Tina Marie — You Should Know Your Numbers And What To Do With Them

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float, Shark with your boy.

My boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe Fear.

Hey. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast presented by Evergreen Profits. Hey, we pulled it off, Matt. That's the perfect intro right there.

Perfect intro.

All right, so today we are talking to a lady that we go. We have a history with, worked with her as a client. We've attended many traffic and conversion summits and things like that. And I think we first actually met her in an Uber, I believe is what it was in San Francisco or San Diego. One of the two.

Yeah, we rode an Uber with her. Do you want to tell the story of how our sort of connection with her and how we always felt like we'd be remembered?

Sure, you can go. Yes, go.

Okay. So we. So one of the first times we ever met Tina was we were in San Francisco at Traffic and Conversion Summit. We were hungry. We went over to Subway.

What time was it?

This was probably midnight, one in the morning. It was, you know, it was late at night. So we went over to some. To Subway to get a sandwich. And as we were walking back, we walked through a group of people that were smoking the ganja.

Ooh, bad people.

And. And they must have just blown smoke right on us or something. We didn't notice it, but we walked back into the conference, and the first thing Tina says is, what have you guys been doing? You've got a very distinct odor to you right now. And we kind of sniffed our pits a little bit and went, what the heck? What are you talking about? And we reeked of weed. And we're like, well, shit, this is a great first impression. So anyway, we've always thought that Tina just thinks of us as stoners now.

Yeah, well, luckily she doesn't. But we laughed about it prior to recording this call. But she is a total badass when it comes to literally breaking your business down. But finding gaps in your business from this outside perspective that you, being too close to your business, probably don't see so clearly. And so she's given some really cool pointers on how to spot those things, how to figure out what your best KPIs are, key performance indicators.

Kind of like what roles you should be filling in your team or even with yourself, like, some gaps in your own personality and how you can improve those. Slash, hire someone to help you out. And I mean, so many cool things. But this is one of our biggest pain points in our business right now. I mean, we're growing so it's a good thing. It's a good pain point. But she is an amazing, valuable resource, and she pretty much spills all the beans on this podcast.

Yeah, we totally nerd out about tracking.

And stats and numbers and stuff, but just even people. It's not even just stats. It's like being a person and being a person effectively in your business and life.

You're gonna love this episode. You're gonna love Tina's energy. So let's go ahead and dive in with Tina Marie.

All right, Tina, thanks for hopping on the show with us. How you doing?

Glad to be here.

Yeah. Yeah, it's been a while since we chatted, and, yeah, we. Because I know we did some. You and I did some work back in the day, four years ago.

Yeah, you made an amazing video that people were like, oh, my gosh, I haven't seen a video that good in forever. And then I never marketed it. So way to use that talent.

That's okay. It was a fun time either way.

Yeah, it was good stuff.

Yeah. But I think that was around the time maybe we initially met. Maybe prior. Prior to that at Traffic and Conversion San Francisco or something like that.

Yeah, I think we met that within a year of that time.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I think it was an Uber ride. And then, you know, I think you're like, yeah, just carpool with us. You know, it's cool. You seem like a nice person. And, yeah, from there, I feel like our paths have kind of, like, crossed. You know, we have a mutual friend, Dan, who you work with, and I don't know what you even do for him, but I'm sure we'll talk about what you do in general.

I don't know of this Dan. You speak up?

Yeah, he's the mystery man that we've tried to get him on the podcast.

I know of the One Foot Wonder. Is that the guy you're talking about?

Yeah. Yeah, we'll call him One Foot Wonder.

I'm not quite sure what.

That's referenced in the gym selfies with the one shoe.

Oh, okay. Okay. My brain went to a different place, and I'm not gonna say where it went.

I'm not.

Well, it's Dan. That's Dan for you. I'm just kidding. Well, saying that. All right, so let's get into this. So who the heck are you? Tina?

No, no, that was a little too broad, I think.

No, I know. That's very too broad. I know. See, I did that on purpose. All right, so tell me about what were you doing? I guess. When you first started in business, what was. How do you kind of kick start everything that you're kind of up to now?

Oh, my gosh. That's. That's.

Is that still too broad?

It is and it is. And it depends on how much you want to know, because that's like, you know, how did I get started? It was kind of crazy, like most entrepreneurial journeys, right. Because you kind of, like, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. So I have that story, which is pretty short. It's just the girls. I had my first daughter. She was 20 months old, and I was about to have my second daughter, and I left my first one in daycare every day while I went to work at a call center that I was. I was a manager at. And I just didn't want to leave her anymore. I did not want to. She. I this beautiful light of energy, and I pick her up at the end of the day, and she was a zombie. And I'm like, okay, this isn't gonna work for me. Like, I have to do something else. And I was one of those, like, natural entrepreneurial type. Like, I had a paper out when I was 11, and I cut the grass for people and I babysat and I even had a lemonade stand. Like, I did it all. So I'm like, in. The call center business wasn't doing very well. It was, like, super competitive at that time. I were constantly getting threatened by Apple and Intel and all these other places that we outsourced for that they were going to take their business to the Philippines because, you know, they could do it cheaper and whatever. Which is where, by the way, I learned tons about metrics. I learned about.

Management. I implemented a tracking system that they actually adopted worldwide. So that kind of got me started in systems, trying to improve our process so that they wouldn't take our jobs away from us.

Yeah.

And so I started, like, ebay, selling things there and taught myself web design and graphic design or whatever. And I'm looking at this, and this was 1990. No, no, no, it was 2002.

So I'm trying to learn all these new skills, right? And while I'm looking at things like this Don LaPree course about how to put ads in the newspaper and make money, which I never did, but I bought the course. You guys know that guy that went to jail and, like, died there or something? Yeah, it was bad, not good. The dark side of Internet marketing.

So. But that's when I got familiar with Internet marketing and I saw these People with these different products about how to make money online and blah blah, blah. And so I spent like two or three months really just looking at this stuff and I got on a bunch of people's email lists and bought their products. And then we had, we didn't have social media, so we had forums and people would get on teleconferences and they would open up the line sometimes and you could talk. So basically I cyber stalked people like they do Facebook only. I did an old school forum style.

And I, I was noticing that the people that ran businesses who, who were idolized by others and who were making a lot of money had crappy businesses, which hasn't in 15 years by the way.

That's right.

So what I did was I told this guy Frank Guerin and his partner Lee Benson, I'm like, I see you guys have this awesome product and I love it, I bought it. I've been on all your calls, I think you guys are awesome, I think you're smart, I think this is an amazing product. But I've been listening to your people in your forums and they're complaining left and right and I know that they're requesting refunds because they're posting, where's my refund? This is crap. I don't get service. You promised to have the next installment. There's no next installment. Like all kinds of complaints going on. And I said, here's what I learned in the call center, is that if you don't run in front of customer service issues, this is what happens to your profits. And I'm guessing. So I said if you're making approximately this amount of money in sales and you're losing approximately this amount of money in refunds, and you paid me approximately this amount of money to take care of your customer service issues, you still come out ahead. So they said, fly over to Pennsylvania and let's talk. So, so I flew to Pennsylvania and I got a job working for them back at my house, which was totally across the country. And I replaced my full time call center income within a year of taking off and having no idea how I was going to work from home by doing what I already knew how to do, which was just managing overall business. And so it just kind of evolved from there, noticing that people that make even a million dollars have no idea what they should be doing with their numbers. They're just really good at selling and they're really good at figuring out the product that the market wants. But managing their people, managing their time, things like that, creating the systems that allow them to not be a slave to their business. A lot of people actually don't have any idea where to do that. And so they hit this breaking point where they're like, I've been doing this for a long time. Where's my freedom? Where's the freedom I'm supposed to have from this business? And that's when they start to have an aware, which is when somebody says, hey, go talk to Tina. And then I take care of it.

I love it. Because that is speaking our language more than you can believe. You probably already knew that though.

Yeah, it's not more than I can believe, I promise.

Right, but it's true because, I mean, we've been doing this since what, for 12 years.

2007 is when we first started our blogging career.

So we've been doing stuff for a long time and we're very grateful that we haven't had to go to go to an office for some other boss in that amount of time. But definitely like, that freedom we found recently is like, we really love the startup phase. The, you know, you see an opportunity, you see a gap, you want to fix that thing, whatever that is. Maybe it's someone else's business as like a equity partner, which we're doing now, which is fun, but it's like we're doing that because we realize we don't like the management of the day to day of a business, nor are we really good at it.

Yeah, that's kind of the plight of the entrepreneur, isn't it? Like, we tend to get really, really excited to get projects started, but then once a project's actually rolling and now we're in the day to day of running that project, we all get bored.

Very quickly with it.

Well, so it's we all, because there's actually two kinds of entrepreneurs that I found. And there was a book that I read that describes it really well. And rather than give my version of it, I'll borrow some authority from, from the book, which is called Rocket Fuel.

Oh yeah, I read that one. Yeah.

And they talk about visionaries and integrators. So I had identified them as being the sales networking type, slash, and then. And then the implementer, which is what I would call it, the one that managed the day to day stuff. But they're both equally entrepreneurial in that they want to create their own path, they want to do their own things, they don't want to have somebody else be their boss, but they're missing one of the components. So the thing about the visionary is that they are not very well grounded. They hop around, have all these different visions and they don't look for what's going to.

Sabotage their vision. And so they just kind of go off on it hog wild and they don't really implement it very well. But they could still make six, seven figures, I don't know, about eight figures. I think by that point they found somebody in my experience, but. But they can make a lot of money. And then the other person usually ends up following into a job rather than a partnership and a business because they're the doers. Right. So yeah, yeah. So there's, there's a, there's a blend of both. And a lot of times where people end up finding me is they're the visionary and they don't, they don't have that counterpart. And like you guys, I wouldn't say that I'm, I'm lazy. But the managing the day to day, I've just found that there's a better way for me. So what I do is I go into companies like you. You go in where you can take equity. I just go in and say they have to have the resources for me. They've got to have the funds to hire the managers. I'll train the managers, I'll give them the systems, I'll make sure that they can communicate well with each other. But I don't do the work for them anymore. I just guide it.

Well, I'm curious because Matt and I, this is going down the vein of working with other companies and then we'll kind of circle back to rocket fuel and the integrator stuff. Visionary. But I'm curious if you have filters that you specifically look for in a business that you are going to work with to, you know, obviously bring upon the best results for everybody. For you, for the client or the partner.

Absolutely. And I created a process that helped me to get all the information I needed to filter it out. Instead of getting references and asking people a few questions, actually have a paid process which has helped me a lot. And I'm sharing that because I think it's good for people that are higher level consultants or you know, service contractors, whatever. So it's called a business audit. And I take two hours and I go through this six page questionnaire and I find out, I ask them their numbers. I don't let people answer the questions ahead of time because I don't know how long it took them to get it. I want to see if they're stumbling. I want to see if they have any idea what they are off the top of their head or if they know where to get them or any of that stuff. So when I ask them all of these questions, and it's kind of under duress, because I'm asking them a ton of questions about every aspect of their business, I'm able to find out what their attitudes are in terms of asking things that they're not comfortable with. I'm able to gauge their resourcefulness that under duress, people reveal more of themselves. So that's part of it. The other thing is the number. So they have to be making a minimum of $20,000 a month every month, even on like their lowest months for me to come into it. But they're closer to 50 to $80,000 a month. I'm working with up to 250,000amonth, and they have less than 20 people working with them on their team. No matter how many contractors, whether they're in house or out of the house, they, you know, remote workers, they have less than 20 people, they've been in business for at least a year.

And they are not managing their numbers well or they don't have the right systems. Basically, they're overwhelmed to some point and they already know that they're not going to make this better by themselves because otherwise I have an uphill battle of trying to argue with them and persuade them, if they're not automatically like, yeah, acknowledge that I have this problem and I want your help with it. Then filtered out, just out of curiosity.

Why do you look for businesses with less than 20 people in them?

Because.

There'S a couple of reasons. Generally it just happens to be that the small business world that's around where I can optimize them, they're under that amount of people.

They. People that have more than that, it's usually. And if they're not making more money than a small business owner would, they. It's a vanity number for them.

And it usually correlates with other vanity numbers, which is really, really high revenue, very, very low profits. And the problem with those people is ego. And I don't deal with ego. Ego, they have to get that fixed first. I don't. I don't have time or interest in helping people reduce their ego issues. So, I mean, I can, but it's not what I want to do. So I'd rather get where they're primed already to get results.

Got it.

I love it. No, because that's. I think that's one of the most difficult things we're faced with right now is so many opportunities and ways to focus on, you know, even just clients or partnerships, opportunities that come along. It's like, okay, we need solid filters. And also we kind of call them a setup. And Matt, he kind of took that from. Investing is like, okay, if you see, like, three things that are setting up to be something that's favorable, a favorable outcome could be an investment based on criteria. We kind of are starting to do that with opportunities that come our way as well.

Yeah. We have basically a list of criteria that we look for in a business that we're interested in purchasing. And basically the list is like 10 different items, and if a business has any three of those items, we're interested in that business. But we also have a list of red flags. So one red flag is a no go. So we have a. Basically a list of about 10 red flags. And if any of those one. Any of those 10 things, any one of them happens in that business, then we're not going to work with that business. So zero red flags. Plus they have to meet three of our criteria on our list of 10 potential criteria. So we have.

I love it.

We sort of built this system around it, which is sort of complex to explain, but in front of a whiteboard, it makes sense.

Yeah, no, that. That's the biggest problem. I find that most contractors, consultants, agencies, anything that you want to say is that they don't have those red flags defined. And so they take on jobs and clients that they shouldn't be because they're not a good match. And they get excited about those vanity numbers. They get excited about who it is or the potential or the opportunity. And what they don't look at, look at is the stick and the likelihood of fail because of that red flag.

Totally. Yeah. Because there's a lot of energy that's wasted if you're going uphill with a client. That might.

Yeah, but that's why I have a job, so it's good.

Are you familiar with the Colby assessment?

Oh, yes. Actually, I had a previous client that you guys would definitely know of, wanted me to take that, and it was interesting. I don't remember, though. I'm.

I don't even remember where I fell on the starter.

A quick start.

Yeah. I was the one that was most complimentary to the one who's a quick start.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Matt and I are, like, light years apart from each other in terms of our score. Yeah.

We're pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm a high fact finder. High implement, not high implementer. What's the other one.

I'm also a high implementer. That was the one.

Yeah. I'm a high fact finder. High follow through. Joe was low fact finder. High.

Quickstart 2394 is me.

Yeah.

That's nice. You guys are complimentary.

I was an 8, 7 4, 2, something like that. So I was a middle of the road. But anyway, it's funny because Joe and I, we've sort of been on this kick lately of doing all these different assessments. We did the disc assessment, we did the Colby assessment, We've both done Myers Briggs and we also did the little Rocket Fuel assessment as well. So we've been trying to figure out as much about ourselves because we're in this mode right now of we need to build a team. For the most part, our business has been me and Joe running all operations. We have a support lady and then we have a few little outsourcers that we'll use for, you know, tech development stuff here and there and things like that. But for the most part, it's been Joe and I running the show. And so we're in this mode of let's start to scale this company and put more people around us. So we've been on this kick of taking all these assessments to find out, like, who should be the perfect complimentary people in our business. And it's been awesome. It's been a real fun journey to, like learn about ourselves and how to communicate with each other and how to communicate with other people and all that kind of stuff.

So, yeah, I totally geek out about that. And most people, it just never even registers to them. They don't even think at that level. So that's awesome that you guys do that.

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess let's go back to. Because, like, I think the big thing with Rocket Fuel, and I'm sure you take that because I know Dan, our mutual friend, he actually mentioned Rocket Fuel. That's where I first heard it from and why I read it. And it was really cool because just the assessment is free on their website. Yeah, Rocketfuel.com or something. But yeah, Matt and I both took it. I was a little bit higher of a visionary than Matt and he was higher implementer, which, I mean, that's why we can work together. So I guess so.

Well, huh? Yeah.

So I guess talk about how you approach businesses or how you build teams around someone that might be one or the other.

So a person that is a visionary, the first thing that I'm going to look for, I end up being in the beginning, their integrator and I'm looking at, you know, what are their profit margins right now, what are their resources? Do they have the resources to pay for quality integrator at this time?

If they don't, then it's a longer term partnership that we have and I can fill that role because it doesn't take a lot for smaller businesses. It doesn't need a full time person, it just needs somebody who can direct the team to do it, who's got a lot of experience. So there's always trade off. If they are looking for an integrator that they can keep in house, they either have to have very, very healthy profit margins or they have to be willing to play the long game and take the time to learn themselves and to learn their future partner. And an integrator doesn't have to be a partner though. It can be an employee, a higher level employee or contractor. But they need to be able to take the time long term to build out those skills. Just because you can identify I'm more visionary and I'm more integrator doesn't mean you're good at either one of them.

Just because you have those characteristics doesn't mean yeah, yeah, I'm awesome here and you're awesome there. So trying to find out like you guys were talking about your weaknesses and looking at what kind of impact those weaknesses have on the business. And then this is the trick is to pick the one thing to be working on. So you might notice that there's several different weaknesses and you have to decide is it going to be a weakness that you're going to work on improving within yourself or are you going to outsource that one? Generally I'll have somebody work on one thing within themselves and find out the next resource that's going to have the highest impact and that opens a whole new can of worms, which is where knowing business and knowing marketing comes in handy. Because if we're looking at their numbers and once we finally sit there and identify what it is and the biggest problem is high refund rate, well, there's a whole lot of things that can go into that. It can be a disconnect between the marketing what's actually delivered, right. If I say I'm selling this thing and people get in and they find out it's actually this doesn't mean that they don't like what they're getting. So you don't necessarily need to change the product, Right. You just need to change the marketing message so that it's more congruent with what they're actually getting. So maybe they need a copywriter, maybe that they just don't have good customer support and there's nobody. You know what I mean? Like, there's no one answer to anything. You have to go in and take a whole approach and understand all the different components about what makes the business operate. There's multiple data points that have an impact on one single KPI. So you have to figure out which one is having the biggest impact on that KPI and go that angle. So while you're doing that, you're looking at who's going to do it. Like you guys were talking about who's going to do it, and are they in house already? Are we going to do it or do we need to go find somebody else to do it? And then it's staying focused on improving one thing so that there's significant momentum and consistency in that improvement, meaning we've actually impacted it and it's going to steadily improve or maintain itself and then go to the next thing. Because when you take your eye off the ball, right, you're not going to hit it. So making sure that one thing is modified, changed, improved consistently. So consider it as adding a new habit. Right. You're not going to add multiple habits at one time. Or if you're trying to solve a problem, you don't try to change multiple things at one time because you don't know what really works. You don't know what really sticks. If you start a new habit and you develop another habit at the same time and one fails, did it fail because you couldn't do it? Did it fail because the environment was wrong? Or did it fail because you tried to do something else that was reliance upon you having solidified the first habit in the first place. Does that make sense?

That does.

There's just so much going on.

Yeah. And it's interesting. It relates to Jay Abraham. A book that we've read is that he kind of takes an outside360 look at a business and looks for gaps and sees how he can optimize that gap. Not the whole damn business, but just that one thing. And it sounds like that's kind of what you're doing here.

It is. I made a post, actually about a superpower I have, and I. I said, it's asking questions. And I'm like, you can just call me Gap Girl and imagine my superpower cape behind you.

It's so cool. But I'm wondering, for those who don't have you, who don't have access to Atina in their life? How do does someone close to their own business? Are there strategies they can use to find that gap, to focus on the thing that's lacking?

They have to learn how to ask better questions. It always comes down to asking better questions. You don't know what you don't know. And the problem with that is you don't always know which questions to ask. So if you don't know what questions to ask, then you just have to start feeding yourself information. You have to learn about sales, you have to learn about business management and systems. You have to. And now you can either do that through hiring a mentor, which again, comes with its own pitfalls, right? Because you don't. You don't know what you don't know. So you don't know who's lying to you. You don't know who's good. But you can't operate from a place of fear. So you just have to keep learning. You have to keep feeding your mind very specific things in one particular area. So I read a lot. I read leadership books, I read systems books, I read persuasion books. And then whatever I read, I take a little time to implement it. And every single time I work on implementation, I change. Because now I know something from experience versus theory, and now I see the world differently. Because when I experienced something new, I became a new person. So if somebody doesn't know where to start, they just start, period. Doesn't matter where it is. Learn something new. Take what you learned and instead of going to learning the next thing, implement something from what you learned. Observe what happens from what you implemented, then decide what to do next. As long as you keep moving forward consistently, one day you wake up and it may be five months from now, it may be five years from now, you're going to look back and be miles ahead from where you were. And that's what I talk about, playing the long game. And most people won't do it. It's instant gratification. I have to see results. Now, that's not how it works. You can't follow somebody else's path because you're not somebody else. You won't ever duplicate somebody else. Exactly. So you have to just figure it out as you go and as you learn, figure out what the next step is.

I love that. I love that. Now I'm reading the thing that when you signed up to be on the podcast, we have our little calendar scheduling tool. And one of the things you wrote is that numbers tell the real story. So you dig into the Numbers, you look at the numbers, you're looking for specific KPIs, that sort of thing.

What are some of the numbers that you think people should be focused on from the beginning? Obviously you've got sales, but obviously KPIs are more than just sales. So what sort of numbers are you looking for from the beginning?

So I will look at sales. I'll look at how many sales they have, I'll look at how many refunds they have. I will look at conversion rates. I'll look at how many sales come from ads and what is their ad spend. I'll look at how many sales come from organic effort, and I'll ask them what they're paying for their organic effort and how much time are they spending on it. And.

I'll look at retention rate. So conversions is one thing, but I really care a lot more about retentions. If you convert 90% of the people on the page and 85% of them refund, I don't really care about your conversion rate. You have a bigger problem. You're convincing people to buy something that isn't really what's. What they're getting. Other numbers that I'll look for is how much time they're spending working each week. And I'll look at what their schedule is like, how much of their time is being reactive. Almost everybody starts the day in a reactive set, which is checking email, social media, finding the fires and putting them out because they think that's what should be getting first attention. And the problem with that is you're not growing because you're not creating anything new. You're not problem solving. You're not. You are, you know, putting out fires, but you're not solving how do I get new people into my funnel sales process.

Whatever you want to call it. And.

So those kinds of numbers, I'll ask them what their monthly lights on cost. What does it cost for you to operate and live? And what is the discrepancy between that cost and what you're actually bringing in as profit? And by all of that, I get a picture. And as they answer the questions, you can hear the overwhelm or the fear or the excitement or the happiness. You can hear where they're at, where they're strong and where they're weak. And wherever their strengths are, I'm looking for how quickly can we take greater advantage of your strength and where their weaknesses are, I'm looking for how can we solve that weakness, either strengthening you in that way or finding somebody else to outsource this to looking at the numbers and saying, is there room in the profits to be able to hire somebody to do this? And that's just it. Looking at everything from cost to income to time and energy going out, how much time do they actually have to be with their families? How much time do they have to spend sleep? I'm asking everything, how much time do you have to do things that you want to do? How many days off a week do you take? And to me, that's the whole picture. And that's where you figure out what the biggest problem is. Because if somebody, here's the thing, if they have really healthy profit margins, but they're working seven days a week, there's a point at which everyone breaks and it's different for everyone. But if a person is nearing the breaking point, it doesn't matter how profitable they are, they will implode. They will totally destroy the business or a divorce is going to destroy it for them or something else. You know what I mean? People forget to be a person and they operate from a point of I'm just the business. And you can't do that. You have to take care of the person and the business at the same time. So I'm looking for not just how well the business performs, but how well the person performs and making sure that they're both at maximum capacity so that the game can keep on going, that this is a long term solution that's going to work for them.

Oh, I love that. I love that. That's so important. And I think that's something that so many people miss is there's so many people out there that are proponents of that hustle, hustle, always be hustling, sleep when you're dead kind of thing. And yeah, that's just not the way we operate. You know, we, we decided we wanted to build a business for ourself because we wanted time, freedom, we wanted to spend time with our family, we wanted to get traveling, we wanted to not go, have to ask for permission to go on a vacation. You know, that is, that is why we started businesses. Yet so many people get into business and then they get into this hustle mindset of never turn it off, Never. You know, I'm always a business owner, I'm always working on my business. I don't have time for anything else. And you know, to me that's just, that is, I know someone who, who operated like that for 55 years and then died of a heart attack. And it's like that was your life. Like, you know, he's he's gone now, so obviously I can't ask him the question, but, like, are you happy with the way things played out? You know, on your tombstone that.

That's. That's what you're proud of. Yeah.

Yeah. He was actually one of my old bosses.

That mentality of that mentality for the longest time, too, because I'm such a hard worker.

Yeah.

But what I decided to, you know, my children's little hearts were broken because I wasn't really present with them. I'd put them to bed at night and I'd be thinking about work and what I. What I needed to get to. To. And I'm super competitive, and so it's very easy to. And I think all entrepreneurs are super competitive, so I think it's very easy to step into that mode. And I would be surprised if everybody at some point wasn't in that mindset, wasn't a grinder, at least at some point in the beginning when they realized there was a cost to that. And being of a business mindset, you realize that that wasn't cost effective. But. And I think that it's important, as you point that out, that people choose their mentors very wisely. They choose the books that they follow. You know, there's Gary Vee and Grant Cardone, and neither one of them look very healthy. I saw Grant Cardone bragging about his hard work while he was literally in the freaking hospital bed.

Oh, my God, he was in the.

Hospital bed from having a heart attack. I'm like, man, you are out of your mind. You are missing the point. Comes to your, like, deathbed, you're going to be like, oh, what were you proud of?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's that whole thing too, Right. Of, you know, when you're on your deathbed, you're not going to be sitting there saying, man, I wish I worked harder. Man, I wish I made more money. You're going to be saying. They're sitting there saying, I wish I experienced more. I wish I traveled more. I wish I got to spend more time with my family. Those are the deathbed regrets that people have, not the, I wish I. I wish I finally bought that Ferrari, you know?

Right.

That's exactly right. And that you have to have that mindset shift before you can do the kinds of operations that I have people do. Because it's. Because otherwise you get into the scarcity mindset that I'm not making enough and I'm not earning enough. And what you have to do is flip that switch and say, all right, how do I make more in less time so I can get more of this life? And until somebody wants that, they're not ready to do the things. Because when you get into optimization, you have to say no to lots of things. You have to say no to lots of things. So you could say yes to the right things, but you have to be primed for that mentally or you'll never do it. You'll constantly go back into the fear mindset and go, but this opportunity here, that fomo, right, fear of missing out, it's into play. So people definitely have to be primed and they have to want to live life more than they want to make money. I love making money, but I would rather make, you know, a lot more money and less time. And so doing that through systems and optimization, but then also doing that through value, understanding what your worth is. There's a post I made today about the curse of knowledge. And I didn't have the phrase for it, but I was reading a book called.

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. Oh yeah, I love that book, but it talks about a phenomenon that I found. And I would tell people you're having half the conversation in your head and you think somebody else understands something, but they don't. But the problem is, as an expert, a lot of times we take for granted our knowledge and our expertise. And that's why we people end up not charging enough because they take it for granted. Like, I've already got this, most people already know this. You assume that other people operate with the same information and understanding that you have. And even if they have the same information, that understanding is what sets you apart. It's when you convey that understanding can put it into a tangible value for somebody else that you can start charging more for what you're doing. Especially when you can draw. And this goes back to numbers, right? A direct correlation to how that knowledge you imparted or that skill set or whatever it is that you're offering creates more money for them with less cost. So higher profits, not just more revenue, right. But a better profit margin for somebody else.

That makes sense. I mean, it's a no brainer at.

That point, but it's, that's why I love numbers. That's what I was saying. Numbers make it a no brainer when you, when you draw things out and you make it very specific. For example, right? If I tell you that if you work with me, you're going to be working 10 hours less a week and then I go and do the math and I say, here's how much money you make a month, and you're telling me you work approximately this amount of time for each client each week. So I figure out how many hours a week you're working, and I basically boil down what you're making to an hourly number, right? And I figure out that you're getting paid approximately $80 an hour. Even though you're a high level entrepreneur, you think you're getting a lot more than that. But because you work so much, you're not really. And I tell you it's gonna cost $1,000 or $2,000 to work with me. And I tell you that you're saving 10 hours of a week a time, and it's gonna like, I literally just saved you this amount of money because now you're not working those 10 hours. Because just by making one shift in your operations without hiring anybody, you just increased your productivity.

I love it. I love it.

And I do that with people and they're like, holy crap. And then they stay the next month and the next month and the next month and the next month because the numbers did it for them. And then when I teach them how to do that with their clients and give them the scenario in a story, the way that their clients can understand it or their potential customers understand it, like, this is what you do. This is what it cost you if you do this. This is what it gains you. It's a no brainer. Numbers just draw the picture in a beautiful way. It takes a little bit of storytelling to do it right, but people can get it. And numbers are really hard to argue with when you've got tangible anchors to put them with.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love that. Now, I actually have another question about the sort of KPI discussion. Is there any sort of metric that you feel all entrepreneurs should know, but working with people most entrepreneurs don't know?

Absolutely. It's how much time you work. People are so mindless about how much time they actually work. Most people have no idea how much time they're really putting in. They have no idea what it actually cost them to get new customers. A lot of people just really have no idea what a new customer cost them. They don't know what their profit margin is or their cost per acquisition. And they don't know the lifetime value of each of their customers. And the other thing is, back to value. They don't have a number of how valuable they are to their customers. They can't say, this is my value to you. And if they can't say that they can't put it in their copywriting. They can't sell it. They can't. They're missing out a key opportunity, the most powerful opportunity to persuade their customers to say yes. Because they can't spell out their value because they don't know it to begin with.

Got it. Now, do you have any exercises or anything that you walk people through to figure out what the value of something is?

Yes. So it's just asking them questions. I'm asking them about their target market. I'm asking them about the problem that they solve for their target market and whether we're talking in terms of energy or time or investment. And I have to ask all the questions to figure out where we're saving them or health, quality of life, any of those things. Then we put a number and associate it with it. So if we're talking about quality of life, how many more years do you get with your family? Well, good luck putting a monetary number on that. But there's an emotional value at that that you tie to a monetary number which is like $47 a month to live this much longer, be this much happier. That's like a no brainer, right? I'm like, for the cost of dinner out with the family once a month, let's say we're talking about fitness and a gym membership, right? That's a no brainer. That's a no brainer. You have to just figure out what the cost is, what the value is and correlate it to something that they can say. That's all it costs. No brainer, no problem. Just. Yes.

You could sell anything that way. And that's. Yeah. And I think, I think what you're. The feeling I'm getting here is like you're making it fun. Like this whole process, it just kind of seems like. And obviously it's scary as hell for people that don't know their numbers or they're not ready. But. Yeah, because I mean, there's a lot of this stuff where it's like Matt and I just kind of have hacked this together. At least we tried to. Like James Schramko. He uses something called effectively hourly rate. And it sounds like what you're. Same idea. And just that concept alone, we've tried to. We started to apply that to what we're doing here. And we're not the best at tracking our time. That's why I wrote down. I'm like, I got to find like a tracking tool. If, you know, toggle.

Toggle is a good tool.

Toggle. Okay, cool.

Interesting.

That's good.

And there's timers. There's all kinds of different timers. So whether you want to do it, something on your phone, if that makes it easier for you, because maybe you're out with the kids and watching a soccer game and plug in for 15 minutes. Oh, I'm gonna do this. You know, there's an app called Memo. What is it? If you. If I can't tell you, I'll tell you later. But I think it's called Memo.

Okay.

Anyway, Neil Patel was. Was suggesting it, but yeah, just. Just tracking that and. Dang it. There was something I was gonna tell you, and I just spaced out. Oh, the fun. You said you make it fun. So here's the thing. Entrepreneurship is fun all by itself. What I do is remove the fear so that people can get back to the fun. The fun is already there.

Yeah, it's.

The problem is that they're weighted down by fear and pain of not being able to solve a problem. I take those out of the way. So fun just gets to come back in all by itself.

Yeah. So it sounds like it's not just totally diving in and analyzing the numbers. You also sort of act as an entrepreneur's psychiatrist a little bit as well. Sounds like you have to kind of.

I don't want to know about your mother. I don't want to know about your wife, but you do have to sort of know about what's holding you back fear wise. And I don't want to know about your childhood issues.

But when I ask them about where their time is going and why they're not doing something. Yeah. Then the fears come out. And it's super easy from experience. I mean, I've gone through some crazy, scary things myself, including walking away from all income four times as a single mom of four daughters. Because what was working, what I was getting paid by people was ridiculous compared to what I was making. Them literally going bankrupt, making $15 an hour, turning a company into a million dollar company. And how do I know it was me? Well, they took three and a half years to even create the product. They were making 3,500amonth while I was working with them. And then I said, you know, you guys are being ridiculous. Here's what you need to do. And if you don't do this, I'm gonna quit. Even though I would have no money again. Yeah, no, no, we'll do it. And eight months later, they were making a million dollars in sales from a consistent 3,500amonth. And after three and a half years of even getting, taking just to get the product created, I'm like, I think I'm the common denominator there, but let me just do this a couple other times. And I did it a couple other times, turned a couple startups into seven figure businesses. Where before me it was a lot of treading water. I'm like, oh, there, there is a pattern to this, you know, so it's just taking, it's taking the fear out of it for people and helping them.

And through recognition of my own experience and as well as the hundreds of entrepreneurs I've consulted with over the years and small businesses recognizing. Oh, that language, when you use that phrase and you talk about this, I know what that means and I know what the end result of that is. And I also know how to solve that because I've seen it like 20 times. You know what I mean?

That's interesting. And I'd be curious to learn what are some common language or phrases that are used in certain scenarios. Obviously there's probably a million that you can do.

There's a bunch.

Yeah, yeah, this is cool. Now I'm curious about the team. So selfishly, like Matt and I right now are, we're looking for kind of some project manager types, assistant types, people that we can leverage our time better and focus go deeper on projects rather than more than doing. And you said, you know, you don't want a big team. It's vanity numbers, which we totally agree with. We like to be lean and manageable. Is there a magic number or maybe a process that you recommend when, when looking for maybe the best next hire?

Yes. It's figuring out what is the thing that is not getting done most or the thing that is bogging you down most. It's getting done, but you're hating it. And everything else is getting neglected because you're either not good at it or you hate doing it. So in its definitions, people define project management very, very different. Some people call project management what somebody else would call operations management. And it's not a matter of semantics, it's a matter of understanding. One person overseeing kind of all of operations and another person just moving things along and pushing projects forward. Another is the other. Another definition some people have is the interface between a client and, you know, an agency or something. So it's making sure that especially in partnerships, that everybody's on the same page about what that phrase means, what that looks like to them. Because I guarantee you, the visionary partner and integrated partner both have very different ideas. About what they want the project manager to do. And the problem is going to come up when the project manager is supposed to report to two different bosses with two different mindsets and two different objectives. So we have to figure out in advance who gets to be in charge. It's one person. Everybody needs one boss. You give them two bosses with two different agendas, you're going to have problems and they're going to be gone, and you're not going to be moving forward. So there's. There's, like, people like to turn it down to what's your process? What's the path? Like, this is where you can't forget that businesses are run by people and that people are weird little creatures with idiosyncrasies that have to be acknowledged, and it has to be on a case by case basis. There are definitely questions that I have that get me the answers to who's what and what needs to happen. But those questions are not the same for every single person, because some things are self evident and others I have to dig for.

Totally. I mean, we know that Matt and I do. I mean, after this person. This is what spurred the whole personality thing, is that the big thing that makes Matt and I tick, in that even our team ticks and the people that we hire is we're all gonna share the same goals. And that thing we're working towards, even though we might approach it from different ways and thinking. And that's why Matt and I, even though we're so different in the way of our thinking, and even when everyone saw our personality results, they're like, holy crap, how are you working together for the last 10 years?

Yeah. I don't know how many people actually looked at our Colby scores and went, you guys are partners. How is that working out for you?

Because you're complimentary. That's. That's the thing.

Yeah.

You're complementary. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to work well together.

Yeah. But it's interesting, though. It's that shared goal, I think, is that big thing that obviously, if our goals are different and it's shared values. Values and goals. Yeah, you're right.

Values are extremely important, and that's something that other people don't take into account. It's very difficult when you have partnerships where one person is family oriented, another person is not. Because what one person is willing to sacrifice, like that grinder mentality, and the other one who's like, dude, I just want to be with my family, like, this is my end game, is getting more quality time with my family and the other person's numbers goal is vanity numbers. It's like, how much money can I make? How many shoulders can I rub that are, you know, how many Lambos can I get? That kind of thing. If you don't have the same values, that relationship, just like a marriage, is going to disintegrate pretty quickly.

Yeah. And I'm sure it goes with a team that you hire as well to an extent.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Personality types are a huge thing when I'm doing interviews with people. I used to let them outsource it to me, but I don't anymore. The owners need to be a part of the interview process because if there's not chemistry, there's not longevity, it's not going to last.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Oh, looked like you were going to say something there, Matt. Yeah, no, it's interesting because we're. We're going through that process right now, and we have. We hired a guy to help us filter, but yeah, we are going to be a part of that interview where, you know, it's a select few that then we can kind of interview and start to sync up with. But it's interesting because now. Oh, and what I was getting at with the personality thing with Matt and I, just, the two of us, we've figured out over the years the hard way how to communicate with each other to get to that. Whatever we're working towards, you know, like there will be some button of heads, but then like, you know, five minutes later, or we're hugging it out or sharing a beer together for an example.

That's awesome.

Well, basically, that's a long way of saying I know how to push each other's buttons, but we also know how to butter each other up real well so we know how to get what we want out of the other.

But now we're armed with language in ways that we can basically let both of our personalities kind of flourish in what we're good at and then still come together without that kind of butting of heads thing.

And that gets to one last thing, which I think that we should talk about, and that's accountability.

None of these things matter if you're not accountable to them, if you're not accountable to a partnership, and if you're not accountable to whatever those KPIs, if you think that you can outsource everything. The book E Myth, I'm sure you guys have read, talks about how business owners love to abdicate their power to somebody else as soon as they get in the door, whether it be a partner or an employee. It's like, oh, here, this is your responsibility now and then check out.

Yeah, yeah.

And that is something that people, people that have never hired somebody or never really had a team are very prone to. That. That seducting power of having power over somebody else. Like, I pay for you. I own you. This is what you're supposed to do kind of thing. And feeling like I pay your salary, you do this like you own this. I don't have to do this anymore. And that attitude will destroy your business every single time. Because nobody's gonna love it like you do. Nobody's gonna value it like you do, and probably. And hopefully nobody's going to think about it as intelligently as you do. And so it's important that people make sure that when they're hiring, they're hiring somebody who, who they're responsible for. It's your job to make sure that they have clear instructions, that they have a clear role defined, that they are accountable to you and you're accountable to them to being a good leader. Because otherwise, you know, again, it's just you're not going to get where you want to go, which is most people want to be happy. Every goal can be boiled down to happiness. You want to make lots of money because you want to be happy, or you want to have lots of money because you want to know this person, because you want to take these trips because you want to be happy. Like it all boils down to that. So if that's ultimately your goal, you don't want anything to get in that way. So whatever it is you have to do to step up to the plate so that you can get to those goals. Like that's the incentive is making sure that everybody understands that the why behind everything is I want to be happy. And that makes it a lot easier for people to get on board to do with what they have to do.

I love that. I love that. Now we do have. We're going to have to wrap up now, but we do have a couple wrap up questions that we ask everybody on our show. You've already mentioned a couple books. You mentioned Rocket Fuel and you mentioned Built a Stick and the E Myth and my voice just cracked there going through puberty again here. Do you have any other book recommendations? I have a feeling you might have one or two more that you find yourself recommending off.

I have a ton. But I will say one book I really love is Essentialism. It helps people figure out how to say no, which is A common problem amongst people because we're charismatic mostly as entrepreneurs. We like to please, we like to do the cool thing. But saying no, again, like I said in the beginning, the more things you say no to, the better quality of things you can say yes to. So the book called Essentialism, there's a book called multipliers by Greg McCown and Liz Wiseman, and it's how the best leaders make people great around them, basically.

So making sure that you can get the best out of people. And then if I had to add one more book to it, I would say Pre Suasion by Robert Cialdini. Because honestly, if you're trying to sell anything and you're in business, you're definitely trying to sell something. And you're not just trying to sell to your clients, you're trying to sell your vision to your team as well, because you need to get them on board. Right. But I think knowing how to influence and practicing becoming a better influence helps you in every aspect of life. But in business, you know, we're here to win. Better get the right tools. And those are some of the best tools you can get.

Yeah, very cool.

Yeah. And that Multipliers book looks like it's by the same authors. Essentialism too, Greg.

Yes. You know, good people, they sometimes put out extra good stuff.

Very cool. Yeah, we love Decentralism. I haven't even heard of his second one yet.

No, me either.

Or did that come before Essentialism?

Maybe it did 2010, maybe. Either way, we're getting it. That's. Yeah, both of those. All those are going to be great recommendations because, I mean, this is right up our alley. I think it's. Most of our listeners are pretty much right where we are as well. So I think a lot of this is hitting home with all of us. So where can we tell people to find out more about you, what you're doing, or maybe they can hire you? If they're qualified, of course.

If they're qualified, of course.

Yeah.

So I love connecting on Facebook more than anything there. I share. I share a business post every single day and personal stuff. And the reason I share the personal stuff is so that people understand that my focus is about balance. And they say that there's no such thing as work life balance, but really you have to find some balance. So it's facebook.com profit drivers inc. I think it's Inc. At the end of it. You can find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn.com Profit Drivers Inc. Tinamarie is the name that you're looking For. And Then also profit driversinc.com is my website.

Right on, Tina.

And I'll answer anywhere.

Yeah, no, you are. You're super responsive. And yeah, no, I've read a lot of those daily posts, and those are something that, like, Matt and I are trying to do, too.

I wouldn't know, because you guys never click, like, or comment or say anything. So thanks for being the Facebook.

I think the latest Facebook algorithms have been just crap, basically because, like, I don't see a lot of the posts that I used to see. I don't see a lot of the stuff from the people I want to see stuff from anymore.

Yeah. So we're trying to change that, which is. Yeah, I just liked your post today, by the way. Hopefully I can get more because I want to see those.

Another thing is, Joe, we don't spend enough time on Facebook. We actually want to do more posting to our walls and that kind of stuff. We just. We don't do it as much as we know we should because every time we do, we get pretty good response from the stuff we post. We just don't do it enough.

You guys are brilliant, but that just comes back to you. And we can chat about it offline, but I don't spend very much time on Facebook. I'm there every day, but I really don't spend a lot of time on it. I've got four kids. I'm too busy doing that.

Very cool.

Well, the website is Profit Drivers.

And it's Profit Drivers, Inc. On pretty much all the social media channels. So make sure you're following Tina.

Yeah. Yeah.

Check out our website.

Teeny Rock. Thank you very much. I wasn't surprised that you bring in amazing knowledge bombs.

I was worried about boring you guys to death, though. I was like, I hope I don't bore them.

I nerd out. Usually the nerdier or the boringer. The topic. The nerdier I get about the topic. So, you know, like, stats and tracking and analytics and stuff is probably my favorite topics to talk about. So there you go.

All right, well, thank you guys for having me. It was lots of fun reconnecting with you. You have so much personality and you made it enjoyable. So for anybody else that's thinking about getting on your show, they should definitely do it because you guys are awesome.

Yes.

Awesome.

I appreciate that. All right, thanks. See you. Bye.

Bye.

All right, thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to Now. Right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe. Subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out@evergreenprofits.com so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.