Episode 102: Rethinking Happiness with Doug Kisgen

I find your lack of faith disturbing. I got a better new sound effect, though. This is the new one. I mean, tell me you don't want to just chill when you hear that.

Is that one for Christina? You gonna open one for yourself now?

Here's one for me. That was for Christina. Here's mine.

All right, well, if you're listening to this, have a drink, a soft drink.

No, no, no, no, no. For God's sake, guzzle down the Profit first podcast, episode 102.

Yes.

Come on, give me the energy. Bring it.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Darth, did you like what he was saying? No. Yeah, I didn't think so. You were too chill. You were too chill.

That's right. Well, welcome everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curran.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first and the brand new book that's out in the market now on Amazon called Surge. Pick it up. It's an audio, it's in print, it's in Kindle version, supposedly has been chiseled into rock.

Oh.

I'm joined in studio by my colleague, Christina Bulldog.

Hi.

You're feeling. Are you feeling the energy?

I am totally feeling the energy.

What's up with you two guys? You and Chris? I need to send calls because we're just cool. Yeah, just chilling, man. We're drinking our beers, bro.

Chilling, man.

You. You are bringing the energy, listener. You're listening to the private first PODC show on the entire web that brings profitability to you from every single angle. And there's always a moment in your experience here and you'll experience that today, too.

That's right. We interview a great guest, we give our takeaways, and we have some great corporate partners. And this show is really about you and your business and your sustainability. So if you take that seriously, have fun listening to our fun show. You can hear us everywhere on itunes and Stitcher and. And Google Play, Tunein Radio, and of course, the website profit first podcast.com. all 101 previous episodes are there. Go ahead and binge, listen. Enjoy it. Grow your business. Be profitable, please, for God save me.

Problem. So, dude, what have you been up to, bro? You just seem a little shelaxed right now.

No, I'm okay. I. Yeah, so my parents were supposed to come visit, but my dad had to have his appendix out. Oh. Yeah. But he. Everything's okay. But he's okay. And. But they'll come. So they'll come a few months from now. How old's your pops 71.

You know the Appendix man, it can get you anytime.

Anytime?

Anytime. Just a little piece of food. It's usually food or something that gets lodged in there, right?

Really?

Yeah. It can happen in your 20s too?

Yeah, any age. My friend was 15 and all of a sudden he just. We're in class at school and he. He falls over, like grabbing. Well, didn't, thank God. No. If it burst. No, but he was just in extreme pain. Falls over and everyone's like, you know, the lunch here ain't that good. I mean. And he was rushed to the hospital, sure enough, at Penn. Within three hours, it's out. Oh, and he was back in the lunchroom the next morning, eating the crappy.

Really?

Oh, well, I don't know if he came back that quickly.

Yeah, I was going to say my dad was in the hospital for four days, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah. So what have you two been up to?

Dude, I've been building out my soundboard. And you know, this show is about getting businesses back into the black, so I thought there's nothing better than a little of this. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm building out my soundboard. What have you been up to?

See, lately my jaw has been clicking and I've had this problem since I was like 5. But my left side of my jaw, especially like when I yawn or when I'm singing lately it just like clicks and it completely throws me off and I don't know how to fix it.

Maybe a chiropractor can do that on my face. Yeah, chiropractor. Listen, I went to a chiropractor and my wrist was hurting. He's like, oh, that's no problem. Snap, snap, snap, Crap, crack. Or crap crap. And it was fixed. And I thought they only work in your spine. Yeah, my knee was hurting. Snap, crack, twist. Fine. So why not the face?

It's a bonus. Punch in. Do not punch.

Well, maybe try that out. Maybe we make shout outs today.

We do. And I'm unprepared again.

Well, you look it up. I'll tell you about the sponsors while you prepare.

You do that.

So I want to thank Nextiva, Fund Box Receipt, bank and Fundera. Listen, these are these folks that just keep showing up and up and up again. There's one. It's one company we're not mentioning anymore. They finally backed out. So if you know who they are, shame on them. Shame on them.

They're still a great company.

They're still a great company.

And they might be back. They're going to regret that decision, I feel.

Yeah. So next time I'll announce the all five. I'll say fundbox, nextiva receipt, bank Fundera. And that's how we're gonna announce our fifth one. Oh, all right. Did you find who?

I did. This is from Snaps and two on Amazon. He said, I absolutely love this concept and it's just what my company needed. I already feel my business being more and more stable, and I look forward to continuing the profit first system.

So thank you. Today we're talking to Doug Kistrian. He is the author of Rethink Happy. What do you think about happy when you think of happiness?

Family, to be specific.

That's nice. That's good. Yeah, a lot of people wouldn't say that. Really?

Well, not like every person in my family, but like.

No, no. But it's a happy time together. That's fantastic. See, and I think you're already rethinking happy. I think a lot of people think an injection of some kind of drug. But it's time we rethink happy. And why? Because if you want to be truly profitable, you must have a base of happiness. They come hand in hand. You can make money and be a total biage and hate life. And that's not success, that's not real profits. And conversely, you can be extremely happy, but then no degree of sustainable wealth, and that ain't so great. It's a combination of two. So Doug is a serial entrepreneur, author, consultant, speaker. He's grown businesses, he's had challenges, and he's written this book. But he's also. Him and his wife are family teachers at Boys Town. That's for at risk boys. So we'll learn a little bit about that. Doug, want to welcome you to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I got to tell you, the three of you just. I've been, like, smiling this whole time. Number one, that I get to be on this podcast. Number two, just the energy you all bring is just. I'm really, really happy to be here.

Oh, that's wonderful. Well, talk about energy. I'm gonna bring to a low point instantly. You had a turning point in your life. There was a low point. You had. What. What exactly happened?

Well, I was in the kind of Kush quote unquote golden handcuffs, had a great job and had a bug to go buy a business. So I bought the business, moved my family to a city where we knew no one, rented an apartment with our four children at the time, and tried to make a go of it. And it went quite a bit backwards before it went forwards. We were, gosh, close to 300,000 in debt. I'd halved my salary twice. And it's at that point where I thought, okay, this can't be all there is. Or, you know, and honestly, the biggest part about it is I thought I could do anything completely on my own. I thought I was in total control. I thought I had everything. And I went in with a very egotistical mindset that I was unstoppable. And I got a rude awakening.

But what inspired you, if you had a golden handcuff job, what inspired you to start a business in the first place?

Well, it's interesting. My grandfather on my dad's side was a Phillips 66 guy in the town of 300. He had an actual pump in his front yard, so he's essentially his own businessman. And then my father was a CPA for a number of years, and he would see these guys out golfing in the afternoon and thinking, well, how are they golfing in the afternoon? I'm trying to bill hours. So he ended up buying a manufacturing company, and he was a franchisee for Godfather's pizza and essentially became an entrepreneur himself. And I thought, gosh, at some point, that's the way to go. I just hadn't kind of found the right idea to go with until at that time when I was at that job.

I wonder if they were your family. There was out on the golf course saying, God, there's no work to be had. This is, you know, we might as well golfing, because this can be the last time we're out. I mean, I. I wonder if, in all seriousness, they face just as difficult of challenges that you have faced in your own entrepreneurial endeavors, but you didn't see that component.

It's true, actually. That's very true. I mean, it looks pretty. It looks nice. It looks easy when you see the people who have already, quote, unquote, made it, the people who are struggling to find their last dime. Actually, one of my inspirations quite a while ago here is the toilet paper entrepreneur. I absolutely.

Oh, nice, bro.

Yeah. I don't know if you remember this or not, but I had 14 must reads for all entrepreneurs, and I picked that book as One of my 14 top must reads.

Love it.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome.

It's one of the concepts that stayed with me even when we turned the corner on that 300,000 debt and we started paying off the debt and started becoming more profitable and totally Turned it around. And there are a number of reasons for that. I still maintain the mentality that, that I only have, as you put in the book, you know, three or four or five sheets left toilet paper. Your mentality is a lot different than when you got, you know, eight stacked up, you know, next to it. So. And I think that's a concept that helped us be very profitable moving forward and paying off the debt as fast as we could.

Well, what was the first that business you bought? What did you do exactly?

So it was actually, it was a franchise, it's a home instead senior care franchise. So we provided non medical senior care to basically seniors who couldn't maintain some of their activities of daily living. So meal preparation, lighthouse keeping, that type of thing. We actually just. Our little mom and pop ended up being an Inc. 5000 fastest growing company in 2011 and 2012, and we would have made it again in 2013 if we hadn't sold it.

Wow. So it sounds like the initial struggles turned into a pretty phenomenal turnaround.

Very much so. So I, you know, my, my mindset changed from one of it's all about me to how can I serve? I mean, that's kind of the punchline of it. And I got out of my own way and my own ego and I found the right people and I let them do their thing and, and did it for the right reasons. One, one of your quotes from the toilet paper entrepreneur is success in business isn't about being right, it's about being committed. And then also always bet on the individual serving his calling, not the guy who's doing it for the money. So, you know, in essence, if you're doing it for the right reasons, the money will come. You just gotta, you just gotta stick to it and work hard and again, surround yourself with the right people and know yourself. That's, that's a tricky part, you know, know where you really play the best and play to those strengths. I was listening. I'm kind of talking too long here, but I was listening to podcast Gary V. Was on there, Gary Vaynerchuk, and he said, I doubled down, I tripled down, I quadrupled down on my strengths and I delegate all my weaknesses. And I'm in that camp 100%.

Oh, I am with you 100% too. So tell me, this experience you went through was in part the spark to write Rethink Happy. What is Rethink Happy about?

So Rethink Happy is a fable. It's in a fable format. So it's a story form and it's meant to be an easy read, quote unquote. But there are a lot of philosophical, psychological principles that are throughout it. In essence, what it's saying is that there's more to life than money, than success. And some of these things are interesting. Like Christina's first thought when you said happy was family. Family is a big part of it. And a big portion of the book is spent talking about balance, talking about prioritization, talking about principles and virtues and things of that nature, which really, at the end of the day, and it's kind of like what you said, too. I mean, you can get where you want to go in a lot of different ways. And if you get there without some fundamental core ideology that's in tune or in line with what's right and what's good and what's true, it's not worth the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.

How do you find what is, what's right, what's good, what's true?

Well, it's interesting. So, Socrates, most people heard of this quote, the unexamined life is not worth living. So the first step is to stop and think, set aside some time. I can't tell you how many executives, entrepreneurs, who just got to get caught in the day to day, day to day, and never take time to get out of the office and just literally go think and examine exactly where they're at right now. And then Aristotle came later and he said a quote that most people don' Know. And that is the unplanned life is not worth examining. And I love that because, you know, we can examine and think and examine and thinking, but until we do something, until we execute, it really doesn't mean a whole lot. So. So that throughout the book, it kind of this, the. The main character goes on this journey of trying to identify these important principles. And there's. There's a couple things in there that might be worth sharing. But anyway, that's. That's where I'm at so far.

Okay, well, I do want to hear some of the principles, but the first question I have for you is the stop and think. How do you do that? Is it the golf course? Was that what your family was doing out there? Stopped and thinking, or is it something that just. Just time affords you?

Well, there's a number of ways that you can, or a number of things you can do when you're stopping and thinking. But. But the most important thing is to set. Set an appointment. Just like you set an appointment with a client or with your team or whatever that you set aside time that is absolutely one be interrupted and not to be moved under any circumstances. And you know, I ideally start small and then work your way from there. But you know, once a week, twice a week, three times a week. So if you're in a strategic role in your company, you're working on the business instead of in it, to quote kind of the old E myth Michael Gerber concept, then you have to, you must take time away from the day to day to really think of it. And it's just a matter of setting aside the time and making a commitment to do it.

So we told some of our listeners that we're going to be bringing you on the show and the first email I get is, hey, his book has a dollar sign erased on that's the COVID of the book. Are you sure you want him on the Profit first podcast? What's the concept behind erasing the dollar sign?

Well, essentially, that is kind of ironic, isn't it? I didn't think in a good way.

It's in a good way.

Hey, I appreciate you still having me on the show. Well, the essence of that is that there have been numerous, numerous studies in terms of straight up money. And it's interesting, the biggest one was conducted by Gallup and they determined that 75,000 in a fairly high rent district was the sort of tipping point where perceived well being or happiness did not increase beyond it. So 75 might sound like a lot, might sound like not very much. But the moral of the story is at some point, it really isn't. There's never enough in a sense. Now I am 100% a business guy. I'm an EO member like you entrepreneurs organization. I'm here to build businesses that make money and make profit, period. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity, period. So don't get me wrong. But by the same token, if that's your only focus, if that's the only reason you're in business, then it's, you know, I don't think that's going to be setting yourself up for authentic joy. It's going to be more fleeting pleasures and happiness instead.

Now there's a little trap here because what I heard you just say is there's, there's never enough when it comes to money. So there's that 75,000. You kind of hit your happiness cap, if you will. But we endeavor to make more money, but it doesn't actually bring more happiness. So we endeavor to make more. It sounds like we get on a. What's that With a mouse. Hamster wheel. Not a mouse wheel. Yeah, it seems like a little bit of a hamster wheel. How do you pull yourself off of that unwinnable race toward more money?

Well, I think it's again, it's a matter of examining and making your plan and saying what are your priorities and what's important. Seneca, the Stoic philosopher from many years ago, said it is not the man who has too little, but the man who is never satisfied, who is poor. So it's about taking a deep breath and saying what is enough and what is important, what is really making me happy, not just fleeting or seeming or judging or whatever the case may be. Now, how do you get yourself off of that? Well, I don't want to tout. Bring it back to rethink happy, but I mean, the essence, that's, that's the essence of the book.

Okay, well, why don't you give us three or four maybe practical tips from the book. I don't want to give them all away because then people won't buy your book. But give us the three or four things that we can do to re examine happiness.

Okay, Absolutely. So the first thing that the mentor in the book talks to the guy going through the struggle is about virtue and principles. There's the father of positive psychology is considered to be Dr. Martin Seligman. He did a research project and analyzed all peoples of all time and determined there were six universal principles, Transcendence. So some concept of God, love, wisdom, justice, courage and temperance are the others. And these, whether it's Aristotle, whether it's Augustine, whether it's Aquinas, or whether even Ben Franklin, who was a big virtue guy, by the way, and worth looking up. But anyway, striving toward those virtues and thinking of them first is incredibly helpful for putting other things like money and that in proper perspective. And then within the book, we hit on specifically love and charity, and then we specifically hit on that toward our wives and children.

Well, I want to talk about what you've discovered. You worked and continue to at Boys Town, which is an environment for at risk boys, teenagers, I think specifically what got you involved in that, that environment, that project.

So when we first had, when we had our first child, we wanted to get closer to home. And we're originally from Omaha, Nebraska, and Boys Town is right outside Omaha, Nebraska. And we thought, you know, we need to be as good a parent as we possibly can be and how do we do that? And we just happened along this opportunity and applied for it and my wife and I became family Teachers. And yes, we had eight at risk boys, our house living with us, and we were essentially their parents. We had one weekend off a month and my wife and I had two of our next children while still in that environment. When we had three kids and eight at risk boys, it became unfortunately too much. And that's when we moved on from that.

So tell me, these, these boys at risk, how's that defined? What does that mean exactly?

So essentially there, it's kind of a last resort, honestly. It's either you're going to go to juvenile detention or you can try this Boys Town thing out. And they have to actively choose Boys Town. Even if they're reluctant to do so, they still can choose it. But it typically looks a little better than juvenile detention. They, some of them truancy, some of them moms of drug addict dads doing time for armed robbery, some of them are from foreign countries that didn't do well in their transition. Here we had kids from Brazil, Chile, San Francisco, Phoenix, Arizona, I mean all over the country who came there to try to basically learn how to do things right. And real quick, Father Flanagan, the man who started the whole organization, said that there is no such thing as a bad boy or a bad young man or a bad young girl. It's bad training, bad teaching, bad education. And so if you give them the proper environment, they can flourish. And I'll tell you, in the first 90 or so days, they don't flourish a whole lot and it's really hard. But once they get the system and understand it and realize that yelling and screaming and throwing things won't get their way at Boys Town, they start to understand how to, how to learn self control and become remarkably fine young men.

And so what would you say are the greatest lessons you learned around happiness? I mean, you're the guy who wrote the book Rethink Happy. What did you learn from these young men?

Gosh, that's such a great question. I learned, number one, that little things can make a huge difference. We would have some vacation time, and when we do so an assistant family teacher would come in and stay with our boys, stay the night. And one of these mornings where they were getting off to school, one of the young men was getting ready to go and he said, hey, I'm going to school. Our family teacher assistant was named Brandon. He said, okay, okay, that's great. He's of course, telling us the story afterwards. And he goes again, well, you know, I'm really leaving, I gotta go to school. And he's like, okay. And Then this young man goes, no, you have to say, have a great day. So this punk kid. Yeah. Skinhead, Smoking constantly, catching him smoking, doing a bunch of whatever. He couldn't leave the house without having an adult wish him to have a great day. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So, I mean, I call it bookends. Whether it's your. Whether it's your spouse or whether it's your child. What's the first thing you say when you see him or do. And what's the last thing you say or do before they leave or before you leave? Critical. Critical little moments that can add up to really strong, happy, flourishing relationships. And it's just so simple. One other thing I do, maybe a couple more. I don't know. But one other thing I would like to share that we learned from the head psychiatrist there. He said there are three kinds of attention. There's good attention, there's bad attention, and there's none. And every child will choose bad over none.

And this means to. To capture attention. Right. They'll do something that gets them in trouble because that's getting them attention, even though it's not desirable, it's okay. And why they always. Why would they choose bad over none?

Because any attention is better than none. The ignoring the I'm not even here. I don't exist. Kids want to be loved. Kids want to know that they matter. Kids want to be a part of what's happening in the family and with their parents and side by side. And we talk about in the book balancing this and bringing kids and making them, you know, helping them get involved in our business endeavors instead of totally separating. More of an integration rather than a separation.

And did you ever experience kids coming in the system that wanted no attention? I mean, that sounds like that's the most dire situation in that case.

It's interesting so that you say that. So there are times where our boys who were dealing with anger control issues would go and either go to the room or go in a corner and not want to be spoken to at all. So, yes, that happened. And there are other times where they would take pens and put them in pencil sharpeners and throw things and run out the house and do anything to get attention when it was clear that we were giving it too much to another young man.

Interesting.

And those are peaks and valleys. And even the kid who doesn't want anybody to talk to him. As family teachers, you kind of pick your battles, but we want to tell them, if you're on a job and you feel like this, you just can't go over in the corner and not be spoken to. So, you know, the real world is this doesn't work. So now that doesn't mean that everybody doesn't deserve their space. And in certain instances or certain time frames, it's acceptable. But there are a lot of times we would teach to it and help them to overcome some of the things that they're going through.

All right, so I've learned what I've learned from you that you've learned from them, meaning these young men, is the bookends you've learned from the head psychologist there, the good, bad and the non. When it comes or none. When it comes to attention. Maybe you can share one more tip, another thing that you've learned while working at Boys Town, what brings about happiness.

Sure, sure, sure. So, I mean, a real simple one is do what you say you're going to do. I remember having kids sitting on their suitcases at Thanksgiving waiting for their dad to come pick them up and he never showed. So you'd have parents that would come and have a visit or grab them for a weekend and then bring them back. And a lot of times I can picture right now one young man literally sitting on his suitcase for four hours waiting for dad to come get him and he never came. But the other kind of more overriding principle is when I learned, and maybe it's obvious to others, but that fairness does not always mean sameness. So to think that you're going to treat each child the exact same can often be unfair.

Interesting. Can you give me a story or example?

Yes. So if you have a child that's dealing with, for instance, anger issues and you sit there and you can't, you don't want to rib them, you don't want to put them into, you don't want to provoke them, okay. Whereas another child who has absolutely no anger issues whatsoever, but maybe has self esteem issues which are underlying most of these anyway. But let's say that that's the case. You know, you can rib them, you know, you can kind of give them the business a little bit, you can kind of fool around with them a little bit. But you're, you're actively and choosing, I mean, you're precisely, you're strategically picking and choosing who you can sort of play around with, so to speak. Now, within my own family, I have five children between 7 and 19. And I've got some real talkers and I've got some real quiets, I've got some artists and I've got some sportsy and the conversations are distinctly different, and sometimes they'll go, well, you're doing that with him. I know I'm doing that with him, but I'm doing this with her because that's what she likes. And so, you know, you can't always do exactly what each child wants every single time they want it, of course. But balancing that and recognizing that they have their own wants, needs, likes, dislikes, and how do you figure those out? Vet those out, and then make sure that you're honoring their time and their sentiments and their likes as often as you possibly can.

It's always fascinating to me, all these different insights, perspectives from working at Boys Town to your own businesses. All this stuff translates into the folks listening now. Entrepreneurs. How to grow your business, how to have happiness there, how to have the most foundational, important component, happiness, which brings about a sustainable business. Doug, where can people find out more about yourself, and where should they pick up your great book?

The book is on Kindle right now. It'll be on every book website that you can find here. It officially releases June 14, and then rethinkhappy.com is the website to learn more.

All right, everyone check out the book for sure. And by the time this podcast is live, it's out there. So get it right now. Start rethinking. Happy from what a wildly interesting perspective, too. Doug, thanks so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Thanks, Doug. Good job, man.

Thanks, Chris.

Yeah, that was interesting. From Socrates to Martin Salvichen, I think his name was. To Boys Town.

Yeah, I need this. I really want to read this book. Yeah, I'm gonna get it.

I always get pumped when I'm talking with someone that just is clearly so well educated. It's just. And has worldly experience. It just opens my eyes in so many ways. So in a second, we're gonna recap what we learned. You got pageful notes. I got pageful notes. Chris's energy's back. He's jacked again. Just in case he's not, I'm gonna whip him. Oh, oh, and I want to thank our corporate partner to make the show possible, please. Yeah, you know, he was sharing that some of the boys there, and they're in a rebellious situation. In some cases, they retaliate. Of course, they were taking pens and jamming them into pencil sharpeners, which I kind of find is funny until, you know, the damage it does. You know, there's one phone system that's resilient to the most brutal attacks. It is made out of solid Kryptonite not kryptonite. Titanium. You know where the phones are?

What.

What phones are they?

Nextiva.

Exactly.

Nextiva.

Nextiva. We. My car was rolling down a hill. I needed the wheel chock. So I just took the front of my Nextiva phone, plugged it, you know, just put it right there.

That sucker stopped it.

Stopped it.

It stopped your car. And then it rang and then you.

Had to bring it up. Right. A phone call came in, I picked up, and the car ran down the hill, so. And it crashed. Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Then I had to run and get a. To the local auto store to get my car repaired. It was all damaged now. And they give you like a receipt that's the size of another automobile. I scan that in with my receipt bank system.

Look at that.

But here's the issue. As I'm scanning it in, I'm like, oh, my God. I actually don't have enough funds in my account to cover this car repair.

What did you do?

I called Fundera.

Oh, thank God.

Meredith Wood sends money right over. Right?

Of course.

What?

No, I was gonna say, of course. Fundera, they give business loans not to get your car repaired.

No, they don't. They don't. Yeah, exactly. This is. This is a fake story. No one listening knows this. This is a made up story. And then it's like a Mad Libs. Then as I'm sitting at the place, they're repairing my car. That person I made the sale to, he says, I'm not going to be able to pay your invoice for six months. I'm like, what? I need the money now. But I didn't say it out loud. I only said in my mind because I made a call immediately on my next phone to Fundbox, who released the funds to me, gave me the cash, I was able to repay back my loan to Fundera. I pulled out my brand new repaired car and drove back to the office and made another phone call. Nextiva.

That was quite a story.

None of that's true, by the way. I know. Listeners are like, oh, my God, this guy. All right, Chris, what was your big takeaway? My brother?

Well, I always love, you know, I love this. The real side of profit, the happiness, contentment, taking time for yourself. I mean, that's why my wife and I started the pause your life organization, right? To stop and think and just be. So it's all about lifestyle. You can, you know, you can be making lots of money, lots of revenue, and even lots of profit, but at the end of the day, oh, I hate that. I don't want to say that the end of the day. At the end of the day.

It.

Is what it is.

Nope.

Thank you.

Nope, nope, nope.

When it comes right down to it. No, look, look. The balance and the lifestyle is what's important. Lifestyle. That's why I really like that book, the Four Hour Work Week, from years ago. It was about lifestyle. Build a lifestyle, build a business, but also build a lifestyle.

So that's what I was listening to, an interview with Tim Ferriss. And the interviewer said, have you yet worked a four hour work week? And he goes, no, not even close. And it's just funny because then people are like, don't you. Don't they think you're a Charlotte? He's like, no, that's the title of the book. It's something. It's a goal.

It's a concept.

It's a concept. Yeah. He's like, but work toward balance. And then he went on to explain his life. He's like, oh, my God, this guy's got a balanced life. So. Yeah. All right, what do you got there?

Oh, my God. I don't know which one to pick. They're all so good. No, Doug says, you know, do what you say you're gonna do. If you make a commitment, keep it. And that's not just true for children, obviously, that's important. But for family, even in business, you know, you gotta follow through on your. I mean, not that all of them are promises. I feel like I'm trailing off of my thought process.

Do you want me to take it for you?

Yeah.

You're staring at. You are tired. We gotta get you jacked up. So here's an example that happened to me. There's an email that just came in. I'm always checking my email. That's actually a problem. I shouldn't be doing so much, but I was supposed to do a casting call yesterday for a new TV show and. Yeah, I forgot to tell you, but it was okay. I had it booked, it scheduled, and I called the person, said, I'm ready, not a word. And I just got an email back, so sorry. Was bombarded with network deadlines. Can we talk next week? Do what you say you're gonna do. This person, we scheduled the time, we confirmed it, and then when it was time, I called, checked in twice, weren't there. And after 20 minutes, I said, okay, this is an abandoned call, but there's just no respect for potentially, I could do other things. And if she can't do it, or he. I'm not Saying it's a shame, but clearly if she didn't, it couldn't do it. Just give me a heads up, say, can't do it today. We'll have to reschedule. I think it's not. It's not just the kids at Boys Town, right. I mean, this is a systemic problem throughout society that we say we're gonna do something and then we don't do it, and then that's almost acceptable.

Oh, yeah.

Well.

Or a lot of times you'll bring up something up to someone, be like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll take care of it. And then they don't. And how do you know to hold them.

Yeah.

Accountable for it? And I think that's one of the reasons, again, not to keep bringing up our morning huddle.

Bring it up, bring it up.

That's. I mean, that's part of the reason why we do it. Because every day we pick one goal that every person's gonna get done. And if you don't get it done, push ups, bitch. At least you know what the person didn't kind of helps scales the business.

Thank you. I love our morning huddle. I think one day we should. We should record. You are back. We should record our morning record. Our morning huddle.

One day. Yeah.

I don't know if we have the equipment to do it, but now we.

Know why Christina's tired doing all those push ups.

Oh, she banged out. Oh, it's rates off the board now. Would you bang a 30 this morning?

I did 30 this morning.

Dude. Everyone had push up. Everyone had push ups. And we were about to finish the meeting because sometimes the push ups accumulate because it happens. You gotta hop on a call. And it was me in this case, but someone will call it. I said with the Chris off the board. Like, you can't. We can't not not do push ups. And so the first 10 minutes of our day, everybody's doing push ups. Christina, you walked out because you finished yours.

Yeah, Mike had to do like 75.

You come back in and you're just standing over me. I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm delaying our meeting because I gotta do push ups.

I put my leg up on his back.

I know. She's like, one more you bag.

Put a case of books on his back. Profit.

They were surge. Surge kind of thin. So it wasn't so bad. So my takeaway from Doug was fairness is not sameness. And it's so funny, like, to treat my children fairly, I always think I had to treat them Samely. But they're different types of people when it comes to our members. I think I gotta treat all of our members the same. But they're different types of people. That was a big, big aha for me.

Catering to their own needs.

Yeah.

Like it. It.

Yeah. Cater.

Yeah.

Speak. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if you turn that around. Like, if you treat everyone the same, does that mean you're being unfair? In some cases.

Oh, nice. Oh, very good.

A joke.

Oh, I'm sorry. That's better.

Thank you.

All right, dude, well, you know what we did today? We brought you back in black now. Now your business is more profitable because you're happier. All right, dude, start taking us out, bro.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, listen, this has been a great episode. Thank you to our guests. Thank you to Mike and Christina. You can find our show everywhere. Itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google Play, Podcast, Paddock back in. Oh, I thought you were gonna start.

Backing back the good part.

Yeah, right. He cuts it off. Did the clip end there or did you cut it?

Yeah, the clip ends.

Yes, the clip ends there.

So, yeah, so you can hear us everywhere. You can comment on these posts, go to the website profitfirstpodcast.com. give us your happiness story or give us your, you know, how you treat your kids. Or ask Mike a question or ask Doug Kiskin a question on. In the. In the comments there. You can do it. Profit first, podcast dot com. And real quick, a big shout out to Profit First Professionals, which is an organization that Mike and Obi Ron Kenobi run. And I think it helps that Obi Ron has a lightsaber in his pocket. I mean, so you guys are really making accountants and bookkeepers more consultative and bringing profit to their clients. Hello?

Yes, that's you listening right now. You're sitting there. You can be more profitable. Now I want you just imagine something. Think about how much revenue your company brought in in the last year. How much money to bring in? 100,000, 10,000. 50,000. 5 million, 100 million. I don't care what the number is. Multiply that number by 10%. Say you brought in 100,000 last year. Multiply by 10%. That's your profit distribution. Have you ever had one before? No. Now you do. Now, by the way, a profit distribution is above and beyond your pay. So if you've got a hundred thousand dollar business and you took home 50,000, we are going to find another 10,000 in that business. If you have a million dollar business, we're going to find another hundred thousand dollars in profits to distribute to your business. Why that is. The typical increase we can make in any business is a 10% top line profit, meaning taking 10% from your top line, making profitability. How do we do it? By taking your profit first. It's a system I devised. I wrote a book about it. And now accountants and bookkeepers in our organization have taken it to a whole new level. And they specialize in your industry. We are ready to get you more profit than ever before. And you need an accountant or bookkeeper anyway. I get that. Why not hire one of our profit advisors who just happens to be an extraordinary accountant and bookkeeper too, and drives Profit. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com right now. Click on the find button and we'll hook you up.

There you go. Profit first. Professionals.com. next episode. Clay Clark.

Clay. Clay Clark. That's a hard one to say. Clay Clark is America's number one business coach. Finally become number one. You know, I. I wonder who's the person that's out there says, I'm America's number seven business coach.

I'm sure they don't advertise.

I've never found it's so funny. I've never seen anyone below number two, But Clay Clark is number one, and he's me coming on. And we're gonna be. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna lower it.

And we're kind of on a happiness theme now. He's gonna talk about why saying no brings happiness ironically and profitability. That's next week. Episode 103 next week.

Right. And one of our previous episodes is all about happiness too. Enjoy.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Happiness correlates to Prof.

It, right? Think about that. Meditate on that, young padawan. See you all next week.

See y. So, yeah.