Episode 125: Have Even More Fun with Nick Gianoullis

All right, we're all rolling.

We are rolling. And we're started.

All right, set to go. We're ready for text.

Hold on, hold on. Okay. No, no, it wasn't attack. Isn't that weird? My phone will vibrate for like a. That was a tweet. It wasn't.

You can change those settings.

Oh.

Ow.

Well, I need your help with that stuff.

Okay.

Okay. Now I'm ready. Now I'm ready. It was nothing.

All right, you are here. We're here. We're all set to go. We're. We're ready to go.

The Prophet first podcast, episode 125 oh, my God. Ow. Come on, Nick. We need you.

Oh, man.

I'm all strapped in, man.

Ready to go.

Hallelujah.

Oh, word.

Hey, everyone, this is.

Let me talk to Nick. Just fade the music. Nick, could you. The headsets. There's still a little issue. Could you push the earbud in a little closer to your ear? Because maybe a little quiet. A little more, Little more. There you go. There you go. There, I got you. Okay.

Nailed them.

My ears bleeding. Is that good?

Welcome, everyone, to the show Profit First Podcast. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording and.

And Pause youe Life, dude.

And Pause youe Life. Love it.

And I am Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First Revised and Expanded.

Pick it up now.

Now. It's out there. It's out there waiting for you. Listen, if you read Profit first, that was nothing. Profit First Revised and Expanded. I literally rewrote the entire book. I mean, I kept the good stuff in there. It's not like I dumped it, but there's tons of new, juicy stuff. I'm here joined studio by my colleague, who is suffering from my oncoming migraine. Howdy, Christina Buldak.

Hey.

Sitting back. She needs a beer the way she's sitting back.

Oh, my.

Yeah, so she threw down some generic stuff. Isn't working, but we'll go quickly. Okay.

I'll be good. I'm good. Go with the punches.

And you, listener, you're listening to the private First Podcast is where we talk about migraines. We get our. Our guests tooting and hollering. We. I yell. We play stupid noises like this and that. Oh, hell no. Next.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Barry comes on. But believe it or not, between all of this insanity is also the lessons around profitability. Today we are going to discuss about having fun at work and how it brings profitability back. You may remember Nat Measly. He was on Quite a few episodes back. Well, this is actually.

He was on gmap, I believe.

Oh, he's on gmap. So you probably. Okay. You probably have no idea what's coming your way. So we had Nat Measly Nick is coming on, and Matt was his business partner, and we talked all about having fun and how it worked in building an accounting practice. In that case, now we're gonna talk about how you can use fun in your office, shockingly, to make more money, which seems like the antithesis of how to make money. You watch TV and they whip the employee. Whip the employee to get into shape and keep working.

Ow. All right, so that.

Yeah, go another one, please.

Thank you, sir.

I have another.

You have another. If you're listening to this show, you actually appreciate the concept of fun, because that's what we do. Our website is profit first podcast.com. all our episodes are there. You can comment or post on any of them. So if you have questions or anything and where you can hear us as a podcast, guess where. Guess where.

Where.

ITunes, Stitches, TuneIn, radio, Google Play, whatever podcatcher you use. I, for instance, I use Android. I use Podcast Addict. That's the app. So check us out anywhere. And we have a great guest every episode. And then we give our takeaways, and we want your takeaways and. And we hope you're having fun, because this show is not about revenue, right? No, it's not. No, it's not about expenses.

No, revenue is great. I mean, it really is. Revenue is great, but profit carries the weight.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, I set myself up for that one, Bing. But really, it is about profitability. But before we do that, Chris, I need to know what you've been up to, my brother.

Oh, you know, I have a Samsung phone. Yes. I have one of the GS7s, and no, it didn't blow up. And it's not going to. Please stop.

It's a little crazy, isn't it?

Yeah. But I found they have this health app. You can actually check your heart rate, and when you go for a walk, you can start it and stop it. It'll monitor you. And apparently I've heard with the iPhones that this kind of thing is all the rage, and it can help you with your health, and, I don't know, it seems pretty cool. Do you guys use it?

I have. I have the heart monitor on right now. I wear my watch all the time. I've been tracking my heart now for, I think, seven or eight months straight.

Yeah. And it's compatible with Other apps on your phone, too. Like, I use that. My Fitness Pal, to track my calories and things like that. And you're supposed to track your fitness in My Fitness Pal because it contributes to your calorie intake and it takes it right from the. The health app.

Do you. But you need to plug it in. Like, there's no wearable thing that's tracking stuff.

No, I mean, if you're fortunate enough to have an Apple Watch, I'm sure it's fine. But.

Yeah, the Apple Watch.

Aluminum foil on your head.

Yeah, that's exactly the Apple Watch. I think it was, like, 150 bucks. I mean, it's not cheap, but I use it constantly. I get tons of value out of it.

He makes me nervous because all the time he's like, I feel like he's.

Looking at the time.

You think I'm looking at the time? No, it just said I got. I gotta stand right now. It just told me so. I gotta stand. Yeah, yeah. It tells you you've been sitting too long because that's.

So how have you benefited from. From that?

I actually, I've exercised at the best, most highest level I've ever exercised since I played sports in college. I mean.

Got it.

I'm working out all the time. And, like, today, if I don't get near my mileage, I'll make. Ah. I'll go for a quick walk. And it's a good reminder.

Nice.

All right. You know who makes the show possible? Christina.

Corporate partners.

You're like, your eyes are slammed. Just get through the show.

I'm like, yeah, when you used to have a fly swatter there.

Yeah.

Someone brought that up to me at Profit Guy. They were like, you need to whip Mike into shape more.

I'm like, that's funny. It's somewhere around here. We'll bring it to the new office. We'll bring it to the new office. So our corporate partners are Nextiva, Fundera, Xero, Fundbox, and Receipt Bank. We'll conspicuously stick them into the show. Highly conspicuous.

Sneak them in.

But first, I want to talk about Nick. Nick is the founder. They call him the Godfather of Fun at the Fun Department. What was that?

It's a good story.

Well, now. Well, now you gotta tell me the story.

So. Totally interrupted you there, but. So it's not the Godfather. Scary, dude. So I won a James Brown dance competition in my early 20s at a beach bar. Got the crown, the cape. I don't remember it, but it's the Godfather of Soul. So that's where that Comes from.

That's cool. You have a good name. My nickname is Fat Daddy Fatback.

Oh, I'm sure there's a story there.

Yeah, there is, there is, there is. Here's the, here's one of our guests saying it.

Fat Daddy, Fat back.

So she was on and she just started calling me Fat Daddy. Fat pack, beans, coffee and biscuit. And a little piece of fat back. That's right, Barry. That's right. So, Nick, you are the founder of the fun department and you started this business for what reason?

Yeah, so I was in the corporate world back in the day, and I was using fun in my own personal style, management style. And the company had this work hard, play hard ethic. And I thought, damn, like, I know how to, you know, I know how to work hard. But the fun part fascinated me because I really thought it was our competitive advantage at this company. So I incorporated my own style. Then I started to develop some activities at the company outside of the traditional holiday party and summer picnic. Because I thought, geez, what if fun is a process, not just an event? And if we did it frequently during the course of the year in small doses, wouldn't that yield a better result? So I formed a committee. We call it the Circuit Club. Pretty cute, right? It was an electrical wholesale company. And very successful, you know, very successful. We had great retention, great productivity, you know, kind of all the things that you hope and dream for as a, as a company. So I thought, wow, this is really powerful. I want to share this with other companies. And that was really the genesis for starting the fund department, is that every company should have a fund department and produce great business results.

And what are the results? The core benefits of having a fun office.

So they're kind of far reaching. Everything from. You hear a lot about creativity. So 300% increase in creativity, there's 44% better retention, 66% less sick days. The list goes on and on. And these are not just our numbers. These are numbers by Harvard Business Review, McKinsey, Gallup, all the big consulting companies throughout the world. And probably more important than all of that is that the highest performing companies in any vertical market, the best companies in the world, have fun as part of their core value. And so that's how it's getting so much attention, because the competitors of these companies are saying, geez, man, I can't even attract any good employees anymore. This company is kicking my butt. And you know, I've got to pay attention to it. And then of course, millennials are driving a lot of it. Too. And we'll, I'm sure, be talking more about that.

Yeah, but I think, you know, I think these big companies, whoever they can be, say, General Electric, I mean, it's a massive company. If there's 50 people or 20 people going out for some fun activity, everyone else is still working. I mean, I don't think it affects the company. But if I have a small business, say I have 20 employees, if I take half the staff and say, hey, we're going to celebrate, that's literally 50% of my workforce is now goofing off and producing. Can this work for small companies?

Sure. So a lot of our customers are small companies. And the way we do it is we really break it into these very small, manageable chunks. And our prescription, if you will, for somebody who's looking at starting a program is five to 30 minutes once a month. And if you think about it, that's not a lot of time. Right. Like, you can fit that in anywhere. It could be at the beginning of a weekly staff meeting or monthly staff meeting. It could be. We help you identify the places where fun fits within your organization. Those opportunities to have fun. And then you keep it really brief and you keep it low production and easy. Right. It doesn't have to be this big event that people got to plan and spend a lot of time and money on. These are really, you know, little things that. That you can do very easily in the workplace. But the first step is finding out what is fun for your department, your group, your division, your company. And we do that through what we call shared experience. So it's. It's cool. It's a process. We just take people through the process. We apply the laws of fun, and, you know, voila. You've got, you know, programming for your company with, you know, hundreds of ideas on things that you can do easily in the workplace.

Right.

So it's. It's. Yeah, I'm sorry.

No, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah. So it's not kind of that old what people think of traditional team building. You know, people are, you know, have been traumatized by that stuff. You know, it's long, boring, expensive. It kind of, you know, invades your personal space. And, you know, all that stuff is really not appropriate in the workplace anymore. Think, you know, brief, organic, you know, quick and easy things that you can do.

Chris, did you want to say something?

Yeah. When you said make it easy, I thought of, like, a manager who's, like, pulling his hair out, stressing out over, come on, we gotta have fun. We gotta do something that's fun, you know, getting all crazy over it, but easy and fun is. That's the whole point.

Yeah, exactly. And, and once people go through the process and they realize, wow, this really is easy to do and it's, they're not threatened by it, and then it just becomes much and much easier. It becomes organic. But the first step, like I said, is really finding out what's fun for you individually. And then we find out what the collective experience is. What, what kind of activities can we create around the things that you all individually find as fun in common? And how can you participate at a level that you're comfortable with? Because we don't want to put anybody on the spot. You know, we want everybody to participate. That's our goal is 100% participation. So I can give you an example, you know, one that comes up pretty frequently. We have a company that decided 80 people in their department and they said, geez, we, you know, we came up with one of the things that we all mutually like dance. And for most people that'd be like, oh man, that's, that's intimidating. I might not like to do that. But what people realize is that a lot of people like to watch dance and maybe they like to score it, you know, hold up scorecards. So at this particular company, they have a three o' clock dance stop. And it started once a month. An employee would pick, you have it. They rotate, you know, pick a different song. And the people who wanted to get up at 3 o' clock and dance could. And the rest, you know, cheered or held up scorecards or just enjoyed watching. And then it was, you know, kind of contagious and popular and it went to once a week and now it's every day. So every day, three o' clock dance stop, you know, works really well for that company. And they have a ball. And about 70% of the people participate in the actual dancing and the rest just, you know, just enjoy watching.

Nick, you said the laws of fun. What are the laws of fun?

Yeah. So the first one is leadership buy in. And it's really, you know, I sometimes refer to it as permission to play because if the leader doesn't buy in, doesn't actually participate and endorse that fun is allowed in the workplace, then it's. Then it can be risky and intimidating for an employee to engage in fun. Right. But once a leader buys in, it kind of gives you that permission slip that it's okay to play. So leadership buy in is critical. Usually the companies that do this very Successfully Fun is one of their core values. So as a company, they say, you know what? We're going to have fun. And it's somewhere in their core values. It used to be kind of, you know, way down on the list, and now it's moving up to be a priority in a lot of, lot of companies. But that's kind of where it starts. And then the other things that we say is it needs to be compliant, it needs to be compliant with your culture, whatever that is. And it can vary from one company to the next. So a company full of millennials might have a different threshold for compliance than a company full of, you know, 50 to 60 year olds, but should be compliant with your culture. It should be consistent. And consistent is doing it on a regular basis. Like I said, once a month is where we like to start people. And it should be on company time. So they're kind of the three Cs. Where possible, it should be on company time because all the research indicates that's what employees see as real and genuine. When it's on company time, not on your time.

Okay, so if, if we start a little bowling thing and I say, okay, guys, Friday night at five o' clock, everyone has to go bowling. We're gonna have fun. That ain't gonna work because now I'm eating into people's personal time. Right, exactly. But if we say, hey, we're gonna have Friday fun day on Friday morning once a month, we're gonna come into the office, we're gonna get our bowling jerseys on and go down. That's better timing.

That or adapt bowling to be on your conference room table. You know, so that, and, and that's the kind of things that we do when we work with people, we, we help them in that creative process is to modify a game or activity that you don't even have to go out of the office. You could do it in your parking lot and you may use, you know, tennis balls for bowling. I mean, there could be any, any number of, you know, of ways that you do it that, you know, you can modify easily modify a game. So we do a lot of that. And I wouldn't rule out fun after work because even ourselves, we play, you know, fair amount as a company. It just happens spontaneously within our group because that's what we do. But we also go out, you know, after hours. We like each other, you know, we hang out. So I don't say don't go out after work, but realize that time is valuable for people. And most people really want their personal Time. So if everything is after work, it's not fun.

How do you navigate the naysayer? Maybe the boss is into it, the leaders are into it, everyone's into it. But yeah, that one curmudge. I don't want to go bowling. I joined this company to work and make money.

This is stupid.

Gosh.

Yeah, great question, right? There's a curmudgeon, you know, and they say, or a fun killer lurking in every corner. So what I say, and it sounds a little harsh, but you know, it's just the truth for me is that that person doesn't fit with your culture and they shouldn't be working there. Because when we bring people into our company, and I see a lot of other companies do this who don't do fun for a living. They do some serious stuff it or whatever they do, but they use their core values in the hiring process, in the review process and in the firing process. So if people know coming in that hey, we're a fun workplace environment, is that offensive in any way to you? You know, like if so, this might just not be the place for you. Zappos really is the one that kind of blazed that trail. And you have to have a sense of humor to work there. You have to be predispose for fun. You certainly do with our company. And I see more and more companies measuring and certainly hiring for their core values. So I hate to say it, but you know, a person who has a really negative attitude about, about that probably not good for your company overall.

What about the guy who's the win at all cost guy? So you're doing the bowling, right? And knocks everybody over, pushes the girls.

Around, Right, right, right.

He's putting like pins on people's chairs so when they sit down, they get injured. Like what do you do with that guy?

Yeah, so when we design things and that's that compliant part, right? That we want them to be safe and we want them to be, you know, non threatening. So when we actually design the activity, even the scoring of it is like, who cares, right? It's not, it's, it's not about a big trophy. You know, we do some competitive things because people do like a little mild competition. But you know, in the design of the program, you, you kind of rule that stuff out, right? And a lot of people, that's why they're so intimidated by the thought of team building. Because it was a ropes challenge and some beast on the other end, you know, drug somebody into the mud. And they were traumatized and you know, still in Therapy, you know, like that. We don't encourage that kind of stuff to happen. We just don't, you know, if you want to do that stuff outside of work, you know, that's cool. But the things that we do, mildly competitive and you know, people really stand out when they get to that place if they're that competitive that they, you know, they can't play in the sandbox with people again. You probably have some other issues you need to attend to.

What about the profitability? You know, sounds great. It sounds like we're maybe people are bonding and happier, but does, does this affect the bottom line in a good way?

Yeah. So I often tell people that fun is not the silver bullet. Right. That it can take a, you know, good company and, and make you great or it can be your competitive advantage. But if you're not already fundamentally a good company, we don't recommend, I mean, we don't engage with companies where, you know, they're not already treating their employees fairly and all that. It's perceived as an insult to those employees at that, at that stage. So the companies that, you know, do this and do it well are, we call them self actualized, kind of at the top of the pyramid and they, they recognize the value and you know, they get it about, about why fun. The ROI is really for us and fun is one component of culture and engagement. It happens to be the biggest component. So when you poll employees, so the top places to work and these other companies that measure all this stuff, employees say that the highest correlation to a great, highly engaged employee into a great culture is fun. It scores about 70% of the time as the number one correlating factor. So it's not the be all, end all, but it's a valuable piece and it's easy. You know, I think that's the other thing is it's not what people perceive it to be necessarily. It's not, you know, kind of old traditional team building. It's. We just redefined it and made it, you know, much more easier, easy, accessible, non threatening. So yeah, there's, there's lots of ways that you can look at it from a profitability standpoint. We've got white papers, we've got all kinds of, you know, documentation on the subject. And more and more it's, it's happening every week and you have people like, you know, Simon Sinek and Scott Christopher and Sean Achor and others that are, you know, touting the virtues of fun. We call them the wise guys, like W H Y S right. And we love it, because they're validating and we're the how to, you know, so once you decide, hey, this, this works for me, I get it that it's good for my business. We can help with the how to.

If you build a fun culture. I presume some people want to introduce their own ideas. Right? I mean, once the momentum gets going, people like, oh, we should change things up and stop doing the song of the day. That's what we do in our office. And let's do something else. Right? I mean, that's what will happen.

Sure, sure. So when, when we go through this process and help people determine, number one, what's fun for them, it's not just one thing. There. There's literally, you know, tens of things, could be hundreds of things. And then they go through the complete, you know, workshop process where they do have hundreds of activities that they can implement. So there's no shortage of fun. I was worried when we first started the company. I thought, geez, what if we run out of ideas? But never. And there's an endless stream of ideas. I often tell people, you know, go to holidayinsights.com for every day of the year there's a holiday associated with it. So it was like National Smiles Week not that long ago. We had a company who just started and put out an email, said, we're measuring smiles this week. And of course they couldn't measure every smile, but they still awarded some small trophy. And they said it was one of the best weeks they ever had because people were conscious about smiling. They take pictures, they pass them around. So it's little things, you know, watch Jimmy Fallon for, you know, a couple nights or watch the debates, for crying out loud. Like, there's tons of material out there. So, you know, we had a company, did it dress like Donald Day? You know, you, you can just, you know, there's. There's countless things. And when you, again, kind of go through the process and look at fun in a different way, you can see where there's. There's a, you know, just endless stream of things to do.

So maybe you inspire your team to bring their own ideas. But what if someone goes awry? What if you walk in one day and someone's brought in cards against humanity? This is a good idea. And now the team is playing this and you bring in your client and they're hearing, you know, some great funny game, but maybe not the appropriate setting. How do you manage that?

Well, again, you know, compliant with your culture. So you're not going to do anything. We Don't. That, you know, offends hr. You know, we're very sensitive to that, and we encourage companies to do the same. The other point about that that I think is interesting is because it's a process, right? Your first time that you do this, people are, you know, they're calling us and they're going, you know, so, you know, getting our input and what should we do? And. And by the third month, they're like, we got it. Like, because, you know, it's like anything else. You practice it, you get better at it. And that's exactly what happens. It just kind of becomes organic. And that's when, you know, you've arrived in the fun at work business, where things just happen organically and it's very casual. It's, it's not a, you know, we're going to have fun at 5 o' clock today. Or, you know, it's, there's not necessarily a prescribed time for it. But you, when you are playful at work, you are definitely more creative, you are definitely more productive. And, you know, it doesn't have to be these big elaborate events. So, you know, we encourage people, just get started, try it. We'll help you get, you know, get on your way. And then it becomes easy and it becomes second nature. And you'll always have people that will raise their hand and go, pick me, pick me, pick me. I want to be in the fun department. Those people already exist, so it's not like you have to create anything. We call it, like, activate your fund department. It's already there, waiting to happen. You just have to give people the tools to do it.

And what about the millennials? They're taking over the workforce. Is there some special way that millennials need to be included or lead us in the fun environment?

Yeah. So they're a big part of what's driving this. But what I love about millennials, without making big generalizations, but I relate totally, you know, I'm in my 50s, and I relate completely to their world because what do they want? They want recognition. They want to be involved in the process. So they want to know that they're contributing to, you know, to something that's great. They want flexibility. They want fun. I mean, think about it. These are things that everybody wants. The millennial generation is just the first to demand it. And it's not in a obnoxious way. They're just making very conscious decisions to say, you know what? I don't care so, so much about, you know, the pay and benefits. It's important to Me, but I want a great culture. I don't want to go to a place where I'm locked in a cubicle all day and not allowed to come out. Like that just doesn't work for me. So what I find is that the millennials I work with and I see in the. In the workplace, highly productive, willing to work extremely hard. They want flexible hours. They don't work a regular. You know, our, you know, a lot of our employees work remotely, virtually, but they get the work done, and it's great. So I think that the Millennials are teaching us something. I just recently wrote an article. They're the solution, not the problem. So I wouldn't do anything special for millennials. I would do it for your whole workforce. And what I find is that, and other companies report that it really bridges the generation gap, you know, that people, you know, fun is kind of universal in its concept. People, all people want to have fun. Everybody's idea of fun is a little bit different, but if you can find that, you know, kind of shared experience, it's great, you know, and it does bridge the generation.

You guys reading up and learning about your business and you. I see your aspiration was or is to be a greeter at a Wawa store.

You know, I just wrote, you know, in our last newsletter, I, you know, it's fascinating to me if, you know, Wawa, that that's a friendly place, right? It doesn't matter if you're a construction worker or your executive or, you know, what race or what, you know, people hold the door. You know, they're friendly. We. We do business with Wawa. It's not a, you know, they surprise. Their culture is so great. It was great before we got there, I can tell you that, because their. Their leadership is just on it. Like, they. They value their people. They treat them extremely well. Fun has always been part of their core value. We do some supplemental things for them, but they're. They're awesome. And it's one of my highlights of my day. I go to Wawa, and I love it that other people open the door for me. I do for them. Like, it's just a friendly place. The employees obviously are friendly, and I think, you know, trips to the Wawa are just kind of fun.

And Christina does background research for every guest we bring on the show. She researches out. And the challenge I put in front of Christina said, I want to make sure Nick really is the Godfather of Fun. Like, what proves it. And she said, I proved for you here. He has six children. Clearly, he Has a lot of fun.

I did not think.

Nick, where can people learn more about. About the fun department and your business?

Yeah, so you can go to our website, which is more funatwork.com morefunatwork.com can learn about our business there. Our book playing it Forward is available on Amazon and there's also a link through our website. But yeah, it's that easy. I will tell you, like, some people just pick up the book and they can start. They can start this process. And of course, we offer workshops and we do speaking engagements and we do all that stuff. But our mission in life is to help people create opportunities for people to have fun at work around the world. Whether they do it with us or they do it without us, it's great because it works, it's healthy. It's kind of a greater good.

All right, thank you so much for joining us, Nick and everyone listening in.

Thank you.

Go to.

You guys are truly fun, by the way.

Thank you very much.

You're a fair amount of these. And I would have to say that you, you're way up on the Richter square.

And for you, listener, go to the fun Dept. Thefundepartment.com to check out what they got going on there. And yeah, why not get a fun guide in your office, one of those wise guys to help you.

Thanks, Nick.

A little more fun.

Thank you. Have a great day, Dan.

All right, we're going to learn in a second. We're going to share what we learned. Chris and Christina and I. And Christina needs to get out of here.

I'm good.

She's dying.

She's good. She needs a punch.

Oh, there's the punch. You know what? She you punched us into the segment about our corporate partners and I don't know if you heard us sneaking him in over and over and over again throughout this episode, but we did because fun Dara and fun. Oh, you two thighs porn. Yeah. Fundera is one stop shopping for your loan. It starts with an F U N and ends in a dara. And go check out Fundera F u n D E R A by the way, right?

One stop shop. Like you submit all your requirements to them and they're the ones who go to all the different banks and find you the right bank.

Yeah. And they come back with a bows of the clown saying, I got your funds for you. Waka waka.

And a bowling ball.

And a bowling ball. I mean, it's a blast. But of course you have fun or fund box or fun fun docs you can call them. And Fundbox will finance your invoices. I'll tell you something that's not fun when someone doesn't pay you. Well, Fundbox now releases the fund to you.

And when you have your fun day at the office, make sure you save your receipts and scan them into receipt.

Bank so Mike can pay them. Yeah. Otherwise you're stuck with the bill. Christina.

Nope.

So, yeah, Christine, you got to give me those receipts. I can't find them. She says, and I'm like, don't worry. They were scanned in by you into receipt bank. I already saw them.

Oh, I did it. Thanks.

Oh, Oh, I took care of it. And then I got run over to my accounting system and say, okay, plug in the numbers. This is gonna take forever. I wish it was more fun. Oh, it is. Because I use Xero accounting, and Xero is a really innovative, simple, and honestly fun accounting system. Cloud based accounting system. And then, of course, nextiva. I have to call all my friends and tell them about the fun day I had at work yet again. So I pick up my next diva phone and call everyone on the planet. Unlimited calling to anywhere in your calling plan.

Literally everyone on the planet. You should have a voicemail from Mike.

Yeah, I call everybody, right? I call everybody.

So when Mike wins the bowling.

Yeah.

Our system. You can configure how you want our system set up. So I can. I literally can call anyone globally, too.

Yeah.

And it's all included in our package. Now, that's like the elite upper echelon because we have so many international clients, but they have very inexpensive and affordable international rates if you choose that.

And the amazing thing about voice over ip, we just moved into our new office, and literally we just had to unplug and replug the phones in the new space. And everything is just set up like it's all done.

Of all of our technology, that was the easiest. Yeah, it used to be the hardest. We moved in. Our phones are running the computers. I'm still kind of trying to figure out.

We're still working on it.

That's another story.

You mean for the phone? You don't have to wait for the guy to come from the phone company?

No, literally just plug it in and it works.

You just plug it in. Making phone calls. You're already butt dialed. I butt dialed. I put the. The next phone in. I lean over to set up the computer, My elbow hits it, and I did the most recent call. And then they hear me just bitching, computer suck. All right, what was your takeaway, Chris?

Well, I like the idea of frequent fun. And see, creativity is a big thing. He says it boosts creativity. The more fun you have at work, creativity is boosted. Now what does that mean, creativity? Are people drawing on the walls with crayons and stuff? No, they're finding better solutions to these day to day business problems. So think about it. Business today is changing all the time and it's changing quickly. And we're all coming up on situations that we don't know how to deal with it. So if there's more creativity floating around, your employees and anyone in the office will come up with better solutions and ideas. And I mean, think about it. That's worth a lot. I don't know.

That's worth a real lot. Christine, what'd you take?

I think it all comes down to respect for the people that you work for and the people who work for you. If you show them how, you know, important they are to your company by, you know, providing once a month an outlet for them to go and have fun and it's a bonding experience for everyone and then it makes them want to work harder. I know we have that here. We've gone bowling, we've talked about going to the shooting range. Yeah. We make all these plans and it's great because it's, it gives us all to, to have that family feel. We, we get to know each other as friends and then we all truly want what's best for the company and it drives us all to succeed that much more.

We gotta go to the shooting range.

We're gonna go.

Yeah. Can you line up? I want to shoot zombie. There's this one thing where you shoot a zombie. It's a plastic zombie. Every time you hit it, it starts bleeding.

Oh my God. Okay, we're gonna do that.

That's so ridiculous. I want to do that. My takeaway was activate your fun department. You already have it. That's like, oh, I thought you have to establish it. You have to find someone hire. No, everyone wants it.

Yeah.

Activate it within your company.

I love that.

That's all I got. That's.

There you go. So you know what, what's your takeaway? You're listening to this. If you're still listening, you must be listening for a reason. So you can go to profit first, podcast dot com. Go to the website and find this post. It's episode 125. Is it?

Yes.

Yep. And comment about how you're gonna have fun in your office or what you're gonna do or what you're gonna suggest to your employers. So profitfirstpodcast.com. that's the website. You can also see all our previous episodes there. Every single one. And I didn't mention again, pause your life. It's a little thing I'm working on. Pause your life.org, go. Just go there and check it out at. I don't know, Mike. We might have to talk about how we're fitting in this, into this show because it doesn't seem to be fitting very well. What do you mean? That's okay. Pause your life.

Well, why share a little more about it? Are you. I sense disappointment from you.

Yeah, no, no, it just. It just doesn't seem to fit. It's not anything. It's not anyone's fault or anything. It's just. The show's about profit, and we're wild and crazy, and then it's like, okay, pause your life and, you know. Yeah, but drop your baggage and relax.

Listen, dude, I watch you on Facebook, like, a little bit. Soccer. Ish. That's kind of weird. But I see you doing the 14k. I see you out observing the beautiful animals you have out there in Colorado. Isn't that the essence of pause your life is that you're actually in the present moment, fully engaged? Isn't that what your organization does?

Well, that's part of it, but what we really do is retreats and meetups, so, you know, how about taking a week off for yourself?

Yeah.

Pausing your whole life.

And how can you profit, make your business and strive to make your business profit more profitable if you're not. Your head's not in the game. You need those little breaks to recharge, rejuvenate, and to snap back into focus. I think it's completely relevant.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Chris, you can't drop as a sponsor.

Sorry.

Okay.

Good attempt, though. Good attempt.

So.

And way above the level of sponsor is called profit first professional, because that's. Mike, you and Ron are just like. Someone threw in a softball, and Ron put it, like, over the upper deck with. With profit first Professionals.

So it went whizzing by my face like, it was like. You ever do that? Like you're playing sport and like, you ever have an instance where something almost hits you that's almost scarier than being hit?

Like when we have dark gun fights in the.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

You sit there and like, you're. You hear wind, and it's like, what the hell was it? That is terrifying, because then your mind just goes into spinning. Well, Ron pitches. I throw up a lob. He hits it so hard, it goes flying by my face and all I hear is, profit, profit, profit. Here's what he did.

He cut the ball in half, too, because he wasn't swinging a bat. He was swinging the lightsaber.

Exactly, exactly. Split and dropped to the ground. That's what really happened. He's assembled we collectively, but under Ron's tutelage, we have assembled a team in house of. Of people who care more about eradicating entrepreneurial poverty than anything. In turn, he's also, with the help of our team, created a organization now of, you know, the numbers are. I thought it was like 140, like 165. Yeah. But then. But then there's numbers everywhere. Now it's like, well, they're core and there's always different. It's confusing. There's 100 plus. So that's all I know now. That's all I know of Profit First Professionals out there. These are coaches, these are bookkeepers, and these are accountants who have studied under our guidelines how to leverage and use Profit first to help your business improve its profitability.

Certified.

They're certified. So listen, you gotta have a fun office. There's no question about it. But fundamentally, you have to be profitable throughout. You have to be able to sustain. And you need to know someone that can go in, dig into your numbers and get you to that profit platform you need to be at. That's what Profit First Professional does. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on the find option. There's one in the top. There's one at the very bottom of the homepage. Click on the find button. We will find you a Profit First Professional who help drive your business to the levels of profit it always has deserved to be at. Do it now.

It's just amazing that a business owner can have an accountant or a bookkeeper. That's like literally all they think about is driving profit to your business. And you call them on the phone and what are you talking. What do you talk about? Profit. What are we going to talk about next week? Profit. I mean, it's crazy.

Profit.

Jeez. Go to the website. Profit First Professionals.com. thank you, Mike. Thank you, Christina. Thanks again to Nick. That was awesome. And of course, everyone in the background over there, including Oberon Kenobi, Obi Kenobi and the Hawaiian lumberjack. Hey, we hope you're more profitable. Why don't you send us a note and tell us how this show is affecting your business and your profitability. I paused at just the right time and by the way, you can read Profit first and Surge and all Mike's other books too, so let us know. Thanks for listening. We'll see you all next week. Shut up. Oh, that is tremendous.