Choices Create Change

About Choices Create Change

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

Publisher

Bobby Mink

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Mar 2026

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

27 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 Oct 2026

   Nobody Was Ever Doing Better Than They Thought (Ep 26)

   Bobby sits down with Mark Whitmire, a CFO with more than 35 years in finance and accounting, to close out the Know Your Numbers series. Part one was the mindset. Part two was the math. This is the practitioner. Mark's father was a CPA and president of the Georgia Society of CPAs, and Mark grew up watching him drop tax returns at the post office at midnight. He has the accounting gene and deliberately did not become an accountant. What he has instead is 35 years of being the person who finds the financial problem in somebody else's business. His verdict, after decades of counselling owners: there has never been an instance where somebody was doing better than they thought. Not once. The conversation covers why a builder reading a tax return may be looking at a business eighteen months old, the spec house that did not sell and why nothing in an income statement will ever reveal what it cost, the warranty money that leaves after the closing, and why you should raise three times what you think you need and raise it while you still do not need it. Then it turns, as these conversations do, from money to people. Hiring to your weakness, the way Charles Schwab and Richard Branson both did. Why effective partners tend not to be friends. Why most business plans are simply "more," and what a finish line should look like instead. "Engineers will build something nobody wants. Salespeople will sell something they can't produce." "My to-do list tends to be one item." Chapters: 0:00 The house you didn't sell 1:13 Why owners struggle with the numbers 3:29 Mark's father, and the adding machine 7:19 Advice for a new owner: triple it 9:57 Raise money before you need it 11:28 Your tax return is 18 months old 13:13 Regular reporting, and the discipline it takes 16:45 Warranty, and the cash that leaves after closing 17:47 Nobody was ever doing better than they thought 19:02 Hire to your weakness 21:00 Most business plans are simply more 23:34 Don't hire your best buddy 29:09 Go think 31:39 Your to-do list is one item 38:16 Homes where families create memories 41:02 Write your eulogy 42:01 Close Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

2. 

   7 Oct 2026

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

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

3. 

   30 Sept 2026

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

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

Who has been a guest on Choices Create Change

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Ryan Mink
• Matt Haynes
• Carrie Rogers

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Contact Choices Create Change

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Questions about Choices Create Change