Today’s show is all about growth rate: the rate you should target, how to identify that rate, what you can do to manage your growth and how much you can expect that growth to cost you. Listen in as Kevin Trout, former founder and owner of Grandview Medical Resources, Inc. — a fast-growing and award-winning specialty medical equipment distributor to hospitals and healthcare providers — explains how he landed on his optimal growth rate of 20% and gives specific examples of the tactical marketing they implemented to scale the company and compete with the industry giants. Kevin started out with a maxed-out credit card and sold the business years later when they were doing millions of dollars of revenue, multiple product lines and over 60 employees.

 

What You Will Learn In Today's Podcast Interview

The way Kevin’s focus led to doubling revenue within six months

How Kevin went from maxing out his credit cards to a $1 million line of credit and 23% growth rate

What the maximum sustainable growth rate is for distribution companies and how Kevin challenged it

The importance of understanding where your financing comes from because you’ll just keep eating your float otherwise and grow right into bankruptcy

Why Kevin started with the end in mind when deciding the growth rate

Your P&L statement shouldn’t be a surprise to you

Why Kevin set out to capture the patients most underserved by hospitals and how this impacted his bottom line

How to achieve excellent profits through rentals

How vertical integration works, why more companies need to be focusing on that, and how incentive plans typically encourage horizontal integration and are missing big segments of the markets they already serve

The value in complementing vs competing and winning clients through good service rather than aggressive sales

What “flanking the enemy” means in marketing and how to pull it off with style

The false dichotomy of offense and defense and how it hurts your strategy

How knowing he was building to sell let him

The benefits of maximizing profits, paying down debt and investing in technology before you sell your company

Why, despite an intentionally designed and successfully executed sale, Kevin wishes he’d known more about the impact of culture, EOS, how to build value and exit planning

How building a business is like driving a manual transmission — you need to know when to push in the clutch

 

Are You Growing The Value of Your Business

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Do you know what your company is worth?

Do you know the differences between Management, Family Transitions, PE Firms, ESOPs and Strategic Buyers?

Does the business have a written strategic plan on how to achieve the desired normalized EBITDA and valuation?

 

About the Guest:

Kevin Trout is the former founder and owner of Grandview Medical Resources, Inc., a fast-growing and award-winning specialty medical equipment distributor to hospitals and healthcare providers. Kevin is now a Vistage Chair, where he leads four private peer-advisory boards and coaches, mentors and advises CEOs and business owners on strategic growth, leadership skills, and developing and retaining their top talent. He is also a past president and long-time board me