59. Business Profit Coaching To Keep More of Your Money with Lisa Campbell

You are listening to the Wealth Without Bay street podcast, a Canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe, as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on.

Money isn't complicated. Your relationship with money is complicated. And we are just incredibly honored to be joined today by the one, the only, Lisa Campbell. Now, Lisa Campbell, aside from being a great speaker and a profit coach and an entrepreneur, she's also going to talk to us about her first book that is scheduled to be launched likely around the time that this episode airs. And so, without further ado, I want to take a moment on behalf of our entire Wealth Without Bay street audience to give a warm welcome to Lisa Campbell. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited to do this. I love talking to you guys.

Lisa's incredible. So for anybody who's tuning in on the YouTubes or the Facebooks or the Instagram or wherever our podcast episodes get launched and communicated forward to, you're in for a real treat. Lisa is just exceptional. And one of the things that we're going to dive into a little bit that you may already be familiar with if you've tuned into previous episodes is we were also blessed to have some time with Mike Malkowitz, the co founder, the co developer, if you will, of the Profit first model. And so, Lisa, we're going to dive in and have some conversation, maybe share with us a little bit about the clientele that you most love to serve.

I love to most serve anybody who wants to build their business or who's struggling in their business because we all go into business for, you know, we want more time, we want more money, we want more freedom. And quite often that's not the case. You guys know that we, you know, you have an idea, we go into business and soon we run into cash flow problems and then we're not getting paid. And then, you know, we're having troubles at home because we're hiding things from our spouse. We're getting further and further in the hole. And I'm a big believer that your business should serve you and not the other way around. You don't want to be a slave to your business. So I love to work with people who are currently drowning in debt or who are doing really, really well, who we can make them even better because, you know, look what you guys do, right? I want every business owner to be profitable so that they have the opportunity to have their money, make money. Because once you are profitable, you have to look at wealth building. Especially as an entrepreneur. We don't have pension plans. Right. We have to do that for ourselves. So if I can work with a client and then hand them off to you so that they can build their wealth, how phenomenal is that?

Love it, love it, love it. And so, you know, you really got focused on prioritizing profit. I think one of the things I read on your website is that, you know, your life gets to be able to be filled with the freedom of choice once you prioritize profit. And so maybe if you didn't mind, just share with our listeners a little bit about how you're. How the journey of where you were in your business and somehow profit first as an idea landed on your plate and it kind of changed everything for you.

Yeah, somebody mentioned profit first in a group. And I'm thinking, what is this profit first thing? Like, I've never heard of it. I hadn't read the book, immediately got the book and I was like, wow, this just makes so much sense. Yeah, there it is. Right? So immediately. But like, without any deep knowledge or training or anything like that, I'm like, I can do this. I'm going to do this for myself. Because I will be honest with you guys. I went through a very difficult divorce, separation. We were drowning in debt when we were married because he's one of these guys that it's all about how it looks. You gotta have the fancy cars on the driveway. You know, inside of the house looked like crap. No one wanted to see that. But there was all this stuff that made it look like things were very successful. So when I left him, I also walked away with a mountain of debt over six figures, okay. And lost my house and all that stuff. And then I had three kids to support on my own, right? So starting over at the age of 46 was a big deal. So I thought, I've got to get a handle on how the money moves through my business. I was making money, but then, you know, the tax bill would come up and the HST bill would come up and like, okay, what am I going to do? Right. So I started to implement it on my own. And by devoting money to profit first, no pun intended there, but putting money into profit first and making sure that I reserve my taxes, I was able to operate within my. Within my means of where I should be operating as far as my expenses were concerned. I was able to pay myself consistently so that I knew that for on my personal side, what I had to work with every month versus what my expenses were, make sure that I kept everything in line. And the building up of the profit was the key thing because we have this thing that we do with all of our clients. If there's debt in the client's business, you tackle the debt first. Okay. So meaning if we're going to reserve profit aside, we don't just take the profit and go on vacation, we snowball the debt. So. So that we make sure that we get rid of it very, very quickly. And once that disappears, then we can start looking at banking profit. So you want to take half of it, build it into your reserves, and then you want to take the other half. And that's where I went into, like the financial end of it, where I could, after I had gotten rid of my six figures worth of debt under two years, by the way, didn't take.

Congratulations.

Yeah. And like, what a freedom. Like, what a. Oh, my gosh, like I have no debt whatsoever. Then I was able to start banking up funds so that I could start looking at wealth management. I mean, I'm 50 years old, right. And you know, nobody's going to pay for my retirement, so. And having had to start over again at 46, I'm in a little bit of a hurry here. Right. So that's what I'm doing.

Don't look a day over 25.

Thank you. Zoom has good filters.

What I think I heard there is that. So once you focused on putting profit first and as you're teaching that to other people, it's not a. Now that we've got this profit over here, we don't take it like it's not profit disappears first also, it's profit gets reallocated appropriately with good decision making and coaching first.

Yes.

And then we can start to put it to work in other areas.

Yeah. And that's the thing. So people read the book and then go, oh, I can do this. Which is exactly what I did. Right. But then when I decided I'm going to go further and I'm going to become certified in the process, there are so many little things that you don't get from the book. The book's a great starting point, It's a great overall concept. But this is why we stress the value of working with someone who is certified as a profit first professional. Because things will come up. For example, when, you know, people were on an allocation rhythm where they were putting money aside for taxes and for all these different things, and then the pandemic hit and revenues drop off by 50%. Well, what do we do? Right. You can't get that from a book, right? Not only that, but think about people that decide they need to start saving money, yet they've got all this debt behind them. What is the point in saving money if you're spending money on interest? Let's get rid of that. So it's all about strategy. And I always start with the individual client. What are your personal goals? What do you want your business to do for you? What is your monthly nut at home? Right, that you must have? What is your dream monthly nut kind of thing? Where do you want to go in a year, two years, five years? Do you want a vacation home? Do you want to put your kids in the fanciest school? What is it that is important to you? Do you want to build your wealth as far as your portfolios are concerned? So we start there and we reverse engineer basically what the business needs to do for the client and to service those goals. So it's such a holistic approach. And when we have meetings with clients who have actually gone through the process and they've gotten out of their debt and they're taking more money home, and the arguments have stopped at home because they're not secretly working on the line of credit to fund payroll and the wife doesn't know about it, or the husband doesn't know about it. It's just an overall sense of, wow. I took this business that was failing miserably from a cash perspective and I fixed it. And to be a part of that as a profit first professional is very, very rewarding.

Well, and I've seen you firsthand looking through assessments, and it's so important for people to recognize, I think that if you want to make change, then you have to face reality. And that's something that I find that each time that I've seen you looking through an assessment, reviewing the numbers, there are things that immediately jump off the page at you where you already have a good sense of the reason why the numbers are the way they are.

Yes. Numbers don't lie.

Exactly. And so that puts you in a really good position, you know, to be able to obviously confront that in a constructive way and then provide good, really good, tangible next steps that are gradual. So working through this profit first methodology and the profit first approach, it's not a light switch change, it's a gradual incremental shift. But once you get there, and we can speak from firsthand experience, I mean, we of course, are incredible proponents of the model. We love it, we live it, and we share it. We're surprised Mike Malkowitz didn't send us a message to tell us that his book sales went straight up into orbit after the meeting that we did with him because we had so many clients who are reaching out, going, hey, we're reading the book. We're immersing ourself in the message. And that the profit first approach is, you know, we've all heard the cliche, the, you know, hey, this is a game changer. This is transformational. This will absolutely change the way that you deal with money that's left over to operate and to take care of things and to prioritize this profit first so that you can build the premise that you can actually do this. And the more you do it, the more you want to do it. And so I think for any of our listeners, you really do have to take a look at Lisa Campbell's website. Lisa Campbell, profitcoach.com Again, that's lisacampbellprofitcoach.com and we will include the links in the show notes for everybody who's tuning in, listening because you have got to get more acquainted with Lisa. She is absolutely, in my view, she's exceptional.

Well, thank you for that.

Lisa, being being the Canadian kind of presence for the profit first training methodology here in the country. Maybe speak a little bit to that. You know, you got very kind of aggressive on your approach at taking this information in getting your certification and and now moving it into a period today where you're kind of in the train to trainer role. You're helping facilitate individuals, bookkeepers, accounting professionals, financial professionals and so forth. How to help implement this process for business owners, for the clients that they most like to serve. Talk, talk to us a little bit about that and what made what brought that decision up for you.

That was actually a journey and it was a really cool journey because so I had started off years ago where I have a bookkeeping firm and when I became certified in Profit first, I made it a profit strategy bookkeeping firm, meaning that if you wanted to work with us, you absolutely had to work with as far as implementing these strategies for profit first because I can't work with somebody who's moving money to cover minimum payments and stressing out with their debt when I have the solution for them. So I got to that point, but only because I was able to systemize my business. So I basically created what I call an ecosystem for my business where we have the right clients coming in who understand what it is that we do the solutions that we provide to the problems that they have. And I was able to do this in a way that freed me up so that I wasn't the one doing the day to day compliance work. And I have my team doing that now and I take the output of that work and I do my analysis and I work on my strategies and I communicate with my clients to get them to their goals. And so what happened with that is I guess I started posting it on social media, what I was doing. And people started saying to bookkeepers and accountants would say to me, how did you do this and how did you do that? And so for over a year I'm brewing in my head how can I present this in a way that makes sense to other accounting professionals? And so the Accelerate to Advisor program was born. And that is a mastermind program where I take higher level bookkeepers and accountants through a 12 month process to do exactly the same thing in their business so that they are out of that technical role and now into more of an advisor role. And the reason why I say it was a journey is because it came naturally. I love profit first. People can see that I'm passionate about it every time I talk about it. And so I started talking with home based profit first in the States because there was no representation in Canada. And I thought, well, if I can position these higher level bookkeepers and accountants so that they can do the same thing that I did, why not actually be able to teach them the skills and certify them in what I'm so.

Passionate about that is so good. And that's where those industries need to shift to. Because the days of just looking in the rearview mirror and assessing. Here's what happened in the last quarter, the last fiscal year, the last few fiscal years, versus what are we doing to plan for the future? And what type of advice are these entrepreneurs or business owners receiving? Exactly. And it's so, you know, these, these accounting firms, these bookkeeping firms, they get so entrenched and so busy in the churn. Yes, we've got a return to prepare, we've got bookkeeping entries to make. And it's just this churn of activity, but nobody's standing back or stepping back and saying, what are we doing to help our client be more profitable? What are we doing to help our client achieve the specific, do we even know what their financial objectives are and what role can we play in helping them get there? And so what you're doing, Lisa, is probably a little more innovative than you may even know. I mean, it's obviously having an impact. Your business is rocketing along and you can be proud of all the accomplishments that you've made.

Well, thank you.

That you will make. And we're going to make your book available. We want to hear about your new book now. This is a Wealth Without Bay street exclusive reveal.

Well, okay, first of all, my book. My book actually speaks to that point, but it is more intended for the bookkeepers and accountants. Okay. And I say it speaks to that point for this reason. Keep in mind, most bookkeepers and accountants are also entrepreneurs.

Right?

They are struggling. They build their business up one client at a time, and it's fine to give that stellar service and all the reactionary items and.

What do you call it, scope creep, where all the work just keeps building and building and the money's not really reflecting that. So they're in a stressful position. They don't have time to think about, how can I help my client. They also tend to not recognize their own value. The more experienced you are as a bookkeeper or an accountant, the more knowledge you have banked up in here. You've seen all sorts of stuff happen with your clients, especially if you have a wide range of client, you've seen. So things happen. And I know myself personally, I would work with clients that were struggling with debt and issues, and I think I can help this person. Like, I know this is not the way I would do it. I didn't necessarily have the tools back then, before I was certified with Profit first. But I knew that this was wrong. This is not how you operate a business. So my focus is to position the accountants and bookkeepers first so that they can focus and then they can work on their entrepreneurs. Because I'm going to have a greater impact and a greater reach if I can actually work with the people that are closest to the numbers who can help those entrepreneurs. So the book is primarily about how to partner with your clients, how to recognize the value that you do have, how to expand on some of the offerings you already have, and how to specialize. Maybe in a certain. Maybe you are a specialist with certain processes, or maybe you're a specialist in a certain industry. You know, things that the average bookkeeper would not know. Right. Or the average accountant would not know. And if you build on that and you are talking to entrepreneurs in that field or in that area of struggle, that's where you can form that partner relationship and actually make an impact with your client and change the way their business is running. So that's primarily what the book is about. There is another book coming down the road. Not yet. That will be for everyone.

And we're going to have the exclusive on that, too. Lisa's already assured me of that.

Oh, yeah.

I think Lisa just invited herself back to an podcast episode.

I'm pretty sure she did.

Oh, I'll do that.

We would. We would absolutely love that. And I think it's cool, because what I really heard you say is, you know, the way I interpreted that is it's collaboration breeds impact. The ability to create these collaborations creates that. That impact. And. And by the virtue of your book being there, being available to these, These bookkeeper and accounting professionals, you can deepen your own impact, which is almost an extension thereof of what Profit first has done to you. So it's. It's this, a pebble in the pond, expansion kind of effect taking place, which is very, very cool.

Right, right. And think about it like entrepreneurs go into business and, you know, it used to be that they had to hire a bookkeeper because they had to file their taxes. Right. They wouldn't actually use the information. And then the CPA would be doing, you know, their tax returns at the end of the year. There wasn't really a lot of conversation about what's happening in my business. And when you can. When you can, when you're that close into the numbers and you can actually work with creating change, it makes such a big difference. There is no reason why any entrepreneur this day and age should be struggling unless your business model is wrong. But again, we can determine that because one of the first things we do is look at historically what has been going on in your business. We need to know where you've been. And there's no shame. There's no, like, our coaches are all very well versed in how you talk to your clients. This is a very sensitive subject. I've had grown men, men on zoom meetings in tears with me because they've realized what has happened in their business, and they think, I'm so drowning, I'm never going to see my way out of this. And our job as professionals is to get them out of that in a way that's kind and encouraging and supportive, and that's the whole thing. So we look at, where have you been? Where do you want to go? And we do that over a gradual process so that it's realistic, because we don't want you to go backwards, and we don't want you to give up and think this is never going to work. And we also have to have the Ability to pivot. Like I said, something like Covid comes up, you've got to be able to pivot because things are going to happen. What if you get hurt? What if your production lines are down? What if something goes wrong? What if there's a change to like, I don't know, something really catastrophic happens. You need that specialized bookkeeper or accountant in your back pocket who can walk you through that process. It's hard enough to go alone in entrepreneurship. You know that. It's very, very hard. So when you've got someone like that knows how to navigate those waters like that in your back pocket, it's a game changer.

Oh, it sure is. And you know, we can speak to you from firsthand experience that when Covid, you know, when things got to the degree where we knew, okay, this is going to be obviously very serious, we don't know what the ultimate impact is going to be. And we already had a cadence in place. We already had a rhythm of.

Setting capital. A portion of every gross revenue dollar that flowed to the business would be earmarked as a continuing capital surplus reserve.

Very important.

And that money is there, it's available to create that smoothing effect so that when you run into a variability in cash flow, you run into an obviously an unplanned impact, you know, on your business. Well, when we sat down and talked about it as a group, we said, look, one thing that we need to do, and this is actually the first time that we've ever revealed this on, you know, to our listeners, but we sat down as a group and we said, okay, look, we've got plan A and plan B. So plan A is that we sit down, we talk to our entire team and we say, look, we can either advance or retreat. We can't do both. Pick one now. But plan B.

What I refer to as our catastrophe plan, what do we do if we need to immediately shift to a skeleton crew? Who's going to be impacted? How are we going to manage through that? It was planning for it, but what ended up happening is our business ended up going in the total opposite direction. It just literally skyrocketed. And so the reason I'm sharing this is because what you're describing is impactful for existing business owners, but it's also impactful for people who are just at that point where they're ready to get started.

If you can embrace this profit first approach right from the inception of your business, oh my goodness, you'll be light years ahead of your peer group.

Absolutely. When you think about it, if you're just starting out, you're already. You've bypassed the whole I'm drowning in debt issue. Yeah, right. Because if you continuously have to borrow to sustain your business, your model is off. Definitely. We have to stop that immediately and figure out why and then fix it. But when you think about the average small business entrepreneur, somebody opens up shop and, you know, little by little sales start coming in and then more sales start coming in. And I remember this specifically when I was growing my bookkeeping business. You know, you'd have a few clients and then all of a sudden you're making some pret. Decent coin, right? And you think, I've got this great amount coming in every month and all of a sudden I need a new TV and I need to go on vacation. And because the money's there, all of a sudden things are, I'm spending more because it's there. Right. But what people don't take into consideration is happens very, very gradually, but it happens all the time. They don't think about their gsthst, they don't think about the tax bill that's coming at the end of the year to cra, right? And they're spending that, they're mixing it all in with all the other cash and they're not separating it out from the beginning. And when you separate those amounts out and they're in separate accounts and you don't even think about it because you know that you, you can't spend that amount of money and then you look at just your operating expense account, that's what you can spend. That is a game changer because you are not going to run into problems with the CRA down the road because it's not just the amount you owe. So it's the failure to file, typically it's the late payments and then you're stressed out. And so now what happens is you now have this huge debt and maybe business takes a downturn and you think, okay, now I'm not making anywhere near what I was making and I have to pay this debt from last year when I was doing really well and I can't really take that vacation back because I already went on it, you know, that sort of thing. So what we're trying to do with new business startups is to get them on the right track from the beginning. Always know that, you know, a certain percentage of every dollar that you bring in goes here, goes there and goes there, and it's for an intended purpose. And what I always tell clients and whoever I'm talking to about profit first is every dollar in your business has a job, and it's up to you to tell it what that job is. It's not random. It ha. You have to be very, very intentional. And like, for me, right now, my intention is wealth building. I've told you, like, I've got to make sure that I'm doing things on the right way. I didn't have to do that. I could just, you know, go do whatever I wanted to do. But you have to be very strategic in how you're spending your money. And this is why I say it's not complicated. It's, you know, people have issues with, I can't make too much money because that makes me look greedy. That's not true. Because the more money you make, the more you can give back in different ways. As entrepreneurs, we have a responsibility to be profitable. We may have team involved. Right. If we want to have impact in this world, we have to be able to contribute financially. Because not everybody's born to be an entrepreneur. Right. Those of us that are have the ability and the responsibility to make the money, to make change.

Absolutely. And the world looks at us like we're weird.

I know, but it's so not difficult. You guys know that it's very simple. Once you figure out how money works, it's very simple. And there's never a point where something can't be fixed. So if anybody's listening, thinking, oh, yeah, if I had known that back then, I would have done it. But now I'm up to my eyeballs in debt and I can't pay payroll, and nothing can help me. Absolutely. This can fix your problem.

That's so good, Rich.

Well, you know, I was thinking about, you know, the. The experience. You kind of outlined him like, yeah, you're right. I guess you really can't get the money from the vacation back. I tried that one time. You know, WestJet yelled at me.

Yeah, no doubt.

The resort didn't give me my money back. I'm like, you're right. Once you spent it, it's kind of gone. No sense of humor at all. Those guys. Crazy.

Well, we're excited about your new book, and I'm sure you are, too. And it's coming out right away. And I'm guessing the process writing a book for the first time is a bit of a new opening experience. But I get the sense, Lisa, that you're an avid learner. You seem voracious, attacking new knowledge.

I'm constantly learning, and even on that subject, I'm a big Believer in coaching. I'm always preaching, if you want to learn something, go find somebody who's done what you want to do and learn from them. It's very, very important. I do that in my programs as well. But writing this book, I actually partnered with Nicole Gebhard, who runs Niche Press Works, and she has a whole process to follow, because to just sit there and say, I'm going to write a book is one thing, right. But to have a process to follow. And then I got the thrill of working with Michael Haig, who is a story master who has worked with Will Smith and all these famous people. And it was really cool. And he just knows everything. In fact, that little clap thing you did at the beginning, I learned what that was all about as far as how to line the reels up and that sort of thing. So a wealth of information. And it's really, really important to lean on those people who know what they're doing. For example, when I get a client to a profitable point and they now have money to spend, I'm not going to go tell them how to invest it, because that's not my wheelhouse. I know people like you that I could say, you need to go talk to them because they are the ones that are going to. They're the next level. So, yes, I am constantly learning. I'm always being coached for whatever it is that I'm trying to do. And I get a thrill out of just making it better and better and better, because then I know that I can give more.

That is such a incredible philosophy and attitude. It's a wonderful attitude, and it comes back in spades. Yeah, it really does.

It's important. You know, I had a good upbringing, and I think it's. It's really important. And I think, you know, having gone through that situation that I went through where the finance control was so opposite to the way I thought about it and the way I was raised, it was. I found it really, really like an internal struggle. It was almost like every day I had to get up and fight the negative energy first to just even get to neutral before I could bump myself up to being positive. So, you know, what things.

I'm a big believer in, we learn from everything that happens. I don't have any resentment or anything like that. I learned a lot. I learned what I'm capable of. I learned that I can help other people who've gone through similar situations so that they maybe don't have to go through as much. And again, it all stems back to money gives you Freedom of choice. It gives you the power to help other people. It gives you the ability to give back. And it's not complicated to figure out, but you definitely have to lean on the people who know how to help you.

You've got to have a good coach. You've got to have a good coach.

We're pretty big proponents of coaching. We had a great coach and a mentor, our Nelson Nash. And of course, his book inspired us to do what we do. And I thought it was perfect when Jason. I'm not sure exactly how he stumbled across the Profit first book exactly, but. But, you know, there's almost like they're two totally different books, but they have this. It's almost like they could be connected in some way because of what it is we do on a daily basis, teaching our clients on the process, becoming your own banker. And you know, well, you need a place to store profit, and you need a place to store that capital reserve so that when the things change, when the pandemic hits, you have ability to access it when you need. And so what a great, great combination of mirroring two wonderful ideas together to help businesses and families so that they can be more profitable and have more choices.

Yeah. And think about it. Profit first is a tool, right. It's the envelope system for business. So our Profit first professionals, they use it as a tool. I mean, I know you guys have had conversations with other members who are in different aspects of the business, and we all use it in a different way. It's not cookie cutter. Right. It's reliant on our expertise and our experience in what it is that we do in order to be able to help the client. So, you know, what I do may not work for you as a client, but it might work for your partner over there. And we need to have that variety, but we also bring in other tools. So, like, you're talking about, you know, the wealth without Wall street. And I use a book by Greg Crabtree where we talk about different ratios. And when we take all of these different elements and we pull them together in our strategy to help our clients, it's just. It's a win, win. And again, it goes back to continuous learning. You've always got to be learning through reading, through coaching, through video, like, always. Always upgrading all the time.

And Rich, it was Jason Rink. Yeah. So Rink posted on his Facebooks, I.

Knew he had somebody to blame.

Yeah.

He said, you know, hey, this is a great book. You need to get your hands on it. And then he had posted another book that Mike had authored. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm going to read this prophet first. One first pun intended there, Mike. If you're listening, you probably need to.

Chuckle out of that.

So I read the book and I was immediately captured. I said, this has no brainer stamped all over it. And we're just going to. I'm not quite sure to what degree we're going to implement it properly or the way that it was intended, but we're just going to get started. And it's been transformational. Honest to goodness, it's been transformational.

And getting started is all that matters. Because think about it. If you Even just reserve 1% for profit and you pull out your GST or your HST and you even take 10, 15% for tax and put it aside, you are way further ahead than you were because you now have a little bit of clarity on what you have left to spend. But if you have it all in one bucket, it's really hard to determine, you know, what do you have available for this and what do you have available for that? So it's the clarity alone. It's a very simple concept. Grandmothers did it for years, right? Always there were jars or envelopes or little purses or something like that. They did not go past that. If it was a good week, you got meat for dinner, right? If it wasn't a good week, you got beans and rice, that sort of thing. But they never borrowed from the other pouches because that's how they ran their house households. You have to run your business the same way. You have to think, this has to be sustainable. If I take from here now, where is it going to come from? Later, when it's due, if we eliminate that whole problem, it's sustainable.

Absolutely. I can share with you too, Richard. You would know this. And Lisa, this will make you smile. So, years ago, there's an organization within the financial professional community, and that organization is the Million Dollar Roundtable. And when people qualify for membership to this Million Dollar Roundtable, it's just a network, a group of financial professionals from around the world. And when you qualify to be a part of this group, you're at top of the table. You're in the top, literally 1% of financial professionals across the world. And Bruce Etherington, who's been a member of MDRT for a number of decades, he delivered a presentation. This was several years ago. And from the stage he asked, okay, so do you have a business plan? Well, that's one question. But the real question that I have for you is do you have a profit plan? What is your profit plan? Because financial professionals who are commission based, they receive this money and most of it, if not all of it, is already spent before they even get the commission. And so his coaching around that just aligned perfectly with Mike Malkowitz's approach. And the late John Savage, Richard, you know who that is, he in one of his books had mentioned, the way that I operated my business is that my operating expenses never exceeded 40% of my total revenue. And so I thought many years ago, I'm just going to embrace that, I'm going to adopt that. And that's the way we've been operating the business since inception. And it again marries perfectly to the profit first approach where you create the accounts. Now that we've expanded into implementing it that way, and it's just made it even better. And so that's a question that I think is super important. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're an established business owner just getting started, or you have a business that you're hitting your stride and you have ambitions or you have struggles, ask yourself that question, what is your profit plan?

And then you need to deep dive into the book Profit first. And you need to get acquainted with Lisa and again Visit her website, lisacampbellprofitcoach.com Again, that's lisacampbellProfitCoach.com and if during the episode you found yourself thinking, she's talking to me like this is something that I need help with, then you need to get connected and get the help that you desire. But that's the key is the starting point is the desire to change. You have to possess that desire. Somebody can't be more invested in you changing.

For your business and for the people that rely upon you than you are.

Absolutely. We say that all the time. We cannot care about your business more than you do. You have to care about will absolutely help you with everything. And just as a note there, if anybody goes to that website, there is actually a link to download the first two chapters for free of profit first the book. And those first two chapters, as you know, are like eye openers. Wow. This makes total sense.

Right?

But let's talk about the whole fact that it's not even just, just about debt or profit. Profit is all encompassing. If you're not profitable, nothing else falls in line. Right? So when you look at like take for an example somebody who, who has maybe a manufacturing business or something, and maybe they're renting the building and they think, I want to purchase a building, because it's going to save me more money in the long run. Why don't we pre plan for that? If your debt is gone and we have a profit strategy in place and the business is profitable and we don't have to worry about taxes because that's already taken care of, why don't we sort of reverse engineer where is it that you want to go with your growth plan and let's make it happen. Same thing with hiring staff. Everybody jumps, oh, I got to hire somebody. I'm so busy. I've got to hire somebody. Can your business really afford to hire somebody? Why don't we reverse engineer it and figure it out? Let's start reserving for three months and if your business can sustain it for three months and we don't anticipate any drop offs and you've got your reserves built up, should everything fall apart, then you look at hiring. But to just randomly jump in there and that's what a lot of people do. I need to buy this, I need to buy that. I need to hire somebody. I need to all these. I need, I need, I need. Let's dial it back a bit because if your business is going to serve you because that's what it needs to do, we need to make that happen intentionally. It's not going to happen randomly. And we can't just wait for that one big sale or that one big payment to come in. We have to make it sustainable or it's, or it's not sustainable. The model won't work. Right.

That is so good.

Well, and you're separating the business from, from the individual, which often a lot of people think that they are the business. The reality is, no, the business is its own entity. And I think Mike McCall said it's a, it's kind of more like a conjoined. It's not your baby. It's more like a conjoined twin. I think that's what he share with our listeners. So that separation happens by implementing the model. I think it's an intuitive, natural thing that happens when you get started doing it. So that's, that's fantastic.

Absolutely.

Sorry, Lisa. We are, we, we realize that. You know, I'm not sure you've probably seen, although there has been a lot of movies out recently that there's been a really big uptick in superhero films in the last number of years. And now not all superheroes wear capes, of course. And you might not always think of yourself as a hero, but every time that you come in and you profit first, the you know, everybody's business out of, you know, and you, you train bookkeepers and your training accounts, your training professionals so that they can go in and attack this model for all the businesses in Canada that need it so desperately. You're providing tremendous value. You're benefiting others and making their life easier in so many ways. So our question that Jason, I would have for you is, you know, when you think about that, who do you want to be a hero to?

My kids.

They've seen a lot. Thank you for saying all that stuff, by the way. Yeah, no, that is the most important. I want my kids to be on the right foot. I want them to understand that whatever bad situation they find themselves in, they can flip it around. And that goes for everyone.

Lisa, thank you. It was an incredible honor having you on our show and we hope that you'll join us again and we can talk about your new book and have you back because our listeners will undoubtedly get incredible value from today's episode. And to all of our listeners, if you're on the YouTubes and the Facebooks, just take a look. That way you're going to see the playlist, the next up video. We would encourage you to continue your journey of learning and to comment, comment on the show. If you have any questions, we'd love to hear from you. But we sincerely thank you for tuning into another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. And so on behalf of my amazing co host Richard Canfield, hailing from Chilliwack, bc, and Lisa Campbell, who is just an exceptional person to get to know and we would encourage you again to visit her website. Thanks again for tuning in and have a wonderful rest of your day.

Thanks for listening to the Wealth Without Bay street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show. We definitely appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode with someone you care about. Join us on the next episode where we continue to uncover the financial tools, strategies and the mindsets that maximize your wealth.