Seth Flowers has quit a winning business on purpose, twice. Not because it was failing. Because he’d solved the puzzle and gotten bored of the picture. “Once the painting is done or the puzzle is done, I move on to the next project,” he says, and it’s the closest thing to a mission statement his career has. Insurance agency, home services, a knife sharpening company, now sales leadership at Seth Flowers‘ current stop, Go Big Coaching and Consulting. Chaos, he calls it. Utter chaos.
He landed in Round Rock the way a lot of people do, chasing a job that kept promoting him and moving him, until he decided he was done moving. He started his own insurance business instead. It failed. Not a soft failure either, a real one, right out of the gate. What pulled him back wasn’t a strategy. It was people in this community who told him the truth when he didn’t want to hear it.
Seth has used the same line for years: you can’t read the label from inside the can. Bryan matched it on the spot with the version his own mentor, Roy H. Williams, taught him: you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. Can or bottle, it’s the same lesson. Business owners miss the obvious thing wrecking their own company, the same way Seth missed it the first time his own business failed. He compares owning a business to hitting a piñata blindfolded. The first few swings never land. Somebody has to spin you around first.
It matters here specifically because Round Rock runs on exactly the kind of proximity Seth is talking about. Founders Forum, 1 Million Cups, the Chamber’s Startup Day, all of it exists so somebody can look at your business from outside your bottle and tell you what you can’t see. Seth’s own comeback started at a table with people from this community, not a consultant’s invoice.
What’s the thing in your business right now that everyone around you can see except you?
Key Takeaways From This Episode
- Fixing the symptom doesn’t fix the disease: Seth lost over 100 pounds and later learned he could still be unhealthy underneath the number on the scale. The same trap catches businesses that hit a revenue goal while running on a bank account balance instead of a P&L.
- Run your business off the P&L, not the bank account: Seth has watched owners think they’re flush because the checking account looks fine, while unpaid bills are about to prove otherwise. The P&L is your bloodwork. The bank account is just your mood that day.
- You can’t coach what you haven’t lived, but you can still see it: Seth doesn’t know gym equipment maintenance, but he knows the pattern of problems every owner faces, because he’s lived versions of it himself. Perspective travels across industries even when expertise doesn’t.
- Trust your mentor completely or don’t pay for one: Seth’s advice for anyone hiring a coach is blunt: if you don’t trust them, you won’t listen to them, and the money is wasted either way.
- Round Rock’s business community is the mechanism, not the backdrop: Seth credits the people who came alongside him during his own business failure, not a program or a course, for getting him back on his feet.
You can’t read the label from inside the can.
Seth Flowers, Go Big Coaching and Consulting
You can fix the problem and still have an underlying problem, and not even know it.
Seth Flowers, Go Big Coaching and Consulting
If you’re trusting a mentor and you don’t really trust them, don’t spend the money. It’s a waste.
Seth Flowers, Go Big Coaching and Consulting
Episode Chapters
- [00:00] Meet Seth Flowers — A career built on chaos, on purpose, across insurance, home services, and knife sharpening.
- [02:06] The businesses behind the resume — How a corporate uniform company, a failed insurance startup, and a knife sharpening company all led to Round Rock.
- [05:10] You can’t read the label from inside the can — Seth’s signature line, and the bottle version Bryan matched it with, and what both reveal about why owners can’t see their own blind spots.
- [08:00] The weight of the business you’re carrying — Seth and Bryan compare notes on losing over 100 pounds each and what the number on the scale hides.
- [09:54] Running your business off the bank account — Why owners who quit reviewing their own reports lose the business they built.
- [11:39] The RV life that didn’t match the dream — Seth and his wife sold everything after their son graduated. What actually happened next.
- [16:46] The piñata story — Why the owner never breaks it open on the first swing, and what that means for hiring a mentor.
- [21:06] What makes a coaching relationship worth the money — Seth’s rule for trusting the person you’re paying to tell you the truth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Seth Flowers from Round Rock?
Seth Flowers is a Round Rock business leader who has run an insurance agency, worked in home services, led sales for a national knife sharpening company, and now works in sales leadership while coaching business owners through his own company, Go Big Coaching and Consulting. He’s active in the Round Rock business community and a graduate of the Leadership Round Rock class of 2018.
What does “you can’t read the label from inside the can” mean?
It’s Seth Flowers’ phrase for why business owners often can’t see the exact thing that’s hurting their own company. Bryan Eisenberg has his own version of the same idea, taught to him by his mentor Roy H. Williams: you can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. When you’re deep inside a business every day, you lose the outside perspective needed to spot problems that are obvious to anyone looking in from outside.
Why should I run my business off the P&L instead of my bank account?
Your bank account balance only shows what’s there right now, not what you owe. Seth Flowers explains that owners who track their bank balance instead of their profit and loss statement often discover too late that outstanding bills have already eaten the cash they thought they had.
How do I know if I should trust a business coach or mentor?
Seth Flowers says the test is simple: if you don’t fully trust the person you’re paying, don’t spend the money, because you won’t actually listen to them and the coaching relationship won’t work.
About Seth Flowers
Seth Flowers is a sales leader and business coach based in Round Rock, running Go Big Coaching and Consulting alongside his corporate sales work. He moved to Round Rock to raise his family, joined the Leadership Round Rock class of 2018, and has since built and rebuilt his own businesses across insurance, home services, and B2B sales. He and his wife Shelby have hosted five exchange students through Stony Point High School.
Connect: LinkedIn | Go Big Coaching and Consulting
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Full Episode Transcript
Click to read the full transcript
Bryan: Hi everybody, it’s Bryan Eisenberg and welcome to Rock Solid. I’m joined this week by Seth Flowers. Welcome.
Seth: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Bryan: Your story and your resume are a master class in the boringness of businesses, invisible businesses for the most part until trust breaks. Tell me why you’re so attracted to that, why your life seems to keep repeating this pattern.
Seth: Chaos is what it’s called. Utter chaos. I am intrigued constantly by issues, and I have a unique ability to see the missing piece to a puzzle. I like finding it, solving it, and then once the puzzle is done, moving on to the next project. I joke with my wife that I don’t have hobbies. I have business and I love tinkering with businesses.
Bryan: Let’s go into some of the businesses you’ve been in. You’ve been in insurance, knife sharpening, give the community a sense of your background here in Round Rock.
Seth: I started in the uniform and facility solutions business, working for Unifirst. I was promoted three times over nine years, moving my family each time. We landed in Round Rock, and I left to get back into restaurants, where I got my start. Then they wanted to promote me again and move me again, and I didn’t want to do that, so I started my own insurance business. It failed, wasn’t a huge success out of the gate. I was blessed to be part of the Round Rock business community, and a local business asked me to come work for them in home services. Eventually I missed being part of a business more than solopreneurship, so I went to work for a knife sharpening company for two years, and now I’m director of sales for Citywide Facility Solutions, helping grow their business across central Texas.
Bryan: I want to dive into this chaos thing. What’s the common theme that creates most of that chaos in these businesses?
Seth: It’s a saying I’ve used multiple times. You can’t read the label from inside the can.
Bryan: I fancied it up a little. You can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle. So I guess you’re going for the beer can, I’m going for the bottle of wine.
Seth: We’re on the same page here. When you’re inside the can, you’re in the ingredients, blindfolded by all of it. I can look from the outside and say, did you realize somebody dumped a pound of sugar into you? And they go, what, no they didn’t. Yes they did. It’s not about my arrogance of saying I know more than you. It’s just being able to remove something so you can thrive.
Bryan: It really came from failure, didn’t it?
Seth: If I didn’t have good mentors and support people in Round Rock who came alongside me when my business failed and said, yeah Seth, but, I never would have turned around and seen a different perspective. I was inside the can. I couldn’t see the things coming at me because they come at you so fast.
Bryan: Let’s talk about the weight for a moment. I heard you and I have something in common, we’ve both lost over 100 pounds. What was your biggest lesson learned in that weight loss that you’ve applied to helping businesses?
Seth: That you can fix the problem and still have an underlying problem, and not even know it. You lose the weight, make a few changes, but you still got high cholesterol, you’re still craving things that aren’t good for you. There’s a big difference between being skinny and being healthy. It’s the same thing in business. I was talking to a business owner who said, my business is failing because I’m running it off my bank account, and I didn’t realize I had all this accounts payable still that needed to go out. How many businesses run off the bank account versus the P&L? The P&L is your bloodwork.
Bryan: Talk about the RV life. You and your wife sold the house and everything after your son graduated high school.
Seth: We were weekend warriors in an RV for years and loved it. My wife wanted to travel and sell everything that tied us down. So we did it when our son graduated. Life hit. We ended up traveling to take care of family members who got sick, going from working at the beach in California to working out of an RV resort in Belton with military personnel there for two months. It wasn’t what we wanted, but it made a big difference. We were tied to possessions and by getting rid of them, we got to live the life we wanted.
Bryan: What’s the weight you see most business owners carrying today?
Seth: Expectations. You paint a picture of what you expect and it doesn’t align once you get into it, and you’re afraid to realign your expectations. With RV life, we thought it was the RV we were chasing. We were really just tired of being tied to a house, a yard, a pool, all the maintenance.
Bryan: I think that’s the huge advantage of a great mentor or coach, helping you see where that passion came from, where that story came from that fuels you forward.
Seth: I’ve been mentoring a young man running a maintenance company for gym equipment. He sat across from me and said, Seth, I thought all these problems were my problems, and I was terrified to share them because it meant I was a failure. I don’t know anything about gym maintenance equipment, but I know the problems he’s going through because I’ve worked with hundreds of business owners going through the exact same problems. It’s not a self problem, it’s a common problem, just a different mask.
Bryan: I heard a story about hitting a piñata as a kid. Sometimes the first kid never breaks it.
Seth: They bring in a new employee, a coach, and who gets to hit it at the end? The birthday boy. The owner always gets the ultimate reward. You know how to run that business, and then somebody puts a blindfold on you, spins you around, and you can’t even find the piñata anymore. That’s what a mentor, a coach, a community like Round Rock does for you, if you’re willing to be authentic and vulnerable.
Bryan: Any advice for someone hiring a coach or mentor?
Seth: If you’re trusting a mentor and you don’t really trust them, don’t spend the money. It’s a waste. You’re not going to listen to them, it’s not going to be worthwhile. I’ve had big businesses pay significant money and three months after I left, they took everything right back to where it was. That one-to-one coaching with an entrepreneur who gets to call the shots, that’s who we love to help.
Bryan: If people want to reach out to you, what’s the best way?
Seth: On LinkedIn, Seth Flowers, you can find me there, or by email. I love helping people, I love helping businesses grow, I love this community and always will.
Bryan: Well, we appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.
Seth: Thank you very much, Bryan.
