Episode 131: Bringing in the Top-Talent with Mark Hunter and Dr. Sabrina Starling

You know her as Dr. Sabrina Starling. I know her as a business psychologist. And she is also the author of how to Hire the Best. She has strategies to grow your profits big time by hiring top performing employees. In fact, Dr. Starling is putting on a masterclass. Now, here's the deal. Eo it is free. It is free. You just need to do one thing right now. You can push, pause and listen to the rest of the podcast in a second, but do this first. Send the word employees, E M P L O Y e e s employees to 44222. The number again is 44222. Text the word employees and you'll be signed up for the next free masterclass with Dr. Sabrina Starling. All right, Chris, that's my read. Now I'm ready to rock and roll.

That's right. Well, you might be ready. And you and every person who's listening should strap in your seven point harness because it's time.

Episode 131.

Yes.

Come on. Grunt, Christina. There you go.

I heard no grunting from our guests.

Jeez, Lord. Sabrina, grunt, please.

All right, welcome, everyone, to the Profit First Podcast. You are in the right place. You know what? Cause this is all about profit. It's not about revenue. It's about profit. That's what means sustainability in your business. And we're happy to be here every week bringing you the goods. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording and Pause youe Life.

And I'm Mike Michalowitz, the author of Profit first and the author of Surge Surge, Surge Surge. And you are listening to the Profit first podcast. This is the show where we explore every single component of profitability. And we're devoting this past episode and this episode to hiring to be profitable and talking about being profitable. We invested a little bit of money in all this amazing equipment we have here in the podcast studio just so we can capture the grunts and then our guests don't grunt. It's killing me. It's killing me, Chris.

So that's right, Chris show wherever you hear a podcast on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio. And you can also find us on the website profitfirstpodcast.com that brings you to every single episode we've ever done. If you want to binge listen like a maniac, you can. And what's cool about this show is we, like Mike said, we cover every area of profit. It's kind of like if you fell in a mud puddle and then you go to take a shower and you basically find dirt in places that you never knew you had dirt. You could do the same with your business. You could find profit in a place where you never knew it was there. Right, Mike?

That's totally right, brother. There's profit everywhere, even. And this is what I wanted to say to you. Even in our rookery of equipment, there's profit opportunities. Do you know what a rookery is? Any idea what a rookery chess term? No. No. Oh, these are every. Every word I'm using for last episode. In this episode, when I referenced these two new words I came up with. These are always a group of something. So last week was a clowder, which is a group of cats. Cats. And so, Chris, what do you think a rookery is?

A rookery? I'm gonna say close.

Close. Yeah, close. What do you got?

A pack of armadillos.

Oh, my God, you guys are good. If you blend. If you blend an armadillo and a rooster, you get a. Oh. And that's what a rookery is. You two. You two are geniuses. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, Barry. That's right. So, Chris, we've been up to my brother.

Well, you know, I gotta start doing some yoga over here. I actually. I'm eating a lot better the last two weeks, and I think I actually lost weight. I stopped eating all kinds of bread stuffs.

Oh, nice.

Too much carbs. So I'm trying to. And I don't eat meat, so it's a little tricky. But, yeah, I'm eating better and eating less. You know, it's so interesting when you eat less, you're kind of always hungry. But if you learn to embrace that hunger and, like, not freak out, just be like, yeah, I'm hungry. So what? So whatever. Like, that's how you lose weight.

That's a good point. I guess your body adjusts to it. Yeah, but there's a period that you get, you know, the hungry angry, the hangry angry.

Oh, that happened to me last night. Oh, so hangry. Alex.

Because he, like.

Like, you know, he has a long day. We both have a long day, and he just wants to talk. And I'm just like, I need to eat something.

Shut up and let me eat. That's funny. There was a Saturday Night Live episode with Chris Farley.

Oh, yeah.

When he's a. He's dressed as a woman. He's with his girl. You know what I'm talking about?

Is that with the French fries.

French fries. He's. Chris is dressed in. In. He's a young teenage Girl with these other girls. And they're like, there's a food being served. And they're like, oh, I'm barely hungry. And these other girls are just laughing. Chris is like, I could barely eat. And then they put out the french fries and they go, does anyone want some? He's like, I want some.

I'm starving.

It is so funny. So funny.

What have you been up to, brother?

Dude? So I call my father, who is celebrating his 89th birthday in 10 days from this recording. And I say, hey, dad, you want to go out for lunch now? I took him out for lunch about three weeks ago. I took him out to a sushi place down the street.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna take him out to chili Willies, the Mexican place. And he's like, I love that. We go in beach. That's cute. So, yeah, I'll learn. A date with my father.

Those are important.

Hey, do we have any community shout outs at Christina?

Yes, we do. This one comes from Chip McClure. And he says that he's only one chapter into profit first and he is mind blown. He is drawing the line in the sand, and he will make this business a profitable and cash rich. And he said he started his business 14 months ago, and his real revenue to date is over 140,000. Yet their taxes aren't paid. Waiting for the next big deal so they can catch up. Great plan. Except for the two months leading up to the election in which they had zero income and clients pacing their projects on hold. The great news is they're a consulting company with very low overhead, and he was able to pay himself $96,000 since he started the business. The bad news is, thanks to the instant assessment, he just gave himself a $30,000 pay cut.

Oh, he's overpaying himself.

Yeah. So he said, I can't thank you enough for your book profit first. He's read hundreds of books. And he just said he will never look at business or profit the same way again.

So first of all, Chip, you're awesome.

Yes.

Congratulations. And you know, one of the biggest challenges people have with Profit first are pre. Profit first is overcompensating themselves. Many entrepreneurs live a lifestyle based upon what they see in their revenue. They actually over compensate themselves. And then the day comes where that one check doesn't come in and everything falls apart. There's just not enough money. They live check by check in their lifestyle. So part of profit first is getting your business off of a check by check survival. But it's also getting you personally Off a check by check survival. So shout out to you, Chip. That's awesome. Step forwards, a step forward and keep doing it, man.

Good for you, Chip. And I also have a shout out for Mike Michalowicz. It's actually from Barry.

Trust me, this man is on the money.

Oh, Barry. That's the first comment. Trust me, this man. Money.

Trust me, this man is on the money.

I love it. I wish. We really should try to get Barry up here. I wonder if he'd come up to some.

When I visited New Jersey, I went to the buildings. I tried to find Barry, but he wasn't there that day.

Okay. I wonder if we can go down. I mean, he doesn't know me. I mean, he's met me twice. I don't think you remember me. Probably mentioned you.

Yeah.

He'd be willing to come up to our studio here?

Yeah, probably. No, he wouldn't. Probably not know. He just goes to work and he goes home. He's an older dude. He's got like one. One of his eyes is not too good. I kept trying to get him to come in on us on a Saturday to record some stuff with me and he, he never would. He, he kind of said, oh, maybe. Yeah, maybe.

Oh, yeah, the old yeah, maybe. Oh, I'll be there. I'll be there. 6:00am all right, first, the anchors talking about the Incors. Today we're going to continue our concept of hiring the best. The Incurs were known to be powerful tribe. They were the best. They were the, they were better than the Azteckers or the mayors or Mayans.

All right, first the Inkers.

We are going to be talking about hiring the best. And last week I think we had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Starling. She's bringing on one of her mentees, Mark Hunter, who has grown a business. Well, he'll explain some more of the details. In Wyoming, in a rural part of Wyoming, which is almost an oxymoron to say Wyoming and rural. I mean, it is, but in a rural part of rural Wyoming and it's been wildly successful and he's recruited eight players. Question is, if, how do you do it? If you can do it in Jackson, Wyoming, you can do it anywhere, they say. But first, I want to thank our corporate partners who make the show possible.

Did you hear the crowd start cheering for our guests and then quiet down?

Yeah, that's awesome. First, I think our corporate partners make this show possible. So a shout out to receipt bank.

Wonderful fund box tremendous.

Oh, yeah, you have to do all these superlative words. All Right. Nextiva.

Fantastic.

Okay, that's a unique one, Fundera.

Terrific.

Zero.

Tremendous. Oh, I said that already.

Outstanding.

Outstanding. And then the big one. Pause your life.

Oh, pause your life.

Perfectionist. Perfection.

That's it.

Well, at the show, I want to thank all those core partners. Those are the folks that make this show a reality. So thank you for doing that. The other show. We'll share some insights on them and how they may apply to your business. In fact, we know that one quasi listener, Corey Coates, our podcast producer.

Yeah.

Has engaged Fundera and Nextiva for its business and is winning as a result. All right, so I did a kind of a quasi intro, but now I'm going to do the official intro. First, Dr. Sabrina Starling. She is a business. I shouldn't say a. She is the business psychologist, the one I work with. She's the author of how to Hire the Best. She owns Tap the Potential, which you can check out Tap the potential dot com. And she helps businesses just like yours to hire, to recruit, to bring on a players. And she argues you can do it anywhere in the world. I said, doc, you can't do it anywhere in the world. She goes, oh, I can even do it in Wyoming. And she did it with Mark Hunter. Mark Hunter owns Hunter's Home Center. If you're ever out in Wyoming, be sure to stop by her place. His place. It is phenomenal. They sell appliances, mattresses, furnitures, but it's a really kind of cutting edge store. And Mark has found a way to bring on the best of the best employees. He's going to share his secrets now. Welcome, Mark and doctor.

Thank you.

Yes.

How are you, Mark? Can you hear us?

Yep, I'm here.

All right, we got you.

Oh, we got you.

We're here.

We thought perhaps you were hanging out with a. A rookery of penguins.

I was shoveling snow.

Did you choke on that, Christine?

A little bit. A little bit.

Christine was drinking water when I said to rookery. You know, Mark, you say you have a players at your furniture store. I mean, you have top talent. How do you define that? How do you know that your employees are the best employees out there?

Well, because they can run the business if I'm not there. They can take care of things. They can. They. We get comments, continual comments from our customers, saying, boy, he's just a phenomenal employee. I really appreciate him. He's just doing, you know, a great job for me. And so you get that kind of confidence back from your customers, telling you, hey, you've got good people and that, but you know, I think the main thing that has allowed us to focus on good employees is to get your financial house in order with the profit first budgets and get that straightened around first. So then you can focus on these little things. And when you can focus on the little things like looking at and attracting good A players, you know, you're not worried about, hey, can I pay the bills this month? Am I worried about payroll? Am I worried about all the accounts payable with the profit first in play? That's done. And now I'm focusing on the main points. And so finding good employees also comes into play with profit first when you realize real quick there's profit there that you can afford to pay employee a little more money and get a good employee to begin with and you're not spending money retraining. And so we found that we've upped our ante and we pay more. And it's just kind of ironic. This last month I've had three people come to us and say, we want to work for you. And you know, that's unheard of. And these are three people that are already employed and have good jobs. But they hear, they know that we share the pie to ensure there's a pie period. And you know, we also, this Christmas time, we've done some amazing bonuses. We're sending one employee and his family and two children to Disneyland at our expense and you know, flying them there, paying all of their park passes, staying in Disneyland hotel. You know, that kind of stuff gets out on the street that a company will take care of their employees. And, and all of a sudden people go, I want to work for this, this people or this type of a company. And, and so that's what we found. It's just kind of a snowball that once we started these things and started getting our financial side all in order, these other things are just kind of falling into play. With the help of Dr. Sabrina and helping us focus on, okay, a players, where are they? What do they look like, where do we find them? And with her help, we've been able to attract some great people. And so it's just kind of a natural progression once you get your building blocks in place and you start making those things happen. There's just a calmness and confidence that we felt since we've got the financial house in order that we can now focus on our future and our strategies and start making plans. And so with that, we start looking at what type of employee do we need for this position now that we're planning Long term instead of day to day, we're now looking long term. So you completely look at people completely different, you completely look at positions completely different. And you look at, okay, can they fill this niche today, but can they take on a major role over here in the future? And so that's, so it's changed the way we think. And that's the one thing that I found with Dr. Sabrina is our biggest competitor that we have in business is ourselves. And what we've got to do is change the way we think or the way that the world thinks or the way we've been taught to think and change that and then have the courage to take and run with that new thinking. And immediately it allows you to grow and it allows you to expand and it allows you to find good people. And so it's various, a very simple process. Once you understand it and once you start putting those, those building blocks in place.

Can I, that's, I want to jump in and share something because that is a wonderful success story right there that Mark is sharing. And I realize that a lot of listeners may be thinking, how do I get from this place where I'm struggling to pay my bills and I can, I can't find good employees, I'm having to do all the work myself. How do I get to this place that Mark is describing where just in the last month, three really good potential employees have approached him. And I want to, I want to give you an analogy of Mark used the word snowball. And he's in Afton, Wyoming, which is a very small area, rural town. And I want you to imagine that you are standing at the top of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming and it's snowing and you're trying to get a snowball together and you want to roll this snowball down the mountain. And as that snowball rolls, it gathers momentum and gathers speed, which is, that's where Mark is right now. He's that snowball that's rolling down the mountain and getting bigger and bigger. His business is getting better and better. The profits are there. He's able to attract those top performing employees. But if you've ever been to Wyoming and you've been skiing in Jackson, maybe you've stood at the top of the mountain and you've tried to form a snowball. That snow in Wyoming is very dry. There's very little moisture. You can't get two snowflakes to stick together and to spit in your hand and you have to rub that snowball and you're, you're really having to work to get that snow to form together. But if you work it over time, you can get a little bit to pack together and you can get a little more and a little more, and then you get it rolling down that mountain and it comes together. That's where. That's where Mark is. He's got his snowball rolling.

Yeah. So he talked about that foundation to get started. And what I was hearing is he brought the business to profitability. Mark, my question, though, is this. You know, the chicken versus the egg, which comes first? Is it. Is it. You have to be profitable first, then you can get the people, or do you need the people who bring the profitability first? To me, it sounds like chicken and the egg.

Well, I think it comes both ways, and you'll see benefit either way. But you've got to. I truly believe you've got to get your budget in order. You've got to set up the profit first and lay out that and start earmarking your funds for the different categories and start getting that. That part of it in order. And then you start seeing really quick, I have this X amount for operating. I have this amount for this. I have this amount for, you know, labor, you know, your employees. And you start realizing real quick that you can afford to pay employees at a higher rate than you ever imagined prior, and that immediately you're going to start attracting key players that you would have normally thought, well, I need to start out at a ten or a dollar twelve an hour. No, you can start out at a. At 18 or a $19 an hour. You know, real quick, you see that the profit is there.

Wow.

It was like it's been mentioned here, profit is in every segment of your business. You just don't know it until you lay it all out. And once you lay it all out and lay it out so it's in black and white, you start realizing, hey, here's some profit that I can apply now to this. I can reallocate funds over here. I've been wasting money here. I've got money over here to do this. And then once the new employees and these better A players are on, they start making you money. It's just an amazing effect where you start realizing, hey, I can afford this. And now look what they're giving back to me. They're giving me back three or four times what you were so worried about paying that it becomes not even an issue anymore. It's like, no, that's the cost of doing business. If I'm going to be here in one year, five years, 10 years, I have to pay that kind of a salary if I'm going to have a successful business. Those employees are your business and they will either make you or break you. They'll tell everybody all the good that you're doing for them and how great you are to work for, or they'll tell just the opposite. And if you take care of them, and that's what we have found, if you take care of them and share again that pie to ensure that there's going to be a pie period for all of us and we get into that mindset, the A players want to be part of that strategy.

Now, when you, Mark, when you share the piece, is it just by increasing their hourly salary or wage or are you on an annual basis when there's a profit left over, are you sharing in the profit or is it both?

Well, we're not sharing into the profit. However, we are in a sense. I mean, when you give good bonuses at the end of the year or for the holidays, you are sharing in the profit. So, yeah, so it's in a roundabout way. There's several strategies you can do. But we chose to look at, we have one other employee that we're looking at January 1st, their hourly rate will be bumped up and then he got a sizable bonus already this year about a week ago for the holidays. And. But there are several strategies and I don't think there's a right or a wrong. I think every business is so different and everybody's sales or whether you know what type of business it is, it's all a little different. So that strategy, I think, needs to be determined by the business and what you're doing. So that's how we have structured it to date.

I gotcha. Now, I presume, Mark, every employee in the world wants to work for you. You're paying such good salaries. But that also means the non A players, perhaps the warm bodies, are just trying to come over and work for you. If everyone wants to work for you, how do you sort out the folks that are going to have a positive impact on your business from everybody else?

Well, there's a couple things that we look at. We look at, where are they today? Why are they where they're at today? What are they really wanting? What we have found there's a lot of people out there that want a paycheck, but they don't want to really work. And are these people that want a paycheck, what is their motives? What is their motivation to actually come? And a lot of that you can look at an employee and look at and see what type of motivation they have or why they want to come. And are they just there to put in a chair or get a paycheck every two weeks? And are they there to just put the hours in? But, you know, we've looked at people, and again, with Dr. Sabrina's help, we've realized that the people that we want are already employed. And so we start watching people in our community and we start watching others, and we watch how they work at their current employment, and we just see how they react. Are they hustlers? Do they pick up a broom and sweep when they don't know what else to do, or do they just stand there and ask you to tell them what to do next? We watch those with some energy and some drive. We watch for people that are in certain situations, family situations, where maybe they're a little hungrier than the next guy or the next person and maybe they'll hustle a little more. But that's what we have found. And the ones that have now come, we've just brought on two new employees in the last six months, and both of them are hustlers, and they do not let the grass grow under their feet. So therefore, they're going to be rewarded and we'll take care of them. One we brought on as a contract employee, and, you know, he is just running. And what we try to tell our employees also is you've got to think like the owner. And when you start thinking like the owner and not as an employee, you're going to see rewards come to you. And we've tried to use that as a little bit of a. As an enticement to say, you know, look, what would I do in that situation? And start thinking for yourselves. And so we try to give them also a lot of room right and left to make choices, make decisions, and so that they know that we're not there to ride hurt on them. We'll say, we need these things done. Please get them done. Do them like you would think that an owner would do. And then we will discuss it, and we'll have a discussion, you know, at the end of the day, and we'll see where you're at. And it's amazing when you can take an employee like that and you give them that little bit of room. You learn real quick if they are an A player or an A player. And so we tried different strategies, but, you know, those are the things that we found that work to date.

How do you get an Employee to think like an owner. And let me ask you this, they don't have the downside that you do. You, that business isn't profitable this year, Mark. It comes out of your pocket, not your employees pocket. So how can you get them thinking like an owner if they don't have that exposure like you do?

We actually share numbers with them and I think it's very important that you take them and now and then, you know, if there was a problem or an issue that came up and maybe it wasn't the best decision that they made or you know, we give our employees an opportunity to purchase, make purchases on behalf of our company at other businesses and we'll let them just go make those purchases. And then I kind of watch it and when I see that there's maybe an issue, I'll say, hey look, let me just share something with you. Had we done bought this one instead of this one, we would have been money had today. And I would have showed him why. And I said, this is how you've got to think because the more money that you save us as a business, the more profit we are going to have to share with you in bonuses, in salaries, in wage increases. And so we just actually did lay it out on the line and share that with them. And it's amazing how all of a sudden they start, okay, yeah, I need to tighten the belt a little bit here. I don't just have a charge account here that I can just go do whatever I want and make choices. And so we try to hold them accountable to their choices, but through education. And that's how one area that we have found them to make good decisions others is when they're in people's homes, whether it's our delivery or it's the appliance repair side in homes we just say, look, how would you want to be treated as an employee or how would you like to be treated as a customer? How would you like? How do you think Mark would treat those people in this situation? And I tell them, I said do it and then I will support you in your decision. But then afterwards we'll discuss it and say, was that the right choice? So we try to give them as much latitude and longitude as we can and let them have some decision making process of all the decisions that we all have to make every day, the many decisions and we give and we empower them and give them that opportunity to be an owner, to act like an owner. And it's amazing what people will do with that. And they'll either Blossom or they won't be able to handle it. And to date we've been able to get them to Blossom.

I want to know a little bit about those open books. Are you sharing everything? Does every employee know every other employee's salary? Do they know your salary?

No.

Do you hold anything back as far.

As salaries and as far as bonuses? In our company we have a policy that we don't share that. And so we don't share that type of stuff. And the open book part of it is only on a need basis. And like I've shared with them this year that we as a company are setting a new record for total sales this year. And you know, the 14 years that we've been in business and I've shared that with them and I said, you guys are part of that. You're the reason for it. So you know general numbers. Yes. You know exact profitability about this or that or that. But I don't get into now we start doing projects. So like this year we did with our profit first profits, we put all new LED lighting in our warehouse, all new LED lighting in our retail store. We put a one piece membrane roof on our warehouse with our profits and didn't borrow a dime to do it. And I shared those numbers with our employees and I said, this is true cost. These are real costs. And when you share those costs with them, they start realizing, hey, there's some. He has a big, has a lot of costs and a lot of operating. And so what we have found is it gets, it gets the argument out of, well, I'm worth more, I want more money. I kind of just removes that fight because all of a sudden they realize, boy, Mark is doing a lot of things here and he's really got a lot going and yet he's still treating me fair. He's taking care of me and yet he's taking care of our business. I want to work here. And so it's a big, I don't know, everything's connected in that. If you share that and you're honest with your employees and you share certain numbers, they appreciate it. And all of a sudden now they're part of the process. And I think it's very important.

I'd like to add something there to what Mark is sharing because he's got some really good insights on this. A lot of times employees don't really know what profit means. And so we have to step back and educate them about profit and what it is and that it's real money that's sitting it's accumulating, it's not getting spent. And we want them to understand that a profitable business is a healthy business. And it's very important as an employee to be asking, is the business I work for profitable? Because that's where your job security is as an employee. If you work for a paycheck to paycheck business, you don't have job security as an employee. So that piece right there starts to pique their curiosity and create that buy in that you want where they want to make the company profitable.

And another thing I heard, Mark is right. In the beginning of this interview, you said that you three people that recently approached you wanting to work for your company is one of the benefits of recruiting a players, setting up an environment for them where they're compensated very well, extraordinarily well. And plus these other benefits, like I like to go to Disney. Thank you. Does that set up kind of a marketing plan for you where other people are finding out about you and you don't have to run ads, they're coming to you?

Yeah, yeah. You know it all, it all connects, you know, it's all of these are dots on a screen. And when you start doing this and the more that I've got into it, the more I realize that all we're doing is connecting the dots. And once you connect and these dots just keep connecting themselves as you do more like this and you start realizing, wow, how far reaching this is, how powerful these simple concepts and how powerful by implementing these strategies are because it goes right back to marketing. As a business owner, I taught two classes in our community on business startup in the last month. And all of a sudden you become the, I've done this now the last five years. But you become the go to person in your community. It then all of a sudden people start hearing about you and you're teaching 15 or 20 startup businesses and all of a sudden they says, I had no idea. You know the comments after that Mark is who he is and he's willing to help. And I'm going to start shopping there. And yeah, it all comes back and it's all connected. And so the more you give back to the community, the more you give to your employees, you give to your customers. It's one of those things where it just keeps coming back and you cannot measure what comes back. I mean it's yes, you can measure yourselves, you can measure that, but loyalty is huge. And in our business, we found it to be very huge. We have a 95% repeat rate of our top 300 customers have been to our store six times in the last two years. That's powerful. And they're not just coming, but they're spending with us each time they come. And so that's, people want that people buy from people they like, people shops and people they like. People like to deal with businesses that take care of their employees and take care of their customers. And so again, it's so far reaching. But you know, I think the profit first and hiring, all of this, hiring the best, those are the things that kind of woke me up after, you know, being in business for 36 years. It's fine tuned it and gave me a reason to see it.

Mark, you and I share a common, you know, friend, colleague, coach in Dr. Starling, what is the impact of hiring a business psychologist, a business coach for your organization?

Well, if someone had asked me that five years ago, I'd have laughed at them. You know, I just thought, right, you know, yeah, I need a psychologist probably for myself or psychiatrist. But it's powerful. It's amazing to have a business psychologist that teaches you to rethink how you've been programmed to think by CPAs, by other business people, community leaders, your own business experience. And you know, you sit there and you go, you know, I spun my wheels for 10 years. A business psychologist comes along, just gives me a few simple basic ways of rethinking the big picture. And all of a sudden a whole new world has been opened up. And so it's powerful. And that's that coming back to having to rethink how you've been trained to think. And that's, that's the power with Sabrina, Dr. Sabrina with her business psychologist is bringing that to light. That is powerful. And so I can't, I mean I'm light years ahead of any of my competition because of it. Any business person that is looking for an edge needs to do it. It's just, it's, it's that, it's that powerful. But it's something that, you know, I would say 95 to 98% of the people don't do. And so I see this, you know, Sabrina is my key to being here. In 10 years she's made us profitable. I, in the first time in 36 years, I'm not worrying about is my taxes paid for the year and setting new records this year on sales. I've already met with my accountant in October and because of profit first is in place, our taxes are all there, we don't have any worries. I'm not worrying about is My taxes paid. We've already found that out. We're already taken care of. And so it just with that whole mindset, you, you're, you're not worrying about the day to day accounts payable, the stress of that, you're now worrying about the fine points that really matter and that will really take your, your business to the next level.

Mmm. Mark, our time is, is at conclusion. But before we depart ways, where can people pick up some great furniture? What's the website they should go to?

Go to huntershazit.com and.

Great.

Yeah, we have, we have a great website and we're glad to help anybody, whatever we can.

I'm doing a little makeover my office with industrial furniture. I was checking online. They have it there too. That's Hunters has it dot com. We'll include that in the show notes. Mark, thanks so much for joining us today.

Well, thank you and good luck with everybody and, and heed what's been said.

Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, Merry Christmas to you also. Now, of course when this broadcast, it'll be like January. It'll be like Halloween or something.

April.

Yeah, yeah. But Merry Christmas 2017 then. Dr. Starling, if you want to share just a real concise kind of summary of what you've done with Mark and then maybe you can share a little bit about yourself too.

Sure. So my favorite thing to do is to help business owners transform their time, energy and cash, sucking small businesses into thriving, highly profitable, great places to work. And that's why I was so excited to be able to bring Mark and share his experience and his story because that's what he's doing and that's what lights me up. I was really taking in what he was sharing and I'm so excited to hear him hopefully inspiring other business owners with what's possible. I'm offering a master class in 2017 called quickly double youe Profit with Top Performing Employees where I introduce the concepts that you're hearing Mark speak about that he's applied in his business. This is a free masterclass. There's no charge and you can get access to it by texting the word employees. That's employee with an S at the end to 44222. So employees to 44222.

Wonderful. And Christine, mind, just make sure we have that in the show notes too.

Absolutely.

Will be all right. Dr. Starling, you're released to go save other businesses. Thanks for helping us today.

Thank you.

Thanks, Doctor.

That was a, that was a rookery of knowledge.

Wow.

What's the rookery Again, Christina.

Penguins.

Yes. Clowder cats. Oh, good, good. I have. I. This visor I have over my head is ridiculous. You get a picture of this. We got to put this.

Get a picture, please. I need to see this.

You guys see this thing and text over Chris or. Yeah, text it to Chris. Smile.

Hold on. Barry's. Barry's actually over there. He can see you. Barry, what does it look like?

Something from out of ancient times. Big mouth, lot of teeth. Have you ever saw that Dr. Pepper commercial with the guy that's, you know, Dr. Pepper here? That commercial? I kind of have that on my head because the sun is beaming in my face.

Really?

It's funny. We left the old podcast room, which was boiling hot, to move to a hotter room in a air conditioned building. And it's boiling hot in here. All right, well, here's the deal. Yo, my rookery of friends. We are going to discover or discuss what, what Chris and Christina and I just discovered. But before we do that, I want to thank our corporate partners officially who make this show possible.

And you know them all, like, personally, you guys?

Yeah, I do.

Oh, we personally know every single one of them.

Yeah.

And we will make personal introductions. So maybe you're a little afraid to call Zero on the phone and say, I don't want to call them up. I'm nervous. Or I don't want to go to their website. I'm afraid. Just call us. Come to the profit first, professionals. We'll take care of you. We'll make a personal introduction. Zero, by the way, it's cloud accounting software. It's amazing stuff. Receipt Bank. You know those. Those receipts that are just piled up. Look at your pocket. If you're a guy, look at that wad in your back pocket, that wallet of yours. I said the wallet. The wad in their back pocket. That's all receipts. Get rid of those things. Or that embarrassing container. What is it? Tupperware you got there with all those receipts in it? For God's sake, get modern, man. And use Receipt Bank. You can scan in your receipts and of course, if you're a woman, you can do the same thing with your purse. Like, you don't need to carry that huge, oversized triple purse. My wife is, like, always ruffling through that, trying to find her keys, and it's like a snow flurry of receipts coming out of there. No more use Receipt bank now. Nextiva voice over IP phone system. The best ever. Is that even arguable?

No.

No. Okay, so we don't need to go any further. Fund. Fund. Box. Christina, how many times have you heard of a company saying, I am not getting paid by this client? What do I do? Do I have to do a collection call? Do I have to make them angry?

You have to call Fundbox.

Call Fundbox. They'll give you the funds right away. They release the funds in its entirety to you immediately on the spot. Immediately. Immediately. Now, we were doing German imitations today.

Right now.

What is this vat?

I want my money so I can buy strudel, which is delicious, by the way. I'm thinking about making a strudel for.

Please do for tomorrow.

No, you know, I'll make. Maybe I'll make an apple pie and bring it in. I do like to bake.

You like to bake?

I love to bake.

Wow.

Is that crazy?

No.

Yeah.

Baking with Michalowicz. There's a show waiting to happen.

We should film that. Yeah. Apple pie. Any kind of the berries. So blueberry, BlackBerry, cherry. Which isn't a berry.

Cherry. Berry.

Cherry berry pie. Rhubarb killer.

What does rhubarb mean, by the way?

It is a collection of sasquatch.

It's a rude bar.

It's a rhubarb. And then of course, there's Fundera. And Fundera is a, as I call the one stop shop for a loan for finding a loan. But it's more than that. It's an educational center. You're looking for a loan. How do you go about it? Who should you use? Who's giving the best deal? One connection with Fundera. They shop it for you. They educate you on the process. They tell you what the different options are and what they mean. In plain English, that's fundera.com. and then certainly not last, but certainly not least, certainly not last, but definitely least, certainly not least but definitely last is pause your life. What's that all about, bro?

Pause your life. Yes, pause your life.org. you ever feel like you just wanted to hit the pause button and stop the world and literally just not be saddled with all the BS you have to take care of every day, day in, day out? Well, that's what Pause youe Life is. It's an organization my wife and I created. We provide retreats and meetups actually to hit the pause button, drop all your baggage, relax, and just be a human being without all the roles and titles and all the nonsense. And then what happens is you gain strength and you. You actually feel things from inside yourself in terms of creativity and solutions to problems. That's one of the best Things about meditation like this. There's. There'll be a problem you've been thinking about for weeks, and you'll meditate, and you'll. The answer will be so clear, you'll be like, duh. And it's just awesome. Why? Because you're unlocking that wisdom inside yourself. Right? So that's what Pause youe Life is all about. Pause your life dot org.

Yeah, check it out now. Pause your life dot org. We'll have that in the show notes, too. All right, now let's discuss what we learned from this episode. I always let one of you guys go first. I'm go first. You know, this. Two things. One is the concept of open books. We really don't have open books here because my fear was confidentiality. I mean, like, do you want everyone to know your salary? And then if someone else is making more, is that fair? Or they're making less and they look at you and go, christina's getting overpaid. Like, I don't want that. But I never realized that you can do it partially. I thought it was all in or all out. And I think that makes sense because then we can all focus on profitability and pay more. I mean, Chris, Dr. Starling talked about it in the last episode, and Mark validated it is. You got to look at what your people can get at other companies. And are you paying competitively? Because, listen, people are going to leave because they don't like working with you, and it's not a cultural fit, and that's fine. But for someone to leave because they can get compensated more, I got to really focus on the structure of the company, that I have fewer employees making more than more employees making less. That's kind of the takeaway. Yeah. You're like, especially me. Now fucking pay me.

Especially me.

Now pay me.

Ow. No, my takeaway is simple. Just, you know, Mark said from the beginning, when you hire the best people, when you hire quality people that you can trust, you have that safety net of knowing that when you're not there, your business is running on par, as if you were, but without you.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was the big one.

Yeah.

I said, how do you know you have great employees? He's like, because I don't have to go to work.

Oh, that's.

But I would imagine, you know, it's that type of security. I would imagine that when you're traveling for speaking events, you're comfortable because you know that me and Kelsey and Ron and all of us here are holding down the fort.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, that. That is it. And, you know, the big challenge, too, is inside my head. Like, there's also a sense of loss if I don't. Am not needed. There is a sense that am I losing control?

Right.

And I think that's part of the owner has to come over is you're not losing control of the business. You're empowering people to lead the business, giving you freedom to up your game as the owner, to do more speaking, which is my thing. Yeah, fascinating. All right, Chris, what did you learn?

Yeah, I like the way he treats his employees. It's almost a little bit like he treats them like an apprentice or almost like a student of business. You know, like he's teaching them about how business works and basically, in a way, grooming them for more responsibility. Right. Because if he teaches them the fundamentals and he knows that they know the fundamentals, then he'll be. And he'll be more likely to raise them to higher positions and higher pay. And the other thing is this feeling of inclusiveness that an employee feels like they're an important part of the team. They're actually contributing to the venture somehow. I think those things together, it's just. It. It just. It's more intimate and develops a sense of trust that is a lot more than just, you know, yelling out orders and screaming at somebody because they didn't do it, what you said the right way and all that nonsense.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Boom. I need. I need my. Where's my. Hold on a second. Where is my atomic bomb?

There you go.

This is like Rogue One all over again.

There you go. So look, that's our takeaways now. You listening? You part of the rookery, the cloudy, the gaggle, whatever you are, you're an entrepreneur. You're a business person. You're a profitable person. You can go to profitfirstpodcast.com you can write in the comments what you learned from this episode, and you can also have questions. If you have questions, you can write them in there to either Dr. Starling or Mark or Mike or Christina or Obi Ron Kenobi, if you even know who that is, because he's a special guest.

You better if you're a listener. You know who Obi Kenobi is.

That's right. So there you go. And you can also find, as I said before, profitfirstpodcast.com we have all our previous episodes. So if you're thinking you need some help in certain area of your business, go ahead and peruse the website. Profitfirstpodcast.com Right, Mike, how many episodes are up there?

Oh, my God. We have 131 episodes. And then with a sister program called Grow My Accounting Practice, which even if you're not in the accounting business, you can learn stuff there. That's another, I think 80 now.

Wow.

Yeah, there's a lot of.

That's awesome. And of course, this show is really brought to you. The very fundamental base of this program is provided to you by Profit First Professionals. And if you, if you want to hear about and observe a company that is literally freaking changing an industry, it's Profit First Professionals. I mean, this is like, this is like, you know, Newton describing gravity. Like as soon as he says it, everyone's like, duh, of course, gravity. Like, what? But he was the one who said it. Mike, I think you and Obi Ron Kenobi are bringing something to the world where everyone goes, yeah, duh, of course. My accountant should be looking out for my profitability. Duh. But this is new. This is awesome, dude.

So there's a study that I heard of. I don't know who did this study, but I hear this 83% of businesses are surviving. Check by check, 83% of businesses are not profitable. And there's like 80 million businesses out there in the world. I'm like, oh my God, there's tens and tens and tens in tens and tens of millions of businesses that are not profitable. What's wrong with the system? Well, the problem is this. Profit comes last. Everyone says, you know, profit's the bottom line, profit's the year end, and when it doesn't happen, we kick the can down the road and hope to next year. Well, what we're starting doing starting today is take your profit first. Now, this is not like profit over people. I am not saying that, but I'm saying you must bring that foundational health to your business. That's what Mark talked about. You must bring profitability consistent to consistently to your business. And guess what? There is a rookery of people out there that do it. Dr. Sabrina Starling happens to be one of them. There's countless others. We call them Profit First Professionals. These are accountants, bookkeepers, and coaches who drive profitability in your business. They use the profit first method to make your business more profitable than ever before. So all you need to do is take one step. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com right now. Click on the find button. We will hook you up with the person that is best suited for your industry. Best suited for your needs best suited to take you to a level of profits you've never experienced before. So do it now. Profit first, professionals dot com. Click on find and we'll do the rest.

Yeah, and do it, if for no other reason, to check up on Mike Michalowicz and see how fast he gets back to you. How about that? Well, thanks for listening, everybody. Everybody, thank you to our guests. Thanks, Mike and Christina, and thank you for listening. We're very happy to be part of your profit journey. And we want to hear about how, how you're getting more profit into your business. So email Mike and Christina. We'll give you a shout on the on the show until next week. You know what to do.

See it.

Grunt and be profitable.

Sam.