IAM320- Founder Focuses on Helping Firms Recover Lost Revenue and Increase Cash Flow

Dee Bowden is the founder of BCS Solutions. Dee graduated from the Steve Harvey’s Act Like A Success School of Business Acceleration in 2018. Dee focuses on helping companies and government agencies recover lost revenue and increase cash flow for services provided but not yet paid.

Dee has successfully collected over $50 million dollars for several companies and government agencies in the past 10 years.

Street Cred and Podcast Guest on the Following Shows
Guest on Sean Douglas's Podcast Life Transformation Radio
Guest on Tamie Collins Markee Radio Show
Guest on WJMS Radio NYC with Jaymie Jams

• CEO Hack: (1) 30 minutes of gratitude/meditation/reading every day (2) Adding value to others
• CEO Nugget: Don't lose your passion or perspective
• CEO Defined: Servant leader

Website: http://www.bcsconsultinggrp.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dee.bowden.5
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dee-bowden-5b379b4/

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Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Dee Bowden of BCs Solutions.

Dee, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Dee Bowden 0:39

Thank you, Gresh, it is an honor to be here. This is an amazing day. I'm always excited to get to share my story and to tell the listeners why I love talking about collections, cash flow, and most importantly, how to stay solvent in your business. So again, thank you for the opportunity to share this great message.

Gresham Harkless 0:56

No problem super excited to have you on because I think you have such a great message and it's something that's not talked about a lot. So I'm super excited to have you on the show and hear more from you. But I wanted to read a little bit more about Dee so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Dee is the founder of BCS Solutions.

Dee graduated from Steve Harvey's act like a Success School of Business Acceleration in 2018. Dee focuses on helping companies and government agencies recover lost revenue and increase cash flow for services provided but not yet paid. He has successfully collected over $50 million dollars for several companies and government agencies in the past 10 years. street cred and podcast guests on the following shows guests on Sean Douglass's podcast life transformation radio guests on Tami's Tammy Collins, Marquis radio show guests and on WG ms radio NYC with Jamie James Dee, Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Dee Bowden 1:52

I am so ready to speak to the community. As you say on my side. Let's get this party started.

Gresham Harkless 1:58

Let's get the party started. I'm all about that party. So I wanted to kick everything off and hear about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Dee Bowden 2:07

Sure. Well, it's so much fun. And everybody, every chance I get to tell this story. It's like this. So about 10 years ago, I'm in my own mid-crest team to change lives. I worked for a small company, it was an IT firm. And it was a company actually. Okay, let me back up and say I'm originally from Boston. So I know that you guys are fans that are like, ah, Boston Patriots fans. Yes. I'm all that. So there you go. This is a Boston Patriots fan. So don't go just listen, you'll learn something. So 10 years ago, I worked for a small company called Art Amber's Technologies, actually in Merrimack New Hampshire, right outside of Boston, where I'm from.

And I share the story so people can understand what drives me to do what I do now. So they had $8 million. They weren't I'm sorry, they were an IT firm and $8 million in sales on the books, but not $8 million in the bank. Let me say it, again, $8 million with the sales, but the sales are not in the bank. So I'm a collector by trade. So I love to untangle people's financial revenue in their business. So $8 million for all these accounts. And I'm sitting there part-time going, this is a lot of money to not be in the bay. So I work on the accounts and I get $6 million back in 60 days, working part-time.

Gresham Harkless 3:25

Wow.

Dee Bowden 3:27

As Phenomenal. Thank you. Thank you. That's for anybody who's listening is going that's a lot of money. It is, but here's the thing, as phenomenal as collecting eight $6 million dollars in 60 days what got me here is that two months before Christmas, the CEO called all of us downstairs and said listen, thank you so much for your services. appreciate everything you've done. Does that sale that's count payable, counts receivable, and contracts? This entire company is shutting down in 30 minutes. You got 30 minutes to go upstairs and get your stuff. Oh, wow, we're done. If you Google, Amherst Technologies, Merrimack New Hampshire right now you're gonna find that logo, that is it. It works.

I worked hard to recover that money and to be told we were done. That was a start of a journey to figure out what are the financial disconnects. What happens in business that an executive has to make that decision to close the business down? I contend to report things.

There's something that happens in the sales transaction, accounts payable which is your invoices that are set to the vendor. Accounts receivable are the money that comes in and the contract. Most people can understand it. Like right now there's a company called Payless Shoes. They made the announcement they're closing the four things that impacted their closure sales, Payless bought shoes from other vendors, but they have not been able to pay the vendors for the shoes. They've been billed for the shoes but they can't pay for the shoes and the contracts that they have with the shoe companies are now null and void. The same thing happened in the same camp.

So I share that as an example to say, Listen, what drives this compensation around cash flow is what happened to me personally. And I've asked God to help me have platforms to talk about this and to say, Listen, I want you to crush it in your sales journey, please do that sell your sell or your widget, sell your products, I mean, service that your information. But don't forget, the sale is not complete until the money's in the bank. And that's how I got here.

Gresham Harkless 5:29

Yeah, it's funny that you say that. Because I think a lot of times when you start a business, you think about making sure to make sure you have enough sales, make sure you have clients, and things like that. But there's also a second part of that because you can send out the invoice and they can see the invoice and they can sign the contract. But like you mentioned, if you go to whatever, wherever you're doing your banking and that money is not in there, then there is a connection, because you might have to pay other people and things like that.

So I thought that was a really great topic. I'm sorry to hear all that happened. But I'm glad that yeah, that happened. And then you're helping out so many business owners that might struggle with the exact same thing. So I wanted to drill a little bit deeper, I know you touched on a little bit, just a little bit more on how clients work with you what you go through, and then also what you feel is kind of like your secret sauce. And what makes you unique.

Dee Bowden 6:17

Well, how clients work with me is this basically, when a company acknowledges that they're having cashflow issues of basically, that they've done, they've sold their services or products. And they're realizing that 30 days out 60 days out, they haven't gotten paid. A lot of times, it's hard for them to acknowledge that they need help. But that's why I'm here for you, for you not to feel embarrassed if you haven't gotten paid in six days, because I just said, Listen, everybody is in business to do one thing, which is make money.

Let's be clear. That's the only reason you go into business to make money. But money is also based on relationships. I understand that if you're a business owner, you don't want to mess up the relationship because you don't want to have to go ask the owner, hey, can you pay my bill?

But if you provided your product or service in good faith, you should expect to get paid. And if you haven't gotten paid, and you don't want to have the conversation, we can have a conversation and say, Listen, bring me your accounts. Let's go over how many accounts are outstanding, and how much money is outstanding. And where do you think the disconnects are? Do you think about something that happened in the sales transaction, you think you forgot to data enter information correctly, and you've submitted the wrong invoice, we can go and do what I call a deep dive and untangle one of the four areas that using impact your money.

And we can either give you a report and say here, this is my audit, this is what I recommend, which is one or two, you can say I really don't want to get on the phone with them, do you mind? Well, then we go into contract and you hire business solutions to go call and recover the money on your behalf.

Gresham Harkless 7:44

Okay, I know that definitely helps out a lot. Because I know myself especially when I started I didn't have the systems or everything in place as far as invoicing and things. But once I put that in, you start to see that sometimes it does take 30-60-90 days before you get those payments. And if you're not aware of if you don't even see it, then it's hard to even take those steps.

So it's great to hear that somebody can call on just to do one of those different three things that you outline where you can actually go on their behalf and do the phone calls, or you can actually just help them in partnership to get that money back. I definitely appreciate you for doing that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask her for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Dee Bowden 8:33

Well, one of my habits that makes me effective is I take time, every day to express gratitude I happen to be leaving out so one of my things is I have at least 30 minutes almost every morning where I just sit and I'm quiet. I'm either reading something or sometimes it's just meditation. Sometimes it's just being still.

The second thing I strive to do is look to find ways to add value to others like today, what part of me doing something different today is being able to share this story, but also giving people some nuggets so they can walk away and go Oh, what did she say? Oh yeah, the sales the AP the AR this but they're rarely going to remember who the sale is not completed until the money's in the bank. They don't remember that. I said they're gonna remember that. Oh, yeah, I made that sale I look at it. Where's my money?

So I tried to start to add value every single day but most importantly make sure that I get my 30 minutes in quiet, quiet time with God. And then I also like to read so I'm an avid reader. One of my favorite books I like to read is Things by Joel Osteen. So right now I'm reading Next Level Thinking and it is because being an entrepreneur takes a lot. I mean you've got, mind, body, spirit, all of that. And then you also have to find people that you can connect equity.

So I thank you again for this opportunity to connect with your audience because I need people to understand that although if you think about it when you look at the entrepreneurial experience, it looks like oh my gosh, this is the easiest thing to do. No, it's not. Let's be clear. No, it's not. If you are an introvert and you don't, you're not that easy. If you don't find it easy to talk to people.

That's the challenge. If you don't like to sell, that's the challenge. If you don't like to do data entry, that's a challenge. You don't like to collect the money that's challenging you on the contrary, that's a challenge. But guess what, if you expect to be successful, you have to get uncomfortable with the things that you don't know. And it's okay if you don't know him, but then you got to ask for help. So part of what we're doing today is putting out there that listen, if collecting your money from another company is a challenge, you can reach out to Business Solutions, and we can help you, we can either do one or two things, we can need to show you where the disconnects are, or better yet, we can teach you how to do it better.

So you can actually do it better for the long term because I can fix it on the short end. But if I don't teach you how to understand where the problems are, you'll keep repeating them. And my goal is to make sure that you can actually do this long-term for yourself. That's the goal.

Gresham Harkless 11:15

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And you might have already touched on this. And I know you've given us lots of nuggets. So this is like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Dee Bowden 11:31

Oh, if I could go back in time, let's say I would tell myself, number one, don't lose your passion. What was your passion and don't lose, don't lose the thing that makes you-you. So if for example, what people may not know is there two things. I love Ferris wheels, I love affairs. Well, you can get me out on the Ferris wheel, we can talk business all day. And see this panoramic view of the water. But it also is a way to clear my brain. Secondly, I love hot air balloon rides. And it's another thing is this high-level experience. But it helps you to see things past like what's right in front of you, you get this panoramic view and you're like, oh, wow, I can see this or I can see this. And I would definitely say you need to do some different things.

So I mean, yours, you may not do Ferris wheels or hot air balloon, you might do ziplining, you might do something different. The point is that sometimes you have to get out of your own way. And you also have to get out of doing the routine. I like the Ferris wheel because every time I go up in there, I get to see another way of how I share, which is how I share this thing about collections and cashflow and cashflow systems in a way that people can go oh, oh, it's not just Alpha dollars? Oh, no, but this is an important part of your business. Because you have to have those four components, you can expect to stay in business long.

Gresham Harkless 12:59

Absolutely, I definitely appreciate that he got to have that different perspective. And just for the record, we are not on a Ferris wheel or hot air balloon. We are talking about business and I appreciate that and know I would it ask you my absolute favourite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So d what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dee Bowden 13:23

Thank you for the question. Being a CEO to me means, that number one, I'm a servant leader first. I'm not just in business to make money but I'm in business to make a difference. And being a CEO means I take the gifts, talents, and skills that God gave me. And I'm looking for ways to add value every single day. Whether it's doing podcasts like this, whether it's writing a book, whether it's an ad, you got 10 minutes, I got this issue, can I talk to you about this and saying yes, and so it means being in service? Because the greatest of the greatest among us is in service first. That's what it means to be the CEO it means being a service first.

Gresham Harkless 14:00

Absolutely. Well, I definitely appreciate you d given us a lot of golden nuggets, you have definitely been of tremendous service to us as entrepreneurs and business owners. I wanted to pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can get ahold of you.

Dee Bowden 14:14

All right, well, thanks one of the things I'd like to tell readers is this. If you are struggling with the collections process and you're like I really need help, do me a favor and reach out to me here at businesssolutionsconsultinggroup.com, there's actually a free download right now called the Five sexual strategies to collect your money it's five essential strategies to collect your money and what is my personal beliefs on how do you effectively collect your money because you have to understand that number one you got to believe in collected, you got to know you can do this. You have to identify the small accounts and then you also have to have a plan and my last thing, your greatest thing is to show gratitude. Like I said earlier, my secret sauce is gratitude.

That's what's been life-changing. And that's what people don't understand is that when you show gratitude, you'll be amazed when people just say thank you. Have you ever noticed that just when you say thank you people like, Oh, hey, you watch people's whole countenance change, because you did something and you're like, hey, thanks. I don't expect it. That's what makes it different. Because in collections it can be seen as being kind of harsh and cruel. And whatever. I'm trying to, I'm not trying, I'm working to change the conversation by telling people what my secret sauce is, which is gratitude.

Gresham Harkless 15:31

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I truly appreciate your time. I appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing. This is not a collection. This is definitely just a podcast, but I thank you as just as well. Definitely gracious for your time and we'll have all those links in the show notes as well. But I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Dee Bowden 15:47

You too. Thanks. Cheers.

Gresham Harkless 15:49

Cheers.

Outro 15:51

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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