Episode 117: Navigating Debt with Ruby Tan

Barry, what did you have for. I know you talked to Mike about breakfast. What'd you have for breakfast?

Beans, coffee, and biscuit.

And a little piece of fat back.

Dolph. Dude. Dude, I had about six pieces of fat back on top of more fat back.

Ew.

Oh, it's delicious, bruh.

Dude, you're Fat Daddy Fatback.

Dude, that's. Oh, my God. That's my nickname.

Fat Daddy Fatback.

Fat Daddy Fatback. The rest of the show, please refer to me as my new nickname, okay?

And, Ruby, if you're listening, fdfb, and.

If you're listening, Ruby right now, when you talk to me, you cannot call me Mike anymore. My name is Fat Daddy Fatback.

Fat Daddy Fatback. Take note of that.

Got that? Write that down.

You got that? All right, you know what to say when this show gets started.

That's right. And this we're about to get started. Thank you for tuning in. And you're going to hear our guest yelling and screaming and grunting along with us because you stumbled upon the Profit.

First podcast, episode 117. Oh, a little different, but he still. I don't know, Ruby, I can't hear you saying Fat Daddy Fat Back. Are you there?

Yeah. Fat Daddy Fatback.

Oh, there you go.

One Fat Daddy Fat Back.

Skype is ducking her sound. That stinks. Well, welcome, everyone, to the show. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording, and.

I'm Fat Daddy Fatback, the author of Profit first. And also my newest book called Surge. Just Google Fat Daddy Fatback. You'll find out all about me. And I'm joined in the studio by my colleague, Christina Bullock.

Hi, again.

Hey.

And you are listening to the Profit first podcast. This is the show where we explore all elements of profitability. Bruh, bruh, bruh. And in this case, we're gonna talk about how to eradicate debt. You know, you can't pile up money into your pocket until you pay off all that money you owe. And we have a special guest coming in today who's gonna talk about some real challenges she faced and her husband faced and her family faced in her personal life, so.

Right. Yeah. Who wants debt? I mean, although there's supposedly something called good debt. Anyway, I don't know what that is. Maybe we can talk about it later. But before we do that, I want to tell you, you can find our show anywhere you hear a podcast, and you can rate and review us on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, and guess the website. Guess it. Well, you know, it already. It's profit first podcast dot com. You know, every one of our shows is there. You can comment on any of these posts. This is the place where you can share your insanity. You can grunt in a comment on the page. Thank you. Do it. And this show is great. It's about profit, right? Profitability equals sustainability in business. Profit is what allows you to keep going. So we need it. And everyone always talked revenue, revenue, revenue, revenue, which. Okay, revenue. Okay, revenue is spectacular. But profit is.

Well, you said that word before and I came up with is is. Profit is green vernacular. Because you used the word spectacular before I did. It is the vernacular for being green. Dude, dude, dude.

Fat daddy fat back, dude.

I can rap it and bring it all day long. I'm fat daddy fat back and I am strong. That's my rap. That was a rap, by the way. That was rap.

I'll kick a beat if you want me to. I got a drum set right now.

Kick me a beat. Kick me a beat right now.

Really? All right, hold on.

Yeah, right now, right now. That's right. Revenue is great. But you must hate. You don't do profit today. That's it. That's pretty good. Thank you. Thank you, bruh. Fat. And dude, that was Fat Daddy Fat.

Back to that was Chris playing the real drums, by the way.

Was that you playing the drums? Is that you're you playing?

I totally dropped.

It was him.

That was you playing. Dude, that's sick, man.

Dude, I busted it out and I dropped my stick at the end. Did you hear that?

Well, yeah, you did. And you broke it in half. And then me being Fat Daddy Fatback, I ate it for lunch, cuz that's what I did. Dude, what you been up to, bro?

You know, my wife's father was visiting us a little while back. He's 84 years old. And let me ask you this. Have you. Have you? And I don't want to bring anything, bring the show down, but have you ever thought about when you're 84, 85 years old, and you can't move as fast, in fact, you got to move slow and your hearing's not as good, your sight's not as good, I mean, what is life going to be like? My thought was, if you build your business properly now, you'll have at least you'll have enough money then that you can chill for real, right?

So, dude, this is a topic that hits with me. So my father's almost 90 years old and he's slowing down. Thank God he's got his Health after a serious risk or challenge to his life with cancer. But I've been reading all these futurist articles, and the future is, I want to say it's bright or maybe it's kind of bizarre. With nanobot technology and cellular studies that are doing, they're able to, in test situations now, extend the life of mammals by doubling it. So mice that would die, say, within two years are living four years. They're doubling lives. And I think it's just a matter of time. We may be 5, 10, 15, maybe 20 years out, but these technologies, I think are going to eradicate cancer, are going to eradicate all these different diseases, and they're going to slow down or stop cellular degeneration, which now we live twice as long.

Wow.

I don't know.

Nice.

Welcome to the science episode with Fat Daddy. Fat. That. So, dude, here's what happened to me. Talking about. Yeah, what's going on with me?

Of course.

So I installed this, I told you, a few episodes back, six hours. I get this cable out to go to my porch so I can watch television out there. This whole setup, I put out this TV and stuff. I use my profit distribution to do this. I've been saving for over two profit distributions. I finally got set up. I'm all fired up. My neighbor comes over, he texts that, goes, oh, this is awesome. He's like, but your life is ruined. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm gonna watch every football game out here. He goes, your entire family will be out here. You'll never watch a single game. And I'm like, but I said for me that the first day, this was two days ago, I go out there to enjoy it. My son, my oldest son's laying out, watching a movie. He's 23. So there's a couple beers out. He's eating chips and he's like, what do you want? I'm like, I wanna watch tv. He's like, well, I'm watching a movie, dude. And I was so pissed. So pissed.

So effing pissed.

Now I gotta watch TV on my iPhone in my bedroom. I got kicked out of the room, Christine.

Actually, we got audio of that.

Actually, every second word was a hip word. I know. I was so fired up. I was like, this is freaking buff, Christina. I understand that we got some community shout outs.

This came from a comment on Amazon on the profit first book, actually. And this comes from MJ Hadaran. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name. He goes, if you aren't already a fan of Mike's the book will win you over. Since reading this since reading this book I've started listening to the Profit first podcast and I can tell you with some degree of certainty that there is a genuine personal passion from the author on this subject. His goal is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty and everything I hear on the podcast backs up his goal. Profit. Profit first offers an easy to enact plan to get your company finances in order. The company is supposed to pay you, not the other way around. On the podcast, those that had business prior to discovering Profit first say in virtually every instance how they were able to discover more financially efficient ways to run their business through using the Profit first methodology. So shout out to you MJ for being a big fan.

Mj, you rule.

You want an atomic bomb on that one?

Yeah, atomic bomb. Mj. Dude, you blew our mind. You blew our mind. The air horn sounded late. They should sound that off before the bomb drops. You know who make this show possible are our corporate partners, MJ and they are Nextiva, Fundera, Receipt bank and Fundbox. We'll tell you a little bit about them in a little bit. But and I also want to bring on our guest in a second. Her name is Ruby Tan and you're going to learn how she navigated debt. She's also a profit first professional. Part of what she did, how she eradicated debt has become part of her consulting to clientele's on navigating debt and becoming extremely profitable. But one last thing I want to shout out to another profit first professional.

Of ours and it is that would be Shannon Simmons. She is a profit first bookkeeper and she specializes in gyms. So if you're in the gym industry, Shannon's your gal.

Shannon Simmons is rocking it. She is turning crossfit gyms that are making people physically fit. She's making the gyms fiscally fit. So if you own a gym, you got one call to make to Shannon Simmons and she will make your business grow very profitably.

I can't roll my arse. I wish I could.

That's not a role. I do a God roll. I do the German role, which is, which is great for if you want to do a Chewbacca imitation. That's all back.

We can hear your lunch rattling around.

Ruby Tan was born in Indonesia. When she was 11 years old, her father brought her back to the US. Now I'm totally confused because this, the script is wrong. Gosh darn it. When she was 11 years old, her father brought her to her hometown Back to Malaysia. But she finished high school later on in the US. Something Ruby, I'm destroying this. This is so poorly written. But here's the one thing that Ruby did. She studied in Illinois, she got married and then her and her husband had that crisis moment that unfortunately too many people have. Her husband got laid off. It was a crushing blow. They were filling up and getting swamped by debt. But she found a way through it. And when she was telling me a story when we met up at Sage Conference, it was basically unbelievable. So I want you to hear from the horse's mouth right now. Ruby, welcome to our show.

Thank you.

I'm sorry about totally messing up your bio. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. You said Mike and then you said what? I'm sorry.

Fat daddy. Fat daddy, Fat back.

Yes, that's right. Oh beautiful. We now have a sound clip we will be using. So Ruby, let's talk about that moment. I mean, what was it like when your husband got laid off?

That day he called me from work, he told me that he got laid off. And it was pretty much almost towards the end of it. He was the last wave to be laid off because they decided to close his division completely. So I told him, alright, just come home. And I knew that I had to go back to work immediately. At that time I was a staying home mom with two toddlers, a three year old and a one year old. And at that time my in laws were living with us also. So I start get busy, start applying for jobs at different places. I was doing accounting, bookkeeping in prior jobs so I was ready to get back into that. Unfortunately the companies I applied to, they didn't want to hire me even after them, after the interview for the fact that I was a stay home mom. Maybe because I was a stay home mom, they refused to hire me. They maybe they think that wasn't professional regardless of how many years of experience I had in the past. So I decided to start really low. So I went to our local grocery store and I worked as a cashier from there. Within a month I was able to get a job at a bank. So I worked from there as accounting assistant and within a couple months I was promoted to staff accountant. But the thing is my husband was an engineer. He got laid off and when I got back to start working, I did not make nearly as much, not even half to what he was making. So we made, I made maybe about one third, I think up to what he was making. So we had to cut down a lot, I mean a lot really. A lot I figure out. I use Excel spreadsheet, I love Excel. So I use Excel spreadsheet to figure out what we will need to survive for six people, my two sons, my husband and I and my, my in.

Laws and hey Ruby, did you come to the same conclusion that Barry came to of what you're gonna need?

You're gonna need a couple of horses, a couple of mules.

You'll have to get it all done.

Yeah. Okay, so all right, so you have, I just want to see how many mouths you have to feed is your husband, your two in laws, your two children, plus you had six mouths you need to feed on a single income at a grocery store.

That was not the plan. The plan was to jump, to jump to the next level because I could not get a job, you know, at what I wanted. So I started at grocery store. I made only $7 over there. So there's no way I can make it.

Yeah, there's no way you can make it. But I'm thinking right away the house you live in is at risk. Now I don't know if you owned your house or you're renting, but either way you got to make a payment that month.

Yes.

What were the implications, the immediate implications on you when your husband had lost his job financially?

Well, in prior years we have been quite fit on our finances. Even though when I was working we always treat as one income family. So whatever I made, we did not spend it, we put it away and whatever he made, that's what we lived on. So we had some savings that will that could help us tie through over that. And then when I start working, I did not make nearly as much. So we still had to deplete our savings. We had mortgage and we had credit card that we pay. It wasn't a credit card debt that we overdo things like that. It was just a monthly bills that we have to pay but you know, we still have six months to fit and the bills and all that kind of thing. So from then I got a job. I think I made about 24,000 gross a year and it wasn't enough to cover so we had to cut. We have to look at what we have spent and where, what do we need to cut in order to just survive. So we decided, all right, we're not going to eat out. We're going to eat out only on birthdays within our family. So that means you can tell we can eat out six times a year. So that was it. We don't have cable, we don't have cell phone at that time, the cell phone we finally got was a prepaid. That's $100, can last for the entire year.

And you lived off of one cell phone that cost $100 for an entire year?

Yes, it was a prepaid. So you call.

That.

Still have that cell phone? We still have. I mean, that.

I would never get rid of that thing. I would actually make it like into a. An emblem or something.

I would have frame it, put it on the wa.

Cherish that thing. So you don't eat out. You eat out six times a year. Every other time you're eating at home, you ditch the cable tv, you ditch the cell phone.

Yes.

It sounds like you're compromising the comforts of life. Did your life. Was it horrible now? Was it inconvenient, or did you. What kind of impact did it have on you guys emotionally and actively?

Actually, we didn't feel any different about it. Interesting. It wasn't something that we have to have. TV has plenty. Well, has plenty of channels to see. And when you get busy, you don't really need the TV anyway. In fact, now I don't even watch any TV at all. I don't have time for it. So, yeah, until now.

There's nothing on anyway. Trust me.

Yes.

So, okay, so what else did you were able to cut during this process? Was there other things you were able to cut?

After I worked one year in the bank, we were able to refinance our house, our mortgage. So we brought down the interest rate from I think about 7% or so down to 3.75. At that time, it was unrealistic. The lowest you could go was only 4%. In fact, there was another company that wants our business in refinancing. He said, there's no way you could get this kind of rate. Are you sure this is legit? And my husband told him, yeah, my wife works there, works there. So yeah, it is legit. So we were able to refinance at 3.75 as a 51 ARM mortgage. Because our hope is we just want to tie over for five years and then whatever comes after that. By that time, hopefully my husband would get a job and we'll be able to manage by then.

So after was your decision, was your decision to work at the bank. So you left the grocery store, you start working the bank. Was that in part to take advantage of a situation like this or was it just opportunistic? Meaning you're working the bank and then you say, oh, I can probably get a really good Deal in a mortgage because I already work here. Was that planned or was that just the opportunity present itself and you sprung on it?

No, that one. I just, I just, you know, because everybody said refinance, refinance. I said okay, maybe we should try. And since I already work at a bank, maybe I should check my bank too. So that's what I did. And it turned out that as employee of the bank, I get discount also, which is bonus. It's great. That's why we took the opportunity. I said let's do that, you know, since I got that opportunity. And so. But one thing though, a good friend of mine gave us an advice. It says, be faithful in your tithing and God will take care of everything else.

And this is what was amazing. Christina. We meet up at the Sage conference. She's meeting Ron and I for the first time face to face. And Ron got robbed on the way, his wallet got taken. When I say robbed, he got pickpocketed and we sew up. And Ruby is so true to giving back that literally. Ruby, you gave Ron a wallet. I don't know if it's full, I don't know if it's full of cash, but there was a wallet that you gave him as a gift. And what blew me back is so true to your nature that when you see other people hurting, you instantly give. And then you told me this story of tithing and it blew me away. Even during this time you're working at a grocery store, you're giving 10% of that money you need to survive to your church.

Yes. Yeah, that's something.

Ah, I don't understand it. How can you survive? You need that money. What kept you doing that?

That is one thing. Because we cannot out give God. Whatever we give, he will bless us. So that's what, that's the advice I have been brought up with. The moment I start working and making money, my parents always told me to always give God first and everything else he will take care of it. And sure enough, during that three years my husband lost his job. After one year he went back to school. And not only do we need money for food, we need money to pay for his tuition too. So that's additional money. But we continue to be faithful in tithing. And in that three years there were sweet memories made. We were not able to go back to Malaysia prior year because we were affording rate how the economy would be. And guess what, we went back to Malaysia and Singapore with our airline ticket paid for. We went back for free for four of us.

Share this story Remember you sharing this story? How did you get. Because you became so innovative in getting what you wanted without money. How did you get those tickets for free?

Well, we've been using credit card. I'm not saying that we max out our credit card. I did not do that. Whatever we need, we pay with credit card, we collect the points. And in addition to that when we have. They have promotion, a lot of promotion. Or you do this thing and you give you like 5,000 miles, you do that, we give you 10,000 miles, that kind of thing. So we took those opportunities. So we, we did that with whatever, whatever that promotion is. So we were able to collect more mileage instead of spending money to get those mileage. And we were accumulated. It accumulated about, I think enough for, for three tickets. And then my father in law also had his accumulation through phone. So he donated one free ticket for my son, for my youngest son. So with four of us we were able to go back to Malaysia. The ticket to Malaysia would have cost us I think about six to $7,000. Yeah, but we got.

What you also shared that story was that you didn't. I don't believe in credit card debt whatsoever. And what, what really kind of woke my eyes up is that you kept a discipline that you were actually chipping your way. You had to take on some credit card debt to get through the survival of this initial financial heart attack when your husband lost a job and you were now replacing that. But what I remember you saying is that the credit cards you kept under control and you actually start chipping away and paying those down. But you'd intentionally use a credit card to get travel points and so forth. But would make sure that those, those expenses you process on the credit card were paid immediately then in cash, right?

Yes, yes. We were, we were watching on our spending even on credit card. There were months where we would like to buy something. But we have come to a point our spending budget for that month. So we decided to push the spending off to the next month or the following month.

We would like to keep that discipline. I mean some stuff you just need. How did you keep that discipline of not spending money and not increasing credit card debt and actually decreasing it?

I think it's a build up slowly. If you really want to stay on top, you can. It's willpower. I would think if you want to do it, you can do it. If you don't want to do it, then you won't be able to do it. So I think that's something because we really need to get to survive. And we cannot afford to get in debt. A lot of families downsize. They lost their home. We will not. We're not willing because we need a house to live in. And my children are still young, so we have to make that. We need it, we don't spend it.

Now let's talk about kind of the next phase of your life. You went through this really challenging time that others listening to the show, I'm sure experience now, but now you went out and started helping entrepreneurs. You provide bookkeeping services to different entrepreneurs. And I think you were saying you found that these challenges we face in our personal lives seem to run in parallel to the challenges we face financially in our business lives. How do you help business owners who have had a setback financially or a devastating moment financially like you experienced? How do you help them get on track? What are the first steps to recovering from that?

I think the first one will be we'll look at the expenses that they have made, their purchase, all expenses they have made, whatever that is. One of them will be to go through every single category. And just like the personal expenses, there are things that we don't, we want it, but we don't need it, like the cable TV or the, the cell phone, that kind of thing. There are a lot of things can be reduced, cut down or maybe downsize to instead of getting the Aldi Unlimited, but bring it down to whatever amount that you will need.

So do you have an idea or have you seen in the businesses that you've worked with some common things that entrepreneurs want but don't need? I mean, some things that you can cut down those expenses if you look at your business honestly and cut back.

A lot of them. I think a lot with the one that I've seen is the processing fee of credit card. I use credit card, but that one, because like with credit card, you have to pay the fee, I think like a fixed amount, $0.50 or more and plus about 2.9%. So instead of using credit card, accepting credit card, if your amount is $50 or less, that may be okay. But if your sales price is like 3, $400, 3% of that is quite expensive already. So.

Yeah, yeah, 12 bucks.

Yes. So instead of using that ACH, I mean, it's a lot cheaper. And ACH is.

That's a good one. That's a good one. Where do you see that entrepreneurs live beyond their means? Is it the nice office space when they really could just get by another day? Is it the expensive car? Do they give themselves the luxury effects too early. What do you see?

Yeah, sometimes everything. When you feel like. You feel like, oh, you have a business. I need to buy a car for the business immediately and even consider buying a car. You have to consider, what kind of car do I need? Can I drive there? Do I have to drive a BMW to get there? Or can I drive a Toyota?

Well, obviously, the answer is a BMW. I got that wrong.

Yeah. You may arrive there in style, but is it necessary?

Right, right. Are you arriving in style or are you just arriving?

You arrive in style and in debt.

So.

Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

If your style is dead, that's cool.

Yeah. There's one quote by Dave Ramsey. He said, if you cannot afford it, you don't deserve it.

Oh, I like that. So now let's get to the brass tacks here. The reason everyone listening in, why I wanted Ruby on the show is that there's something special that we have never told many folks about, about Prop First Professionals. Every employee here, myself include. This company has experienced poverty. Maybe our own version of it, maybe not Ruby Tan's story exactly. But everyone has been on the brink. Either you grew up in a circumstance, whatever that is actually a defining, important factor. We were just interviewing Chris, who just accepted a position with us. Same thing. She's faced it. Her husband lost his. He was an entrepreneurial business. He lost all his clientele overnight. He's gone through it. Ron's gone through it. Hawaiian lumberjack's gone through it. But our members, too. Ruby understands the emotion of financial loss, but has had the fortitude to navigate around it. And that's what she helps clients with. And that's why I wanted Ruby on the show so badly, just to share her story. So, you know, the people that are working with you aren't preaching from a pedestal. They've walked the path that many entrepreneurs have walked. Ruby, if people want to learn more about you and your organization, where can they go to get your bookkeeping services or learn about you?

They can Visit my website, silabookkeeping.com.

So wait, though. CE yeah, sorry, go ahead.

C E L A. B O O K E E B O. Sorry. B O O K K E E P I N G. Ciela spelled C.

E L A and then bookkeeping dot com. Chris, what were you gonna say?

Yeah, I want to hear the rest of the story. How did you go from, you know, working as a cashier and then in a bank to getting on your feet and also becoming a profit first Professional.

Actually, after we made for that two years the three years my husband graduated in two years with radiology. He became an X ray tech and he got employment immediately from one of the University of Chicago. And so he got a job over there. And we decided to continue to live on survival mode until we paid off our mortgage. Because our mortgage was five one arm and in three years time, by that time there's two already passed. In three years, the mortgage rate will increase, will adjust to whatever that is and we refuse to have that adjustment any higher. So we decided to pay down our principal as every month. We did not do the 13 month payment or the bi weekly payment because I have to pay a fee. I refuse to pay any fee. So every month instead of paying the actual amount, we sent in extra. Having two incomes now, so we were able to lump in like 1005 every month. There were months we were able to put in 2000 extra principal towards that. By the end of the fifth year when we supposed to have the interest rate adjusted up, we paid off our mortgage.

Nice. Give me a hallelujah, Mike.

Hallelujah. Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Yeah, there's three. Pick the one you like the most. I think Christina just won that one.

That's awesome. So then how did you become a profit first professional real quick.

Then when I was introduced to Mike by Gabriel.

I'm sorry, Fat daddy Fat.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Yeah. I was introduced by Gabrielle Fountain and so I listened to her the, the webinar and I listened to Fat daddy Fat bag. I knew this is something that businesses should do because I have been looking for something similar. If I can do it in a personal life, you can do it in business also to be more profitable. And so the moment I got into that, I start reading. I bought all three of his books immediately. The Toilet paper entrepreneur, Pumpkin Plant and also the profit first book. And I, I'm not a reader, but I read three of his books.

Nice. That's great. Wow.

Yeah. And we're. We are privileged to have Ruby as part of the family. Seriously going out there and helping us eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. You know Ruby, thanks again for being on the show. We got a bolt. Time is waning and you got some, some more debt to eradicate for your clients. So thank you for coming on the show.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ruby. Wow, that was tremendous.

Tremendous. Right. Listen, I was, I'm always blown away. So I'm at this conference, I'm about to speak. I did five speaking engagements that week and Sage was four of them.

Yeah.

And I'm sitting down and I'm sitting with Ruby and, you know, shame on me. I expect this regular story. I decided to start bookkeeping and my business has been great. She said I became a bookkeeper because I got to help entrepreneurs avoid what I went through or to survive what I went through. Like, what are you talking about? And she told the story and I dropped my coffee in the floor. My draw dropped to the table. I'm like, what? It's unbelievable the challenges she faced and she chased. She faced them with acceptance and progress, forward movement, where so many people get stuck spinning and lamenting.

Yeah.

She said, this is my situation and navigate through it. I think that's one of the biggest keys to eradicating debt. Well, in a second, we're going to talk about what we learned. First, though, I want to thank our corporate partners for making the show possible. Who do you got there? Nextiva Nextiva VoiceOver IP Nextiva Nextiva Nextiva VoiceOver IP phone system. So next time you call our office, just dial extension 7001 and that will get you right to Fat Daddy Fatback or the Next step and Phillips system. All right.

You have to incorporate that with every sponsor. Okay. Fundbox.

Fundbox. So Fundbox is an invoice financing company. Could you imagine? You send an invoice to me, Fat Daddy fatblack, and I'm not paying you, but you need the funds, call Fundbox, they'll give you the money right away. And then when Fat Daddy Fatback himself pays you, then you return those funds to Fundbox. Plus, they're a little service and I.

Like, I like the term that. They are a cash flow accelerator. I like that.

Yeah. Cfa. They're a CFA cash flow accelerator. And they're gonna be at our conferences here at Profit.

Yes, they are.

Which actually, when you're hearing this already happened and it was amazing, you know.

Who else is gonna be there, I hope?

Who?

Fundera.

Fundera will be there. Meredith Wood. Meredith Wood will be there. And Fundera is a one stop shop loan sourcing. Listen, when Fat Daddy Fatback had to get his band together for his local near his recent concert tour, I used Fundera and they sourced all the funding to put our show on the road. Mike, who's the last company?

Hold on, Mike, I'm not joking. You need to like dress up like a rapper, like a hardcore rapper and just make like a one minute video as Fat Daddy Fat back.

That's a good idea.

Okay, you need to do that, please.

Let's do it. Let's Buy the costume like Shasha Cohen. How he does it. I want to do that.

Our last corporate partner is Receipt Bank.

And corporate. And corporate partner. Receipt Bank, Yes. And Receipt Bank. Well, I use them constantly. I use them last night. Whenever you get a receipt, you need to track it, right? To address your tax consequences, you need to have a record of it. If you have a client you're doing work for and you incur receipts, you need to show it to them. The old school way was a shoebox. Listen, this is 2016. People automate it. Receipt bank does the whole thing. Fat daddy fat package.

And you just. You just take a picture of the receipt from your phone and it logs it and attaches it to the. Your freaking accounting records.

Boom. Sometimes. And you can hold the receipt with your hand down. You know, the receipt curls up. But with all the jewelry, all the swag on my fingers, sometimes it's hard to see for Fat Daddy fat back. Chris, what'd you learn in today's episode? My.

I learned a lot. I really enjoyed this. She kept up her tithing because of faith, you know, and faith that you have to keep it flowing. See, this is one of the laws of nature, I think, in my opinion. You have to keep things flowing. You can't hoard all the money to yourself. If you keep money going out for a good cause. If you keep helping others tithing like she did, if you keep giving, you keep it flowing and then it allows it to flow in. And you're not a miser and you're not hoarding. I really think that's huge. And the other thing was the wants versus needs. I mean, this is, this. I mean, this is not only a financial consideration, this is a life consideration. Spiritual wants versus needs. I think mainly American culture and Western culture. It's like we're. It's like a big party of desires and wants. We want everything and. And that's what screws us up. So she is very intelligent and very resilient. And I'll end up. I'll finish this little mini rant with a quote. She said that I love. I refuse to pay any fee.

Yeah, Yeah, I like that.

Smart.

She's intimidating when she says it. She's, you know, by stature a tiny person, but by voice, I mean, I like no fee. No fee. So I. It's funny, when we were having coffee, I said I was wearing the Starbucks together, and they said, ruby tan, here's your, you know, three dollar mocha lotta whatever. And she's like, I refuse to pay for this she did not. She did not.

She did not.

Not at all. She paid for it and actually tithed somehow. Christina, what about you? Would you learn?

I think that a lot of or some entrepreneurs out there are a little hesitant to start profit first. They find it intimidating. But Ruby kind of connected it all together for me when she said that she started being frugal in her own life. They were starting to live off their savings. That's not acceptable. She's like, no more cable. We're living off of one prepaid cell phone. You know, we're eating out only on birthdays. And that's essentially the same concept for profit first. You're just doing it in your business rather than your personal life. And I think that'll help kind of make it more relatable for people to take the leap.

Yeah, to me, it was the aha moment was that 24,000 gross income. I think a lot of people hear that and they say, no way. No, listen, I'm an individual. I need 50 or 60,000 to survive. You can't survive nowadays. She fed six mouths with $24,000. She went out to dinner six times that year, which actually is pretty healthy. It means every other month you're going out for a celebration. And I said, well, what was the emotion? How did you feel about? She, no, it was no different. I didn't feel different. So there was no compromise to her lifestyle. And I think that's considered below the poverty level. 24,006 people living on that. But really what impressed me was that Excel spreadsheet, that when they faced this challenge, the first thing wasn't like, we can't live this way. Hands in the air. The first thing she did was she hit the spreadsheet and say, how do we make this work and what's our plan out of this situation? Maybe it wasn't sustainable for the long term. And they, yes, they had to live off savings, but they started working on a plan right away. And look at her now. No mortgage at all. How many people can speak to that husband re employed in a position that I think he's thriving in and enjoying. Ruby's now leveraged her challenge to be an opportunity to serve others. I mean, it's almost like a storybook ending, really. I think we all this opportunity when we face a challenge that. That really drove home with me.

Oh, tremendous. The determination she had to make it out the other side. Right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And comes out smiling and tithing. And listen, here's one fear I have as people listen to the show they're like, oh, no, we're talking about God. You know, religion, tithing. Listen, I don't care if you believe or don't believe. Maybe you're tithing. What I do. I used to actually be a member of a church. I haven't been for 10 years. My equivalent is giving to Kiva. There's a great organization called Kiva K I V A.org that supports struggling entrepreneurs. That's my quote, unquote religion. And I give to that faithfully. And it's interesting the return that I've received in fulfillment and seeing entrepreneurs in countries that you think could never have an entrepreneurial spirit, actually being wildly successful because of this wonderful organization, I think we all should look for what's our outlet to contributing beyond just our work. How can we contribute in a different way? And Kiva was mine, so I thought that was pretty cool.

That is awesome. And I just want to. Another thing I learned is that Obi Ron Kenobi, who is your partner with Profit First Professionals, he's walking around with a new wallet and a new shirt from Podcast Movement, because those are the two gifts he got recently.

Yeah, his clothing, everything, it's all contributed to him. No wonder he's so successful. He doesn't spend a penny.

There you go. So this has been a tremendous episode. Thank you to Ruby Tan. Thank you, Mike and Christina. Again, you can find our show wherever you listen to podcasts, give us a rating or a review, and more importantly, go to the website profitfirstpodcast.com find this post, comment on this post. What are your revelations from Ruby's story? What did you learn from her? What questions do you have for Mike about all this or Christina or me? Well, don't ask me. Ask Mike. He'll answer.

You can ask Chris. You can ask Chris, and Chris will refer you to me anyway, so you might as well ask me.

You know, why ask Chris when you can ask the Fat Daddy Fatback.

Fat Daddy Fat.

Can we make a note of that? That's my nickname. Going forward, I want to own that nickname.

Yes.

Fat Daddy Fatback. Fdfb Fudub Fudfub Fud Fib.

Nice. That rolls nicely off the tongue. That's almost like the Hawaiian lumberjack calling them. Hallaj Fub Fib. By the way, you two should make videos together. The Hawaiian Lumberjack on one side and Fat Daddy Fat Back. You could.

Well, we just newly created a Snapchat page for Profit first, so, yeah, I'm gonna start.

I need my rap gear.

You need your rap gear. We're gonna start recording all the behind the scenes stuff, so definitely make sure you check us out. Profit first pros. All one word.

That's right. On Twitter.

That's our Snapchat.

That's our Snapchat.

You can do some profit rhyming. There you go. So listen, this has been great. And Mike, we have to really finish up. Always talking about profit first professionals. Ruby's one of them. These people that you have trained to be out in the world helping people. It's tremendous. I love it.

Yeah, it is. And, and it almost sounds like selfish, not egregious, but that I'm self serving. But I want you to know that these people are out there to change the world. And what we decided to do, Ron, myself, our colleagues, our team here, is to kind of build a singular force. So we went out to the Ruby Tans of the world, the Shannon Simmons that you mentioned earlier. All these people are out there to eradicate debt, but to really, really improve your profitability in your business. Take it to a level it's never been before, because with it you can really contribute in any way you wish to society and enjoy a very comfortable life for your family, your community and all that. That's what we want for you. Here's what you got to do. You got to take your profit first. The question is, well, okay, but how do you do that? Go to profit first professionals dot com. Click on the find button. We'll hook you up with Ruby Tan, Shan Simmons, or another one of our members that we feel is super suited for your unique circumstance. And they will navigate you to levels of profit you've never had before. Your profit is literally one deposit away. You'll be profitable by your next deposit. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com right now. Click on find and we'll hook you up.

Boom. There you go. Ruby Tan, Mike Michalowicz, Christina Bulduk, Chris Curran, Obi. Ron Kenobi, the Hawaiian lumberjack. Who am I missing? We're missing you. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next week, everybody. See you next week.

Yeah, bruh. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Brad, don't. Bruh. Bruh. Bruh. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Love that guitar.