Episode 127: Make Your Brand Fascinating with Sally Hogshead

You know, Mike, Barry stopped by your new office, and he overheard a couple things, actually.

What'd he hear? And they were cussing up a song. Profanity is left. Profanity is right. Every second word was a hep word. Well, you know, the problem is we're moving every second word. Every second word. Every second word was a heft word.

That's right. And that's not how it is on this show. This is the Profit First Podcast. Every second word is not the heft word, is it?

Sometimes it is Hef You. Hef you hef.

Hugh Hefner.

And you know what else Hugh Hefner listens to? He listens to the Bradford Podcast, episode 127.

Oh.

God.

I will build.

I didn't hear Sally here in the building.

There we go. Yeah.

Oh, shit.

What's up, everybody?

Welcome to the show.

This is the Profit first podcast. This is the show where you tune in, you learn all about profit, and you also have some fun. My name's Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording and Pause yous Life.

Yeah. Which is gaining popularity. More people are participating. Oh, and who's this amazing voice you're hearing, too? It's a little bit nasally. It only can be one person. Mike Michalowicz. Yeah, that's me. Mike Michalowicz. I am the author of Profit first, and my newest book is Surge in the Market. There's a gaggle, a gaggle of other books out there available for you right now. If you could just even get close to spelling my lap long Polish name. I'm joined in the studio by Christina Buldak.

Hey, there.

And you, listener, are listening to the Profit First Podcast. This is a show where we explore every element of profitability, and today, it's no exception. Today we're gonna explore your personal brand with none other than Sally Hogshead is in the studio, and we're gonna be.

Hey, you guys, I'm excited to be able to be here today. Talk about profit, Talk about weird last names and things we have in common, like getting beat up on the playground for having unpronounceable last names.

Oh, my God. And we're even going to talk about our alma maters, and you don't even know that's coming your way. So, listener, be sure. Be sure to tune into what we're going to talk about today, because it will drive your business to the highest levels of profits you ever experienced. Right, Chris?

That's right. We talk about profit. We don't talk about Revenue, because revenue is. Is a mule, but profit is the tool.

Oh, nailed it.

He's back. That's right. You can hear our podcast anywhere. You listen to podcasts, itunes, Stitcher, Tunein radio, and of course, the website. Have you gone there yet? You need to see these pictures of Mike Michalowitz. These funny pictures. Go to profit first podcast.com. profit first podcast.com. that's where everything is at. And we're psyched to be back, Mike.

Dude, psyched to be here. Chris, before we get started with Sally, what have you been up to? My brother?

Dude, I just drove 1750 miles across the country to be here in New Jersey.

And ironically, you're not even at the studio. Like, you're not at our studio. You're at your own studio.

Yeah, I'm back at my parents. Your parents house, which is about 40 minutes from where you guys are right now. And I'm only here temporarily, but I came out here for Thanksgiving and a few other reasons that I had to bring part of my studio with me. That's why I drove.

Are you back in your bedroom with the shag carpet from the 70s?

No, I'm set up in the living. My studio's in the living room, but yeah, I am sleeping in my old bedroom, but there's just. There's nothing there. It's just a bed and carpet.

It's right. Chris, I don't know if you heard in the background, Right. We're getting started. We're about to record, and I heard Chris yell, hey, Ma, where's my lunch? Mom, recording your show.

So what have you guys been up to?

Dude, we're in the new office. Yeah, we're in there a full month. And now today we're back in the old office. And it. Because this is where the podcast.

It's a dungeon.

It's a dungeon. It is a pit. And we moved out and nothing's been touched. It's like Chernobyl happened here, and you come back 25 years later and, like, there's trees growing out of the ground. That's the stage we're at.

Wow.

Yeah. Christine, we have any community feedback? Yeah, no.

We got a little shout out from Rodrigo. He's actually one of our good friends, but he just reached out to us and he wanted to really reiterate how thankful he is for Mike writing Serge. And he said, I just finished everything you write. I love it. I will not stop saying that. For me, you are one of the best entrepreneur slash small business authors of all time. And he just. He's like, I know you're number one fan, but seriously, thank you for writing this book, Rodrigo. Shout out to Rodrigo.

Gracias, amigo. Which means I'll see you later. Oh. Which is, by the way, funny. Quick story. I gotta tell it real quick. I'm in Mexico. I'm going for a jog with some Mexican entrepreneurs there before a session starts. That morning, we decided to go exercising. I run into a farmer who has cattle, and so we have to stop running. And his herding dog is there and comes up to me, really beautiful dog. And I want to say, tienes bueno perro. Right? Which means you have a good dog. But I pronounce Spanish so poorly that my paro, which I couldn't roll, I said, tienes bueno pedo, which means you have a good fart. And all of the entrepreneurs I with ran away from me laughing and just left me there alone with this poor farmer.

Was the guy offended or was he.

No, he's like. It just looks at me, it goes mad. Ok. Stupid, though. And then he said. And then I said, well, hey, pal, I have something else.

I will build a great, great wall.

Okay, before we get started, we got. We got to thank our sponsors who put the show together. Do you mind just rattling off some of the names?

Nextiva.

That's right. That's one of them.

Fundera.

Yes. Love them.

Receipt Banks.

Oh, my God.

Fundbox.

Yes. There's one more. It's the newest one. Starts with an X, ends with an ero. Exactly. Set, rhymes with hero. So thank you to our corporate partners. We'll share a little bit more about them, or maybe we'll even try to insert their names while you're listening to Sally Hogshead, maybe. You probably know the name Sally Hogshead.

Do I?

Yeah, she wrote the book. Fascinating. Listen, I went on, like, this binge reading of books on persuasion and influence years ago. Robert Ciladini's book Influence is where it started for me. Someone told me, you got to read Influence. And then I started reading other books, and I come across the Game Changer. And it's this little blue book. The colors have changed now, but back then, it wasn't even a little book. It was a blue book. And it said fascinate across it. And I was like, oh, this looks amazing. And I started digging in it, and it was the only book I found that really digs into principles and also the elements of ourself that are persuasive, what defines our personal character and how to use it. So all These other books were scientifical, scientifical research and very kind of theoretical. But this one actually applied to me directly and it quickly became my favorite book. I reached out to her and basically fell in love with Sally Hogshead until I found out she's a Duke graduate.

Are we gonna have trouble here? Do I need to break out?

Not really. I mean, not really. Not really. I went to school at Virginia Tech and we played lacrosse against you guys. I was on lacrosse team and Duke would smother us. So I never liked Duke because of that. But we avenged that this past weekend when we played Duke in football. I don't know if you followed the game, but we beat you. We beat you, Sally. Welcome to the show.

Hey. I can't compete on lacrosse or football, but I can promise I'm not going to use words like scientifical.

Okay, well, that's fair. Now let's just get things started. What does it mean to have a personal brand? How do you define that?

There are a lot of really cheesy connotations about personal brand that have to do with what typeface your resume is set in, what color necktie you wear, how you shake hands. And that's kind of an old fashioned way of thinking about yourself. Your brand is how other people perceive you at your best. It's not how you perceive yourself, it's how do you attract your ideal client or your ideal customer and make the best possible first impression and then add value. We've measured a million people up until this point inside of companies like Twitter and Porsche and AT&T. But we've also measured 200,000 high performing entrepreneurs. And we found that the high performers did two things differently with their personal brand that directly correlates to their profits and their personal revenue. First thing that they do differently is they contribute a very specific benefit. They're not trying to be all things to all people. They're over delivering in a very, very specific area. Like people who are great at details are phenomenal at details and they don't try to be the big picture visionary. The second thing that high performing entrepreneurs do is that they over deliver in this one specialty. So, Mike, we can kind of get into that because I think this is a provocative way for us as entrepreneurs and us as people in modern business to be reinventing our concept of what it means to have a personal brand.

Oh, we are going to dig into it. But you said it's how others perceive you at your best. How do they know when we're at our best versus we're off our game. I mean, how did they know that a crappy personal branding day, if you will, is not actually representative of who we truly are?

Have you ever done an assessment, Mike, like a Myers Briggs strengths finder disc, the traditional personality test? I have, yeah. Most of us haven't. So those are based on psychology, and they're looking through your eyes at how do you see the world? And that's a really important thing to know. You know, it's good to know how you see the world, but if you live somewhere other than a desert island, you also need to know how does the world see you? In other words, how do people perceive you at your best? How are you most likely to be perceived? As intensely valuable so that people pay you more, they seek you out. You're not a commodity. You can cut through distraction. So when I was developing the algorithm behind. Behind all my research, I based it not on psychology, but on branding, drawing upon my background in advertising. And what I found is if you can show somebody how other people see them at their best, almost like a focus group, if you can show people how they're most likely to be able to play their A game, to win the moment, to make a killer presentation, to hold their client's attention, and they can do more of what they're already doing, right, Instead of fumbling, being awkward, turning people off, or worst of all, kind of getting stuck in their career in an area where they're struggling and disempowered and they become disengaged. And that's where we go into the slow, inexorable downward spiral of competing on the basis of price and ultimately just being a commodity in the market.

So how do I get to understanding how other people see me?

It's kind of an uncomfortable premise at the very beginning, isn't it? You know, like, we're sort of uncomfortable thinking how other people see us. But imagine if I could show you how other people see. See you in your most at. When you're operating in a space where you're in the zone. You know, Mike, you're a speaker, you're an author. You know that feeling when it's like, dude, I am kicking ass right now. You're talking, they're listening. You're giving them points. They're writing them down. You can tell that they are completely connected to you. They're not looking at their iPhone. They're not thinking about their next meeting. They're not kind of zoning out and daydreaming about their Game of Thrones are gonna watch that night or who's gonna win the election or anything else. Yeah, yeah. There are no crickets in the room. It's cricket free. And you know that feeling, like in those moments you feel really confident. And you'll love this. When you are confident, you produce more saliva. And linguists call this wet mouth syndrome.

Oh, this is awesome.

Wet mouth syndrome. So you've had this feeling when you've been in a meeting and all of a sudden you're tanking and you get a blast of stress and your mouth dries up. Well, what l describe as confidence is when your mouth is actually really wet. And Marilyn Monroe did this perfectly because when she talked, even if she was talking into a microphone, she had a lot of saliva in her mouth and she kept her volume low, so it felt like she was doing pillow talk. That was kind of the secret to her success. So right now I have a wet mouth, but I'm not pillow talking. But imagine if I said, are we.

Sure that was saliva?

I know. So next time, think about what is your wet mouth syndrome? And how are you being perceived by others? Are you being perceived as. As confident? Are you impressing? Are you influencing or are they tuning you out so your words are not gonna create action?

So if you have a wet mouth, that is a behavioral trigger or response that you are on your game.

It is a physiological response within you that's involuntary and you probably don't even realize that you're doing it. But when you feel confident, your listener is more likely to feel confident in you. When you don't feel confident, whether they realize it or not, they're kind of getting turned off. You know, it's like a really bad first date when you don't why there's bad vibe, but they're kind of cringing and they're like sending themselves a fake text like, oh, look, my dog died. I gotta run home right now. The same thing happens in business. When you're not creating. When you're not creating resonance. If you're not communicating in a way that is gonna be perceived at your top, then. Look, let me sum it up for you. Every time you communicate, you're either adding value or you're taking up space. When you're adding value, people wanna work with you. They want your opinion. They'll pay you more. They seek you out. You become an expert, an authority. On the other hand, if you're just taking up space, it's sort of like the email that you get with a fake Rolex watch. People just put you in their mental spam Filter, you become human spam. So the goal here is to not be human spam.

Okay, now you said, or at least I heard you say, is that the most persuasive, the most fascinating people have a very specific benefit.

What does that mean, specific benefit? First of all, I'll use me as an example. Then I'll use you as an example. My specific benefit that I deliver is I communicate with passion and creativity. If I'm communicating in a way that feels passionate and creative, then I'm going to be on my game. I'm going to feel in the flow. It's going to feel effortless. My studies on a million people show that the more that I feel like I'm in that zone where I'm communicating in the way that's just naturally how I'm going to be most energized and confident, my income or in your context, my profit will be a direct proportion of how fascinated I am by my work. You, for example, you communicate slightly differently than me. You have a different specialty. You communicate with innovation and with power. That means you're pioneering, irreverent and entrepreneurial. So if I said to you, mike, let's say you were walking into a meeting where you had to do a speech, so you're standing on stage in front of people, and what if they said right before you walk on stage, hey, Mike, listen, we don't really want you to come. Don't. Don't challenge our audience. Don't present us with new ideas. Just kind of, you know, status quo. And for God's sakes, don't be irreverent. What would that be like for you?

Suicidal? I would get dry mouth. I would lose the wet mouth syndrome. And, yeah, that would be so bad. I already. I really get.

Not only would it suck, but the people who are listening to you would probably not get a great impression of you. They would start to leave the room and they would fill out their feedback forms like, God, everybody. All the other figures were great, but that Mike guy, man, he was boring, right?

Yep. Yep.

Okay, so that's an example of how if you aren't communicating according to your natural advantages, then you're actually at a huge competitive disadvantage. And I bet you've been in a situation in which you were working with a client and suddenly you realized, you know, they don't want me to be pioneering, irreverent and entrepreneurial. They actually want me to be analytical, detailed, meticulous, focused. You know, and all of a sudden you're like, wow, not only is this not my ideal client, but this is a huge psychic cost to me and to my business. And I'm making a bad impression. And I don't want them to refer more people who are like that to me. So here's the key. Key is how do you build, how do you build your business and your life around who you naturally are at your best so that you can stop struggling through quicksand? And that's a huge key to increasing profits in your business?

Well, that's exactly what I want to learn from you, is now that we know what our personal brand is, what, what makes us truly fascinating as individuals, how do we amplify that through our business, through all the work we do?

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is they focus on who their customer is, how they, how they perceive their customer, rather than thinking about how does their customer perceive them. And by this, I don't just mean their company or their, their corporate brand. I mean them as individuals. But what we found is at the highest level of play, people aren't being paid for what they do. They're being paid for who they are. So let's say you want a dental practice. You fill cavities, I fill cavities. You do braces, I do braces. So at the highest level, if you're competing on the basis of what you do, then you're going to have to compete on price. And that's where not only are you not going to, you're not going to achieve profit, you're not going to achieve growth in that area unless you're the market leader and you have the biggest advertising budget. So here's the takeaway from that. You have a choice. You can either have the biggest marketing budget in your category, or you can be the most fascinating. If you have the biggest marketing budget, you can just hammer people like, I live in Orlando, where John Morgan is here. He has the biggest advertising budget. So he doesn't need to be the most fascinating because he can buy his way into people's awareness and conversations. On the other hand, if you don't have the biggest budget, if you are a challenger brand to some degree, then you have to keep that underdog, scrappy mindset and think my communication. I can't take my competition's logo and put it on my messaging and have it make sense. Because what that means is my messaging is a commodity. I will be perceived as a commodity. So if you think of your personality like the greatest asset that your business has, you don't have your personality, doesn't have Any overhead. You don't have to hire more employees to improve your personality and how other people perceive you at your best. And yet, as entrepreneurs, that's the place where we tend to focus the least.

It's true. It's true. I think the argument from the entrepreneur, and I got to ask you this, is customers are the ones who are paying me. If I have an opportunity with a customer, don't I need to cater to what they want? That's the only way I'm going to make money.

You can if you have so many customers that you don't have to worry about elevating your prices. But, I mean, that's not a place of strength. That's exhausting. You're building a business in which you're gonna be seen the same as everybody else. How your customer perceives you, in other words, how your customer perceives that you add value is the key to making sure you're attracting the right customers and the right clients. Let me give you an example. For the first half of my career, I was an advertising creative director. The creative director is the one who comes up with all the big ideas, the national TV campaigns, and works with a team to execute them. And I had really cool clients like Mini Cooper and Nike and Coca Cola. But my favorite client I ever had was Jagermeister. Have you. Have you ever had a shot of Jagermeister?

I have. I have.

How do you like the taste of a shot of Jagermeister?

I think it's hard.

It's hard, right?

It's hard. Yeah.

So here's what it kind of tastes like kerosene or battery acid, I assume.

It tastes like kerosene. Yes. I haven't done too many shots of that.

Right, right. There's not like the Coke Pepsi Challenge where it's like, should we do a shot of kerosene?

No, no, no.

So here's what we learned when we learned that, first of all, the reason why I was brought in on this project is because Jagermeister had a very spec marketing problem, which was consumers were aging out of the Jagermeister brand before they were of legal drinking age. So we would do focus groups with 21 year olds, and they'd be like, oh, that's so high school. But we wanted to understand, why is it that nobody likes the taste of Jagermeister and yet it's the number eight imported spirit in the United States. So we went into bars, and here's how the Jagermeister experience goes. What day of the week, Mike? What day of the week do we tend to drink Jagermeister.

I would assume Friday and Saturday. But that sounds like an old guy talking.

Well, no, that's, you're exactly right. It is Friday and Saturday. What time of day would you say people are most likely to do a Jagermeister shot?

I would assume. See, that thing is a trick question. So I'm going to say like one o' clock in the morning, but now I'm thinking It's probably like 4 o' clock, but in the afternoon.

No, you're exactly right. Let's say 1:00am to 4:00am and you know, anybody who's ever been around Jaeger knows that that's the time they own. They own that time in the consumer's mind. And here's what that looks. A group of people go over to the bar, somebody says, hey, I've got a great idea. Ding, ding, ding, let's get shot. And everybody goes no. And then all of a sudden that crazy button in their brain gets hit and people say yes. So the bartender brings a tray over full of shot glasses. Everybody looks at them with dread. They know that it's going to be the most corrosive thing that's ever gone down their throat. They take the shot, they clench their jaw, they do the shot, they grimace, but then they slam the shot glass down and they kind of puff out their chest and they high five and they fist bump and it's like, ye, let's do another one. So what we saw was the more you hate the taste of Jagermeister, the more likely you are to drink it. So here's the key. In a crowded market, like a bar or like small businesses, medium sized businesses in a crowded marketplace, it's good to be better, but it's better to be different.

Okay?

So you have a choice. Make your drink.

Make your drink taste like shit and you win.

Well, here's the thing. They're not competing on the basis of taste or price or convenience. Instead, they found a very specific way to be different. And that's what, that's been the secret of their success. So the way is different is better than better.

Love it. Love it. So let's talk about us as individuals. If I am that cringe worthy, jaw clenching person, Donald Trump. No, I'm just kidding. But I'm just saying, if I'm that type person, and are you saying that's also fascinating, does that appeal to people?

Let me pause for just a moment and say, let's talk about the word fascinating. Because it's kind of become like this Britney Spears word. That has more to do with cocktail party conversation than about a business strategy. I first started studying fascination about 10 years ago, and the word fascination is one of the oldest words in written language. It's ancient Latin, and it means to bewitch or hold captive. So your listener is powerless to resist. If you look at the Salem witch trials, they're not about witchcraft. They're about fascination. Freud. Sigmund Freud talks about fascination as the hypnotism of love. So the fascination is more about this instinctive, primal force that we have that drives us to do things like to cheat on a diet or cheat on a spouse or buy a car we can't afford. But at the same time, it also has a lot to do with our decision making throughout the day, and we don't even realize it. It's kind of like that crazy button in the brain that has people do jaeger, even though they hate the taste. So if you can understand, what are the buttons you can hit in your customer's mind that are going to make them spellbound by you, hypnotized by you, so that it's almost like you have the ability to stop competing on price, to draw them in, and not by spending the most on marketing. It's going to put you at a huge competitive disadvantage in any kind of distracted, crowded, cluttered environment.

Now, I want to throw some probably overused words at you, but authenticity, transparency, it sounds like actually that is supportive of this model, that the more authentic or true I am to who I am, the more transparent I am and maybe even play up those idiosyncrasies, that that's to my advantage.

You know, I agree that those words are overused. And the reason why they're abused is because they're very important, like authenticity and transparency, because we don't have a lot of words in our language to describe those concepts. I think those things are important. But I think there's something more at play here, which is, Mike, let's say you were about to go into a crucial meeting. What's an example of a meeting where you want to be seen at your best, and it's really important to you. The stakes are high. You got to come out with the answer that you want from this meeting. What's an example?

Well, an example would be a strategic meeting. So I own a membership organization, and we have to meet with other membership organizations, and we have to be moving in a synchronized form. Otherwise it'll disenchant both their membership base and my membership base.

Do you find that for you Having a highly structured business model that's highly synchronized, is that something that comes naturally to you, or is that something that you have to have partners who can kind of keep you aligned on that path?

Yeah, Ron needs to yell at me. He's my business partner every single second. Because I AM so not Mr. Synchronized.

So that's exactly it. So for you to operate at your best, you have to be able to have a partner that can bring that to the table because it is important to your customers, but that's not the value that you're going to provide. So imagine that anytime you're going into a situation, whether it's a project, a conversation, a pitch, anytime you have to play your A game, it's important for you to think who you are. How are you going to go in there and have the highest likelihood of delivering the most value? And the way I created to identify this was by drawing upon my branding background. I mean, we all know what a focus group is like. You know, if my client Coke wants to improve their profits and improve their stature, Coke doesn't care how Coke sees the world. Coke only cares how does the world see Coke? How does the consumer see Coke at its best? Why do people buy Coke instead of buying Pepsi or Jaeger or kerosene or any of these other beverages? Well, what I learned is that you can kind of hack the system. You know, like there's a growth hack. There are growth hacks. They're life. I sort of created a brand tack. What I found is if you can find the perfect adjective to differentiate yourself, then it allows you to go into any type of communication situation, like when you're giving a speech or like when you're leading a status meeting. And you've got to make sure that your team is fully engaged. If you know that adjective, it allows you to position yourself in a really effective way. So, Mike, for example, of these three adjectives that I mentioned a moment ago that you learned when you took the fascination advantage assessment, which one best describes how you are different? Pioneering, irreverent, or entrepreneurial?

They're all so close. But I would say pioneering, I'm with pioneering over.

The way in which you are most likely to have a competitive advantage is for you to go into every single situation like that and think, if how I'm most likely to add value is to be a specialist in the area of being pioneering, you'd prepare for the meeting differently. You have not only permission to be pioneering, you have a responsibility, a duty to be pioneering. So if you were stepping onto A conference call. One of the situations that I think where it's most difficult to be fascinating. It's most difficult to differentiate yourself, except for maybe a podcast with the smart asses that you have on the line today.

Wrong.

Imagine if you said, okay, I gotta totally kick ass in this conference call. So you might come to the meeting and say, I need to deliver three pioneering ideas. In other words, I've got to show people something that they haven't seen before. I have to kind of push them outside of their comfort zone a little bit so that I'm not living in the world of status quo, of what they've already seen. You have to give them something that's unfamiliar and that allows you to position yourself in the mind of your client or customer in the exact same way that a brand positions itself in the marketplace. Like think of Southwest Airlines. Their adjective is friendly. Nike. Their adjective is empowering. Godiva. Their adjective is indulgent. Mini Cooper. Their adjective is participatory. So anytime you've got a brand that's trying to communicate itself, it's critical for the team to have this kind of North Star, like a strategic path that everybody can align around. So if your brand can align around you being pioneering, that helps you build a better team. It helps you optimize your business. It doesn't mean that you. That your business has to be pioneering, but it does mean that you have to be empowered to be in a role in which you're not trying to be all things to all people. And that's what we come back to with this high performance study that we did that high performers have a specialty. Your specialty is being pioneering.

I love it. And that translates right to profits. Sally, you are amazing. I mean, absolutely amazing. The irreverent part of me, kind of like a dog would like, kind of like as a thank you, would lick you from the chin to the eyeball with its wet.

Did you pee on my tree?

Right, exactly. Never get near your mailbox again because what I did to it. But you were so kind. Before the show, you were mentioning that you were willing to do a little something special for our listenership, and I coerced you to do even more. So why don't you share what you're doing for Vokes?

Cool beans. When I created the Fascination Advantage assessment, it was a. A tremendous way that I realized gave people a new perspective on themselves, because instead of looking at it through the lens of Myers Briggs, how you see the world, this is turning it around. It's the only assessment that measures how the world sees you. And so, Mike, we wanted to make it available to you guys, to all the folks who were part of this conversation today, to be able to take the Fascination advantage assessment for themselves so they can get those adjectives that we were just talking about. And here's how they do it. They go to how to fascinate. How to fascinate.com u y o u howtofascinate.com u y o u and they're going to be asked for a code. And if they have the code, they can do it for free. And their code is profit first. How clever is that?

See, I love it. Does it need to be all caps or any of that stuff or it.

Doesn'T matter at all. Just do profit first. And then you're going to go through 28 questions that are going to measure the cues and signals that you are unconsciously sending out to the world. And then what you're going to get back is how do people respond to those cues and signals so that you can start to capitalize on what you're already doing, right? You can build your business around who you already are instead of trying to fix yourself, instead of trying to dumb yourself down, to be all things to all people. So people are invited. In this particular case, normally we don't allow this, but in this particular case, we invite people to share it out on Twitter or share it with their team. It's really effective, especially if you're a small business. Everybody's got to be able to operate at their highest level. You can't have people who are just treading water when you don't have a massive organization with a huge budget. So what we recommend is share this code@howtofascinate.com you and the code is profit first. Have everybody on the team do it. Have them print out their results and then have a meeting so that you can see how each person has a specialty. And that makes it much easier, first of all, for the leader to be able to see. Are you categorizing people according to job descriptions? In other words, in a way that is not allowing them to come into work and thrive and get excited? Are you not leveraging people who could be adding value, for example? Because I have primary passion, I would not want to hire a bunch of people who have primary passion. I used to because I kind of clicked with them in the interview. And then I had a bunch of people running around that were like, woo, woo. Yeah, high five. And then nobody was actually sending out invoices. So one of the best ways that this helps people have a more fun, effortless, lucrative business is to understand the people that you already have on your team. How do they add value? And what we found is people's confidence goes up 200% in several cases. We have been told that when people use it in the hiring process, it becomes far easier to identify the right candidate because you're not just judging based on the resume and that sales go up because you can put the right people in the right roles so they can be more effective and they can become those high performers.

That's awesome. No, thank you so much for doing that, and, well, thanks for joining us for the show today, Sally.

Hey, thank you. It's my pleasure. I appreciate it. I'm grateful to be able to be part of your world. Can I brag on you for a minute?

Yeah. Extend the show. Make a note, please. Corey, do something to amplify this part. Put some exciting music before and after. All right, what's the deal? What do you got? What do you got?

It's crucial for us for everybody to be able to understand how can they have a business in which they love it and they're not just making money, but they are actually building something that matters so that they can be doing it cumulatively. And you sent me a copy of the revised edition of your book. And what I found as I was reading it was I was taking so many notes, I actually printed out a copy of the entire digital document that you sent to me. The margins are cramped. And that's why I emailed you yesterday and said, can I get two galley copies of the book? Because my husband, who is the president of the company, I'm the CEO, he said, I want to be able to have a copy of this because not only is it just written with fantastic wit, like laugh out loud wit, which is not something you normally find in a book that's about profits, but you really had such a counterintuitive perspective that it was showing me ways that I could be radically accelerating my business's growth. And I think I even joked to you, the only thing that I don't like about the book is that you didn't write the book, that I didn't have a copy of the book sooner, because I would have. I know I could have made a huge difference in my business if I'd had that. So thank you for writing the book. I think you are just such a rock star.

Oh, thank you for saying that. And, yeah, I'm gonna send you copies of the book, the galleys But I want, just so our listeners know, your name is gonna be on the back of the book as an endorsement. And it was a score to get you, Sally, on there. You know, you go back. So I have a publisher, it's Penguin Books. And you go back and forth like, oh, who are the people you can get? And we talked Michael Gerber, Chris Galabo, some other people. And then I'm like, what about Sally Hogside? You can't get her. That was literally the response. And I'm like, ah, I think I can. And when, when you emailed me yesterday, within like two seconds, I forwarded to Penguin with the word boom. And then Kashuk, he's my editor, wrote back and said, we're high fiving over here. So thank you. Thank you.

I'm so glad. Well, I'm proud to do it.

Okay. Well, I adore you. And next time in Florida, I hope we can get together.

Cool. Yeah. Hey, Jagermeister, on me at 1am in the morning till 4 Saturday.

Oh, gosh. All right, we'll see you later, Sally.

Okay, cool. Bye.

So you listener, listen, go to howtofascinate.com you use the code Profit first. I did it myself years ago. And it's a fascinating perspective as she was explaining Myers Briggs. I've done all those things disc. They do explain how you see yourself, which is nice to know. This is the first thing ever did where it says, here's how the out world is the outside world seeing you. But also get the freaking book. Like, go to Amazon right now. Go to Fascinate. Type in Fascinate. And there's Sally's book. Pick it up. It's 17 bucks. You know, Amazon always changes the price. So tomorrow maybe 18, the day after it's 12. But 17 bucks for a book that will change your life.

Get it.

And while you're doing that, get profit first too.

All right, all right, Let me punch you, brother.

So in a second, we're gonna recap what we learned. We're gonna share some other exciting stuff. But I first want to thank our corporate partners and thank. Make a special thanks to Pause youe Life, Chris.

Yes.

So why don't we start that. That dude Paul's your life.

Yeah. It's an organization my wife and I started. We do retreats and meetups because life gets crazy and nutty and if you never stop and pause and reflect, then you don't actually learn. You just keep, you know, banging your head against the wall. So we, we do retreats and meetups. The website's pause your life dot org. There's a lot more to it but just go to the website and we just. I just redid the website so you better like it. It took so long.

You better like it.

You better like it.

You better like. I'm, you know, I haven't looked at it since the redo so I'm going to be googling that right now.

Now.

There you go.

But also I want to thank our corporate partners while you're at a pause your life session with, with Chris and his wonderful organization and chillin. When you walk out, you may say, gosh, what else do I need in my life? I can already tell you what it is. It's a corporate partner. One of our corporate partners. You say their names, I'll say what they do.

0.

0. I don't know.

0.

No. Their accounting software, we've been using them for years now. And it's true cloud based accounting software. You know, every other accounting platform has tried to get onto the cloud and it's kind of a hodgepodge and mishmash. Xero is developed in the cloud so it's just designed around all the elements. It's the ultimate, most efficient accounting package I've ever seen. So we use it.

Fundera.

Fundera. One stop shopping for any loan needs you have right now. You're saying, God, Mike said $17 for the book Fascinate. I gotta dig deep. Call Fundera. They can probably get you a loan for that. If you can't pick it up, they.

Can call Vandera with nextiva.

Vendera with your nextiva phone. Yeah, right. We just got another nextiva phone. Oh, and this is how easy nextiva is. So we got a new phone. We put it in front of our huddle board. Where was it? Eight of us now with Kelsey. Or seven.

Seven or eight.

Seven or eight of us. We meet in front of the board. We're trying to hire two more people. So by the way, if you're a listener and you want to work for our insane company, drop an email to Christina. I'm not kidding. K R I S T I n a@profitfirstprofessionals.com and we can tell you what we got going on. We're looking for two more folks. But when we have our meetings in front of the huddle board, sometimes people call in. So we got nextiva phone for that spot and I'm like, oh, Christina, can you set up? She's like, I don't have time today. Can you set up so anyone can Set it up. Even I can set it up. It's a simple phone call to Nextiva. And they do it for you. Yeah, and I never made the phone.

Call, so I gotta do that.

What else we got?

Receipt banks.

Oh, my God. I was wearing their shirt proudly yesterday. Receipt bank is an efficiency tool of the century. Any of those receipts you have. And I have. I have one on my desk right here from Walmart. Look at this. Hear this. Hear that? Receipt. You don't need those anymore. This one. The only reason I have this receipt is because this is from 2007. That's. I got to clean my desk. Yeah, well, I don't clean my desk too often.

Okay.

I was just going through some old stuff, and I put it there, but Receipt Bank. Now I scan all my receipts in, and it's on my phone. See, I'm scrolling through them right now.

Boom.

You can't even hear a thing because it's on my phone. All right, what else we got there? Oh, my God.

Fund Box.

Fund Box. If you go to Fundbox, it is a inappropriate adult website, but if you go to Fund Fund Box, and here's why. You need them. When your business. When you have an invoice due to you, maybe you invoice a company and they say, oh, yeah, the checks in the mail, and they've done that line to you like, 10 times. Like, I really need the money this time, just call Fundbox. They'll go over and break some legs for you. No, they won't. They won't. No, they won't. But what they will do is they'll give you the money and say, you know what? When the check does come in, just return the funds to us. So if cash flow is an issue with any of your clients at any time, call Fundbox. They'll give you the funds. And the nice thing is you don't have to be a headache to the client. You don't have to do collection calls or any that stuff. Just when the money comes in, you return to Fundbox. Is that everybody?

No broken legs. Wow.

Wow.

Gosh.

Love it. All right, so what did we learn here?

Yeah. Kris, do you want to go first, man?

Is that that? Yeah, I'll go first. Well, I learned that I probably have an adjective that. That describes how the world sees me. I hope it's not jerk nuts or something.

Okay, that's.

Yeah. Okay, terrific.

I. That's literally. That's really interesting to me. And I'm definitely gonna have to go to howtofascinate.com y ou and do put in my code profit first and do my. And get my agitation pop up and say, jerk nuts.

Jerk nuts. Christine, what'd you learn?

Oh, I learned that it's good to be better, but it's better to be different.

Oh, my God.

Love that.

Now you've been booking me for speaking engagements that says different is better, right? The whole time my opening line is better is not better. Different is better. I swear I did not steal that from Sally. Now I feel like I did. I swear I did not. Maybe I did maybe read in her book and just started using it and didn't know. I thought it was cool. The highest paid people, the highest paid businesses, the highest paid anybody is not for what they do. It's for who they are. Fascinating.

Yeah.

All right. That was the takeaways. Chris. We got a rock and roll, man. We got some more shows to record.

We do. And by the way, profit first podcast dot com. You can go there. You can check out all our previous episodes. In fact, a lot of listeners are emailing in and saying that they're finding the show and they're going back to start, you know, start from the beginning, which is rough now because it's. What are we on? 126.

This is 127.

27, bro.

127. I'll see, bro.

Let me announce real quick. Cool. Real quick. Something cool is coming. I'm redoing the Mike McCallow. It's right. You don't even know that. I did not know that the Mike McCallow website is being redone. And it's going to be pretty fascinating. I think it already is fascinating. It's pretty cool. It's going to be pretty cool. Pretty cool. Oh, my God. Here. Oh, Sally, we can barely hear you. Could you do me a favor? Just put your ear closer to the headset. Can you push the headset into your ear a little bit like that There? There you go. There's. Get back in your hole.

Jeez.

That's what happens.

Nice.

You know, it's funny you mentioned like 5 or 10 cents royalty commission. I actually, I found some change in one of my. In one of my tech boxes and I literally picked up this. This coin. And I was looking at. I'm like, what the heck is this? And I'm like, the front looked like a nickel. The back I didn't recognize, and it was a nickel. And I haven't. I don't think I've held a nickel in my hand for like eight or, I don't know, seven, eight. Years. Right. I didn't even recognize a nickel.

I was about to say it's fascinating, but I can't use that word anymore. That's interesting. Your nickel story is very interesting. Was it made of wood? Nice.

So you can listen to our podcast anywhere you hear podcasts and definitely subscribe and you can even rate and review this show. We know you want to give us five stars. We just know that because this show is fascinating. Thank you. All right, so, Mike, as part of this show, the, the backbone to this show is not only Obi Ron. Oh, let me put up the fader.

Yeah.

Obi Ron Kenobi. But it's Profit First Professionals because the pioneering, you know, hello, this is your pioneering activity. I think it's your main pioneering activity, isn't it?

It's main pioneering activity is. Yeah. Sally was nice enough to talk about my book Profit first, which triggered an organization. We have now164.164 accountants and clients, clients, accountants and bookkeepers and coaches who help businesses just like yours to start becoming more profitable. Now here's what you do. After you go to Sally's website, howtofascinate.com you you type in profit first and you're blown away. Then we're going to up the ante. Then you go to www.profitfirstprofessionals.com dub, dub, dub. Then click on the find button, fill out the form about your information, some information about your company that in turn will connect you with one of our accounting professionals. These are people that I have personally trained in profit first. They are there to drive profit in your business. Now you need an accountant or bookkeeper or business coach. Anyway, I get that that's what these folks do, but that's the basic easy stuff. They also have the skill set to drive the highest level of profits ever in your business, following the most simple system in the world by taking your profit first. So you want to be profitable permanently, go to profitfirstprofessionals.com right now, click on find, fill out the form, and we'll take care of the rest.

That's right. You can have your own Profit first professional standing behind you, standing at your shoulder, saying, do this, don't do that. I mean, how cool is that? Geez. Well, thank you, Profit First Professionals dot com. Check us out next week. You're not going to believe it. I'm not going to believe it. I don't know, dude.

You are going to believe Elizabeth Barry. You got to hear her story. She is. We're on this theme of personal brand development. She ran these TEDX events that were mind blowing, and I subsequently spent some time with her, and she is mind blowing. And she's gonna blow away your mind, too, on personal brand development. We're taking what Sally shared and fascinating, folks, and we're turning up the levels to the TEDx kind of stage of personal brand development, if that makes any sense.

Yes. And now I know my adjective. Profitable. Thank you, Mike. Drop up.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

See you all next week.

I will build a great, great wall.

Don't. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I will build a great, great wall.

On our southern border.

And I will have Mexico. Oh, that's the Pied Piper of Mexico.

We're running late.

Oh, we gotta go.