Episode 135: The Ten Commandments of Profit with Ed "Skip" McLaughlin

Isn't there a band called Meshuggah?

Or Meshuggah.

I don't know, like a heavy band? Like, really heavy, maybe. Anyway, I don't know. Barry, you ever play in a rock band?

Yeah. Oh, yeah?

Really?

Okay.

I had no idea.

Barry, when you played in a band. What? Sorry, Barry. What? Oh, my God. I'm trying to read all the things. I can't read them.

Let's just get the show rolling. Is you cool with that, Barry?

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry. Switching screens. That's right. You happened upon this show, which is.

The Profit first podcast, episode 135.

Good.

That's right. You can let out grunt here if you want. Come on, let's. Let's get fired up here. There you go.

That's right.

All right.

Are you grunting in, like, musical tones over there?

Yeah. That was pretty cool.

That was pretty good, actually.

That was impressive.

Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. We're really happy you're here. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording and Pause youe Life.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. And talking about Profit first, since we're on, the subject is newly releasing, meaning I wrote the book from scratch over again. Tonight. I'm going to a recording studio to do the audio, you know.

Yes, you are.

So I better not lose my voice today. And it is fully revised and expanded. It's available on Amazon, your favorite bookstores, every single air bookstore, the Hutchinson ones. And all those are gonna be carrying it. So wherever you are, wherever you're listening to this right now, I don't care if you're in some bodega somewhere in New York City. They got Profit First. Pick yourself up a copy.

There you go.

Oh, and by the way, you are listening to the Profit first podcast. Just as a little aside, little bonus material, this is a show where we talk about all the elements of profitability and we like to have some fun while we do it. Is that right, Barry?

Yeah. Oh, thanks.

That's right. We have on great guest every episode and we share our takeaways, and we also have great corporate partners. And look, we're on the journey with you here. We are your support team for profitability in your business. This show is about profit, not revenue. Revenue is frost on the grass, but.

Profit is money on your ash. I don't know.

Go ahead, say it.

I said it's money on your ass.

I don't know.

It doesn't even make sense.

It doesn't Even make sense.

I love that.

Our website is profitfirstpodcast.com. you can see all our previous episodes there. You can binge listen. You can get us anywhere you hear a podcast. Anywhere, anywhere. Look us up, Prophet first podcast. And again, I'm so psyched for today's episode, Mike.

Yeah, I know why you're excited, because we have Ed McLaughlin on, also goes by Skip. He is the author of the Purpose Is Profit. Thank God there was an authority that had the guts to go out there and say, the purpose is profit. People, you know, that is the purpose.

But I was going to say, great New Year profit first. The purpose is profit. What a beautiful fit. And what a beautiful way to kick the new year off.

Amen to that, dude. Amen to that. Welcome, 2017. So. Well, Ed, we're going to bring you on in a second. That's. We do, like, this fake, like, oh, we almost introduced you. Then we pull back and say, sorry. So we got to do a few more things. But there's Ed. He's there.

There's Ed.

Well, you were nicer to Ed than you were to Sarah because you told her to get back in her hole.

No, Ed. When Sarah last guest spoke up, I pushed this button. I said. She said, oh, can I speak now? Shut up, was the response. We will not do that to you. I have too much respect for you. Chris, before. It's like, okay, Chris, before we get started, man, we've been up to my brother.

You know, I'm doing three things. I have my podcast production company, and I have Pause youe Life for retreats, but I'm also starting my podcast, engineering school. So I'm booking this hotel for a week and figuring out the finances. I've never done an event like this, and it's not easy.

No. Well, Christine, you can start.

It's not easy to put together.

It's not. It's the key for me. I always do a timeline. I'm saying, okay, six months before what needs to be done, because otherwise you'll go crazy.

You started working on the Profit for.

Profitcon immediately after the last event. I was like, all right, let's get going.

And Profit Cons in September.

Yeah.

I mean, she started working on it 10 months in advance. 11 months in advance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do they make you put a room block on Chris? What's that?

Do you put a room block on the hotel?

Well, luckily, this hotel, they're going to block some rooms, but they're not going to charge me if I don't.

The winner that's a deal.

Yeah, that's the winner right there. So Profit con. I'm just going to say ProfitCon is freaking epic, dude.

I'm going to try coerce Ed into coming and speaking. Yes, I want. Yeah, yeah. Well, that. He doesn't know that's happening, but now, actually, now he knows.

Surprise.

Yeah. ProfitCon last year was epic. We had participants from, I think, every corner of the globe coming through our live broadcast. We were. We were the first Lisa event that I'm aware of that had a drone.

Flying through it that was awesome.

This massive drone which the hotel, when they saw it in action, regretted approving that. And then QuickBooks connect six months later to the drone or four months later, they. They copied it from us. Maybe it was a month later.

See, I mean, the people who go to ProfitCon, unfortunately, I haven't been able to go, but I'm definitely going this year. But think about that. You're focusing on profit. How business people and entrepreneurs get so confused with all the shiny bells and whistles around. Right? When you focus on the profit, man, it grows. It's crazy.

It grows, baby. Actually, Barry's wife was there. Did you like the concert? Barry's wife? Oh, hell yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Barry. Barry likes. That's why they got issues, the two of them, man.

All right, I forgot about her. Sorry.

Let's first, I think, our corporate partners, and we got to kick into the show. I want to thank nextiva Fundbox. Fundera. You keep yes in me.

Yes.

We gotta start again. Christine. Nextiva.

Yeah.

Fund box.

Fundera.

Nice.

Receipt.

Bank.

Oh, zero. Nice.

Pause your life. Hey, there you go. Good. Okay, now you nailed it. Um, you know, Ed, links are on the website.

Yes.

What?

Sorry. Links are on the website for all our corporate partners.

And we'll give you more details on those folks at the end of the show because I think they can affect your business. Ed, who also goes by Skip McLaughlin, is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunset Sunsets.

Oh, man.

Sunsets. Blue Sunsets, which is a real estate company and an angel investment firm. He's bootstrapped his first business, which was USI United Systems Integrators, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm. And throughout all this, oh, by the way, he turned into an Inc 500. Throughout all of this, he established the 10 Commandments of Start a Profit. And therefore is also the author of something about profit called the Purpose is Profit. And it's my privilege to have our guest on our show today. Welcome, Ed.

Hey, thanks, Mike.

You're welcome.

Welcome.

So are you currently doing angel investing?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

And is that. That doesn't seem to always be profitable just from personal experience. I tanked as an angel investor. Can you really be profitable as an angel investor? I'd like to know.

I mean, you can be profitable if you do your due diligence. If you get excited about an idea and you invest before you figure out who's running the show and what capability they have, you can spend a lot of money and not get much back.

Yeah, I did the latter. Yeah. So thank you. I wish I knew you 10 years ago. So you have the 10 commandments of startup profit. I want to dig right into it. What are the. First of all, how did you come about with the Ten Commandments?

The way we came about with the Ten Commandments is we put this book together and it was obviously the purpose is profit all about profit and advising people when they start businesses, man, you got to think about profit. It's the reason why you're putting your money, your time, your reputation behind what you're doing. And don't get caught up on, I hung out my own shingle. I started my business, but be thinking about profit from the get go. So we started on this journey. Took about four years. Along the way, we realized, hey, there's one chapter that really boils the whole book down. And there are 10 things that separate this book from other books. And we thought, hey, let's call this the 10 commandments to startup Profit. So that's how we got to that title.

Nice. And so when you say we, you co authored this, I believe. Right.

That is correct. Myself and a wonderful woman by the name of Win Lydecker. And my son was also a contributor as well.

Oh, nice, nice. And so what's Wynn's background? Why was she participating? I can see from your dossier why you're talking about the purposes of profit, but why Win? That sounds funny. Why Win?

Well, Win, I'm actually glad you asked that, because Win had gotten to know me because a person who was running a local business decided to leave that business and join me. She knew that person and actually worked for that person. And she said, I'm on this Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year committee, and I've met Ed and I think he'd be the right candidate. And she said, do you mind if we submit your name? We're going to need to work together over the next ensuing months to complete the application and all the due diligence with that. And sure enough, we won And I had a great success with Wynne. We got selected and then I proceeded to hire her for different projects, all of which came off very well. And Wyn runs a business helping entrepreneurs put their initial plans together for how they're going to make money and how they're going to launch. So she was a perfect fit. We had great experience together. And besides, I come from the school of hard knocks. I do not have an MBA or an advanced degree. She does from Wharton Business School. So she rounds out, if you will, my square corners of everything is about hard work. And she brings in some of the more technical aspects into the book.

Now, you said that at least what I heard is that many businesses have profit as an afterthought, that they don't put it up front in their business. Why is that?

I think people get enamored with the idea, hey, man, I'm going to run my own business. I'm going to get an operating location, I'm going to hire employees. I got this cool new product. I don't know if there's a market out there, but I'm going to step out on my own and I'm going to make it happen. And my view is simply this. You need to be thinking about profit. Profit from the get go. Literally every business decision that you make from the point at which you decide, I'm going to hang out my shingle and make something happen on my own, you need to factor profit into every decision. And most folks really, from what I've seen, do not do that. And if you want to end up with profit at the end of the day, I really believe when you launch a business, you have enough obstacles and challenges and new issues in front of you that you may as well be thinking about making a profit on every single business decision that you make.

And maybe it's blatantly obvious, but maybe it's not. Why is profitability so important?

Well, profitability does, as far as I see it, five things. First, it allows you to pay your bills, save a little money. Second, when you hire employees, I mean, let's face it, the better employees, they're going to be concerned. You know, they're going to be thinking, hey, I have choices of what to do with my time. If I'm going to sign up and join your startup, I want to know that you're going to be able to pay my salary, which will enable me to allow my kids to go to college, to pay my medical bills or to do the different things that are important to each employee's life. Next thing, when you make a profit, you can underwrite your business vision. You don't always need to go to the outside world for third party funding as your business grows. And if you build in that discipline, it sure makes a difference in the long Paul. Next item. Folks that make a profit and save a little bit for a rainy day can really put themselves in an advantageous situation for the inevitable challenges that will come up in your life. And lastly, if you want to give something back to society, it's always nice to make a profit to be able to do it.

Now, some people say, I don't want to have a profit. Actually, it seems like many accountants seem to say, oh, congratulations, we were able to cut down your profitability so there's less, less tax liability. Do you ever hear folks talking about that? And is that kind of backwards logic?

I mean, I can, I, you know, from a tax standpoint, you can understand some of that technicality, I think. Simply stated, if you know where you're going to sell your product and you know how much it's going to cost to deliver it, and you ensure that there's going to be something left at the end of the day to make it worthwhile to allocate and spend your time, your money, and your reputation. You can figure out little tricks around taxes down the line if that's appropriate. But to me, our book really isn't about how to, how to get around taxes. It's more to ensure that you're making a profit.

Well, I'm itching to get into the Ten Commandments of Prophet. What are they?

Sure. I'm gonna tackle them one at a time. And if I'm going a little too deep or not deep enough, please interrupt. And, and we'll just hit this button on this.

Yeah, if that happens, we'll hit this button on the soundboard. Shut up. I mean, you're too far into it or, or the whip, but yeah, no, lay it on me. We want to hear it.

All right, all right. Good deal. Good deal. The first thing is, everybody, if you're like me, you edge up to the edge of the cliff. I carried around a goal in my pocket that I was going to start my own business. And I promised myself within five years I would do it. But I spent that time thinking, okay, what kind of business is going to be? What kind of product am I going to? Who am I going to sell it to? Am I sure I'm going to make a profit? Is it worth risking my time, my money and my reputation? And I was scared like really any honest entrepreneur, you know. And one day it struck me that if I build a business based on a place where I have had proven success in the past, what I call distinctive competence, some unique skill or talent, proven understanding of a particular market where I know the customers, I know the pricing, I know the industry, I know the competition. If I build a business in an area where I have distinctive competence, I've immediately increased my probability of being successful. There are many people. Example, I asked somebody the other day, hey, you're opening up a restaurant. I said, why? And they said, because I like to eat. And I said, you know, really? According to my book, that's not really a good reason. Good reason to open up a restaurant. I like working hard, I like dealing with food. I've worked in the restaurant business in a number of capacities over my lifetime. That person has distinctive competence. The other person likes to eat. That's not necessarily the right reason. So I think when entrepreneurs start businesses, they need to open a business where they have a proven competence in a particular industry.

Nice.

Wow. What's number two?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Number two. Number two is now that you've got this competence and you've chosen the business you're going to go into, you really want to offer your customer what I call a superior value proposition. Something that solves pain better than anything else. They currently have something that's unique to you and something that can really drive value where it's crystal clear for your customer. Give you an example. When we started our business, we had a 10 to 1 cost to benefit ratio. Actually, benefit to cost ratio. In other words, we went into our customers and we said, for every dollar you spend on our service, we'll commit to you $10 in benefit. Now, of course, they said, well, how do we have insurance on that? And we said, you know what, we'll put our money where our mouth is. We'll put some of the benefit dollars up front in exchange for a share in the profits. That was a tight value proposition that helped grow our business at a 40% compounded rate. And the customers knew, gosh, if these guys are willing to put their money behind what they're offering us, they must be serious that you're going to get the value that we've outlined. So that would be, number two, a superior value proposition. And the more quantifiable, the better. If it's a bunch of soft benefits, not as exciting, but if it's really hard benefits that you know your customer's going to get, you know, you're probably Going to do very well with.

Sounds like these two complement each other. Distinctive competence, superior value proposition that they sound to blend together or mesh together pretty well.

Oh, they absolutely do. I mean, think about it. If you know an industry, you know the customers, the competition and so on, you've decided to go in there, you've got a proven reputation or tract record of success. One of the reasons why you have that track record is because you've offered value to those customers in the past. So why wouldn't they give you pre orders and work with you in your new venture?

Right, right. Okay, I'm with you. All right. Lay number three on me.

Number three. Number three is a bit of a mouthful, so bear with me. And it's called don't start up until. And there's about five key components to it. And it's pretty simple. It's like, number one, where are you going to get your revenue? Who are you going to sell to? Number two, how much is it going to cost to run your business? Number three, your revenue minus your expense. Is there going to be something left to say grace over at the end of the day? Profit. How are you going to make a profit? And then number four, pre orders. You know, that is the number one way to eliminate risk in starting a business. If you're so confident and enthused about it, you've used your distinctive competence, you have a superior value proposition, then why the heck can't you go out to some of your customers and your friends, folks that you've dealt with in the past, and say, hey, give me a pre order so I can prove to you that I can get done? In my case, I had two significant pre orders. They were verbal. We launched the business. That was the first phone call I made. And sure enough, both of those folks stepped up and committed and said, we're going to go with you. We told you we would. And I had contracts from both of Those companies within 45 days of opening the business.

I found the opposite. I mean, I had the opposite experience. I went to friends saying, hey, I'm thinking about doing xyz. And they're like, oh, I love it. Great idea, amazing. And then I said, would you put a deposit down? And I said, we have to go to our kids soccer game now. Like, they had all the reasons not to put the money down. So it is a great qualifier or disqualifier, it seems.

Yeah. Now it sounds like you started a B2C business. Business to consumer, is that right?

That's right.

Okay. Mine was a B2B so it was kind of more corporate to corporate and I had a proven track record with these people. Sometimes with your friends, that's probably one of the harder orders to. It can also be the easiest, but sometimes it's the hardest because your friends know your strengths best, but they also know your weaknesses best too.

Right. They want to morally support you, say I love it, but they don't even want. They may not want the stuff you have. Okay.

Exactly.

Any other questions I need to ask? I think you said five in that category.

Yeah, the fifth one was. So number one was generate revenue. Number two is what's it going to cost to run your business? Revenue minus expense equals profit. Number three, how are you going to make a profit? And then pre orders, proof of concept, have you lined up some pre orders? And lastly, do you have enough funding to reach break even? And that's tough. That's really tough if you think about it. Because if you've never run a business before and you think, all right, I'm going to open up shop and I'm going to get an operating location, I'm going to hire an employee or two, I need a couple of computers, I need to open up an Internet line and I got to buy some, some collateral paper and business cards. And how much does all that cost? I need some insurance and accounting, some legal. So it's hard to kind of figure that out. But you really need to do that before you launch. So that's why I call commandment number three. Don't start up until, if you figure it out, you pay yourself great dividends over the long haul.

Gotcha. Okay, so now I want you to go through the remaining seven, but we gotta do it rapid fire as I look at the clock here, But I gotta hear them all, so keep going.

All right, well, interrupt me if I'm not going fast enough, but here we go. Number four is simple. Take charge of the money and control it. What I mean by that is you finally make some money, you put your own money out there, make sure you keep control. Don't quickly hire a financial officer and expect everything to be hunky dory. You need to stay close to the money to ensure that it's there. And you need to understand the health of your business on a regular diet. Number five, create a profit based reward structure. So what do I mean there? So you have some folks maybe in management, you have some salespeople out there. Don't pay them off revenue, pay them off profit. Why? Because then everybody who's out there selling the Product and expanding into new markets. The opportunity, they're thinking, gosh, I'm not going to make any money unless I make a profit. And it turns every salesperson into. And every manager into a P and L manager, a profit and loss manager, because they're smart. If they're not going to make any money, they're not going to sell it. And if they're going to ask you.

About that, can they control the costs for that, or how do they have control over the profit?

Zoomed right in on the right question. You outline in your business model, what are the costs going to be? And then you give them certain amount of latitude. In my business, it was B2B. As I mentioned, it was a service business. So depending on the skill set of the people that are deployed, you have a different flexibility in the pricing and so on. If it's a fixed cost model, you have a little less flexibility. But I still recommend you pay off profit, not off revenue.

Yeah. And they can control the margin. Right. If they increase the sales cost, the sales price, they increase margin in those cases.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

I love it, love it, love it.

It.

Okay, number six, are you ready?

Lay it on me. Yeah, I'm ready.

Okay, number six is recognizing hire lightning in a bottle. Best example I can give you is you're running a basketball team and you need. You need a point guard, but all of a sudden, you see LeBron James is available. Make the adjustment. Go after LeBron, go for the power forward, skip the point guard. Because when you see those unique opportunities over the gestation of your business, where you can bring in the best and the brightest in a particular area, don't miss that. And I call that recognize and hire lightning in a bottle. It's worth the money. You'll stretch beyond your comfort zone, but it'll change the course of your business. I did that five times. We revolutionized our business model. We transformed our organizational structure, and we figured out the most profitable way to scale our business.

I love that you don't hear that often. So you're saying build the business around the people, find the right person and build the business around them as opposed to the reverse.

Absolutely, absolutely. At least give them the latitude to influence the way in which the business is going to evolve.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, number seven.

Number seven. I'm going back to profit again. And you know, that's the name of the book. Purpose is profit and profit first, baby. So.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, thanks, Barry.

Okay, the next one is create profit centers to scale your business. And we Touched on that a little bit. But as my business expanded, we had service lines that we had line of business profit centers, and then we had geographic centers where we set them up as profit centers. So we had kind of a complex matrix, if you will. But it forced everybody to think the service line folks wanted to make a profit and the geographic folks wanted to make a profit. So it forced them to work together to figure out how to do that for each particular line of business. It sounds complicated, but it's really simple. If everybody is compensated based on profit and your whole company is flooded with profit centers, everybody's thinking, how do we make a profit? Because we're not going to make any money unless we do. Then the folks that are running the business can be more focused on strategy and less worried about are we going to pay our bills at the end of the month.

I love it. I love. Took me a while. My mouse was blocking that. So that was an awesome one. Okay, keep them coming.

Okay, three more left. Number eight. Augment profits with proprietary technology. Now we all hear about that and you don't have to go into a high tech business. Hell, my business wasn't high tech. It was real estate services. But what we did is we found out, hey, customers were bottlenecked on getting the information they needed. They wanted to eliminate workflow steps and they needed access to understand what was going on. Because ultimately we were delivering services throughout the US and even outside the United around the world. Bas and customers were concerned, like, hey, if you're going to manage all this work around the globe, how are we going to know what's happening at a particular place on a particular project, in a particular market? And so we came up and said, hey, why don't we develop our own technology to give them access so that they can understand every touch point we make against their particular project anywhere in the world. We called that proprietary technology Sequentron Sequential Tracking. It stood up as its own profitable company. It was one of the four that I started and simply this, it created the sticky between ourselves and our customers. So that when these contracts came due, sequential was the thing that held it together. Because they realized, hey, if we're going to go with Brand X, we're not going to get Sequentra. And that's a tool that we need to live and grow with to stay in touch with all the work we have going on.

But now if I'm an itty bitty company, a lot of folks listening in here don't have the funds or the means to build their sequential can you use kind of off the shelf software and find a new way of operating it or a new way to bring about technology to your clients?

Yeah, most definitely you can do that. As a matter of fact, we started out that way. We hired a big consulting firm and said, hey, let's marry together some off the shelf solutions, put some glue in between to keep them together. But ultimately we stepped back and said, no, that's not going to work for us. But nowadays, I mean, you can come out with an app for a couple thousand bucks, you can come out with an app that supports your business. By that, it connects you more tightly with your customer to a point where it's easy for them to purchase your product, it's easy for them to get information on inventory, it's easy for them to stay connected, and it creates a value added stream of communication between you and your customer.

Got it. Give me number nine.

Number nine. Build a financial war chest for strategic advantage. Simply stated, that's where you come up with your value proposition. Your customer says, wow, that sounds great, but will you put your money where your mouth is? I'm telling you, if you have a financial war chest and you've retained your earnings to a point where you can use it to help really propel your business, if you set aside money that you can use in that war chest, simply, that's what that's all about. It can be a big differentiator. And also it works nice if you hit a few rainy days that you didn't plan on hitting. So build a financial war chest for strategic advantage.

Yeah, I totally get that. Actually. Verne Harnish in his book Scale up talks about the different stages of growth and says most businesses miss out on that financial war chest. Okay, love that. What's the last one?

The last one, and I think it's the best one. And it kind of sounds a little, I guess, in a sense, corny, but it's really, really important. And it's, it's just behave ethically and profits will follow. I don't know. I'm sure you've looked over your lifetime at different people that misbehaved and they were probably doing real well. Bernie Madoff, he was, he was making plenty of money. Why did he have to misbehave? Who knows, you know? But if you do the right thing, that becomes a social glue. Not a technical glue, but a social glue between you and your customer. Why? Because your customer knows. Heck, if you make a mistake, you're going to raise your hand and admit it. They don't have to worry about finding out. We had a rule within our company, told all the employees, you know, inevitably, you're going to make a mistake. If you do, just raise your hand early. We'll say we're sorry. And guess what? If we need to make reparation pay the customer, we will do that. And that paid the biggest dividends for us over the long haul. Because trust is the cornerstone of everything. And if your customer knows that you can be trusted to a point where you'll admit a mistake without trying to hide it, that tightens the relationship more than anything you can do.

What about the business that's listening right now, the business owners listening right now, and they haven't been profitable for years. Can you step right into your ten Commandments, or is there a starting point?

No, I think you can. I mean, I think you have to start off with if you haven't been profitable for years. First of all, that's. That's pretty hard to. To kind of deal with. Years is a long time. So the first thing you need to do is say, hey, am I in the right business? Do I have distinctive competence in the area that I'm trying to vend services? Because something must be wrong. Because if you're a putting output, hours, time, investment, you're putting money behind your idea and you're not getting the traction on the other side, you kind of got to step back and take a look. I had four businesses that I started. One of them was a miserable failure. And that miserable failure was a publishing business. I had huge passion, no competence. I opened it up, I took all the profits from the one business, poured it into the publishing business, because I just, I loved it. I mean, I still do. But it was wrong. You know, it bled all the money. We lost money. Finally, three years in, I had to shut it down. And there were seven failure points, the first of which was I had no competence. Had a lot of passion, but no competence in the publishing field. So I had no business really being in it. So I think you take each one. The second one, what's your value proposition? Is it pretty good? Is it something that you can put your money behind and will your customers step up to it and say, you know what? There's more value there than the cost of me doing business with you. I'm on the team. I want to do business with you. So you kind of take each one and kind of break it down. But it really starts with, do you have competence in the field in which you're entering?

Yeah, I love It. These are guidelines to live by, but also a filter. You can assess your business based upon it. Ed, we got a rock and roll. But before we leave, where can people learn more about the purpose is profit and about you?

Ah, thanks so much for that. The purpose is profit.com. that's the call letters for our website. It breaks down all the details about our business. And, you know, that's probably the best place to get information on me, on the book, and on the things that we stand for. And also, I'd love to talk to you about profitcon when there's a right time.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got all the salivating. Yeah, we watch.

Oh, yeah.

I knew I hit a hot button on that one.

Yeah, yeah. So Christine's gonna be reaching out to the show for everyone listening, and we're gonna have all the links to. To Ed's stuff on our show. Notes, including his, you know, Twitter, his social media handles, Facebook and all that stuff. Stuff. And a link to his book. You got to pick it up. It's on Amazon right now. Don't wait another second. It is time to make your business profitable, and his book will get you there. All right, Ed, thanks for joining us today.

Hey, thanks, guys. I appreciate it. You take care.

You too.

Thanks, Ed.

Bye. Bye.

And I have one more quick question, Ed.

Sure.

How much does a business owner or an entrepreneur's head trash get in the way? Like, if they have confidence or wrong beliefs, or maybe they're not. They're not courageous enough to price themselves properly. Like, how much does head trash affect profitability?

I mean, you. You. You hit on one that is. I mean, you do not want to be an entrepreneur if you. If you step out and you have head trash in your way. You got to get that head trash out of the way or don't do it just because that's probably the biggest inhibitor to success. I know when I started my business, and maybe it was a function of where I was in my life, but failure was not an option. And it never entered my head. Failure never entered my head. And I say to all entrepreneurs, and maybe this is the inverse of head trash is if you have head trash, deal with it. If you have failure is not an option, then go be an entrepreneur.

Nice. Good. Thank you, Ed.

Awesome, Ed. Thanks again for joining us.

All right, take care.

So in a second, we're gonna discuss what we learned. Were we gonna do something else? Oh, you got it. You didn't do the shout out. I forgot to ask you.

So we'll do the shout Out.

Yeah.

But first, I think our corporate partners who make the show a reality, they are Fundbox, which is a cash flow accelerator. Nextiva, which is an awesome voice over IP phone system receipt bank, which allows you to scan in your receipts right into your phone and never again have that Shoebox. Xero, which is cloud accounting software. And Fundera. Now Fundera, that's the wonderful Meredith Wood. You know, it's so funny. I work with Meredith. Rhonda's. You do?

Yeah.

I thought Fundera probably has like three or four people. Ron went over to their office. He's like, oh, there's like 75 people at this one location. And they're on the phone all day talking with you. When you seek out a fund, a fund, a loan or some kind of. If you need funds, they get on the phone with you and say, here's the options that are available through other sources. Here's the ones that we don't recommend you do. And here's the ones we do recommend you do. Based upon xyz. They literally educate you about the loans. They find the loans for you, and then they educate you about which ones are likely the best option for you. Pretty. Pretty cool.

Cool.

And they don't charge for it. I mean, they make their money. They get a fee, I guess, of the loan from the loan provider, their commission, whatever, but they don't charge you, the client. So the loan you gets, the loan you get. You asked for 50 grand. Cory. Did he want some money? He gets the money.

Yeah, man.

And you have to pay them a penny, right?

It's like they're on. It's like they're your funding department. You just call them up and say, yeah, I need a loan. Go. Can you hook me up?

Yeah, it's the modern version. It used to be Tony. Hey, you need some money? I'll get you the money. Don't ask me how I got it. Was a good friend of mine. Like, that's the old school. Now it's Meredith going, oh, you need money? I'll get you money. It's a good friend of mine. Like, that's how it works. Oh, that was horrible. Chris. What about pause your life, bro? Bro.

Oh, yeah, Pause your life. Yeah, you know, hey, you want to take out the trash? Take out your head. Trash. Go on a. Go on a pause your life retreat. We just booked one for May. And. Yeah, Pause your life dot org. Just go there. All the info is there. It's.

We have a vital. A recording from the. The entrance music you have. Let me see If I can find it. Here it is. You hear that when you walk in? It was so not funny.

We all wear sombreros.

That was horrible.

All right, so we got a shout out.

We do have a shout out, actually. It's kind of like a double whammy. This one. This one comes from Darren. He emailed in and he said that although it took longer than expected, this year, or last year, was technically the year that they finally dug into Profit first and set it up for their company. They actually connected with one of our Profit first professionals, Billian Greg. Shout out to Billy Ann. They gave Billy Ann a huge shout out and said that she is beyond exceptional and a joy to work with. And they just wanted to say thank you and to tell us keep doing what we're doing and how much of a major impact it's having on them as a business. And they just started last year.

Wow. Wow. Hey, Ron, you want to say hi real quick? You're making so much noise back there. Just so you know, Ron, kind of like, quietly. You can throw the cans on and everything. Ron quietly tiptoes in. Hello, everybody.

Hey, Chris.

Happy New Year. All you guys out there. I gotta ask you. Yeah. What were you talking about there then? Farting noise. Yeah, Some kind of big loud noises were coming out from this room or something. Yeah. Not from here. Bron's like, what is that noise?

My golf. Well, everybody, I just want to wish all you people out there and your.

Listeners a Super duper profitable 2017. Oh, thanks.

Nice.

So may the profits be with you. Oh, thank you. And also with you.

All right, guys.

Take care, dude. See you, Ron.

Thanks, bro. Brother. Yeah. He tries sneaking in, but when you're a Jedi. Oh, now he slams the door.

Oh, he slam.

I'm now going to push the fart machine button on him again.

He's mad about the fart machine.

I'm pushing it right now. Yeah. No, he didn't know.

Push it right now.

I did. I just did. I can't. You have to hear it. So I don't know if it went off, but he's like. He's like, what was that? Like? He really does not know. He just wants to blame me.

It's like, dude, you farted.

Just admit it, bro. Admit it, bro. You did it, man. You smelled it. You Delta, bro. All right.

Remember that? We used to have that fart spray. It actually smelled like fart.

We. Yeah, I had it. We used to. At Boonton High School. You can get a vial of it. We would wing it when someone Goes to the bathroom, you. And they were using the stall. You'd wing it. It was smash against the wall and the whole place would stink.

Ew.

Within like within 30 seconds. And that poor bastard stuck in that room. You know, here's the funny thing. Ed McLaughlin's like, that was a good episode. That was a lot of fun. I educated people a lot. I'm gonna share this with my community. Now we're talking like this. He's like, I can't tell anyone about this show. I'm sorry, Ed.

Yeah.

All right.

I think Christina.

Yeah.

I thought we had a double. Double. Do you.

That was the double. They were saying that, you know, they started imploring prop first and they gave a shout out to Billy and Greg. Who? One of our favorites.

She's our fab. One of our fabs. Hey, what'd you learn, Christina?

Since you're talking anyway, you know, I think.

I don't know.

No, you know, Ed said, think about profit in every decision that you make from the beginning. And I think it's so important to make profit a habit and not an afterthought. Whether you're starting up your business, start immediately implementing profit or profit first. And if you're listening now and you're a couple years in, don't wait, don't consider it, just do it. Because the faster you do it, the more successful your business will be and the more relief you will have and the more joy you have.

My takeaways, as I was going through the ten prophets, the ten commandments of profit. Each one's like a one sentence answer or just say, yes, no, or I have to do that. So distinctive competence like this isn't like you have to write a whole novel. I mean, you just spend a lot of time. But once you figure out what makes you truly distinct. Like our organization, Profit First Professionals, we guide accountants and bookkeepers to be consultative around profit. No one else does it. That's why we're distinct. Super value proposition speaks to. We are here to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. We have a book and a method and all these things that no one else has that does it. You see how I'm embedding in Profit First. I won't keep going. But we apply to all these things. And I thought that was a really cool kind of rules to live by, but also necessary. What did you learn, Chris?

All right, I want to start with defining a word. I'm going to read the definition. You tell me what word it is. Okay. Certain to happen, unavoidable.

What's the word.

I'll tell you.

Yes.

I'll just tell you because it's quicker. The word is inevitable.

Inevitable.

And that's what happens in business. There's things that are inevitable, and you have to have the money in the bank to take care of these inevitable things. I thought that was one of the best things he talked about. You know, it's so easy when you start a business, or even if you're in business and it's going okay, you sort of get lulled to sleep and you think everything's fine, but things are coming. And if you're prepared, man, then just the day comes and you just write a check or whatever, transfer the money. Like the tax account, for one thing, like that. One of the main Profit first accounts you can set up. The money's there, it's done. And same thing with inevitable things.

Yeah, no, that was good. Here's one. To throw something or someone out a window. That's the definition. What's the word?

Murder?

Eject.

No. Oh, that's a good one. No, it's defenestration. True. That's my magic word. Defenestration. Look it up. Okay, Chris, I got one more thing to share, bro. Oh, you got one thing to share? Then I share it. You. You do the rating?

Yeah.

You got one more thing to share?

No.

Profit first podcast Dot com. That's the website. Go there. There's funny pictures of Mike Michalowicz there. And you can also, you know how we talked about what we learned? We want to know what you learned. So go to profitfirstpodcast.com, type into the comments of the post what you learned, and you can hear. You can binge listen to our shows from there as well. And of course, this whole entire show is courtesy of Profit First Professionals. Now you just want to talk about a profit. First of all, a profitable organization. Second of all, an organization that's helping everyone else to become profitable. It's like a fractal.

It's a fractal. It just keeps going around and around. Yeah. So here's the dealio. Here's the dealio. You have a business right now. You've been listening to episode after episode of Profit first, hopefully. What?

Nothing.

What were you gonna say?

I said podcast.

Oh, I feel podcast. Yes, that's true. That's true. You've been listening to episode after episode of Profit First Podcast. The question is, are you more profitable? And here's the deal. I suspect narrowly. I think that means. That means a little bit narrowly. Narrowly more profitable. Why because you don't have a profit first professional yet. You heard the shout out to Billy Ann, Greg. What's the words? She was fundamentally beyond exceptional. Says Dar Darren or Darren he pronounced. I know. Let's go with it. Profit first professionals. We will hook you up with the Billy and Greg for your industry, for your business. We will drive properly in your business. Listen, you need an accountant or bookkeeper or coach anyway, I get that. Why not have one that is steeped in the profit first method and can bring profit to your business. Now how do you do it? It's easy. Go to profit first professionals dot com. Step one, step two, click on five. Step three, fill out the quick form. Then there.

Yeah.

And then we will find you the profit first professional. That's it.

Go do it now.

Let's make you very profitable. Not gnarly or narrowly profitable, just make you very profitable.

Take note of that. Totally doable. I mean, think about it. A profit first professional think. Picture this. You're sitting at your desk and you're looking at your finances and the. Your profit first professional standing there looks over. And because they're trained to spot things, things and to be creative and to drive profit, they're going to see like eight things and they're going to be like, oh, we can make some changes here. We can be a lot more profitable. I mean, think about how that will affect your life. So profit first professionals.com Again, thanks to Ed McLaughlin, our guest and Mike and Christina and everybody in the background.

Sneak appearance.

Yeah.

Yes. All right, we'll see you next week and we're happy to be part of your profit journey. So let's get out there. Let's be profitable. And Mike, on the website, we should have a, a, a growing number that shows all the money and all the profit accounts of all our listeners. How about that?

That's not a bad idea. That's not a bad boom, dude.

All right, see y' all see?

Yeah.