Episode 138: Overcoming Adversity with Robert Hartline

If you don't know her name by now, well, I don't know what I have to do with you. Maybe slap you over the head a little bit. Because her name is Dr. Sabrina Starling. She's the business psychologist and the author of how to Hire the Best. She's actually my personal business psychologist and I kind of coerced her into doing a little special thing just for you. She's doing an in demand class. It's called the Masterclass. How to quickly double your profit with top performing employees. That's right. How to double your profit with top performing employees. Want to know how to do that? It's real simple. Just send a text to Dr. Sabrina Starling. Send the word employees to 44222. That's employees to 44222. And you will have access to Dr. Sabrina's masterclass.

She's a real mover and shaker.

Oh, you love that.

Oh, come on. That's right. You happen to press play. And this is the Profit first podcast, episode 138.

Don't forget it.

Yes. Nice bag. Come on, Robert. Come on.

I don't hear Robert.

Christina. Where? There's Christina.

We forgot to tell our guest that he has to grunt along with us.

I know he's been. You know, he listened to the practice. He came into the studio early and listened to the last episode. So I think he intentionally backed up.

That's right. Welcome to the show, everybody. 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 Revise and Expand Edition. It's in your local store bookstore. It's an Amazon. It's everywhere right now. Get a copy and even if you had the old copy, get a new one. It is a totally new book. I'm the author of some other books, too. The Pumpkin Plan Surge and Toy Paper Entrepreneur. And you are listening to the Profit First Podcast. This is our little special show where we help entrepreneurs just like you grow profits and hopefully have a few laughs along the way.

That's right. We could be called the Knucklehead Brothers or Profit First Podcast. Whatever you prefer to call us.

Go.

And profit first podcast.com is our website. That's right. Go there all our previous episodes. You can binge listen. You can also find us anywhere. You hear podcasts in itunes and Stitcher and Tunein Radio. Definitely subscribe and you can even rate and review us. Although they're saying now. Well, it's been Known for a long time that ratings and reviews are good, but they're not the ultimate in getting your podcast heard, by the way. Mike and I probably shouldn't have said that. Really?

What is the ultimate. Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Terrific.

Okay, that's right. Well, profit is what we're talking about. Revenue might be a soda pop, but.

Profit is the only way to the top.

Finally.

Six months. I'm missing it. Oh, my God.

I was waiting for you to whiff again, but dude, you nailed it. Over the fence.

Finally. Finally. Fine. You know, like one of those athletes going through those dry spells. You think they're all washed up, and then all of a sudden, Jordan from He's Black.

He's black.

Oh, dude. What have you been up to, my brother?

Well, I just had. I know it's probably February that this is airing, but we're recording it a little earlier and Martin Luther King died.

This is March. Actually, this one.

Oh, this one's in March. Oh, my God.

First one in March. Y.

Anyway, well, then what I've been up to doesn't really make sense. But I'll say it anyway, because it is interesting. At the end of last year, I was thinking about. Because I had a pretty good year and I was thinking about, well, what expenses do I have that I could just pay before the end of the year? Right. So it could be a write off.

Yeah.

And at the very last day, I realized that all my domain names, I can renew my domain names.

And then.

Pay that money, and that's a write off. And then I can renew. I renewed most of them for three years at least. So that was a pretty good. Yeah.

How many domains do you own?

Oh, I don't know. Probably like one. No. 70 or 80 or maybe 100.

Oh my gosh. Dude.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Well, it's not. If I went through them all with you, you'd be like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, look, fractal recording.com is my main website for my podcast production business.

Yeah.

But I also have.net.org and. And then I have. You know what I mean, fractalstudio variation of each one.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It adds up.

So this is not my personal update, but now it's gonna be because I now gonna play off the domain thing. I bought the domain Fat Daddy Fat. And for April Fool's Day, I'm setting it up. I'm gonna set my own rapper site. And April Fool's Day, I'm redirecting Mike McCallow. It's the fat Daddy fat back.

You better follow through on that.

I know, I'm. Yeah, exactly. And right. Yeah. I gotta be pushing hard now because it's from this recording day. It's gonna be not even like three weeks later.

I had a website at some point when I was like, you had a website? I had one. I took it down because I didn't want to keep paying when I was still trying to figure it out. But you know, every artist or every singer should have a webpage that people can refer you.

Oh, that's cool.

For your resume and your past experience.

And did you have like videos of you singing?

That was the problem. I didn't have enough content up there yet. I have a couple things, but I had a lot of pictures.

Okay. Yeah, a lot of pictures of me and my dog.

Nice. Christina, what have you been up to?

You know, just living life, singing, living with the boyfriend, cooking all the time. Now I'm domesticated.

Do you ever bring food to the office for Mike?

No, because Alex eats a lot. He's a weightlifter. So, you know, if. Even if I make like three pounds of beef, it's gone in.

Like he can bench like £7,000. Like he's one of those guys, he's like, you know, you ever see those, those TV shows? Like it's on at midnight. You see some guy flipping tires from a tractor.

Ye.

Yeah, that's what Alex is.

He's a deadlifter. He's actually looking to get into some competitions.

Is he going to do the strongest man in the world, pick up a.

Car, something like that?

He could twist the steering wheel.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. With his teeth. Those guys are animals. And they're always from like Yugoslavia and stuff. Like there's one American and then there's always like Eastern European guys.

That's really funny because he only follows like Russian.

Yeah.

Workouts. Yeah.

Lars, Lars.

Lars Oldberg, bench press. I bench pressed two buses today. What did you do?

I lift things up, I put them down. I lift things up, I put them down.

What was that from? That was a commercial.

Commercial?

Yeah, I think it was a Planet Fitness.

All right, so here's the deal. We have other people that lift things up and put them down. They're called our sponsors. Oh, they lift up our hearts and then put us down. Oh, I don't know. It was down gently when they send us a check.

Good save.

Here's the. Here's the companies that we suggest you check out. They're fun loving companies that have a good, good service offering. Fundera.

Oh.

Well, Barry's got a strong stuff off Fundbox.

Oh.

He'S. He's like, of. He doesn't want to say nextiva. Barry. Oh, yeah. Oh, receipt bank.

Yeah.

Pause your life.

That's a tongue twister right there.

Yeah, that's a doozy. And then zero. Barry.

Oh, forget it.

I'll forget it. Yeah. All those companies are our sponsors and supporters, including Dr. Sabrina Starlings, her last episode of Supporting us, though. She's gonna abandon us. Just like any good business. She's gonna leave us out now we're on our own. There's other companies, they're stalwarts, so we'll tell you more about them at the end of the show. And before we kick into it, do we shout out?

I have a shout out. This actually comes to Josh from Quick Talk Podcast, and he actually had me laughing a little bit. He goes, okay, so I was under the impression that business podcasts, whom actually provide real value, needed to be dry and boring. I now stand wrong and ashamed, as you should be, Josh. This podcast is killer and fun and full of knowledge bombs. I'm serious people. The guests, the hosts, and the production quality, which is not easy, and lots of work, is very high level. So shout out to us. Thank you to you, Josh.

Josh, you were the man.

Awesome dude. And Barry here can can attest Barry has listened to every other business podcast in existence. And Barry, how would you summarize that?

There's no activity. No giggle? No.

Okay, yes. Hey, Barry, one more question for you. You know, Josh shared these kind words. I think we like to send him a gift. Can you suggest an item or two or maybe perhaps a few things that we could send to Josh?

Yes.

Saw, hammers, nails, monkeys, Pumas. Yeah.

Yeah.

Beans, coffee and biscuit. And a little piece of fat.

That's right, Josh. So you may find some monkeys and pumas in the mail coming your way. That's from us. That's from us here at the studio. Now. Thanks for being a listener and thanks for putting up with us. So here's the deal. Yo. His name's Robert Hartline, and he got ripped off. Christina.

How's that?

$300,000 embezzled from his company. Have you read Money stolen from You? Actually, I know you have.

Yes.

Actually, I know you have. I don't even know why you were supposed to say no, but you have. Robert was selling cell phones from the trunk of his car, and then he went into building a chain of 33 wireless stores called Absolute Wireless. And that's when he got ripped Off. And he's about to share his story of what it feels like to get banged for $300,000 and then recover your money. Robert, welcome to the show, brother.

What is up? Good to hear your voice.

It's good to hear your voice. So what happened, man? $300,000. How can anyone steal that much money without you even noticing?

I know, right? You think that, you think I'd be able to tell you first things first. I mean, you kind of go through this phase where you like, oh my God, I'm just dumb.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So, you know, and it's like, how could I be so, so naive and stupid, but you know, the story just like, you know, I guess if you were to talk to victims of white collar crime like this, I mean, it's all the same. You know, the, you know, we, we hired several years ago peo to manage all of our HR and, and all of our payroll services. And, and you know, at the time, you know, we were growing really fast and I really a big proponent of outsourcing and, and, and do what we're good at and leave others to do the other things and hired this company, got us all set up. I mean, they literally handled everything when it came to HR in our payroll. And I was dealing with our contact at the payroll company and super nice lady. I didn't have a lot of interactions with her, but one interaction that I had struggled with since we had signed up is my access to the online portal to actually see all the reports.

Okay.

And what would happen is I'm just like, just probably the average entrepreneur who's got a thousand things going. You know, you get hot and bothered on one topic and next thing you know, you get distracted and you're off, you know, chasing some other squirrel, right? And every now and then, every few months, I would go to look for this payroll report and ask her for my access. And there was always a reason that my login credentials didn't work. And I always shrugged it off and really never really thought. Thought much about it. And it was one day I was, I was looking at our, I was looking at our cash flow and I was like, man, this is something. Just don't feel right. And I got, I got my VP of sales, he has a login a lot. I use his login. I go in to look at their, their system and literally the first report I pull was earnings by employee report.

Okay.

And I was just, I was honestly just curious. The, the look at, I was just kind of going and looking at different reports. In this first report had these list of names and it had their year to date pay. And there was a gentleman that showed up on this report that made a hundred and six thousand dollars.

Who?

Mike, you know what? I know people who make that kind of money in my organization. I know them by name, I know their birth date, I know their spouse, but I didn't know who this person was.

Right.

And, and I was like, what? And so then I took all of our, you know, our POS system is where we put all of our employee information, but yet we actually do payroll. We pull those reports out, we send it to the payroll people and they, and they, you know, pay everybody. Right. And so I took all my data that I had, all my list of employees and I crashed it against their list and I discovered five people over the course of three years who been getting paid. Now they didn't know who they were.

Oh my gosh, you'd. Five employees. Five fictitious employees that were getting paid or.

Yeah. And. Wow. And you know, honestly, I look back at this whole thing and had. Had the amount not been so high, I would probably still be with that payroll company and I would still be paying for fictitious people. So.

Wow.

Yeah. I mean, this happened back in. Gosh. It happened back in. I want to say, gosh, it seems so long ago. Maybe it was April. No, I'm sorry. It was back in September when this kind of went down. And you know, the, you know, the, the things that go through your head especially there's nothing worse than finding out information you can't fix because it's after business hours. You know, I'm, I'm stressing at 10 o' clock at night.

Oh my God, that's asleep.

Oh, that's the worst.

Oh yeah, totally. And I'm like freaking out.

And you know, my pillow didn't help you rest at all?

No, no. And the, you know, the very first thing I did was I emailed this, this payroll specialist and my email was, you know, who is Josh John's for instance? I don't remember the guy's name. I was just basically like, who is this employee? I don't know who the freak he is. Right. And her response was, oh, you know what? Sometimes your payroll information get mixed up with another company's payroll information.

Oh, geez.

Oh, was her response.

Yeah.

And it wasn't until her response. And I, and I thought, wait a minute, hold on. What are the chances that their technology is just that. That bad?

Right.

That accidentally, you know, employees showed up in my, in my payroll Report that didn't really exist.

So what happens next? Do you have to set up a sting? Like, now you have suspicious. What do you do next?

Well, the very next thing I did is I. I talked to my accountant's office. The very next morning, I was waiting at their door. And then I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going crazy. And I went right to the payroll company and walked in. I was like, I need to speak to the guy. You know, I need to speak to the man. Because we got. We got an issue. And my first question was, is it possible that my payroll could be mixed with another person's? And I wanted to see if, before I started making accusations, if there was a system issue. Right.

Yeah.

You know, you want to think the best in people.

Of course.

And so once I sat down with the. With the guy, I mean, he knew instantly. I mean, he was literally with me maybe an hour before we were on the phone with the FBI.

Wow. So here's a question for you. How do you call the FBI? You don't dial 911. Are they, like.

My stomach is a notch just, like, hearing this.

Yeah. Who do you call when this happens?

Well, every. Every area major metropolitan city has their own FBI division.

Okay.

And, you know, there, believe it or not, they have a team of people that get these calls all day long. And we. We did our. We did our report. And of course, in the meantime, this employee had came to the office, and I was there, and sure, she gave me the. Oh, Robert. How you doing? You know, there's. This is a simple. This is a simple mistake. You know, we'll figure it out. And just right to my face, like. Like, you know, it was just. It was kind of surreal to be there. And now.

Is she the owner of the peo.

No, no, no. She. She was a. Basically a payroll specialist. She was our liaison between all of our employees and in her company. In the company.

Oh, so she worked for your company?

No, no, she. She. She worked for the payroll services.

Okay, okay.

She wasn't my employee.

Gotcha.

But she was our. Our liaison between anything HR related or payroll related. She was the person we sent our reports to.

Oh, my God. So how. What's that moment? Like, she comes to you like, hey, how you doing, Robert? Good to see you. How's the wife and kitties? I mean.

Oh, you just. You know, I had my laptop set up. I'm, like, recording every conversation. Like, I mean, I'm. I. I'm like. Because, you know, there's a. There's a Part of me, there's a lot of unknown because, number one, I knew some of the gravity at that moment. I knew of maybe 150,000.

Right.

But I didn't know how big the problem was at that moment because I didn't really have all the data to do all the research. But, you know, when I was, you know, in that scenario, I just, you know, I was on eggshells, obviously, in it. I will have to say, the company acted so fast. I mean, you know, you know, the lesson for me, and part of this was, you know, it was. It was my fault for not making sure that the reports that we actually got from payroll match the reports that we submitted. And that was, you know, a big error on our part because what ended up happening was she was paying fictitious employees through using those prepaid Visa cards.

Oh, that's how she got the money.

Yeah. So she would create these fake Social Security numbers and she would pay those Visa cards. And, you know, honestly, she, you know, had she not, you know, this has happens to all criminals. They get too greedy. Right. You know, you know, I'm in. I'm in retail, and I don't have an awful lot of people that make more than a hundred thousand. She could have easily had, you know, 50 people that paid, you know, they got paid less than 50,000. And I probably would have never, probably really discovered it.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Well, she deserved to be discovered. Now tell me about this situation, Robert. Now, you know, you've. You've been screwed. You. You have a strong suspicion or you actually know who's doing it. But does the FBI come down that person that day, or do you got to be like, nicey nice for a couple weeks? How does this work?

Well, you know, from the moment that I stepped into the payroll services company, it was, believe it or not, a pleasure, a pleasurable experience, because, number one, they could have easily shoved me out the door to, you know, and then stopped all contact with me.

Okay.

And because they were trying to figure out they could have done that, and they didn't. They. They were so forthcoming and mean, I literally, after they got off the phone with the FBI, they were calling their insurance company, and there was the very next phone call.

Was that because the woman was the one do it? Like, was the company itself not aware of what this woman was doing?

Oh, yeah. The company had no idea what she was doing. It was news to them. I mean, it was traumatic to them that, I mean, the owner, I mean, they were just absolutely beside themselves. You know, I knew Instantly that. Just watching their body language, that, you know, they had no clue and you know, that even the phone call with their insurance company, I mean, it was just. It was very well done. And, you know, the second lesson that I got out of this as well is, you know, a lot of us entrepreneurs have these companies that we outsource our services through, whether it's HR or, you know, lots of different services. And if they have an errors and admissions policy, that policy is going to bring my sanity back. And it did, because I literally got my check and I was made whole within a week.

Wow. So. And what was making whole? What was the amount?

Well, it came up to just around 270,000. And then there was, you know, this. It was an occurrence that happened over three years. So we had interest on top of that money. And so, you know, at the end of the day, it came out to. Right at 300,000.

So you got a check for 270,000 plus interest. 300,000. And your business had sustained up to this point, even with this money being leached off you. It sounds like you found a new hack to profit first.

I know, See, I know I was going to bring this idea to the forefront because you should just get into this business. I mean, just jump right in because, you know, you just need to have. Create a nice scheme to steal your money for the future.

Right from yourself.

Yeah, steal the money from yourself and then all of a sudden surpr yourself with the refund. Did the FBI, what did they do with this person?

Well, you know, that was kind of interesting because they move very methodical. You know, they. They're dealing with these cases all the time. And they had me do a statement. She came in and interviewed. And I mean, literally, my. From the time this happened to that. My first interview with the, with the FBI, it was. It was probably an entire month in my head I was thinking, oh, this woman's gonna get away with it.

Yeah.

But she. She interviewed me a month later, and it wasn't until just about a week and a half ago they. I guess she got. She's gotten served and, you know, she has a court date and you know she's gonna do time. I don't know how much time she's going to do.

Wow. Wow.

But she'll. She'll do some. She'll do some serious time.

Now let's talk about the impact to your business. I presume you feel. I would assume I couldn't trust anybody now. I'd be so panicked, I'd want to. How has Your business changed. How have you changed because of this?

You know, it. I have always somewhat been a little bit, you know, when you're, I've been in business for 20 years now and I'm probably that grouchy old man that doesn't trust anybody. And, and you know, this is only going to make me worse.

Right, right.

But in my business, you know, I'm in retail, so I'm getting, I'm getting stolen from each and every day, whether it's a shoplifter or an employee. You know, it's literally I'm in court probably every other month with something that's happened.

Oh my God.

With, with, with, with that. But it, it just comes with, you know, the nature of being in this type of business where, you know, it tends to happen. Well, now we've, we've changed a lot in terms of how we would prevent this in the future. I mean, there's really probably a thousand different ways one could, could steal from, from a company. And you know, we often think as your payroll person could, could that be that person. But you know, you never think about the, the payroll company you pay every month would be the source of the theft. And so you, you know, you have to look at, you know, everything in your business that could possibly break or be compromised as a potential, you know, issue. You know, now we've, we've gone through the effort of, you know, we obviously, we don't use that company anymore. Yeah, no, no, so, so we have a new payroll services company. But, you know, there's always that fear that, you know, anything can happen, but you just have to be on your toes.

Oh my. I can imagine. Hey, I gotta ask you, what's your impression about society now? I mean, if you're, if you employ, stealing from you, these other companies, I assume you're, you're a pretty jaded guy.

I'm not too jaded. I mean, I still, I have other businesses that I jump into and I, and I look after and I don't really look at it that way. You know, as long as you have a good checks and balances system, you're going to catch these things as they happen. But I mean, you know, it's funny. We have security cameras in all of our stores and I never forget. This is like, you know, probably five, 10 years ago, I had an employee that, you know, had this huge conversation. I said, there's cameras in the store. There's a camera, there's a camera. And literally the next week, in front of the camera, she's Stealing from the cash drawer. And it's like, did you not remember the camera that I talked about? Like, I mean they're not really that, that, that smart. But you know, what ends up happening is a lot, you know, people that are, you know, this, this younger generation that maybe it's their first job or maybe it's the first time on their own and that they, they, they didn't get taught really that, you know, some life events happen that, that you could choose to make a really bad choice. Let's say, for instance, you're getting evicted and you're standing there in the business and there's money in the drawer that could solve your pain, right?

Yeah.

Money in your drawer that could, that could make the landlord be happy and you don't get evicted. Well, what they're not thinking about, if they steal this now, they have a felony and the felony is going to affect their life forever.

Yeah.

You know, the, the challenge with their landlord is just that moment in time and that will pass. And you know, a lot, a lot of people just don't think that far in advance of the consequences of doing these types of things.

Yeah.

And how are you protecting your company? I mean, obviously you're keeping a close eye on everything in your day to day operations, but is there some type of like liability insurance that you take out or is that even possible in retail or what other precautions are you taking to prevent this?

You know, mainly it's a process thing that was broken. You know, the process was broken in terms of we submitted an Excel spreadsheet and then she would input that into the system as payment when I wasn't looking at that actual report to make sure. All right, what did Joey get paid? He was supposed to get X and this is what he actually got paid. There was none of that happening. It's amazing. These payroll companies, even this new payroll services that I just signed up with to switch to, and this is a very big payroll services company, does not allow you to export an Excel spreadsheet into the cloud. To do payroll, you literally have to go to a web portal and enter that stuff by hand.

Really?

And this is a big payroll services.

Company and you're, you're a pretty good sized company. How many employees do you have?

So we have 250.

You to manually move over 250 people? Yes.

Wow.

Yes.

Oh my God. I will start a payroll service just to serve you and I promise I won't sell more than 10%, maybe 12%. Deal. That's it. That's unbelievable.

I Tell you about it. And so how many opportunities for errors can I have in a payroll? Yeah, when someone's hand entering stuff, you.

Know, we use up a sponsor. I could take care of this, but they're not going to get mentioned because they left us. They abandoned us, Robert.

And if Mike ever does start a payroll company to help you, he'll only have one or two fictitious employees. That's all right.

Exactly. Yeah. When will we.

Ronald, can you call it Mike's Payroll Services? Because that'd be easy.

Yeah, Mike's Payroll Services. We take our profit first. Perfect. So. And you've employed profit first to some degree in your business too, right?

I have attempted to. I have not gone through the. Through all the mechanics to do that. We. After I read your book, I created a couple of new bank accounts for particular things like our Christmas party and some initiatives that we have. But I got to figure that model out for us.

Well, I'll give you one little tip before we depart. Ways you can set up a. Maybe already have an employee pay account, right. That's for the payroll, but you can allocate, prior to the payroll being processed, the exact estimated amount into that account. Only give the payroll company access to that one account. And then if they make a request over that amount, that's a huge red flag. Why are they requesting more than cash available? So Profit first covers that too. Robert, for all the folks listening, from small business to big business, what advice can you share with people to prevent running into what you had to face?

Just have a. You got to have a checks and balances. And you know, I hear all the time, most of the embezzlement you hear about is, you know, Sally's been with the company, works her fanny off in the company, and she writes checks every month. And, you know, she's been creating, you know, fake fictitious companies that she writes checks to. And you know, one of the things that I have already, I have always done is, you know, every single morning we all have these routines that we go through, right. You know, I work out at 5 in the morning.

Nice.

You know, I have my cup of coffee and then I log into my bank account. And what am I looking at when I log into the bank account? I'm looking at checks that have cleared. Yeah, a lot of these checks have been cleared. I didn't actually sign those checks. I had someone else sign those checks. So I'll literally look at those checks at that moment. You know, who is that? Was that supposed to happen? Or some random draft that came out of My account, I'll look at those. But you know, what I wasn't doing is looking at the right report. And information is powerful. And sometimes, you know, I look at what happened over the last three years if, you know, I had my head in the sand and just believed that we were doing the right thing. And sometimes, you know, you know, I would probably challenge your listeners to, to pick three things in their business that they are, they're assuming are being done and pretend they're not and go and see if they are actually being done. You know, we may assume that Sally is, is writing checks to the right vendors, but who are those vendors? Who's who? What vendors are making the most money from you? You can easily do a report and find out what vendors you pay the most to and then question yourself, why are you paying those vendors so much money? There could be legitimate things, but what could, what could stand out and help wake you up a little bit?

I love it. The checks and balances. Hey, Robert, why don't you give kind of the one minute pitch on what your business does and then where people can find out more about you.

So my, my core business is Call Proof. It's an app for outside salespeople. So it's an online tool for outside salespeople. Salespeople to use on their mobile device to track and report all their daily activities when it comes to selling.

And where can people check out Call Proof?

So you can go to callproof.com or you can also hit our blog at Call Proof Forward slash blog.

Unlike our guest from last week, Robert, you actually knew the website you have?

Oh, yeah.

Last guest we said, so what's your website? He's like, I have one, so. But he didn't know. Robert, thanks so much for sharing a story. We wanted to share the other side of profitability and it took some courage to share that. Thank you so much. And we wish you the best of outcomes as you kind of see this through the final stages.

Yeah. Congratulations on taking that first step, man. And even though you didn't do all the bank accounts you started, that's.

Yeah, that's cool too.

There you go. Perfect.

I mean, that takes courage. And when I was talking to Robert, we connect offline. He's like, yeah, I'll share the whole story. Because he's explained so important that people realize this happens. He never ever expected it could have been him. And then bamboozled.

Never assume that everything is being done.

Yeah, never. And you could be the next next one. And it's not like you have to have armed guards? No, but your simple precautions you can take. I think this is a great story. A warning. And I thought he says I'm kind of an old guy, a curmudge type. No, no. So first of all, not a curmudge. He's like, yeah, no, people do this, it's cool. And he likes to off road ski, do all these different things in Costa Rica. It doesn't sound like old curmadge, it sounds like young. Or at least young at heart. Nice guy. So. Well, in a second we're going to discover and share what we learned.

Yep.

And we may have a little surprise. Chris, Matthew. Guess.

Are you gonna hum?

Try one more. One more. Yeah, yeah, we're do one more Hummel. If that doesn't work, that's out. It's no longer gonna be a bit. Okay, but first I want to thank our corporate partners, Chris, who make the show a reality.

Oh, you know what, I just. Wow.

I'll say their name, Chris, you give a sound effect and then I'll explain what they do. Fundera.

Fundera.

All right, first the anchors.

All right, first we'll do the anchors and then we'll come back to Funder. You know Fundera, the incurs could have used them to build those massive temples they were building. Yeah, you know those pyramids there. But I guess they're temples. They were, but they are pyramid shaped. The Incas, they used hundreds of slaves. They could have gone to Fundera and said hey, can we get a quick loan? Fundera said yeah, we'll hook you up, don't worry about it. And why don't you use those Azteckers over there instead of you inkers doing it? Oh, I know my Mexican Indian history. And then There's Fundbox, Chris.

190%.

That's right. When they opened up their business, they were funding businesses at 190%. That meant if you had a client owed you $10,000, they would send you a check for $19,000. Oh yeah, it didn't work so well. They went through the second iteration. They said we're just going to do 100% funding.

Can you use Fundera in like this type of situation with Robert?

You mean Fundbox? Fund box.

I meant fund box.

Yes. Yeah, you're right. So even Robert could use them. If he had a cash flow problem where he needed more funds if people were not paying bills, Fundbox released the funds to him and maybe even 190%, huh? I don't know. We'll see. Actually ask them next time you call them Fundbox. Just say, hey, we. We like the 190% fulfillment offering we heard about on the Profit first podcast.

What can you do about that?

Yeah.

All right. Next company's all right. Sorry, Barry. Next company is nextiva.

Some people are smart.

Yeah. And some aren't. And some aren't. And if you're a dummy like me, you better get a nextiva phone system because they work for dummies. I don't listen. I don't know what I'm doing. So we just plug these things in. My daughter came in here, and you're like, oh, we need the conference set up, and we need to be able to do remote pickup when the phone rings somewhere. She's like, where's the bathroom? Like, she has, like, no clue what's going on here. And within minutes, she had all the phones set up. Yeah, because nextivas supports that. Good. All right. Receipt bank, scan all your receipts.

Scientifical report from California was saying the same thing.

That's right, Barry. There was a huge scientifical report. Oh, I tried to straight face that. Let me try one more time. There was a huge scientifical report done on Receipt bank, and they noticed that most people either put their receipts in shoe boxes or they just give them to some anchor walking by. Well, receipt bank, you can now scan it in, and scientifically, that's a more efficient way than using receipt. A shoebox. Or an anchor. Or an anchor. Barry, what do you think about Zero?

What? Hold on. I was going to play a negative one. Actually, there's a couple negative ones.

Yeah, give us a negative one. That's fine. Zero.

Frightening.

Zero is a little frightening. You know what's so frightening about Zero? It's frightening that you're not using it yet. Barry. If you were using it, you wouldn't be so scared. It's cloud accounting software, and it's the best because it was built on the cloud. Up.

Super easy.

Super easy. And the last company I want to talk about, but certainly not least, is Pause your Life, Barry.

And this makes no sense.

Something from out of ancient times.

Ancient times.

Big moment, lot of teeth.

Barry, I'm with you. I'm even jumping on you a little bit because I get it. When I hear Pause youe Life, what do you think of? You think of something from ancient times and you think of these big teeth, like an Anthony Robbins kind of long, toothy smile. Oh, that's what you think when you hear Pause your Life, ironically, has nothing to do with ancient times or big teeth.

That's right.

And Barry, it's about taking.

Yeah, right. No. Barry, what do you think about this whole segment when we're talking about the sponsors?

It's a mess.

All right, so pause your life.

Correct, sir.

We do. It's a organization my wife and I started. We organize retreats and meetups. When you need to hit that pause button and just, you know, change your hustle versus chill factor or whatever and really chill and get some creative perspective on what you're doing and clear your head.

And if you listener have a big mouth and huge teeth, this. This group is perfect for you because it's a collection of.

Back to that Internet stuff there.

Yeah. What about that Internet stuff, Barry?

God. Let's talk about our takeaways now.

Yeah, why don't. Why don't I go first? Because I'm.

Please do it up.

Yeah, I like to go first this time. First of all, wrote on the side, download a new sound effect called Squirrel. So that's a note to myself, call the FBI. You know, I wouldn't. That wouldn't be my first call. I'd call the police. But if you have. If someone steals money from you, just because it's your business doesn't mean that's not a crime. It's something you don't handle. You get law enforcement involved. So that was kind of an aha. I'm thinking, oh, someone stole money. We could reprimand that person. No, no, no. Get the FBI involved. So that was a big deal. The second thing is there's some lessons. Checks and balances. Check. He must have said. Roberts must have said a hundred times. Checks and balances. Checks and balances. Get two people that are not, you know, not comp. Not working together. You don't want the collusion going on here, but have two people, perhaps including yourself, when it's the critical cash flow, knowing what's going on. And make sure your vendor has EO insurance. That's the last thing. Errors and emissions insurance. Chris, you're up.

All right, I'm up. And just so you know, you listening right now? We want to know what you learned. You can go to profitfirstpodcast.com and type into the comments for this post. Episode 138. You can. We want to know what you learned. And you can ask a question to Robert or Mike. I personally really like the way Robert has handled all this. I mean, when he was telling this story, I mean, Christina, you. You mentioned out loud that your stomach was in knots. You could hear the way he was breathing, that this is. This is rough man, this is like one of those situations that'll just tear you up inside. And he was handling it really well, you know, My brother and now my other brother. My brother Darrell. My other brother Darrell. They. They run the family business in New Jersey. It's the roofing and siding company. And let me tell you, dealing with homeowners with roofing and siding is. It's crazy. It's nerve wracking.

Shut.

It's crazy. You just want to tell homeowners to shut up sometimes. But it takes a special kind of person to be able to handle that well and not be cynical and learn from the mistakes.

Yes. Oh, I didn't say, oh, yeah, you did. That's right, Christina. Not to be cynical. What do you got, Christina?

I have two things. Systems and processes are essential to stay in control and monitor what's happening in your business. You need to keep yourself aware of what's going on, no matter how big your company gets, because you want to try and avoid what Robert went through. And also, I really love the tip that he gave. He. He said, pick three things in your business that you think are being done and stop and actually check if it's actually being done. Just kind of hold your employees accountable. Hold yourself accountable.

You got the air horn for that one. That's a good point. I don't know why it's not. That's a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just because you're bigger doesn't mean you're better. You know what I'm saying?

Oh, my.

You know what I'm saying?

Hey, now. Yeah. So go over Christina today. When? As soon as we're done taping this, go over to Obi Ron Kenobi's desk and just check him out. Say, look. I want to look. I'm going to double check you, my friend.

Oh, that's. You know what that sound means. It's time for the Guess that song. I'm sorry, they interrupt. There's one last thing. Are you ready?

I'm ready. Go ahead.

Oh, I know it.

Yeah, I think. Right. Margaritaville.

Margaritaville. Did you know that, Chris? Did you know that one?

No, I didn't. Good job, Christina.

Oh, good. Do you want to do one real quick?

Oh, gosh, no.

I'll do an easy one while you're thinking.

You go, Chris.

All right. This is an easy one, though.

Smoke on the water.

Oh, hello.

All right, that was it. I don't know if we're gonna do that bit anymore. I thought it was fun.

But, hey, listen, it's harder than you think.

It is hard. Anything. If you like it, just post a comment, say, I love that. Or if you hate it, to say, for God's sake, Michal, it's. Just shut up. Okay. Okay. And now I'm done. Oh, no. I love the Hagar.

Sammy Hagar. All right, well, listen, we want to know what you learned, so go to the website profit first, podcast.com youm can comment on this post. It's episode 138. We want to know what you learned. And if you have any questions for Robert or Mike, that'd be awesome. Every single episode we've ever done is on that webpage. So feel free to browse and to binge the two Bs. All right?

A lot of our listeners binge listen.

Yeah, yeah. And you can. Supposedly some people are playing now at 2x, which is hard to believe.

Like you.

Yeah, I listen to our own show.

Yeah.

My wife is like, why do you listen to your own show? I'm like, so I can see how we're doing and improve it.

Yeah, well, and sometimes we get questions and like, hey, who did you talk to? And we learned about this. And I'm like, I have no idea.

You listen to the show, right?

I do, yeah.

Does Alex. Does your boyfriend listen to it?

Not yet. He's listening to, like, one episode.

Do you ever listen to it, Chris?

Sometimes, yeah.

Oh, good, good.

I do. Yeah. I check in.

We just earned ourselves three lists.

No, you know, what happens is I. I'll. I'll end up just randomly when I'm just with my wife, like in the kitchen or something. I'll just put it on just for fun. And then. And our show is. I mean, I don't know. I think it's pretty funny, actually. So we. Once it starts rolling, it's hard. It's almost hard to turn it off.

It's a little bit addictive. That's our time. That means we're up. That's my new signal, my new alarm. We got to. We got to get out of here, bro.

That's right. And do people know who. Who sponsors this entire show? It's Profit First Professionals Changing the.

Oh, here's what I want you to do, listener. You know I'm Talking to you, Mr. Commando or Mrs. Commando.

Oh, again.

Well, that's your problem, not mine. Commando pants. Put your ear closer to your headset. Push it in your ear. A little closer. Closer. There. Oh. Ah.

Take that.

You know why? Because you haven't gone to Profit First Professionals yet. Why haven't you? What do I need to do? Do I need to serenade you? Oh, did that last episode. Do I need to wine and dine you up? Oh, I actually haven't done that. Okay, maybe I'll do that. Here's what you got to do. Go to profit first professionals dot com. Why? Because we have a gaggle of Profit First Professionals 147 recording 47 of members throughout the globe who are accountants, bookkeepers, and business coaches who specialize in the profit first methodology. And they're fun people and they will help grow your profitability. So here's what you do. Go to proffers professionals.com. click on the find button, fill out the form. We'll hook you up with a profit first professional. Now here's the deal, yo. If you haven't done it yet, what are you waiting for? Do it. Don't you want to be profitable? Don't you want to avoid these calamities? You know, our members. You know Robert. The first person he went to was his accountant. Yes, they should be. Maybe they are profit first professional. I actually didn't ask him that. But that's your trusted advisor. Someone's gonna help you navigate situation like this. They should be navigating his profitability too. So there you go. Do it now. Go, go, go.

It's almost like your little private own FBI profit agent in your corner.

Exactly.

Sorry. I love that I played some Eddie Van Halen guitar Are too. Well, thanks everybody for listening. Oh, we are happy to have you here. We're happy to be part of your profit journey. Thanks again to our guests Robert and Obi. Ron Kenobi and Mike and Christina. Everyone over there in the background, professionals, Mo Fireball. Oh, it's what we get some other people. What a squad next time.

Yeah, squad next time. Let's bring some of the squad in.

Okay?

I want fireball ball on here.

All right.

All right.

Lunch back. He's my favorite.

We'll see you next week. And until then, may the profit be with you. And the crowd is getting up and. And getting crazy.

Let's do it. They love. They love. Yeah.

Woo.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Good night. No way.

Crazy.

Oh, no, hold on. I'm fading. Oh, but I'm also fading. The crowd.