial review, it should show that net profit climbing. We’re at 1%. Now we’re at 4%. Now we’re at 8%. So that there is a provable, tangible result. I don’t care what a consultant does, what their background says, if they can’t affect your bottom line, they’re screwing you. It’s not, the tangible effect has to be an improved profitability within a business.

Anthony Codispoti (44:16)
You know, you mentioned one of the pillars in your four pillar approach being people. How do you think about attracting and retaining good talent for your clients?

Kristopher Hart (44:27)
There’s a couple of different ways to do this. So first off, oftentimes you have good people already in place. I think people assume consultants just want to cut and fire and trim. That’s not, you can’t cut your way to profitability. What you do is are we giving them the support they need? You know, a great example, I’m going to use pipe bending again, but they had just hired a sales guy four months ago, but have not given him any structure, any goals, any training, any clients to go after, no CRM. So what a, ⁓

poor, that’s not fair to him. And then there’s no result. You say, well, I tried sales guys, but they didn’t work out. No, you didn’t. You got to give them the structure. You got to give them the support. And then you drive accountability. cannot measure, sorry, you cannot manage what you don’t measure. And so people, to your question, I want to make sure that the people we currently have are the right people. Now, every once in a while, it’s less than you think. Every once in a while, you have the wrong person in the wrong spot. And you would either

Need to see, is there a value in them in a different department or should we get rid of them? Well, if there’s a safety issue, if there’s a theft issue, it’s time to get rid of them. And then you need to go looking now. Don’t get me wrong. LinkedIn and zip recruiter can be soul sucking at times. It sucks, but it works or it wouldn’t exist. There’s recruiters, know, Cogen has talent solutions. We will go out. We will hunt down the right people for a position, but I don’t care if you use Cogen’s recruiting or not. I don’t get anything for it.

I just want it fixed. I need those people in the right spot so that we can drive our wide to the bottom line. If we can’t get that bottom goal, it doesn’t, the whole thing’s a waste of time.

Anthony Codispoti (46:06)
Khristopher, I want to switch gears on you for a moment and dive into a particularly big challenge that you’ve had to overcome in your life, whether it’s personal or professional. Walk us through what that was and how you got through it.

Kristopher Hart (46:20)
Yeah, like I said before, I came from nothing. I had a ⁓ kid in high school and I dropped out of college and it was a complete ⁓ bad start. I didn’t know my dad growing up. If you name it, I come from Pasadena, Texas. It’s as bottom as it gets. And I think part of the situation was having a child.

regardless of the age will drive motivation to change. And meeting the right partner, my wife and I have been together 20 years and meeting the right partner, she brought out the best in me. I had a purpose. And I think that a lot of people, the hardest thing for most young people is finding a purpose. But once you find that purpose, like I said, I worked 92 days straight in aviation to pay for a wedding because I didn’t have the support. That’s my struggle story. After that,

built two businesses while doing that at the same time. So you’re talking 90, a hundred hour weeks. I paid for college through that. I didn’t take loans out. I fixed my business first, then paid for college six degrees later, which I think are, I think there’s a little too much weight put into college degrees, but I got them because I got them for me, not for my career. And it has been, you talk about you, Rob Raymond, the owner of Cogent is the same story. He comes from nothing.

He served in the military. mean, Cochin is full of these stories of people who have been exactly where they’ve been. Our clients have been exactly where we’ve been. And it is something that is truly the American dream to come from nothing and to make the American dream come true.

Anthony Codispoti (48:07)
Khristopher, do you think you’re sort of wired from birth to be this persistent, this driven, or do you think having a child so young was a bit of a catalyst for you?

Kristopher Hart (48:20)
I do think it was a catalyst. do. It’s, think you’re talking about pieces here, right? So I do think that a big part of a mindset, you have two mindsets in the world mindset is something happened to me and therefore I can’t achieve what I need to achieve or something happened to me, but I’m not going to let it stop me. And I think those two things are massively different mindsets. And that’s again, it’s entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have all gone through. This is what happened to me, but I’m not going to let it stop me.

Again, the idea that my father-in-law, my girlfriend’s dad hated me and I thought, I’m not going to accept that. I’m going to learn to enjoy whiskey and I hated it. It was terrible. I grew to love it and then it became this romantic story and then it became a business. Then it became our future. I couldn’t be a bigger fan of people who pick themselves up by their bootstraps. It is a real thing and everyone who’s pulled it off will tell you that’s how they did it.

Anthony Codispoti (49:16)
I’m going to build on what you were just saying about something happened to me, woe is me versus something happened to me and I’m not going to let it define me. ⁓ As much as possible, I try to coach myself to say that’s something that happened for me. As painful as it may be in the moment, it taught me something. It steered me in a different direction. It lit a fire under me. And so in some ways, this is something beneficial that happened for me.

How does that resonate with you?

Kristopher Hart (49:46)
The, the, some reason, the word dynamic came to mind when you were just saying that you have to be dynamic. You have to be resilient. Those two words are probably the most, important words for any entrepreneur or anyone. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur, just people trying to get through life. Life is hard. You know, I’ve got two teenage daughters that are 19 and 20. I’ve told them life is hard. It sucks. You have to be dynamic and you have to be resilient. And if you can’t be those two things, then it becomes, this is what happened to me.

versus this is what happens for me to grow and become better.

Anthony Codispoti (50:21)
So as you look back over your journey, Khristopher, what’s one piece of advice that you wish every entrepreneur would embrace early on?

Kristopher Hart (50:29)
⁓ no one to get out. So, so yeah. Yeah. When I talk about being dynamic, my, again, my Pentecostal grandfather, he would say, he would say that if you know everything there is to know about one thing and know something about everything, then you can have a conversation with anybody. And I think that, ⁓ I did not imagine or dream that I would start a marketing company in the spirits industry or a radio show on ESPN.

Anthony Codispoti (50:31)
No when to hold them, no when to fold them.

Kristopher Hart (50:56)
or whatever. I didn’t expect that. I was curious and I would say you need to be curious in life. And I think there’s this mantra that you should never give up. And I disagree completely. I think you should know when you need to exit. You know, I think a lot of people dream of having a bar, but bars are not very profitable. ⁓ It’s dream that you have, but it can be very difficult. And I think at some point, whether you want to be a standup comedian or you want to be

whatever your dreams are, you should know. ⁓ that’s a dicey subject. Even as I’m saying, and I’m talking myself out of it. There’s been times I’ve had to move on from things. And I think that it’s benefited my family because it’s not about me. I’m not saying you should give up for you. Give up for those who need you. Like my wife and kids, the spirits industry has been great, but I knew it was time to leave. And when the time was right,

It was the right call. look back on that situation and think we were we were thriving. We were on top of the game and it was the right call and I knew and I’m glad that I did it.

Anthony Codispoti (52:07)
So I want to dive into this just for a second, because and I think maybe we’re laughing because, well, in some sense, it does. And this is something that as an entrepreneur, I’ve wrestled with many times before, you know, working on a business that just doesn’t seem to be working out. And in some cases, I just needed to keep turning the dials, keep turning the dials and eventually find success. And in other cases, like I just felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. And it was time to throw in the towel.

Kristopher Hart (52:10)
Does it make sense?

Anthony Codispoti (52:36)
But I look back on some of those instances and I’m like, did I just not try hard enough? Did I quit, you know, six months too soon? And so like, I always like to find sort of these metrics or these rule of thumbs or, you know, these indicators that say, this is the time to fold it. You know, this is the time to stay in the game. How do you think about that?

Kristopher Hart (52:41)
Yep.

You’re hitting the net.

You’re hitting the nail on the head. So here’s the thing. I realize that it may have not come out right the first time, but play with me here. There’s something called the sunken cost fallacy, right? You’re playing poker. You realize you’ve already got a thousand dollars in the hand or 500 bucks or whatever the number is. And you think I don’t want to fold because if I fold, I’m accepting all the loss. I’m realizing the loss of the money already put in there, but it’s at the sacrifice of what of the additional money you’re going to end up losing if you don’t

play it smart. So to your point, which is what I’m saying, by the way, is you have to have a clean set of metrics and a clean, okay, this is when this has to change. Because if you’re doing it just because you think it’ll happen, if you don’t give up that there are a million people that I know personally, that have, you know, they wake up one day and they realize it’s been a complete waste of time. And I’m not talking about their business per se, I’m talking about

I want to be a movie star or I want to be a rock star. I want to be a standup comedian. I know people who are great comedians and their life’s falling apart around them because they haven’t made it yet and they’re not trending towards making it. And the question then becomes, well, should I give up or not? Well, it depends. If you’re about to lose your house and your wife, maybe there should be a clean metric of knowing when to cash in or cash out, so to speak.

Anthony Codispoti (54:19)
Yeah. Well, let me know when you come up with that spreadsheet where we can plug in all the variables to come up with ⁓ the right calculation. How about a ⁓ helpful resource that you’ve enjoyed? Good for you. A book, a podcast, course, something you’d recommend to our audience.

Kristopher Hart (54:22)
Yeah.

I’m a huge fan of Ryan Holiday.

Ryan Holiday.

Anthony Codispoti (54:40)
Anyone

in particular, any one of his books.

Kristopher Hart (54:42)
All of them literally all of them right holidays a stoic and the mantra of stoicism is very in line with most entrepreneurs I know and that is no one’s going to rescue you you have to rescue yourself things can happen to you It could be terrible. It can it can be tough, but you have I Tell this to clients all the time if you don’t manage the business of the business No one’s going to manage it for you in less

You hire someone to manage you for you, like a president or a VP of operations or something. I’ve got architectures, ⁓ architects that all they want to do is draw. That’s their passion. They don’t want to run the business that they own. Okay, that’s fine. You can do that. But if you don’t set up the framework for it to run, it will not run itself. If you do not steer the ship, the ship is going to hit the rocks. And so I would say that anything by Ryan Holiday about taking ownership of your life,

Asking for help, learning, being dynamic, being resilient to hardships. Ryan Holiday is 100 % my recommendation.

Anthony Codispoti (55:48)
Good stuff. I’ve read several of his books and I enjoy them as well. What’s the future of cogent analytics looks like?

Kristopher Hart (55:55)
So we are currently primarily in two time zones, central and eastern. ⁓ The goal is to roll it out nationally. ⁓ I could not believe more in what we do. Again, as a kid, I never dreamed I would be helping save other businesses. And now that I’m here, it is the dream that I will work for Cogent for the rest of my life. I will not leave until the ship goes down, helping small business owners save their business and their future, their legacies.

Anthony Codispoti (56:25)
So the future of Cogent ⁓ is aligned with the future of Khristopher Hart. You guys are going places together. Yeah, love it. Just one more question for you today, Khristopher, but before I ask it, I wanna do three quick things for the audience. First of all, ⁓ cogentanalytics.com. ⁓ You’ve heard Khristopher talk a great deal about what they do, how they do it. Their spirit is really in it to help.

Kristopher Hart (56:32)
That’s right.

Anthony Codispoti (56:53)
the small medium sized businesses, go check them out, cogentanalytics.com. And if you’re enjoying our show today, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you’re listening. It sends a signal that helps others discover our podcast. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, you can be the hero advisor that helps clients give their employees access to therapists, doctors, and prescription meds while paradoxically increasing their net profits.

Real gains that can change how businesses value. Contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you, Khristopher. A year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Kristopher Hart (57:35)
That’s a great question. ⁓

Honestly, and I hate to beat this drum over and over again, but it truly is. ⁓ There’s something very rewarding about wrapping up a project with a client. Our process is very, ⁓

structured in a way that I come in to diagnose the first time we fix the business. We manage for about 12 months after in life cycle to make sure that we keep things in goal. And then I come back for a rediscovery at the end of that time period to see how things went. And there’s nothing more exciting than walking in and seeing that, oh my gosh, a great example is a client in Moline, Illinois, is an electrical contractor, but the best profit that they

could have hoped for when I came in was 15%. We were in for about a year. I came back. There’s this, it was great seeing the guy. I remembered him like it was yesterday. And their net profit was up to 28%. It was the most exciting thing possible because this guy was just a guy in a truck, didn’t want to run a business. The best he could have hoped for was 15. By the way, he was at three, 3 % before we came in.

Anthony Codispoti (58:35)
I’m kidding.

Kristopher Hart (58:48)
We run prime performance where it basically says what your profit could be if you were to be more stringent in a few things. And his profit had grown to 28 % and he was so excited. I was so excited. And then we went out and celebrated. There’s this great mustard in Moline, Illinois called Boche’s. ⁓ So we went and we got a pretzel and some mustard to celebrate. was just coming back and seeing a client a year after we run a project is probably the most exciting I am in my day-to-day job.

Anthony Codispoti (59:08)
You

Okay, so for that one specific client, sorry, I’ve got a follow up on that because they were at three, best possible they could have gotten to is 15. So how did they get to 28?

Kristopher Hart (59:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. So, so a couple, a couple of things. ⁓ we run something called prime performance where it basically looks at, if you look at the past four years and you were to take the best year of material margin, your best gross profit, your best line item on each P and L and it’ll give you a, we call prime performance. does not mean, and I misspoke. It does not mean your best possible. It means what you could hit if you were consistent, if your shot grouping was tight.

Anthony Codispoti (59:48)
You looked back at all their different metrics before and if they could hit the best of what had happened in the past, they’d be at 15%.

Kristopher Hart (59:56)
15%, right? And it’s not, again, it’s not perfect. It’s not their best best. It’s just best of each item of each year. Then you piece together a P &L. So we went in, we standardized their pricing model. were estimating shooting from the hip. He had like a 90 % closing rate. If you’re a contractor and you have a 90 % closing rate, you are selling for bottom dollar. I guarantee you, you’re losing money or leaving money on the table. You typically want to be around 40 to 45%.

And then you want to basically have a sales team that can estimate more frequently so that you can increase your revenue. And this particular case, his pricing model was all over the hip. mean, his sales guys were inconsistent. There was a 73 % swing on it for estimators. had them estimate the same job in a silo. There was a 73 % swing in their estimate for the same job. So standardizing that towards the more appropriate end. Now his bid to win ratio dropped to about 50%, but that’s

better than what I was hoping for. And his sales jumped more than 50%. So his net profit went up, his sales went up. And as you know, if you sell, if your sales increase and your overhead stays appropriate with it, it’ll actually pull up your net profit potential. So if you go from 1 million to 3 million, you’re no longer at 15%. It’s going to pull up your net profit with it. So his sales increased, his gross margin increased and his net profit skyrocketed.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:23)
Awesome. So the thing that you want to be celebrating a year from now is more successful client engagements.

Kristopher Hart (1:01:28)
⁓

100%. It’s again, if it’s the most fulfilling and rewarding job I’ve ever had, I want to do it more.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:34)
Yeah. Well, Khristopher Hart from Cogent Analytics. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Kristopher Hart (1:01:44)
Yeah, thank you so much. It’s been a blast. I appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:48)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.