Episode 12: Communication and Profitability with Mel West

From the studios of fractal recording, this is the prophet.

I'm just getting into form. This is the profit first podcast, episode 12. Oh, yeah, I like this.

Bill Clinton. Yes. Introducing our show.

I don't have too much else going on. Oh, yes.

Welcome, everyone, to the profit first podcast.

Welcome.

My co host today seems to be Bill Clinton. And I'm Chris Curran, founder of fractal recording.

And I'm. I'm sorry.

Yeah, you're Bill Clinton.

I'm Bill Clinton. I'm Mike Michalowitz with my buddy Bill Clinton here at the fractal studios. Also, I am the author of profit first.

Yeah. And this is a great show we do. This is our 12th episode.

Episode I slicked the microphone. Episode 12. Episode freaking 12. I cannot believe we made it this far.

That's right, we're at a dozen. I got what we started off. Episode one of one.

Episode one of one. And we didn't think we'd make it. And guess who's here also, he came back for four episodes now. Ron Saharian.

Hello, everybody.

Yeah, Ron, he's kind of like Silent Bob a little bit.

Yeah, he's like two word Bob.

Yeah, two word Bob. The funny thing is, in the office, he talks more than anyone. He has to. He's always on the phone.

I bet.

Like reprieve.

This is his first time coming to fractal. I guarantee next time he'll choke up a storm. Oh, God.

It's my fourth time.

I know. That's true.

Yes, you're right.

The secret sound. We do multiple episodes in one sitting. Damn it. All right, so we've been up to Chris.

Yeah, well, I've been up to some pretty good stuff. I started a campaign for one of my other shows where people can actually contribute to the show. Like a dollar or two per episode.

What's the name of that show?

It's called the mystic show.

Okay.

All about meditation and spirituality.

So you invite people to pay you?

Yeah, they can sign up on this one platform. It's called Patreon. And they sign up and they can basically contribute a dollar or two or three or five per episode.

I heard some businesses moving to that model. There was a Panera Bread who tried that out. They said, pay what you want to pay. And then they gave their cost breakdown. They said, this is what it cost us to make these different products. Try it out. And I don't know wherever it came of that, but it was a grand experiment.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like. It's like a Kickstarter campaign, but it's ongoing. So what have you been up to, man?

Dude, I'm going out to Don Pepe tonight, which is a local restaurant. Ron's bringing his wife. I'm bringing my wife.

Wow.

Our colleague Christina's coming and I can't wait because they literally run if this is not true. They have the best garlic shrimp, like literally on this planet.

Wow.

Right?

Very good.

Yeah, very good.

Two words.

You have two words from him. No. So. So I'm really excited about that.

That's cool.

Yeah. This is hopefully become a more regular event for our little business going to Don Pepe.

Right, guys? Bonding.

Yeah, no bonding and great food. And their sangria is. Is freaking killer. If you like San. Do you like sangria?

Well, I don't drink.

Oh, so you love sangria? Oh.

Oh, awkward. No, I don't even know. Sangria is like a wine thing, right?

Wine, triple sec. Other alcohols? Fruit.

Wine based fruit in a big, huge thing.

Yeah. Big pitcher. It's really. It's a good communal drink.

Trough.

Trough, Dude.

So we got a great guest.

We got a great guest that's funded by great sponsors. So I want to thank Nextiva, Fundera&t sheets. I'll mention them a little bit later on.

Yes.

But thank you for sponsoring and supporting this because they allow us to bring in guests like Mel West.

Mel West.

Mel West. Mel west is the president of. Mel west is the president of Prosperity Logic. He is the president of Prosperity Logic, a performance consulting firm that specializes in assisting clients increase profit and achieve wealth using its prosperity business model. Mel, Hello. It's a grand welcome. Yeah, we activated your line a little girly. How are you, sir?

I'm doing good. Thank you for having me.

Oh, it's an honor to have you.

We're happy to have you.

Where are you calling us in? Where are you calling in from today?

Tacoma, Washington.

Wow.

So we have sunshine today. So it's not raining and there's sun, so it's a great day.

I went from Phoenix, Arizona, all the.

Way to Tacoma, San Francisco. Not even close to something.

Montana, Philadelphia, Louisiana.

Where is Tacoma exactly in relation to Seattle?

It's just south of Seattle.

Oh, so you're on the water? Ish.

Sorta. Yeah. I'm about five minutes from the water. The sound. The Puget Sound here?

Yeah. Yeah. First of all, that's on the water in New Jersey, where we are right now. We're maybe an hour from the ocean and we still consider ourselves to be on the water.

So how long have you been out there since 1996.

Okay, and did you build Prosperity Logic, your practice out there or were you started elsewhere?

I started out here in 2010, so I got tired of dealing with collections and compliance in the credit union field and decided I needed to do something that was more focused on helping people and stuff. So, so that's where I started.

So what specifically does Prosperity Logic? What, what exactly do you provide?

Well, you know, a lot of it's providing executive coaching and peer boards focused on helping businesses create strategic alignment within their company, you know, understanding what their vision is, their purpose, and then developing the roadmap and creating that alignment within the organization. And then we get into the human capital management piece, which is getting the right people on the bus, but more importantly the right butts in the right seats and then focusing on the overall operations of it. And you know, that's where, you know, when I took a look at profit first and where it really made sense, I had this three legged stool and it worked very well. But profit first became that fourth lay and it's, it's just enhancing it that much more because now I've got a really solid foundation when we look at the overall business. You know, for a long time I wanted to just completely get away from the finance piece, but that was really the piece that put me into business was, was that as business owners were coming in to talk about loans and what they're doing, you know, they'd look at you with a kind of blank stare when you'd say, well, what's your business plan look like? And stuff. And so they go through the whole rigmarole of putting something together. And then you'd ask some questions and next thing you know, you make a decision. Yay or nay. And then that business plan either went up on the shelf or into the bottom drawer of the desk and it wasn't looked at, you know, until the next time the need came along.

Now, you're not the first person to associate profit first with stool, but three legged. I know, I know.

Four legged stool.

Mel, hold on one second. Because as per usual, the show is totally off the tracks already. We forgot to do one thing, so could you just hold one more second? We'll fix this in the edit. No one will hear this class.

Oh yeah, okay, hold on, hold on, Mel.

Okay.

All right. He can't.

Forgot the word of the day.

That's.

Okay. Well, we're. One question in. We're good.

Okay. What. What's the word of the day?

The word of the day. Well, I really love Three legged stool, but we can't.

I love stool. I love it.

I was thinking Appomattox courthouse.

Appomattox. Okay. That's my word. Yeah, okay. Yeah, on it. Just so our listeners know, real quick, I guess throw that in as a verb or some awkward moment where it's totally inappropriate and without our guests even noticing.

Right.

Bring them back.

Yeah, let's go.

All right, Mel, we, we just did. We're going to do some edits to fix all this so no one will hear that. So let's, let's talk about peer boards. Something I'm very interested in is peer boards. Tell. What does that exactly mean? Just so our listeners know.

So, so peer boards are where, you know, you take a group of, you know, six to eight business owners and they come together once a month for four hours and they talk about the different issues, opportunities and challenges that they face running their businesses. So it's presented more of like, how can I deal with this type of situation? And becomes an accountability board. So in small business, you know, like, we all know it's, it's very lonely at the top and a lot of times it's hard to see the forest through the trees. And everybody thinks that their problems are unique to just them. But the reality is, you know, the problems can be narrowed down to three things. It's either people, processes, or profits. And so we, we work on those three key things primarily. And a lot of the times we're talking about people issues. And I, you know, I fondly believe that if you take care of the people issues, the processes and profits will take care of themselves. And so, so how does a peer.

Group or peer board work? Do you assemble these people? The group of people come to you and say, hey, Mal, we need your help. How's this form in the first place?

Well, I, you know, we'll do a workshop or whatever. And so when I'm consulting with somebody, I, you know, I kind of go through the, my prosperity model in doing an evaluation of the company and figuring out, you know, what are their deepest needs, you know, and what, what do they want to accomplish. And a lot of times, you know, what they need is just a sounding board and executive coaching. So it's built into a package where, you know, they'll work with me for a year and they'll be part of this peer board. And if they choose which most do they continue on from year to year.

So is it a physical gathering, like five or six or ten or how many people come into one room? Or is this Something you do virtually?

No.

Well, it could be done virtually, but no, it's, you know, I holding them here locally and what they do is we come together for four hours one day a month and you know, the schedules mapped out for the year, these are our dates so people can schedule around them. And we basically have these meetings and you know, they'll come in, we'll do some education. You know, I have a book, you know, like a book review each month that we'll go through and then from there they'll give an update on what's happened the last month, you know, since the last time we met, on the things that they committed to working on and then we get into their challenges.

So can you give us some best practices? And let me just preface that by saying I think all of our listeners should form some kind of peer group or join one that has a professional facilitation like what you're suggesting here, what you do. What are the best practices to forming a peer board group?

Well, I think you have to have commitment and consistency. So you have to have people that are committed to actually participating, not only for themselves but for the other board members. So they've got to give and take equally to the process. They have to be committed to showing up every month and really working on their business. And it's gotta be a consistent process that allows them to go through that and track the results and understand that they're making the progress that they want to make.

Are you familiar with EO by any chance, Entrepreneurs organization?

I am, yep.

So I'm a member of eo. They have. Chris, I don't know if you know this, a peer advisory group. We use the Appomattox courthouse format where it's facilitated by individuals without an executive coach there. But there's other organizations like what Mel does that has a professional facilitator. Mel, I don't know if you've experienced with peer driven ones the appomattic approach versus what you do. Is there a difference in benefits to each or is one better than the other?

Well, I don't know if I could really say that one's better than the other. The benefit of having a facilitator is that you have somebody to keep everything on track and divide the time up equally. So in a lot of the other peer boards what happens is, you know, it'll only be one business owner that really has the floor to work on their issue. Where in the one that I facilitate, everybody has an opportunity and the time split up evenly. And so you Know, and then we have education that's built into there. So, you know, because they, they're, I'm doing executive coaching with them and then we're going into these peer boards, I'm able to facilitate some type of education that's really relevant to what's happening in the group and so that they're able to take that from month to month and build on what we're, we're doing in the group.

How do you get to that level of intimacy where these people in your group are willing to talk about the real numbers, like the profit, the debt? I assume that doesn't happen day one.

You know, for some business owners it does, but for many it's a, it's a, it's a level of trust. And I think, you know, that's one of the things that you have to have ground rules up front and you know, everybody signs a confidentiality agreement and you know, basically they're not going to go out and talk about whether it's employee issues or, you know, new projects coming on. But it's, it's, it's really, each person has a different level of trust and where they build it, you know, but the interesting thing is, is whether it's that first meeting, you know, or six meetings in, everybody develops that trust where they can bring their information and share it, you know, and a lot of it, I force them to put it on the table and actually talk about what, you know, what they're doing. So in January, we'll do a full day board meeting with the board and they're going to present their 2015 plan. And part of that plan is a recap of their 2014, you know, their goals, their sales goals and different goals that they had and put in, lessons learned. And it's gonna be there in black and white. And then going into 2015, they're gonna put their new projections up and then each quarter they'll be given an update on those projections. And we work that month to month.

That's pretty cool. So I have a question. Once you do, once this level of intimacy develops and people are willing to share, you know, you, Mel, you must have come across, you know, some of some popular profit suckers, if you want to call it like elements or elements of a business or situations within a business that seem to be sucking the profit. What, what have the members been going through in that regard?

Well, it's, it's interesting that you bring that Employees is always, you know, the biggest sucker of profits I see. But other than that, it's it's just bad business decisions, you know, making decisions based on the flavor. I know you guys like to talk about ice cream, so the flavor of ice cream each day.

Right. Do you happen to know what the best flavor of ice cream is?

It's chocolate peanut butter cup. Right.

I'm wrong. It was pistachio. It was pistachio. Oh, yours came in second.

No, we need a sponsor, an ice cream company as a sponsor.

Oh, that's a good point. I'm writing this down.

They need to send us ice cream.

Each week to sample.

Wait, we need to sample live on the air?

Yeah. And then inside it will be the check they wrote out to us.

My wife's gonna smack me when she hears that.

Oh, so what is the big time? This big suckers. But you said employees.

Employees. You know, employees haven't have, you know, basically having employees that they've hired to do a job and they're not employing them in the right way or fashion. They don't trust them to do their jobs. I see that as being one of the bigger things. But then it's how do they go about making their business decisions? You know, so if they're just shooting from the hip and hoping it works out, you know, that's another money sucker.

How do you, how do you improve your business decisions?

MALE well, you know, part of it is like with the board, it's sharing what's coming up or, you know, what you're thinking about and getting the feedback. So hopefully you make fewer bad decisions. And, you know, we all make bad decisions as we go through business, but it's really about being able to use other people's mistakes to your benefit and understanding. Well, when you go through your SWOT analysis, looking at your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities and threats, and then how does that, you know, align with your overall vision for where you want to go and who you want to be and how do you benchmark that? You know, so if you have this opportunity that comes along and it looks really great, does it really fit into your overall plan or is it just that flavor of the day?

Ron, you were waving both hands. You had a question. What's going.

Yeah, Mel, for your peer groups, are they like industries or is every industry different the members there so they're not competing against each other and sharing secrets?

Well, most of these are non competing. I've had, you know, in certain cases I have, you know, like companies, you know, manufacturing companies out here. We have a lot of manufacturing companies. So I've had multiple manufacturing companies on the same Same board, but they, you know, they do different things or, you know, and a lot of times they, they complement one another. So it's, it's nice. I just had a gal that is actually runs a broker service for franchises, and she used to have a manufacturing company that joined the board. And so we've got these manufacturing companies on, and she's come through where she used to be on another president's type board and understands how the system works and the value of it. And so she came in and when she was running that manufacturing company, went through and developed these systems. So now she's able to bring that expertise into the group, even though she's in a completely different area today than where she was, you know, say 10 years ago.

You know, earlier on you said that people with the butts in the wrong seat is a problem. I think owners are resistant to terminating employees. It's a. Feel uncomfortable doing it. You feel regret that you brought the person in the first place and now responsible to keep them. How do you make those butt adjustments? If that's the right term. Yeah, you like that?

Love it.

How do you adjust that?

Sometimes it's, you know, it's almost force or a need, you know, but it's helping them, depending on their different styles and understanding the importance of, hey, if you have this person that's supposed to be your general manager, give them the direction that they need and the tools that they need and let them do it. If they're not performing then, and you don't want them, let them go find another job. But they can't stay in that same position. I, you know, as I work with some of my clients, I do job benchmarking. So we go through and, you know, a lot of times when you hire, if you have a company that actually has a job description, that's great, but a job description, you know, I think there's really only six times it's used. It's, you know, from an employer standpoint is when you're hiring somebody, if you're doing a review, if reviews are done in the company, and then when you're getting ready to terminate somebody as an employee, they typically look at it when they're first hired and then when they want a raise, and then when they're updating their resume to go get another job. And so what we do is we go through and identify the three to five key accountabilities of the position that they are accountable for and then give a percentage based on a weight of how much time they should be spending and working in those key accountabilities so that the business owner can really measure if they're performing their job and doing what they're doing. Or do we need to reevaluate the key accountabilities?

You know, there's a few common themes that keep coming up in the show. One, pistachio is the best ice cream. Two, the reducing the set of things you need to do is constantly moving toward a more simplified list of things to do. So what I'm hearing, Mel, you say, is your people, you got to identify those key five things for them to do. Have them focus on that. Am I hearing that right? And is that by assigning way too many tasks, giving way too many responsibilities, does that result in lots of inefficiencies, therefore loss of profit?

Almost definitely. I mean, you look at it, and depending on which survey or the white paper you read, I mean, up to 80% of the workforce is disengaged because they don't know what's expected of them and what their job responsibilities are. So they're. They're bored. They're not challenged. They don't know what's going on, so they just disengage and they're out surfing Facebook or the Internet. And then the, you know, the executive team's upset because they're not performing the way they should be. And it's. It's really about finding the behaviors and motivators of the individual and then plugging them into the position that bets fits them. And sometimes, you know, a company outgrows the employee, and other times the employee outgrows the company.

So this is a true story. I have a relative who will go unnamed. She works for a major corporation who also go unnamed. Ron just met a few days ago, and she works in hr. And so we're talking, and the. This large company came out with a new initiative, and the IT department monitors Facebook use and so forth. As the new initiative got rolled out, Facebook use went up, AKA it wasn't rolled out effectively, and it was lots of confusion around it. And, Malcolm, what you're saying is people become disengaged and then they go off in their Facebooking. Or worse.

Wow.

That weird.

Yeah.

Or worse. Yeah. Especially, I mean, think about March Madness.

Oh, my God.

Stuff around that. I mean, it's just. It's crazy. But if you have people that are engaged, I mean, people want to be a part of something that's bigger than themselves. And so if you have them engaged in things that are challenging them and they feel like they're a valued part of the team, they're going to perform better.

I love that. I love that. Here's a question I have for you. This is an experience that I've had, I found, and this is a little bit of an aside, but with part time employees, I found that they can be just as productive, if not more than a full time employee, which when I give a part time employee, say they work for five hours in a particular day and I give them the same tasks as a full time employee, they get the exact same amount of work done. Do you find that too, that putting these kind of constraints actually isn't really a constraint after all?

Well, yeah, some of my best employees started out as part time employees because that was where they were at in their life or whatever. Then they moved into full time employees and became, you know, great. You know, they were already very good employees, but became great employees at a higher level and perform better because they were doing what they wanted to do and they knew that they were valued and that they had a great work life balance. And, you know, the agreement up front was, hey, I want to be there for my kids. You know, I want to take them to school, I want to pick them up, I want to work these hours and it works great.

Yeah, I think it's kind of funny. I think the default belief is, oh, if I want a bigger business, I need more employees, I need people working full time. I found actually having someone work part time, I know this isn't the core of our conversation, but just putting these constraints around people kind of Mel's concept of do less, if you give people even less time, but the same amount of work, they find a way to get done. I don't know, it kind of plays into human behavioral theory, but also they have a balance of life. You know, they can, as Mel was saying, they can spend time with their family so forth and enjoy that and be working for you, it just brings a balance. I think it's a good way to get the right people in the right seats.

That reminds me of. Sorry, go ahead, Mel.

I was going to say if you, if you're reading many of the white papers and the studies that are coming out, particularly with the millennials now, they really want that flexibility.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's going to behoove, you know, business owners and executive teams to really look at that and how can they best structure their company to provide some of that flexibility that, you know, thinking about the boomers, you know, where they, they didn't need it and they didn't want it, and they still don't want it. How can you blend those two together? And especially since we have 10,000 boomers retiring every day, how do you provide the nurturing and mentoring to the newer generations so that they can be the next leaders in the company?

Oh, I know the answer. You hire Mel west from Prosperity Logic.

Hey, I like that.

Hey, Mel, one last question. Looking back in time at your own business, what would you have done differently to improve the profitability of your business?

Well, I think first off, I would have, you know, and I really preach it today is, you know, make sure you have a good coach, make sure that you have a good cpa, and make sure you have a good attorney. And I skimped up front on the attorney and got myself into some contracts that if I would have had a good attorney, it would have saved me a lot of headache up front.

That attorney would have kept you out of the Appomatto courthouse. I gotcha, Mel.

Well, it didn't go that far. Okay, close. Yeah, it was like, oh, how do I. How do I fix this now? So, Mel, it definitely was this money sucker.

Oh, I hear you, brother. If people want to find out more about you and everyone listening, find out more about Mel. Where should they go?

Prosperitylogic.com. you know, you can find me on the web or Facebook or Google plus. Facebook. You know, it's all out there, so.

Or at your locally local Harley dealer, because I know you're a big Harley guy, too.

Oh, I am. And when I'm not spending time working or with the family, I'm usually on my motorcycle. You know, I've got live to ride.

Ride to live.

We should have got audio samples of different Harleys and quizzed him on if you could tell the difference.

Oh, yeah.

Well, and I don't know if you. If you heard it here at the top of the hour, my clock actually went off.

We did hear.

Okay, get that in the background. I have a Harley clock. And so each hour, there is a different Harley that plays.

Okay, so we did hear that. I thought there was, like, a construction crew coming through. We did hear it go off. Everyone, we will have Mel's information on the show notes. Mel, pleasure having you. Take care, sir.

Thanks, Mel.

Hey, thank you.

That was awesome.

That was fun.

Yeah.

You know what I liked about Mel was that he. He plugged profit first.

Yes. And are we gonna talk about our sponsors?

Oh, yeah. Because I was about to.

Because we're gonna. We're gonna give our feedback and our. What we learned Right.

But the only way we can keep our listeners to listen to the sponsors is by doing this. I totally get it.

Or we could do sponsors at the end if you want.

No, no, I want to do sponsors now. Because you know what? You should hear this.

Yeah.

Nextiva.

Nextiva.

Nextiva is a provider of voice over IP phone systems. I flew out to Scottsdale, Arizona where they're based out of. Toured their facility and they serve beer starting at 5 o' clock every day. Oh, a.m. yeah, p.m. you walk around, they have a beer cart going around. That's a pretty cool setup. Good. People you call support. You're actually talking to the folks at headquarters where the engineering team is where everyone is. So if you ever need help, they're there. And Ron knows this. We've changed our phone system like a million times. Like changing this, changing that. He's calling Steven like we got done for you.

They're awesome. Very friendly and responsive.

Support's excellent. And they're boozers.

Right.

And they offer voip phone systems.

Yeah. Void. Did I. Not even. I avoided that whole part. I didn't say that. Okay. Two other sponsors are Fundera. Fundera is a lending site. So if you need money for your business and you want to go through a lending source instead of going to a thousand different banks, go to one site, fundera.com, type it in and you get it.

And that sound wasn't appropriate.

No, that sounds like. That's my. Like, that wasn't. No, that wasn't meant to be inappropriate. That was like.

The execution reminded me of the three. Three legged stool.

Oh my God. Why would you. He's like. Mel's like. Oh, you know when you really want to get your stool robust and strong, add profit.

First we. We didn't get tell the last sponsor T sheets. Then we gotta get Mel, see if he got the word.

Oh, is he still on?

Mel, are you there?

I'm here.

Oh, we gotta do one more sponsor.

Hold on, Mel.

So t we treat our guests so effing po. And think about it, dude. Our guests have been a freaking ninja who could throw stars at us. Now we got the most badass Harley driver in Washington who could kick our ass and we treat him like garbage. So our third sponsor is TSheets. TSheet does time tracking software. And all businesses need to track time for different reasons. IRS reporting, time tracking, project tracking, T sheets. It's a really simple, effective system.

Nice milestones. Mel did.

Yes.

Did you catch the. The word or phrase that Mike Michalowicz used During this episode, you know, I.

Failed in that, so.

Really? Really?

Yeah.

I'm getting more fluid at it.

I was waiting for the whole supercalifragilist thing or, you know, or something really unique, but, no, I did not catch it.

And let me say this before we reveal the world. Word I said multiple times. And the last time I said it, you laughed at it, like you were acknowledging you recognize the word, which I think isn't a real word.

It is.

Oh, it is. I don't know. Oh, so maybe he was.

It's a place where.

Oh, then I'm.

The Civil War ended.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm the total jackass. Do you know what an Appomattox courthouse is, Mel?

I have no idea.

Oh, good. Really? All right, so that was the word. I never heard it before either. I'm with. The Civil War ended, all right. Me and Mal versus you two clowns, toe to toe. We'll take you on history challenge any day. No, we're gonna fight it out, and then we're Right. Harley's over your ass. So, hey, if there's.

Harley's involved, I'm there, You're there, you're there.

We'll get Mike a sportster.

So there's a. There's an interesting story about the Appomattox courthouse.

It's a woman's bike.

When. When the south surrendered, General Lee got all dressed up in his full regalia, and General Grant from the north was the winning general. He showed up dressed really casually, and he. That was the biggest regret of his whole life that he dressed casually and Grant came in all dressed to the nines.

Yeah, you could. You know, there's a lesson there. You can never overdress, but you can definitely underdress.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's why you dress like Michael Jackson.

That's true, Mel. Thank you. Is Appomattox courthouse, by the way, do you have a word you want us to use with the next guest?

Oh, geez. How about bubblegum?

Oh, Lord. The Harley driver wants us to do bubble gum. That's too easy. No, it's got to be something that's totally weird.

Totally weird. Yeah.

I mean, bubble gum. Like, I could say, hey, man, how's bubble gum going? Like, it's. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know.

Give us a Harley reference. Like, what would a Harley guy.

Yeah. Tailpipe.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, geez.

What's the best kind of. But what kind of bike do you have? Like, what version of the Harley.

I have a Road Glide and a Dyna.

Road Glide. There we go. Done.

Road Glide.

Road Glide. The word is road Glide. Thank you. There you go, Mel, You've been a trooper. Boom. Thank you. Boom.

Thank you.

Hi. We'll see you.

All right.

Road Glide. So we talked about our sponsors.

Yeah. What we. What did we take away from our guest? And one thing, when I asked them about the profit suckers, he talked about employees and bad business decisions. He talked about employees not trusting the employees to do their job.

Isn't that a shame?

Right. Isn't that weird? And also holding them to three or four key accountabilities. And I like that because that makes it clear. And the other thing was, you mentioned, actually this was one of my takeaways, the phrase called butt adjustments. When he says, you get people fat.

How do you do a butt adjustment? And he was right in sync with that. He's like, oh, I butt adjust all the time. I liked, you know, the bad decision making. He. Mel was the first person to say when we said, you know, where do people struggle with profit? A lot of people say efficiency. Other people have said the people. He's the first person to say it's bad decisions. And I love that. I mean, this is his business, but he has a structure. Get with other peers, other business owners. Talk through your decisions. It'll help you clear it out. So that was my big takeaway, and I got the quote for the day, but I'll do with the music checkout.

Okay. And thanks for listening. By the way, you can find the Profit first podcast on itunes and Stitcher and Also the website profit first podcast.com.

And make sure you visit Profit First Professionals. Mel happens to be one of our folks, and I like to bring a lot of our folks on. These are coaches, accountants, bookkeepers that are certified in profit first.

There you go.

Now here's the quote for the day.

Okay?

Abraham freaking Lincoln said this one. Freaking is not his middle name. First tip, he was at the Appomatto courthouse and said, give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax. Oh, yeah, President, dude.

That's awesome. Abe Lincoln representing that he was the man. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thank you. Mike Michalowicz, you give me six hours. Thanks, Ron.

I'll give you 17 cigars.

You know, that's efficiency.

That's good, dude. That's efficiency.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time, dude.