July 7, 2025

Who is Michael Barbarita?

Who is Michael Barbarita?
Who is Michael Barbarita – Introduction to the background of Michael Barbarita of Next Step CFO and Powerful Business Strategies and how he can help small business owners.

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Hi, you live then too, Sue, Wow, great you.

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It's the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man

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W four c Y Radio. And I'm very excited about

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our next guest because this is a positively pipeman guest. Okay,

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he has a show on our station. But get that

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for a second. He's just brilliant in what he projects

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about powerful business strategies. So what I like to know

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is who is Michael Barbarita? Anyway, Well, thank you, thank

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you very much.

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Great to be here, by the way, thank you for

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having me.

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Oh my pleasure.

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And what I'd like to do is just, you know,

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give you a little story of my background. So back

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in night ninety nine, I just sold my second business successfully.

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My first business sold for multiple seven figures, and I

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had this attitude that I could do no wrong. You know,

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after owning and exiting two successful businesses, I thought I

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had the keys to the business kingdom, and then quite frankly,

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that I could succeed in any business. So in all

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of this glory, I started an outpatient rehabilitation facility called

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Freedom Therapy Center. Now, in all the successful businesses that

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I owned, I always and this is this is the

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critical party. I always implemented business and financial strategies that

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my competition wasn't doing. For example, my first business was

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a ski specialty retail business, and I grew the company

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from two and a half million to eight million in

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five years. And the contributing factor to that growth was

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a strategy that we preached called a risk reversal, where

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the seller in the transaction takes most of all the risk.

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And one of the problems that the customer had in

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the ski industry is they really never knew if the

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ski they were being sold by some hot shot ski

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salesperson was the right ski for them until they went

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up in the mountain and tried it out. So what

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we did is we implemented what we call the ski guarantees.

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Ski the ski three times you don't like it, bring

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it back for a brand new pair, and keep bringing

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it back until we get it right now. Now, keep

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in mind what happens when skis hit the slope. They'd

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depreciate dramatically. It's like driving a car out of a

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show room. So my managers and my employees thought I

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was absolutely out of my mind because all they could

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do is they envisioned thousands of pair of skis coming

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back from the field and them having to do all

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this extra work and us losing a ton of money.

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But my mindset was a little different, you know, and

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during the course of the next shows and stuff, as

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we as we go through our journey, I'm going to

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talk about how important mindset is. My mindset was that

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all the customer really wanted was a great ski experience.

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They went out to you know, put one over on

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the retailer. So what we did when we implemented, we

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the first year we implemented the program, we sold eight

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thousand pair of skis, a twenty five percent increase from

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the previous year, and only eight came back. And next

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year we sold the bill. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And so

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eleven thousand pair of skis the next year and only

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fourteen came back. You know, it's it's something.

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See, I'm like, who you were talking about.

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I'm imagining when you first said this, I'm imagining like

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somebody like wipes out on the slopes the ski, the

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skis snap in half and they bring them back because

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you know, hey, it didn't work for them, right right?

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No, Yeah, that you know, all all of skier wants

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at least. This is what my research, all we showed

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and how we ran our business is that all they

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wanted was a great ski experience. It's not a lot

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to ask. Yeah, But then when I fast forward to

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Freedom Therapy Center, which was the patient rehabilitation facility, I

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must have taken stupid pills because I did exactly exactly

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what my competition was doing. The way I marketed. I

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bought over two thousand chocolate cakes, and I tried to

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bribe front office staffs to get to the doctors. That's

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what everybody was doing. I offered services the exact same

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way my competition was offering. Now, no compelling offers, no

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strategic direction, and and and I know how to manage

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cash flow because I'm a financial guy. Oh god, we

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were averageing cash every month. I had to go into

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my savings to fund the operating losses we're having.

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And nobody wants to operate a business like.

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That, No, trust me. That that's where that's yeah, that's

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where you really learn, uh, how how horrible a business

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could be when when when you have cash flow problems,

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it's just it's just off. Everybody's calling everybody. And you

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know what was interesting too, is I made one of

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those promises to myself that we business owners always make,

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you know, just certain promises. I promised myself I wouldn't

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put any more money into the company bank account for

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my savings, and of course I broke that promise. But

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you know, thank god I wasn't married. I'd be under

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the pressure of being told to get a real job,

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and I was staying up nights wondering what I was

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doing wrong. I was waking up in the middle of

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the night with cold sweats, worried about cash flow and

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all the customers I was losing. There was a million

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wednesdays where there was no money in the company bank account,

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the payroll do on Friday, all the employees were leaving.

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They saw a sinking ship. People we owed money to

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were calling left and right. There was personal liability glore,

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and then it just all ended. I just cool. I

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just fell on my face. And it's funny, you know.

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I learned two things from that experience falling on my face.

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Number one, I learned that one of the hardest steps

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to take in life is the step after the fall,

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the next step.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So thirty days after I sold Freedom Therapy, sorry, closed

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Freedom therapy center. Next step CFO was born. And then

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the second thing I learned is I'm no longer doing

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what my competition is doing.

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I think that's a right there.

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Like even I've seen, Okay, there's places where they have

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pizza restaurants and one closes and the new one opens up,

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and it closes and the new one opens up, and

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it's like, I always think to myself, do these people

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not get that every other pizza place has failed either

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they have to do something different or don't do pizza.

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Yeah. I noticed that too in a few places in

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our market that repetitive same business, open, closed, open clobsa

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same industry, same same thing. It is really crazy. And

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so yeah, so you know, if you take all of

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my background, I've got about forty years of business ownership

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experience and you know, I uh I you mentioned the

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radio show. I also wrote a book called Powerful Business

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Strategies Coocident. I am a magazine contributor. You know, I

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grew up business from two and a half million to

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eight million in the ski industry, and uh, you know,

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I'm also what's called a certified profit coach Dean. And

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let me tell you what a certified profit coach is

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you know, there's there's so many coaches and consultants that

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really don't know how to grow a small business. And

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the reason why it's being a certified profit coach is

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so important is we go through rigorous training to prove

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that we do know how to grow a small business.

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And there are very few coaches and consultants out there

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that go through that type of vigorous training to prove

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that they can actually do it. And so I'm really

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proud of that designation. And I believe that anybody who

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doesn't hire a certified profit coach, and there's only about

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one hundred and fifty of us, it's just making a

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big mistake.

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Well I'll even add to that, okay, because you just

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hit one of my things, because I have certifications in coaching,

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and it so boggles my mind these people that they

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wake up in the morning they decide to be a

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coach with no qualifications, no certifications, no education, no nothing,

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And it's like.

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Oh my god, it's like everybody's a coach.

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And I have to say that people that are listening

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right now, watching right now, you wouldn't hire a lawyer

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that didn't pass the bar. You would didn't hire a

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serified financial planner that wasn't a cerfied financial planner, you know.

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And so I think that the professional designation, specifically like

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the one that you have, it is absolutely necessary if

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you're going to be coaching somebody. I mean, I had

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somebody I know that funny enough, he was a wealth coach, okay,

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but he both he drove a beat up pickup truck

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that was all rusty and never made money in his life. Like, listen,

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if you've become wealthy and lost it all, I'm okay

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with you being a coach.

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You have the roadmap to get there.

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Okay, we all fall off the mountain, okay, But if

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you have never been to the mountain, how do you

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give people the GPS directions to get there? You know,

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you've never been there. And so that's why I just

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wanted to add that's so important, and that people do

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business with people like yourself that put in the time

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and effort to become a professional, and they don't just

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wake up in the morning and say, oh, I'll be somebody's.

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Coach, right.

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And you know, the interesting thing too, is that every

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CFO in the Fortune five hundred has to be strategic

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Yet many fractional CFOs get away without having to be strategic.

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In other words, many fractional CFOs just do the stuff

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that is really what most people think CFOs do, which

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is the business and cash flow forecasting, identifying critical metrics

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in the business, solving cash flow problems. But we add

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that element of business strategy, which is something that like

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I said, if you didn't, if you're a CFO in

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the Fortune five hundred and you're not, you don't understand

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business strategy, you don't get the job.

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And that, yeah, it's like a chess game to me.

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You can't play chess unless you don't know all the

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strategic moves of what's gonna happen, like you should not.

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And I think your experience also leads to that, Like

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forget the good experience for a second. The failing experience

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is what allows you to be able to help others

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to be strategic because you can anticipate because listen, you

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know before that happened, and you even alluded to it,

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and we all get like this, we think we're unstoppable.

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We don't think about that. We can you know that

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we have to strategize against what could happen in a

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negative way, because it's not gonna happen to us until

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it does. And then you have somebody like you that

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can really and give people the insight to the strategy

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so that they don't walk through the same steps you

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did on the negative side, but do walk through the

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same steps on the positive side.

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Exactly and tell. And so that's basically ended my background.

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And you know, one of the reasons why I went

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into this this business is because I learned so much

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from the business experience that I had. Yeah that you know,

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like now, you never lived long enough to see it all,

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I'll say, I'll still say that, but I believe I

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have seen a lot, a lot of a lot of

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different things. And I have I have four clients in uh,

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in Denmark and around the world as well as in

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the United uh several clients in the United States.

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Nice And so, how do people reach out to you?

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Check out your website, check you on socials, contact you

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so they could get some strategies for profit and success.

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Well, here's the best way. Uh uh. You know one

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of the things that I do, I'm always we're always

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updating our book. Why is that? Well, this is always changing.

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I mean, just a couple of months ago, it was

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you know, higher interest rates and high inflation, and you

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know today it's similar, but we're now adding tariffs to

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the mix. So we're constantly testing our strategies. We know

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they'd work in any economic environment, but we need industry

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information to prove what we already know. And so what

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we'd like to we'd like doing is we love interviewing

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business owners for the next edition of our book and

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get their insights. And the way it works, the way

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the interview works is it's sixty minutes on zoom. I

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present a strategy, I present strategies from the book, and

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then I ask the interviewe what they think the impact

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would be if somebody in their industry implemented that strategy,

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and then I documented for the book. And the way

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to get a book interview is just go to NEXTSTEPCFO

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dot net, forward slash forward slash contact, fill out the content,

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and in the message box just put the word book

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interview and I'll send you a calendar link to schedule

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a book interview with me.

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Nice And then how about let's tell everybody about your show,

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how they can see it live, how they can catch

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the podcast, all that good stuff.

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Okay. Yes, our podcast is located at Powerful Business Strategies

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dot com. Our show ams on w FOCY on Mondays

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at new Eastern time. It's an hour show. It's called

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Powerful Business Strategies, just like our book, and we go

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over business and financial strategies that your competition isn't doing.

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I love it. I love it.

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And let's tell people about the book and how they

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could get their hands on the book as well.

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Okay. One of the great things about the book is

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it's free. I give it away. It's my contribution to

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the business world. There is some very valuable strategies in

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that book, both business and financial by the way, and

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you could just go to my website next step CFO

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dot net and download it, simple as that.

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Nice. Well, I love it.

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I can't wait to talk to you again next week

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on the Positively Pipeman segment of the Adventures of Pipeman.

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And thanks for being here. And I look forward to

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a lot more great strategies for our listeners and viewers.

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And I know you help a lot of people. Everybody

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needs to reach out to you if they have a business,

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because to me, it's the only thing that's going to make.

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Their dreams come true.

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There you go.

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Thanks a lot, Michael for having me, Thank you for

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listening to the adventures of Pipemin. I'm w for CUI Radio.