BONUS Episode: The Introduction and Chapter One from the Book SURGE by Mike Michalowicz

I'm ready now. All right.

All right, well, let's do. Dude, we got something big today. Let's get ready and bring it.

That's right. This is a very special installment of the Profit first podcast. Right, Mike?

Yeah.

You said installment because you didn't want to say the word episode twice in a row. Because this is not an episode as in a number. It's an episode as in a bonus. Welcome to episode Bonus.

Oh, bonus.

Bone cashew and us.

What was that.

Too? Oh, I gotta rub it off.

What happened over there?

I don't know. I spit bomb here. It was like that Seinfeld episode. I go, gotcha, Cha. A spit bomb hits Christina in the shoulder, which, ironically, I had a hook around the microphone to do it. It bounced up, it hit Scalise in the eye. Now he's running into the printer. It's like that Seinfeld episode where it was, like, physically impossible for Kramer's spit to go around a corner.

Gross.

Remember that episode? No. Do you remember that one, Chris?

And I'm not sure we should start this very special episode with a minute about spit.

That's a good point, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, dude, bam. In today's episode, I left it hanging. In today's episode, you're going to be getting Serge my brand new book, the introduction and the first chapter for free in audio. But we'll talk about that in a second.

Wow.

What?

What's your name?

Who are you asking?

I'm asking Chris. I'm back to the script. Welcome, everyone. I'm Chris Curran.

Oh, I thought we were stopping and doing it again.

Oh, from the get go.

Anyway, hello, everyone. I'm Chris Curran. Welcome to the show. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalis, the author of Surge, my brand new book studio by Christina Buldak.

Hey. Hey.

And you're listening to the Profit first podcast. Profit first being another book I've done where you learn the alpha and omega of profitability. And today in particular, you're going to learn how to grow very quickly. The easiest, most seamless way to growing, and it's by surging. So we're going to do something special today. Normally, we thank our sponsors. We say you can find us on itunes and Stitcher, Tune in radio and Google Play, which, ironically, I just did. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about what Surge is. I'm very proud of my newest book and then let you listen to it and see if you like it. So let me tell you what the Surges.

Yes.

And if you have a question, Christina, because you're not. There's no notes, you just say it.

Yeah.

What is the surge? Do you know most businesses paddle to pursue opportunities. When I say paddle, they try to pull themselves forward. They see an opportunity in the market and they start paddling. If the market's considered an ocean toward the opportunity. Well, someone came to me. One of my readers came to me and said, I feel awkward, them calling them my readers because it's not like I possess these people. It's like one of the people that read my books have come, came to me and said, you know, I love reading business books, they're all great. But I wish we could just simply time the market. You could get rich that way. And this was like five years ago. I'm like, huh. So I made a note in my Evernote, I don't know why I'm doing the hand signal for that, but I made a note in Evernote saying, how do you time the market? And I started studying this and I can tell you unequivocally, there is no specific, perfect, you're going to get it right. Every formula. But there is a formula to getting really close and putting yourself in a position where the marketplace carries you. And that's what I call the surge. What I found is every marketplace shifts at a certain point. There's a collapse of one market and it brings rise to another. You know, the typewriter, like the last guy that was in the typewriter business.

Like, what was he thinking?

That was bringing the rise to the keyboard?

Yeah.

The question was if you saw the typewriter collapsing and the keyboard increasing, if you were the person at the right time started catering to that market, making, I don't know, a keyboard duster, keyboard covers, they make these illuminated keyboards. If you were foreseeing the growth of the keyboards and you start making those products, it would put you in front of the market and the market carries you. Right. And there's this interesting phenomena, Chris, that happens in the marketplace that as there's a shift in demand because of innovations and stuff like that, there is a surge of need with a under developed market to supply. And therefore people will move to the first available best supplier and will actually carry them forward, will be telling the world, this is the only place that does it. And we see this over and over. So it happened with typewriters. It happens with taxi cab drivers right now, taxicab drivers that don't get it. You know, Uber is taking over your space. There's this big shift Going on. There's an opportunity for businesses to cater to this new shared economy when it comes to private transportation. So there's a company called Hurdler, one of the companies I studied that started catering to the Uber driver about a year ago. And they're capturing all this market demand. They're growing explosively because they were in front of the now surging demand. Uber's exploding taxis are collapsing. One last thing. And then we'll go into the little. The audio sampling. But one last thing I want to share with you is the electric car. You know, a lot of people say, oh, Mike. So I guess a future thing is electric car. And what about the autonomous car, the car that drives itself?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Well, there's another lesson in surge, and it's called imminent demand. When something is surging and it reveals itself, it's actually happening in the market. Electric cars. We now are starting to experience a surgeon. Tesla's developed them. Tesla's released their patents for free. Nissan, and who makes Prius, Toyota. All these companies are moving more and more toward electric car service. And now Tesla just announced they had like 200,000 or more orders for their new model of car. Huge volume.

If.

Here's the last thing. If someone in your neighborhood is using this product or service, like in this town, there's like two people with Teslas. That is indicative that this market starting to take foothold. If you deliver a service that caters to electric cars right now, if you can cater to that market, you can get in front of the surge. It can carry you. The autonomous car people are talking about. But how many people do you know drive an autonomous car?

No one.

No one. It's premature.

It's a mistake to try to start developing something for autonomous cars. It hasn't proven yet that it's a surge. It's a thought. It's a great idea. Could happen. But next week, 10 years from now, 20 years, maybe never, maybe something supersedes it. So the key to surge is looking for shifting demand in the market then. And there's a special way to do. I outline the book then. Looking for the imminent wave. Is there already movement there and putting yourself in front of it. The power of surge is the wave.

Will actually carry you.

You don't have to market like crazy. I know Tesla does some marketing, but they don't need to market like crazy. Their name was mentioned three or four times today in this office alone. It's automatically noteworthy and remarkable. It's talked about.

Hold on there, Mr. And maybe you explain this in Your book.

Are you waving your half finger at me?

Wow.

She's wagging her finger.

She's missing a finger on one hand.

And she's waving, I think a quarter.

Quarter of a finger.

That's another story for another time. No, maybe you explain this in your book. But what if this is another. We just talked about this with Dr. Rob. But what if this is another seatbelt scenario where. Because me, myself, I'm not a huge fan of electric cars because I'm like, what if it's the apocalypse and there's no power? What if I want solar power? Like, I feel like, what if there's a lot of resistance? Is there a way to fight against that with Surge? Because we're telling people, go with the wave.

So there's a thing called the early adopters, the people that jump onto the new thing. And then there's a laggards when it came to Ugg boots. Do you have an Ugg Boots by any chance?

No.

Okay, you're a real lagger then. Ugg boots is the core case study in this project. And what I talked with Brian Smith. You actually lined up the interview.

I did.

Brian Smith, that guy runs.

Ran a billion dollar company.

Right.

He started off in 1976, I think, is what I recollect, but in the 70s, and he starts developing Ugg boots for surf in Australia's. For. For California Surfers. He used a design that was popular in Australia, but moved it over to the California Surfer. The key to Surge is cater to a niche where there's early adopters. You are not an early adopter of the electric car, but there's some geekos out there that are really, you know, car folks or really into just the environmental. You have to play into a special category. Maybe play into the environmental category. They're the doctors are there. Play into them. They carry you like the Australian surfer.

Did they.

Then the majority jump in, which was.

I see what I'm saying. You're not going for what's popular. You're going for a niche that you already believe in. And it's up and coming and you're supporting. I get it.

And the last thing I want to share, because we're running tight on time here, we want to play the audio. You know, we're doing this with our own company, Profit First Professionals. When we started it, I sat down with Ron and we talked about this concept of profit first. But we also sat down, discussed the movement in the industry. He and I agreed, and this was two years ago, that bookkeeping and accounting.

Is changing that traditional accounting bookkeeping is.

Going away because software's getting so sophisticated they're getting pressure. So that kind of service bubble is getting pushed down and some people are gonna make the leap over to something new, which is consultative. We said we gotta put our service in front of that and be a pathway so when people decide to become consultative, that we can carry them forward. So that's what we're doing here.

Cool.

And as you know, Private First Professionals is surging. We're growing very quickly. We had like that one person to actually try to attack us. So, yeah, this is a long story, but we're starting to grow in the market so quickly that this little nobody company is making really big waves.

Why?

Because we've gotten in front of the actual surge wave. Well, I can go on forever, speaking at lightning speed. The one nice thing is when I read a book, I actually talk a little bit slower, so maybe you'll benefit from it.

But listen in.

Enjoy the next 30 or 40 minutes or so. Here's the intro and the first chapter.

Enjoy Surge Time the Marketplace Ride the wave of consumer demand and become your industry's big kahuna by Mike Michalowicz and read by me, Mike Michalowicz. Now, before we get started and perhaps you've heard my other books, I like to go off of script every so often, so I just want to mentally prepare you before we get started. I am going to read the entire book, but I'm going to give you a lot more. I'm going to go into individual elements, pieces, sections of the book where I want to give you additional ideas right here as I'm recording at the studio and just give you my own thoughts. So hang in. We're in for a big ride together. And if anything, I want you to leave this experience by having your business surge forward. I'm going to do everything I can to make that happen. The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. Paul Drucker Introduction you can't manufacture luck. It just happens, or it doesn't. For most of my life, I believe that to be true. One morning I'd find a $10 bill on the street and call it a lucky day. A few weeks later, I'd realize I lost a 20 somewhere between meetings and call it a crappy day. To be in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time seemed simply to be a matter of happenstance. It was completely random and out of my control. Or was it a few Years ago, Becky Blanton's story came up at one of my entrepreneur organization EO meetings. You may have seen her moving Ted talk about being homeless for 18 months. Her story is powerful and a must watch. But the discussion at EO was about Becky's unique ability to find lost money on the street. She developed a method based on identifying patterns and using that method, picked up five to fifty dollars a week, every week. If I found fifty bucks over the course of a week, I think the seas had parted and pigs had learned to fly. Talk about luck. 50 bucks a few weeks in a row would clearly mean I have massive amounts of luck on my side. But for Becky, luck had nothing to do with it. She expected it. She created it. I started to think about that elusive good fortune so many big business success stories seem to feature. I thought about how no matter how hard I worked or how well I networked, or how many books I read or wrote for that matter, my current business still wasn't taking off. I had success in the past, but not this go around and had started to buy into the theory that most entrepreneurs subscribe to. Sometimes you do everything right and you still can't make your business work. Sometimes you just can't predict the trends that shake up your industry. Sometimes luck is not on your side. Right?

Wrong.

I was wrong. So wrong. After hearing Becky's story, I began to change my belief about the concept of luck. What if luck had nothing to do with it? Or here's where I began to have a radical thought. What if I could create my own luck simply by paying attention to the patterns in my own industry? Maybe Becky was onto something. Maybe spotting a trend before it took off wasn't a skill exclusive to media darlings and wonderkind. Maybe I could manufacture luck. In the years since I heard Becky's story, I studied luck and applied what I learned to my businesses. Sometimes I failed. Sometimes I succeeded. Eventually, I came up with my own method for spotting what others are not trained to see. The next trend in my industry, I figured out how to be in the right place at the right time, over and over again. The more I practiced it, the easier it was to implement. And now that I know my method works, I'm ready to let you in on it. When I sat down to write this book, I contacted Becky Blanton to ask if she would agree to an interview. I wanted to hear her story firsthand. As luck would have it, we were able to meet for breakfast at a Waffle House on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Virginia. Now, here's the first little aside. As I say the word Charlottesville, I am wearing my Virginia Tech Hokie shirt. The arch enemy to the Virginia Tech Hokies are the uva who's in Charlottesville. It was hard for me to drive down there, to go to that undesirable land. After the death of her father in 2006, Becky packed everything she owned into a 1975 Chevy van and set out to travel the country with her dog and cat. It was a grand idea, but more difficult in practice. Despite her success as a journalist, despite her education and experience, she ended up homeless for more than a year. Though she had a job at the camping store at the time, Becky often went without food for two or three days at a time in search of enough money for a cheap meal. Becky began looking for money people dropped on the street. I'd be at a Walmart $3 to my name and look around the parking lot for change, she said. I started thinking, thinking where do I usually find money? Whenever I find money, I notice the things those places had in common. Then I'd ask myself, what do those places have in common with other places? Then I'd start looking for that pattern in my environment. Becky noticed she often found money where it could be trapped. Usually wherever she could spot a 90 degree angle, there's always a corner or a curb. Phone booths, milk crates lying around are like muddy butterfly nets. Finding money was like learning the good fishing spots, except I was learning the good money catch and hold spots. Another pattern Becky discovered yielded her even more cash. She tended to find money in places where people most frequently take bills and coins out of or put money in their pockets or where money might fall out. It sounds gross, becky said, but people always drop quarters and nickels and dimes around toilets. Nobody wants to dig on the floor and pick up their own change. People also drop money at bus stops but don't even notice because they're in a hurry to get on the bus. The clanking of coins is covered by the bus's engine noise and dollars float away in silence. Paying attention to this pattern, Becky consistently found money near hot dog vendors and parking meters, and in arcades at bus stops, of course, and duh, in couches at furniture stores. Almost no one sees the money that is consistently around them. But I find dimes, quarters and dollars all the time, becky said. You have to train your eyes for it. Once it is on your radar. You do it all day. I still do it because it's a habit. My friends ask all the time how do you always find money? I just know what to look for. Once you see the patterns, you spot it all the time. You see opportunity everywhere. And once you learn the practice, you can do it anytime, anywhere. As I dug into my fried eggs and my sweet cream waffle, I thought about the big kahunas, the business legends. Every successful business you can think of had a big dose of good fortune. They were at the right place and at the right time. Airbnb, Facebook, Uber, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Ford. The company leading in your industry. Every single industry leader. Most people would say the founders of these companies got lucky. That opportunity just landed in their laps. Those people would be only half right. The founders of rockstar companies truly were lucky. But I was starting to see that good fortune didn't just fall into their lapse. It was a revelation to realize that being in the right place at the right time doesn't have to be some arbitrary force of the universe. Luck isn't about fate or worth or karma or tiny green Irishman. Luck is about foresight paired with strategic action. Luck is about planning. Luck is about deliberately putting yourself in the right spot at the right time. Spot the next trend wave that is almost upon you, position yourself in front of it, and you'll capture a surge of consumer demand for your product or service. I know the prospect of spotting and riding trend waves can seem daunting. It would be so much easier if we could just buy a crystal ball or master time travel as I was finishing the edits on this, my fourth book and the first in my Sweet Spot series. And by the way, that's a little tip off of things to come. I'm currently working on some other books. The next book that's intended to come out is actually not part of the Sweet Spot series, but the next two books after that. The hint is this. Every book in the Sweet Spot series, which is going to be three total, start with an S. At least the.

Working titles do for now.

All right, let's get back to this book. We officially entered the future. The future in Back to the Future Part two. That is when I was but a wee lad suffering through acne and getting stood up for awkward teenage group dates. I didn't even know that was possible until it happened. I watched Marty McFly travel to 2015 to save his future son. As an adult, I often wished I had my own delorean time machine so I could travel to the future and figure out what the heck consumers want before they know they want it. It's beyond frustrating to build a business only to have everything come down to happenstance spotting and riding a trend wave might sound about as doable to you as finding your very own DeLorean time machine. I know you're eager for answers. You've done everything you can for your business. You took a risk on your big idea. You worked your butt off, sacrificed your retirement fund and time with your family and educated yourself about better business practices. You sucked it up and learned how to network. You found your way over, under, or around every challenge that came your way. So why isn't your business the big kahuna in your industry? Why is your company still limping along, yet to live up to the potential you envisioned? What will it take for your business to experience a powerful surge of consumer demand? The answer is simple. You have to be in the right place at the right time. Yeah, it all comes back to that essential truth. When I give keynote speeches on this topic, this is usually the moment when I hear groans from the audience. I'm always surprised but grateful that people don't throw tomatoes at me or rush the stage in an angry mob. I suppose no one lashes out at me because they know I'm right. Anyone who has been in business for a few years knows that no matter how hard you work or how brilliant your idea is, you haven't got a chance if you haven't accurately anticipated market demand. So why the groans? Because most people believe luck is something out of their control. I did, until Becky Blanton's story inspired me to think differently. I've been in the entrepreneurial trenches for 20 years now, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that conventional wisdom is a bunch of BS when it comes to business, luck is entirely within your control. I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me. I'm used to it. I've ruffled a few feathers via my books. One Amazon review and I am not kidding here. One Amazon review of my book hints that I am the devil Child by saying he's the devil child and speeches I was invited to keynote at a CPA conference and when I said I would explain why profit should never be the bottom line but but the top line, I was promptly disinvited. But it is only by busting myths that you successfully build a business. I am all about doing what works, not what should work. I've seen a lot of businesses fail simply because the leaders at the helm followed the status quo without question. After all these years, I can say with absolute certainty that timing is everything. I built and sold two multimillion dollar businesses, launched two other successful businesses including another multimillion dollar business and and built a career as an author and speaker. I also had more failures than successes. And if you do read my book Profit first, you'll hear about my most massive failure right at the start. And after I made ridiculous amounts of money with my companies, I became ridiculous and wasted all my money. But unlike most people, I no longer believe good timing is reserved for the lucky ones who stumble upon a once in a lifetime opportunity or the geniuses who who have some sixth sense about commerce. Nope. Being in the right place at the right time is a process that anyone can master. As Becky said, you just have to notice the patterns. Once you're aware of the patterns, you'll notice them everywhere. You might think that this is where I tell you that Serge will teach you how to build your own DeLorean time machine. I mean, not really, but you know, metaphorically speaking. Nope, you don't need it. The Five Step Surge. And that's S Capital S, Capital U, Capital R Capital G Capital E Process I detail in this book will not only teach you the method of identifying the next wave of demand in your business, but also how to capture its energy and ride that wave like a pro. I just don't write about this stuff. This method isn't merely a concept or a simple derivative of the clarity of hindsight. Surge is the process I used in my own businesses. After implementing some of the surge techniques, I modified some of what I learned to better meet my own needs and objectives. By the way, you should do the same with all my books and boil the steps down to the simple process I share in this book. The essence of Surge. You see, you and I are in the exact same boat. As I wrote this book, I was deep in the surge of my newest company. It's called Profit First Professionals, or PfP. To get PfP off the ground, I made extensive use of the exact Surge method you are about to learn. Not only did Surge work for me, it worked fast. And it will for you too. After I finished my second serving of Waffle House coffee, Becky and I walked out into the parking lot to bid each other adieu. I fumbled for my keys while Becky almost unnoticeably scanned the curbs. A crumpled $20 bill sat right next to the gutter, hidden in plain sight. She picked up the bill, flattened it out, and exclaimed as she put it in her pocket, it's gotta be my lucky day again. Settle in. You're about to get lucky too. Chapter one the Power of Waves. You can call me Bob now. It's not my secret given name. It's not a nickname either, at least not a nice nickname. And it surely isn't my safe word. Here's why some people call me Bob. For the past 10 years or so, my December festivities have kicked off with a Man Day trip. My mastermind group just happens to be all guys, and together we spend an afternoon doing manly things. 1. We must shoot some kind of weapon at a target. Last year we shot apples off the heads of plastic zombies with crossbows. And that's not a lie. That's exactly what we did. And no one actually hit a single apple. Just the zombies. Because that is the manly way it's supposed to be. 2. We must compete in some kind of high speed race. Go karts without speed limiters are usually our go to choice. Snowmobiles with speed limiters, we're not that crazy are a popular alternative. 3. We must only eat meat with an optional side plate of more meat. 1. Preparation is permitted. Rare or don't eat at all. 4. We must end the day smoking a cigar and drinking whiskey. And if you don't like that, you can smoke another cigar and drink another whiskey until you do. 5. And of course, no feelings are permitted. Not on this day. Not a word. I have met face to face with these same guys once a month for the past 10 years, and while Man Day is the only day in the year that we allow ourselves to act like meathead ogres, every other day we meet is about feelings. We support each other in the growth of our businesses and in navigating the intricacies of life. These guys have witnessed my transition from selling my companies to becoming full of myself and placing too much importance on my newfound wealth. They've watched me lose it all. They've seen me fall to my knees sobbing and have picked me up figuratively and literally. They helped me become an author, and most recently, they have been firsthand witnesses to my most recent struggle, failure to launch. These guys know me better than I know myself, and they know that often and honest, albeit blunt observation is far more effective than a Kumbaya session. A couple of years ago, on the morning of Man Day, we each shared a quick assessment of our individual businesses before heading out to shoot things. At the time, I was a co owner in a few businesses. The businesses were all led by amazing people, but for some reason none of them experienced strong, fast growth. All were profitable, all had carved out a niche. All were innovative. But for some reason they weren't sailing forward. I was really frustrated. Things were okay, but stagnant. I was ready to replicate what I had done with my prior businesses. Ready to grow. But for some reason, I couldn't get that spark. Something was missing. I thought I had all the answers. Which, by the way, is. Is the first indicator that you don't. It is truly demoralizing to be the guy shouting from the rooftops, writing books quietly on airplanes and in the basement, and sharing the steps it takes to grow the business of your dreams and then failing to do it for yourself. Just before my turn to speak, I thought, for God's sake, I write books on this crap. And now look at me. I'm standing here with a finger and thumb in the shape of an L for loser on my forehead. I wonder if you can name that song. Okay, I hope you guessed it. It was Smash Mouse All Star. Right?

Remember that song?

All right, back to the book. Okay, Mike, you're up. As I got rolling with my own little State of the Union, my peers inquired about my businesses. They dove into everything I was doing. They asked me about the clients I served. They asked me about my offerings. How about the marketing? How about the specializations, the uniquenesses, the systems? Then my friend RJ Lewis asked, where is the surge?

What?

I asked, where is the customer surge? Mike, what are you talking about? RJ Said, where are your customers going? What are they doing? Completely regardless of you? What is the biggest change that your customers are dealing with? Where is the surge? I ordered a few more pots of coffee for our unexpectedly long session. The zombies were gonna have to wait. Which, by the way, is the golden rule of manday. Nothing is more important than doing whatever it takes to support the other guy. Even if that includes canceling mandae. I guess manday isn't that ogre ish after all? RJ Went on to explain the surgeon. In the past five years, the company he launched, Adjuster, had become the number one player in online advertising. Discrepancy resolution. I don't know what that means either, but I do know he had top of the shelf customers flocking to him and a wallet representative of that. RJ and the guys went on to explain that surge is the force of the marketplace so powerful that it rolls forward, crushing whatever is in its path and carrying that which rides on top of it. A few more hours in and it was clear. Picking a niche is critical but not enough. Serving that niche with singular focus is not enough. Ensuring your business is profitable in that niche is mandatory. But profit surely doesn't ensure growth. There is more to it, the natural direction your niche is moving like a massive herd of animals. Your customers may be seeking out a new source of food or water or shelter. They may be seeking comfort or fighting for survival. Of course, herds run from things too danger, for example. And so do niches, like the danger of new competition that is wiping them out. RJ made it clear. My job, your job, our job is to find the surge. Where is your target market headed? Where are they surging? When you find the surge, you can position your company in front of it and ride it all the way to remarkable growth. Of course, you could just bob up and down in the marketplace, RJ added. You could paddle around in circles. You could ignore the waves and instead of riding them, just bob up and down. The choice is yours, Bob. I was floored, waiting for a response. RJ stared me down. The other guys looked at me and asked, where is the surge, Bob? Timing is Everything My Uncle Bill had a favorite joke, and he would tell it every time my family visited. With all of us sitting around the dinner table, Uncle Bill would instruct my father to ask him a specific question. To what do you attribute your extraordinary comedic talent? As my dad started to faithfully recite the question back to Uncle Bill, to what do you Uncle Bill would interrupt mid sentence and say, timing. Get it? Timing. Lol. Uncle Bill was right. Timing is everything. Everything. I don't think that joke, by the way, translates so well in a reading, but when you see it written in the book, you will laugh your ass off. Let's talk about Skype for a moment. Skype didn't become a massive success because of video conferencing. That technology already existed when the company launched. Skype was in the right place at the right time. It caught the customer surge. What surge, you ask? The surge of people turning their cameras on themselves. Skype launched in 2005 as an alternative to to making costly international phone calls. Though Skype experienced consistent growth every year, for its first four years in business, its customers used a fraction of the billions of minutes burned up on international phone lines. Then, in 2009, the tide turned. Skype to Skype. Customer usage more than doubled that year and was equal to the number of minutes used in traditional international calls. As in, wait for the tone, dial 011, the country code, and the number. Then wait for the bizarre sounding ringtone on the other side. So what happened? What caused the surge in Skype's business? In 2006, Apple put a camera into a laptop Remember that the technology to do this existed before 2006, but at that time most people had to attach a camera to their laptops to use video conferencing. Remember that after Apple included a camera in all of their laptops, other laptop manufacturers quickly followed suit. And because laptops have a LifeSpan of about three years, by 2009, most people owned laptops with built in cameras. By 2012, Skype outpaced the growth of the traditional international phone industry. And in 2013, Skype Skype's growth rate was 50% higher than all the international phone companies combined. Skype sold to Microsoft for 8.5 billion. The company's success is in part credited to its technology, no question, but its meteoric rise was due to the fact that it was at the right place at the right time. Skype was primed and ready to take advantage of the built in camera surge. Your success is more about timing than anything. Yes, you need to have a great offering that is distinct from your competition. That's the right place part. And the right time is all about catching the marketplace wave as it rolls through. Miss it and you can paddle all you want and still not be successful. You can't beat the tide. No one can. If you want to experience stratospheric growth, you need to master timing. You need to intentionally be in the right place at the right time. Will you get it perfect each and every time? No, not at all. Most businesses don't, and I certainly didn't. But when you concentrate your efforts to capture the surge, you can greatly improve the odds of achieving colossal success. Timing the marketplace is the holy grail of investors. After all, they know that if they can get ahead of the market by a day, by hours, or even by a few seconds, there's money to be made. If they can do that repeatedly, there are billions to be made. Brokerage firms spend massive amounts of money to get even a millisecond in timing advantage. My neighbor and poker buddy Scott Dejas, who by the way, if you ever play poker, invite Scott Dejas. He's not the best poker player, but he's got a thick wallet. My neighbor and poker buddy Scott Dejas is the head of IT for one such firm. His team consistently upgrades their connectivity to the trading floor. New fiber, shorter connections, streamlined code, faster servers. Everything is improved for efficiency. If new code allows servers to process an order even a millisecond faster, Scott makes the change. Huge money is to be had for Scott and the firm. If they constantly work on timing, huge losses are to be sustained if they ignore it. Brokerage firms invest in an endless stream of companies. And if they get the timing right, even a modicum of the time, they make millions. Their method is one way to make money, but you're in a far better position. You don't have to string together a stream of successes. You don't have to time things perfectly over and over. You just need to catch the wave once and you will skyrocket to being your industry's authority. You are not betting on a small portion of someone else's business. You are betting 100% on your company. And the reward for getting the timing right for your own business will put all those brokerage guys to shame. The founders of Google didn't nail it because their search engine was better, even though some would argue that it was. Google became huge because of timing. Yahoo, AltaVista and other search engines were around before Google. But with the stratospheric volume of content being produced on the web, a growing surge of users were becoming distracted by the web's countless rabbit holes. Yahoo and other engines were pumping news, emails, ads, everything they could get in the screen, distracting users from the little search box. Users of these search engines were frustrated. They simply wanted to find what they were looking for. Google entered the market with a single input box and a logo on the screen. It introduced the right solution, a screen with no distraction at the right time. As people were getting seriously distracted by an overwhelming web and just wanted answers to their questions fast. Better search engines have come into existence since Google's rise. But because the wave passed, Google has maintained its position as industry leader. The founders of Skype didn't have the experience, knowledge or history to be successful. But they were, and wildly so. Why timing? The stratospheric rise of Uber timing. The massive success of Airbnb timing. Apple timing. Ford timing. Edison the master of timing repeatedly. Wright brothers timing. Copernicus good timing. Galileo better timing. The guy who invented the wheel. Serious timing. Bill Gross's wildly popular TED video explaining why timing is the single biggest reason why startups succeed. He timed talking about timing perfectly. The successful rich guy down the street timing the successful business in your industry on your block, down the hall, timing Every successful person you know. Timing the success of your business. Timing capturing waves. Surfers know the importance of timing. Patience is paramount. An inexperienced surfer simply tries to catch the next wave, while an ace surfer patiently waits for the right wave. Of all the factors that come into play in their success, experience, knowledge and expertise, nothing is as important as timing. As I write this Garrett McNamara holds the record for the largest wave ever surfed. His 78 foot ride in Nazare, Portugal is world famous. But if he had tried to do it a month earlier or a day later, or simply decided to sleep in that afternoon and head out to the water whenever that wave wouldn't have been there, he would have missed the massive surge in his chance to break the world record. You can only ride the biggest marketplace wave when it appears you don't make it happen. And you can't have a killer ride on a ripple. It's impossible. Passion is mandatory. Skills are important, of course. Experience usually helps. A history translates into confidence without a doubt. But all that stuff is useless if you don't have a wave to ride. And all that stuff is insignificant when the wave presents itself. I was so green when I started my first business that it took a lot of trial and error to finally accept that I likely won't get rich or happy or fulfill my purpose on this planet by trying to figure out what's hot and then trying to serve that guess. Thankfully, the surge process isn't about making waves or watching the ones others are already surfing. Surge is about capturing waves, spotting the imminent market trend that is on the verge of swelling, then riding it all the way to industry domination. Have you ever gone into a pool with a floaty and bounced around in the water making waves that might be cool for the little kitties, but nobody's going to surf those waves now imagine taking that blow up float floaty of yours into the ocean to bounce around. Making waves in a pool was hard enough in the ocean. It just isn't going to happen. Plus, you'll kind of look like an idiot. Just as you can't make your own surfable waves in the ocean, you can't create your own waves in the markets. Yeah, you may make the killer app that everyone swarms to, but you didn't make the market wave. The energy was already pent up in the customer base. They were already moving and looking. They just found you because you were in the right place at the right time. You capture waves, you don't make them. And let me just take a quick aside here from the book. I can't drive home this importance or significance in this concept. Enough many business owners I've met to think that their solution was the thing that created market demand. But the demand already exists. You have to provide the solution that people chase. So your goal, and I will teach you throughout this book, your goal is to look to where customers are moving and make sure that your product or your service caters to that. That's the concept I wanted to get across to you. All right, let's get back to the book. Trying to create your own wave is exhausting and just leaves you tired bobbing around in the same place. Most of us struggle with a day to day scramble and seeking new customers and new sales. We exert extraordinary effort prospecting, marketing and selling. Soon enough, it's an all consuming obsession to get the next client. Then when the sale does come in, we stop everything else we're doing to exert extraordinary effort delivering on our promises. And then we have little time or energy to sell more or educate the market. The work needs to be done. When the job is complete, the cycle starts anew and we are desperate to sell again because the marketplace has dried up. Panic fueled sales lead to exhausting work which leads to more panic fueled sales and so forth and so on. Sound familiar? This flip flopping around in the ocean is our attempt to make our own waves. Or an attempt to paddle like mad to catch a wave that has already passed. It is not a mere coincidence that all this desperate splashing and gasping for air looks like drowning. Because basically it is. Struggling businesses are always paddling, but seldom get anywhere. Real lasting success depends on finding a way to align your company with the natural, powerful waves that are already rolling through the ocean that is your industry every day. In nature, a wave is a confluence of events. Storms and winds, the moon's gravitational pull, even landslides and earthquakes. A wave is really a movement of energy. The water isn't necessarily moving. Energy is moving through the water, causing the surface to rise and fall. Because of the way waves form, any surfer will tell you that you need to start paddling in the same direction the wave is moving before it arrives, so that you get carried by the momentum of the wave. If you aren't already moving in the right direction when when the wave shows up, you're likely to get tumbled or left behind. In business, waves are also a natural confluence of events. The changing winds and storms of customer demand, the gravitational pull of the economy, the industry shaking, quakes caused by advancing technology, and the landslides of collapsing competitors. All of these factors cause waves. As entrepreneurs, our job is to look for these waves as they begin to roll in on the horizon. And if we catch one for the ride of a lifetime, we'd better start paddling like mad in the same direction before it arrives. When I discovered that there is a process to catching waves, it occurred to me that surfing was a great Analogy for my surge process, surfing waves and catching industry trends is a perfect analogy. First and foremost, surfers always follow these five steps. 1. Look. Be on the lookout for swells in the distance and identify those with the most potential. 2. Paddle. As the swell approaches, paddle in front of it to best match the direction and speed of the wave so that you have the greatest chance for it to carry you. Find the shoulder, the least steep part of the wave and the easiest to ride. 3. Pop up. Feel the wave to first lift you up and then push you. This is the energy of the wave transferring to you and your board in one smooth move. Stop paddling and stand up on the board to ride. 4. Confirm now that you are standing on the wave. Determine if the wave has a pocket. The pocket is the heart of the wave that allows surfers to gain speed and perform maneuvers. Some waves don't have pockets, and surfers are forced to ride the shoulder. If your wave does not have a pocket, it's time to dump it and look for the next. Always look for the wave's pocket and adjust as it moves. Ride. Now that you are up on a good wave, there's only one thing left to do. Ride it for all it's worth. A masterclass in surfing. Arguably, nobody knows how to ride a marketplace wave better than Brian Smith, the founder of the iconic footwear brand ugg. When Brian graciously agreed to be interviewed for this book, I was stoked. His story is legendary. If you know me at all, you know my deal is figuring out how to apply and sometimes upend successful business strategies for my own businesses. Then when I figure out a system and master it for myself, I write a book and teach you how to do it. That's my happy place. Getting a chance to talk extensively with Brian about his massive business success was a huge honor and had me buzzing with excitement. Throughout our conversation. As Brian and I spoke, he explained that he grew up surfing the beautiful beaches of his native Australia before becoming an accountant back in the 1970s. He hadn't been an accountant long when he realized that he wanted to do something different, something bigger. He wanted to start his own company, a company that created products he would want to buy. If only he could find a trend to ride with, a product that appealed to his surfer lifestyle. He could create a company he would love. And if he got the surge right, so would the rest of the world. Like any good surfer, Brian started looking to the horizon to see where those new trends, those waves were coming. He thought about some of the coolest products that appealed to surfers like waterbeds and Levi's jeans and cutting edge boards. And he noticed that those things were all coming from California. So before I do this part, I was going to try to do an Australian accent for his voice, but all I can say is like, hey mate, there's shrimp on the bobby. But that's not even good. So I am going to just do my normal accent. So just deal with it. The California surfing was my lifestyle and the products I liked all came out of California, Brian explained. So I decided that I'd go to California to find the next big thing to bring back to Australia. In other words, plant yourself where the waves are forming. Lesson one. Brian moved to Santa Monica to saturate himself in the California surfer culture and find his product waved. But even after a couple of months of relentless research, he still hadn't hit on anything of interest. Waiting for waves requires patience, persistence and perspective. Lesson dos then. On a nondescript day in 1979, Brian surfing budding Doug Jensen brought a copy of Surfer magazine with him for a day of riding the waves at Malibu. Brian recalled flipping through the monthly rag. I got goosebumps. There was an ad for an Australian company with a picture of this pair of legs wearing sheepskin boots in front of a fireplace. And I thought, oh my God, there are no Ugg boots in America. Brian spotted a cresting wave heading in a totally different direction than he expected. He wasn't going to bring a hot new product back to Australia as he originally planned. He was going to bring Australia's iconic sheepskin footwear to the United States fashion market. Massive waves initially start as little bumps far out in the ocean and aren't necessarily heading in the exact direction you expect. Once you spot your wave, you must never take your eyes off of it. Lesson twa, Doug. Do you see that? Brian remembered telling his friend, we're going into business and we're going to be millionaires. According to Brian, one in two Australians had some type of sheepskin footwear. In Australia, sheepskin shoes were like flip flops. Everybody had a pair. They called them Uggs. But the boots also matched a confluence of events in the world of surfing. Surfing was no longer just a summer hobby. It was a year round sport. Advancements in wetsuits and materials such as neoprene, the rise of competitive surfing for cash prizes, and the fashion setting standard of the California surfer were all changing the surfing lifestyle. And as part of this changing tide, there was a small yet powerful wave forming. Cold feet. Literally cold feet. A professional Surfer would finish a set in the chilly Pacific Ocean and end up standing on the beach with freezing feet. That distant bump was there. Serious American surfers needed something to keep their feet warm and fashionable during cooler surfing months. Brian scraped together $500 to buy six pairs of sheepskin boots from the company that ran the magazine ad. And he also got the OK to be their US distributor. Six pairs of boots and all. It was time for Brian to start paddling. Lesson warg. That's four in the Wookiee language of sheer rock. You know from the unlikely little hit movie that surged Star Wars. Brian's buddy Doug served as the lead salesman and Brian did what he thought he did best accounting. After a couple of weeks on the road, Doug came back with hundreds of business cards from all of the American retailers he had visited, but no orders. Undeterred, Brian managed to get a last minute space in the New York footwear show. But the results were more of the same. In three days, nobody spoke to me. I might as well have been selling car parts because the buyers didn't get it, Brian said. Brian was trying to sell everybody, yet nobody got it. Time to paddle harder. A few weeks of marketing to the masses and it was clear there was no wave in the retail footwear industry. But he could see the wave forming with a small, specialized customer base. And he knew he had to keep moving in the right direction if he was going to catch it. The coolest of cool Californian surfers were already heading to Australia on surf trips and bringing three or four pairs of sheepskin boots back to their buddies. The coolest and edgiest of the community. The the early adopters were revealing themselves. That's when the niche became obvious. Brian couldn't sell to the mass market yet, but he could sell to the surf market. So he started selling to surf shops exclusively. And the surf shops, albeit slowly, started to buy. Brian had to paddle his hardest at this point because he was about to jump up on his board and ride that wave. That first season selling to California surf shops, Brian remembers they sold exactly 28 pairs, which came to a thousand dollars a week's start for what would become a worldwide fashion brand that today sells over $1 billion worth of product annually. But Brian had confidence, or ignorance, as he puts it, on his side. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to have a certain level of ignorance, because if you knew what was ahead when you started out, you'd never start. Brian was also ignorant of an important marketing problem. Unlike Aussies, Americans associated sheepskin with spun wool, which meant Americans assumed the boots were hot, prickly and delicate, far from comfort for your feet. But to Australians, sheepskin is rugged, it breathes, it even wicks moisture so you can put it on wet feet. That really appeals to surfers because within 10 minutes of putting Uggs on, all the moisture is wicked out and your feet are warm, comfortable and dry. And because sheepskin has natural antimicrobial properties, it doesn't collect bacteria, hence no odor. Sheepskin was perfect for footwear. Americans just didn't know it yet. Scratch that. Only the uber early adopter Americans who surfed in Australia knew. The rest of America was primed to find out. Even if they weren't aware of it yet, the target customers had a common, fast growing need. And Brian had the solution. The next season of sales was far from a barn burner. But that's often how the paddling part, intrinsic to this stage goes. The wave is still behind you and it is hard to measure how big it is. Brian's job during this stage was to paddle hard. He had to get moving on his effort so he had enough speed to catch the surging wave building behind him. The indicators of a surge coming your way, they are typically three. First and foremost, there is extreme loyalty and commitment from the early adopters, either to you or. Or more often, the concept. In Brian's case, it was the use of sheepskin boots. Few American surfers were wearing Uggs at this point. There were only six pairs in circulation a few seasons before. After all, from the very few boots out there, a key surge indicator was visible, albeit barely. The customers using the products were very loyal to it. They only wore sheepskin boots. There was no alternative. This little bump in the ocean is the energy within the water revealing itself. Customers using your product bring credibility. Customers using your product exclusively brings unquestionable credibility. Second, those loyal uber early adopter surfers were encouraging their friends to get a pair too. And the friends did. For the surge watcher, the the key indicator is this. Do the early adopters who are loyal to the new product have enough stick to it iveness to fight through social pressure and inertia to convert more early adopters? The third indicator, as Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently described in the Tipping Point, is this. Are the cool kids loyal to the new movement? Brands become statements. A newbie surfer who has a crap board, steals waves from the pros and and just sucks at surfing is not one of the cool kids. If the uncool guy is wearing Uggs, they will actually repulse Other surfers from the boots. But if some of the cool kids are sporting the shoe, the initial surge elements are there and word begins to spread. Word of mouth sales means your offering stands on its own. It's not only delivering on its promise to your customer, it's selling itself. Your product is literally creating its own demand. Time to rally the troops. The cool people in any surge can't be manufactured. But Brian tried anyway. He hired the most beautiful, sleek looking models he could find. He put Uggs on their feet and longboards by their sides and ran the ads in Surfer magazine. Beautiful for sure, but cool? Not at all. Brian told me over beers one day. I explained my trickling sales to one of my surfer retailer friends, Robert. He yelled out to the back of the shop to a couple of local surfer dudes and said, hey, what do you think of Uggs? And they all said, ah, those Uggs, man, they're so fake. Have you seen those stupid ads? Those models are posers. They can't even surf. I instantly knew I was sending the wrong message to my target market. People who want to be cooler rally around cooler people. People who want something rally around people who already have that something. Are the cool kids of your industry using your thing? Or at least something like it? No. Get your thing to the cool kids fast. That's what Brian did. The next season, the skinny models who couldn't tell the difference between a long board and a cutting board were dumped. And a quick FYI here, a cutting board is not a surfboard whatsoever. It's the board on your kitchen counter that you use when you cut up your vegetables or raw meat. On man day, Brian grabbed his own camera and took a couple of up and coming surfers named Mike Parsons and Ted Robertson out for a photo shoot. Together, Brian, Mike and Ted hit all the iconic surf walks. And Brian snapped away. Surfers recognized the authenticity in the new ads lifting Ugg from sales of $30,000 a year out of a van on the beach to over $400,000 that year. Brian had positioned his business to be in the pocket, the special spot where the vast majority of your niche marketplace is influenced to make a go with you purchase decision. Brian was ready to build to what he always thought the company could be, a fashion brand. Everybody thinks I came to California to exploit the surfers. But it was totally by default. Surfers were simply the initial source of energy that started the wave for Ugg. Surfers started wearing Uggs to school, and other kids wanted them. Remember, wannabe cool always emulates already cool and the moms of wannabes hit the streets seeking Uggs. Brian went on to find other ways to expand his market and exposure, eventually creating the phenomena that made it onto the pages of People magazine, the runways of New York Fashion Week, and the feet of every cool girl in the great US Of A. I'll share more of how he did it in the later chapters. For now, I want you to get this one crucial point. You can't make waves, but you can find them. Yes, that does mean you, too. Not the band, by the way. You also. Your business is not too small for a surge. Your idea is not too narrow for a surge. You are not too inexperienced for a surge. There are no special snowflakes in business. The only difference between you and Brian Smith is, is he already rode his wave. This isn't rocket science. If it were, no way I'd be doing it. You can do this. You can be the next legend in your industry. And your story begins now. Action steps. If you read my other books, you know I always include action items at the end of each chapter. Why do I do this? Because if you're like me, I. You like to read a book through and then go back to it and take action. But for me, there's one problem with that strategy. I don't go back. Instead, I dig into the next read. Like many people, I discovered I was filling up on great ideas and doing nothing about any of them. But no more. I committed to always taking specific action while I'm reading a book. And surprise, surprise, I see results. The same opportunity exists for you. While you could plow ahead and just read, I totally get it. That may work for you. I have found that small but deliberate actions will have an immediate positive impact on getting your business where you want it. You will find action items at the end of this chapter and every chapter for which action is required.

In the remainder of this book, I.

Strongly encourage you to do them immediately. Most tasks only take a few minutes. Some longer. But if you commit to doing them, you. You will see results. To catch a wave, you can't just stand on the beach watching. You actually need to get out there in the ocean and start paddling. Start by doing these tasks now. And here is your two action steps for this chapter. First, to see the true opportunity that lies ahead for your business, you must, for now, pull your business out of the equation. Ask yourself right now and every day until you find the true answer. What are my customers doing, regardless of me? Okay, you got that. And by the way, as a little aside, our Businesses grow by asking bigger and better questions. I've talked about this in my other books, but questions are what pop up, those in the shower, inspirational moments with the answers. So stop asking yourself, what do I want? What is next for me? Ask, what are my customers doing? Regardless of me, that big question will ultimately find the big answer. All right, back to the book number two for you on your task list here. If you think you see a wave, validate it by looking for the cool kids. The nature of being a cool kid is showing off the early adopters of the Tesla. Just like all cool kids, find a way for everyone to know about it. The question is, are they cool? And the answer is quite simple. Cool kids will convince others to do the same. Uncool kids won't. Whenever you find potential cool kids, try to find out if they have convinced others to buy. If so, you likely have an imminent wave, a surge.

What happens if, you know, people aren't in the habit of looking around and identifying the surges and kind of going after going with them? What if some. What if an entrepreneur and a business person just has a good idea and they're not. They're not aware of the surge concept and let's say they miss a surge or they miss many surges. What happens to them?

Yeah, so one. So since you asked that, I'll answer that. And it wasn't if you listened into the first intro and chapter, you didn't hear the answer to that, because I do have in the book, but it's. I don't remember which chapter it's in. The nice thing is there are thousands of surge waves going on all the time. The key is to first pick your niche. It's not natural for us to look what's happening next. And it's very hard because we could look at the market today and say, what's happening in the market? It's such a broad term that anything you say is right. Anything you say is validated. So you have just like Google, you can go on Google and say, you know, you can ask the craziest things and there's something somewhere in Google validating it. You can say, the world is flat, right? And you can go Google and you'll find like 50 hits saying, yep, the world's flat.

Sure.

So it's easy to validate any belief you have. So what you have to do is first pick a niche and I'll give you the steps of surge, because I'll walk you through it. Surge is also an acronym. S stands for separate. You have to pick a very special category, the California Surfer. The very specific community that you're in, intrigued or interested about. U is stands for unify. What's unifying that community? Where are they being forced to move or desire to move? Now, here's the the trick, Chris. Defining it. Look for the cool kids doing it. The cool kids buy the Tesla. And for Brian Smith of ugg, the cool kids were the first ones to put on the UGG boots. Then you want to see are people unifying around that because the cool kids took the risk? Are other people trying to emulate the cool kids? If that's happening, that's the indicator of the surge. So this is a very deliberate process. If you've never looked for surges before, which you probably haven't, this is how you do it. The R stands for rally cry. Once you've identified the community and the movement they're making around unification, you must offer the kind of the rally cry. What's the message you're communicating that you can. That can go viral with that group. For Ryan Smith of ugg, it was no more cold feet. Surf anytime anywhere was kind of his motto. Now, that's not the motto for ugg, but that's what they were promoting. And now California surfers in the winter, who had nice neoprene suits, that was the impetus, by the way, of surfing in the winter, now could throw in UGG boots. Well, for us, our rally cry is eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. There's a specific mission or purpose we're trying to serve, and the community rallies around that. G stands for gather. As you're moving along, you got to constantly gather information, keep on revalidating the movement. It's actually happening. And then E is the final stage, which is expansion, where you take out your concept and start expanding it to bigger and bigger groups. Hopefully, Chris. So to answer your question, hopefully I did. That's the method to do it. If you haven't done it, you haven't missed out. It's constant movement. This too shall pass. What's here today will shift again and shift again and shift again. So if you missed it, don't worry about it. There's another wave coming. Just start looking for the waves.

So the, the danger of manufacture, being in a business like you're manufacturing typewriters is pretty rare, I assume, like a lot of people listening, are they in danger if they don't recognize a surge?

You're in danger if you don't recognize a surge, because you'll be part of the commodity player. So the Rise of the keyboard is the surge. The death of the typewriter really is just the consequence of the surge of the keyboard. The thing is, you can get into keyboards today and still make money, but it's a commoditized thing that's so competitive. If you got into keyboards during the rise in the 70s and 80s, you really positioned yourself well because the market carried you. There was a lack of supply compared to the surging demand. So regardless of mark you're in, if you come late to the party, you'll do okay. And please read the pumpkin plan. There's some strategies to get through that.

But if you really want to carry.

Yourself forward with little effort, go when the move is happening. And so that's what we're doing with Profit First Professionals. We identified. There's something. There's a change going on. We applied what we believe the solution is to it, and the market's carrying us. We literally got client yesterday who called and said, everyone's talking about Profit First Professionals. I never heard of you before. I want to join. He hadn't been our website. He hadn't read our book. He didn't know who we were. He said, my clients are talking about this.

Yeah.

So that's the surge. When the marketing happens on its own because the community is thirsting for something and the word starts circulating, that's when you're on the search.

Nice.

So I hope everyone enjoyed listening. You can tell how passionate I get about things.

Absolutely.

But I'm like this. Like, my mother will say, hey, you want breakfast? I'm like, of course I want breakfast. That's awesome. Like, I get hyper. I think about everything.

That's why we call you Flash.

I know. I am intense.

Well, it's crazy. It's live. You know, the. See, the. The mantra of Profit First Professionals, which is to. Well, the purpose and mantra is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. Poverty and surge. And all your books feed into that. They help people. See, you're helping people. You're making a difference in people's lives. People. I mean, you know, it. Entrepreneurs are waking up every day, millions of entrepreneurs waking up, saying, oh, my God, what am I gonna do? I don't know what to do. This is hard. I'm scared. I'm everything. Right. And you're giving them these tools. This is your fourth book. I mean, this is. This is it, man. If people just studied this and listened to it and. And. And even email you, it'd make a big difference.

Yeah, email me. The emails are starting to flow in regularly. I Love it. I love it. So, yeah, you know, I think as entrepreneurs, we have a million things we can do, but we need to do only a small portion of it. The question is, which is the portion? I'm not saying I got the perfect path. I've studied a lot of businesses. I've experienced it for myself, I applied to myself. I think this is one effective path. Maybe you want to go your own way. That's cool. But if you want to go this path, all these kind of books are starting to link together, and in one day, this song will be dedicated to you.

You can't touch this.

Yeah.

When my. When my mom said, hey, you want to do breakfast? I play this. I sound, Christine, I gotta stop drinking. You know, I'm not. I'm not a big, like, drinker. And I told Christine, I started like, I'm making margaritas because this weather's getting good now. I'm really starting to put a little bit to too much tequila in there. But the one benefit is I do slow down a little bit.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

So I don't know. Somebody has a drinking problem is what boils down. Okay, Buy my book, for God's sake. I have a drinking problem. Right?

So when does Surge come out? When does it release? Where is it?

Surge is released June 1st. Pick up your copy. It's on Amazon.com they got the best deal. It's on audible. You just heard it. It's on hardcover. It's in Kindle. It's in Nook. It's in Smash Words, Kobo, Kobe, Kobe Beef, something like that. It's imprinted on the side of Buffalo. Everyone can get it out there.

Pick up your copy now in sequential order. So, yeah, so check it out. You can also go to this post on Profit first podcast dot com. The post of this episode, which is a bonus episode, it doesn't even have a number. Comment on this post and ask Mike questions about the book. And maybe you even want to ask him to sign one for you. I don't know.

Think about it. Oh, yes.

All right, so thanks for listening to our bonus episode, everybody. We'll be back next episode with the regular, regular guest.

No idea who it is because we don't know where the bonus is gonna play.

Yes. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Mike.

See you. Thanks, Christina.

Bye.