Episode 14: Profitability and Top Level Employees with Dr. Sabrina Schleicher and Julie Bohringer

From the studios of Fractal Recording, this is the Profit first podcast, episode.

14. Ron, I threw it to you. Ron already messed up. I know. You're like, go, go, bro. Yeah. Oh, man. Dude, if you're gonna be on a podcast, you gotta be ready for that stuff. Ron.

Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I think we have too much fun, Mike.

I love horsing around.

Yeah. So this is a show. Well, I'm Chris Curran. I'm the found Fractal Recording.

I'm Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First. And this is a show all about business profitability, but we like to have a lot of fun doing it. And my business partner, Ron Saharan, the managing director of Profit First Professionals, is here and. Hey, Ron, how you doing? Good.

Sorry about that. I wasn't sure what episode.

Right.

No, you don't supposed to know. That's the whole.

That's the joke. And thank you, Ron, for bringing caramels to the studio. He brought candy.

He brought candy. But he entered very creepily.

That was scary.

So you have. This entire studio is soundproof. And as we're sitting here prepping for this show in particular, all of a sudden the door goes, it opens, and there's like this one hand that kind of comes out, and then the hand disappears, and then, like, some hair and then her hand. And then all of a sudden, it's Ron just standing there. He's like, are you guys recording?

And I really thought it was the male lady. But you can find our show on itunes and Stitcher. Those are the two big podcast directories. And also on our website, Profit first podcast dot com.

Yep. And I want to thank our sponsors. Nextiva stepped up. Tsheets has stepped up. Fundera has stepped up, and now there's other folks. I actually got an email in the studio right now, some other folks that are interested in joining us as sponsors. So we'll talk more about them at the end.

Yeah. During our other break. So this is going to be fun. I'm glad Ron's here.

I'm thrilled he just showed up. Yeah.

No, so cool.

He is cool. No, he mentioned he was at the office taking care of.

I'm glad I showed up.

Silent Bob. So, yeah, he said he was gonna try swing by, so I'm pumped you're here.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's great stuff.

See, before you were two word Ron. Now you're speaking in sentences.

Yeah, yeah. Do what you were two word Ron.

I know.

Now he's pissed off. Ron. All right. Dude. So we've been up to Chris.

Wow. Doing a lot of. With my other show, the Mystic Show, Talking a lot about spirituality and meditation, and I'm doing a lot of meditation, too. I just. I love it. It kind of balances my life and, you know, profit and business is all great, but there has to be a balance, right? If you're gonna go full bore one way, you gotta have a little anchor somewhere else.

You can always go to an extreme in anything. Everything in moderation. They say. For me, my father turned 87, man.

Really?

Yeah. 87 years old.

Wow.

And looking at me, you're like, Mike, you're about 26. So you're like, what did your father have you when he was like, 61, 62? The answer is no. He had me when he was younger, and I'm not 26. That's the answer. So. So we're going out for dinner tonight. My wife and I take my mother, who's 80, and my father, who's 87, out, and I'm going to listen to them say, do you know how old I am? I'm 87 years old. Can you believe that? Like, that's going to be dinner.

Was he in the Mafia as well?

No. Well, maybe, yeah. The Polish Mafia? The McCallowitz Mafia?

The Mookie Mukalowitz?

Yeah, yeah. Mookie Kalowitz. You know how Polish Mafia works when they threaten to kill someone? Thanks. Ron's, like, passing dirty words over to me.

Oh.

When a Polish Mafia member like my family is. And that's why I can make fun of the Polish. How they threaten to kill you is they pull a gun out and they point their head and say. They say, what are you laughing? Oh, Chris, you okay? Chris? Oh, my God. Our first death ever during an episode.

Oh, my God.

So are you okay? Wow. Okay, so let me finish the joke. While Chris dies, the Polish Mafia, they pull a gun out. And my father puts his own head and says, you better stop laughing because after I'm done with me, you're next. Okay, that's Polish Mafia. Well, guess who we have as a guest today? We have Dr. Sabrina Schleicher. She is the founder and operator and owner and runner and coach of Tap the Potential. She works with businesses, particularly in the rural areas of America, and helps them take Tap the Potential within her business. One of the most common challenges that rural businesses face is that they have employee problems, recruiting employees and so forth. Sabrina has figured out the key to growing businesses like that. We'll talk with her and her client Julie Werzer is coming on board. Julie is the founder of Patch Abilities. She found back in 2004. Guess what patch Abilities does?

Quilting.

Quilting. They specialize in small quilted wall hanging patterns. And they're designed for any beginner who has an itch to dive. Quilting. Like, I know, Chris, you're a big quilter. She's been at the International Quilt Market and other industry trade shows. And she's here today to give us kind of insights on quilting and business and, well, the business of quilting. With no further ado, Sabrina and Julie, welcome. Come on down.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you, guys.

How y' all doing?

What an introduction.

So Sabrina and Julie as. Did you guys hear the Polish joke?

Yes.

Yes.

Literally. He doesn't expect me to do the old gun to the head trick. He takes a sip of coffee while he does it and starts choking on it.

Dude, I inhaled my tea. And then. Well, I'm not gonna go any further. Cause it's disgusting.

And as is tradition. As is tradition. I totally did the introduction prematurely. I forgot one thing. I did promise we would do Julie and Sabrina. It's almost like tradition. Can I put you on hold for one second?

Absolutely.

I love it.

You gotta do.

We will edit this out. Don't worry.

Big Po and circumstance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All gets edited out.

Please hold.

Yeah, no one hears this. Hold on. And we're gonna put you on mute for one second.

I want to show. All right, hold on.

Okay, Are we good? Are they muted?

They're muted.

Okay. You notice for a few episodes now, we haven't done Word of the day. Yes, we haven't. We got game shows going on. You haven't heard them yet. Wait till you hear these, Ron. They're awesome. A new one today. We're not doing Word of the Day. We're doing Omit the word Day. You are not allowed to say the word specialized, Chris. So whenever the word specialized comes up, you're not allowed to use it. It's an easy one.

Specialized.

I'm sorry. You couldn't say that. You already screwed it up.

You lost already.

Verifying.

Okay, yeah. What's my word?

No, I was. I was going to say no because the word.

Any word. Play it on me, bro.

No, I was thinking for quilt, the word quilt, but that's it.

I can't use the word quilt. I love it.

I was going to say you could use it, but you have to say kilt.

Okay. I love it. All right, so I get the word switch. I have to Use kilt. And you cannot say specialized. All right, Bring our guest back.

I will not. Okay, hold on.

Okay, so we've edited it all out. Nothing's been heard. So Julie and Sabrina, are you back with us?

Yes.

Okay, so pretend you're really excited because they're going to hear up to the part like, hey, they're back. So just come on in. Excited. Okay. Oh, my God. Welcome back. So, Julie, just to get things started, tell us about kilt abilities, about patch. Patchabilities where you do kilting. I already messed it up. Yes.

Okay, so in a nutshell, patchabilities is I design small quilted wall hanging patterns. That's me. That's what I do. And then we publish. So I write those patterns, I make up the samples, I write those patterns. We publish them in house here, and then we sell those patterns wholesale to quilt shops all over the U.S. canada, and many countries in Europe, Australia, New Zealand. We're global. And then in addition to the quilt patterns, a number of years back, I had approached the two companies that I used their hangers to display my finished product on. And I also use buttons for embellishing. So I contacted those companies, asked them if we could. If I could buy at a distributor price break and then wholesale to all my wholesale clients, thereby making it one stop shopping for all of our clients. And they did. And so that. So those three. Those three areas are what patchabilities consists of today.

So you're a manufacturer effectively, and then you distribute it to a manufacturer and distributor and you're selling to all these different retail outlets?

Yes.

Do you sell direct also?

We do sell direct also. In June of 2013, I decided to jump into the retail market. And so we sell via our website.

When you have a business that both sells your product through retailers, they're making an income on it, and you also sell direct. Isn't there kind of inherent competition here? Doesn't that disappoint or upset your retail chain?

Yes. Yeah. And I struggled with that for a long time. You know, I started my business in 2004 with the help of, or guidance, I should say, of my mom. My mom has a quilt shop, a very large, successful quilt shop. So she. I definitely always have her feedback, her insight on what, you know, is or is not appropriate. And. But after a while, so I refused to sell retail. I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to offend any of my wholesale clients. But repeatedly, retail customers kept coming to me via email and phone calls and saying, you know, I live out in the Thules of Wyoming, let's just say, and there are no quilt shops.

Yeah, that hurt. That hurt. Sabrina's upset already.

There's no bookshops out there.

So I recognized, well, I knew that there were little voids, you know, all across the country that people were not able to get their hands on our product. So my thought was, you know, if there's not anybody to sell them their product, they can't get it. So why don't I fill that void? Nobody else is filling that void. So why don't we fill that void and then we just walk the fine line. We do. You know, we just try not. We try to send everybody to a local quilt shop if at all possible, but when that's not possible, we happily fill their needs.

But by filling that void, you want to avoid the void that you've opened up with your retailers, if that makes any sense. Meaning how can you say yes, that even makes sense?

My head is spinning.

But basically you're filling a void where your retailers can't service. That's perfect. But now by doing that, aren't you also competing with your retailers in their areas of their locations?

Hopefully not. And yes and no. Mike, all that I can offer retail customers is just simply the very basic product. The patterns, the buttons and the hangers. What I cannot offer all those retail customers is that one on one support, the walking into a quilt shop and smelling and feeling the fabric, which ironically.

Chris does a lot of smelling and feeling of quilts. He's known for that.

Yeah.

Of what? Smelling of what?

Of kilts. You do? I said it right. I said it right. You guys will get it later.

Sorry, Julie.

So, Julie, sorry for Chris. Interruptions. Keep going.

So, yeah, so I compete with them perhaps on the very basic product, but there's so much that goes beyond the product, especially with beginners. You know, it's, it's a, it's a hobby that has to be learned. There's a lot of things to learn. I can't provide, I can't provide fabric. So they need fabric to complete the project and I can't provide that. So I compete very. On a very small scale. And.

Yeah, no, it makes sense. There's a little overlap. Now, Sabrina, Dr. Schleicher. Sabrina Schleicher is a business psychologist. Because that's why the doctor part. Sabrina, just tell us what your working relationship is with Julie.

So Julie contacted me back in June of 2014, so about six or seven months ago, and she wanted some help with growing her business. She has done a tremendous job on her own being a one woman show for many, many years and has grown her business. It's unbelievable what she's done really. But she was to the point where she needed to hire people, she needed some team and she was ready to take her business to the next level. And that's when she reached out to me. And so I'm not going to say much more than that. I'll let Julie speak to whatever piece of that she would like to address.

I guess that's a throw over. So Julie, you just take with it. We're watching the tennis match from over here. You brought Dr. Schleicher on to help you bring on some folks. Tell us about your business. Then you. I didn't realize you were a one, one man band. What invoked this need to start scaling and adding people?

Well, it's funny you should ask that Mike, because I. Well, so I'm now 42 years old. I waited to get married and have a family up until I was 39 and I had been running my business like she says, a one man band here. And that was just fine because frankly I had all the time in the world to devote to my business. But then family came along and I put everything on autopilot. But as I did that, I was watching my sales each year start to drop down and I obviously didn't have the time to devote to growing and maintaining the business anymore. And I was doing a lot of research. I actually came across, she had done an interview with another podcast and what I was doing was I was seeking out information. I wasn't happy with my decline in sales and I was having trouble visualizing where patchabilities was going to go in say five years. And then what I did learn was 95% of all businesses, small businesses, fail in the first 10 years. And I said, Julie, you are not going to be in the 95th percentile. I'm going to be in the upper 5%. So what do I have to do to make that happen? And so I just started really, I just started searching the Internet for like entrepreneur resources and so learning what I didn't know, get to know what I didn't know. And then I ran across her and it just clicked. I sent in an application to her website almost immediately after hearing her interview. And then so here we are. Now that we're, I'm back on track to not only get my business back up to our all time highest in sales, but to take it further and get up in the upper fifth Percentile.

All right, so tell us what specifically have you done to get your business back on track and then tell us what that means too. Back on track.

Gotcha. So the one man band. I did everything. I was the pivotal role. And Sabrina has helped me. She not only helped me focus and bring in one full time employee in just a very, just a very. I don't know how to put just a very professional manner. I just feel like I've done it the right way. She's helped me set specific goal. Be very goal specific. We go over. I mean, I've listened to your. To your pumpkin plan book, which was fantastic.

Thank you. I know. I'm kidding everyone.

Yeah, no, he's not.

Like in your business. You're. You're hiring, you're bringing on an employee or do you have an employee now?

I have one employee. I have one full time employee and I've also hired on one person to do our social media and bookkeeping.

Okay.

So things off my plate.

So tell me about the one employee brought on. Does she or he, what does she or he do?

She goes out and she works on growing our Facebook traffic. She's helping to get us a strong presence on social media. So Facebook, Pinterest, we haven't done Twitter or Instagram or other things, but we're at a starting point here. So we've set goals that we need to increase our Facebook traffic by 500% this year.

And are you seeing a direct result? Can you measure because the Facebook traffic is increasing social media? Can you see you're selling more of your product?

We think so. We have a definite increase in retail sales. We're finding it very hard to. How do we track that? How do we track our Facebook and Pinterest? How do we.

Well, let me ask you, Sabrina, you're the growth strategist in here. You're helping Julie navigate this stuff. We. How do you figure out if this is working or not? It seems very difficult, if not impossible.

Well, the challenge that Julie has is because so much of her sales come in through the local quilt shops. So she's selling to these quilt shops and it's hard to know if Facebook traffic is driving people into those stores and causing them to order more of her products. So she really has to track retail and what is being sold to the quilt shop. What we are looking at is where are those sales increasing? What I always do with my clients is because we're business owners, a lot of us do so much by ourselves to begin with. We can't add a Lot more to our plate. So we want to start really simple. We pick one big advertising expense, for example, and look at. Okay, your expense. You're spending money over here. How do you know if this is resulting in any business for you, any sales coming in? So we start with one area where there's a lot of money going out and we start tracking that. Julie has a really interesting example of that with that magazine that you're in. Julie, do you want to speak to that?

Sure.

So.

I do a full page advertisement in Mary Jane's Farm magazine, which Chris.

Has a copy here.

Yeah, there's no quilting in the title of that magazine because it's not a quilting based magazine. It's totally geared towards the. Towards the gals out there who want to get back to their roots and, I don't know, mend fences and get very basic and surprisingly, we advertised in it once and we get a ton of phone calls and a ton of catalog requests every time you're advertising in.

A magazine that doesn't speak to the service product you provide. I don't get it.

Yeah, not the exact.

But apparently aspiring Kilters, I guess.

Yes, yes. So a lot of those people, one of their common hobby in the folks that are reading that magazine is that many of them are quilters or crafty or creative to some degree. And so we also, you know, we're geared towards the beginner quilter. So if you want to start quilting but don't know where or how we are, we're apparently tapping into that. And so it's working for us. And we are tracking, we have begun to track every one of those ads.

In your type business, you need to know those numbers intimately. Right. I mean, every penny makes a difference because you're a volume game. Okay, it does. So we have a little surprise for you if we could throw our game show on. We like to do a little break midway through and really test people's knowledge of prices. For example, and since you're 42, I'm 43, Ron's 41, Chris is 42, Sabrina's 29. What we want to do is throw some 80s questions to you, Julie and Sabrina, to see if you really know your prices.

Oh, we got them.

Okay. So welcome to Name that price in the 80s game show. We want to welcome both contestants, Julie and Sabrina to our show. And here's your first question. This one is to Julie. Julie, in 1980, a new house cost how much? In 1980, an average new house cost how much?

35,000.

Ooh sorry. 68,000. But we would have accepted anything up to 120,000. But we would not accept your answer. All right, Sabrina, next question goes to you. In the 1980s, what was the cost of a gallon of gas? National average, by the way. In 1980s.

In the 1980s. So anywhere in the 1980s.

Anywhere. I mean, there's an average range. There's an average range.

88 cents.

Oh, so close. But wrong. I'm sorry. 97 cents to $1.19. Okay, now, I don't know why this is on my list, but, Julie, this was meant for you. What did a. I don't even know what this means. What did a style silk blouse cost in the 1980s? I don't know what that means.

That's not your secret word, is it, Michael?

Ooh. No, it's not.

It's not a style silk blouse. I don't know. Not having ever worn a silk blouse myself.

Okay, well, we know from the magazines you read. Clearly.

Ron, any ideas?

Yeah, Ron's wearing one right now. For 15.99, I would say $23.

I'm gonna go with $79.

79. Whoa. Where do you go shopping, Joy? 15.99. All right, Sabrina, I know you had one of these. It was a Camaro coupe. And what in the 1980s, what did the average price for a Camaro coupe go for?

I was cruising in style.

Yeah.

Oh, goodness. I'm gonna go with $9,000.

Very close. $7,571, but we'll accept anything.

Mine had tea tox.

Oh, the option. The option. And only broke down once a week, as opposed to the average of once a day. Okay, and the last question is to Julie. The average income. The average income of a family or. I'm sorry, of an individual. An average income of an individual in the 1980s. As to anytime between 1980 and 1989, we'll accept any number in this range. What was the number? The average income nationwide? Us.

Oh, my goodness. And you guys are really a lot more on top of prices and costs.

Well, we do have research for this show. We do the research.

I'm going to say 35,000.

Too high. Too close. The correct answer is 25,000, but not too bad. We want to thank you for being on the show. That was Name that price from the 80s. And you didn't. Thank you. Okay, we're back to our interview.

You did ask them prices, but they would only be teenagers or younger than teenagers, so they really wouldn't understand the price of that's a good point. Houses and stuff like that.

Hit the game show again. This is Name those prices from the 90s episode. Here we go. Welcome everybody, our two guests. Okay, sorry.

You should have asked what was the price of a Madonna cassette. We would have both gotten that.

Let me hear it right now. What was the price of a Madonna cassette?

Eight bucks.

Wow. Did you listen to that, Julie? Were you like, listen to like a Virgin?

Ah, totally. I was a little Madonna wannabe.

All right, so here's the question.

We should have done Madonna trivia.

Okay, well, what's the best Madonna song ever?

Oh, that's a tough one.

Don't say express yourself.

La Isla Bonita.

Oh, really?

Killer, killer song. You got the little flamenco going on.

But the best Madonna ever, huh?

I don't know. That's how we're wrap up the show today. Do you have time to pull up some Madonna trivia for us, Ron? Yeah, I got it right on my iPad. Oh, you don't have your ipod with you? Okay, don't worry about it. We'll do best Madonna song at the rap here. All right, let's get back to business. Now that we have zero listeners. So what were we talking about, Chris?

Profit.

Profit. What is the profitability? What are the profit margins? Can you share some numbers, Julie? In your business, what's the margins? What's it all look like?

Okay, well, I'll give you margins on. We'll talk margins just on the patterns themselves. And I'll give you actual numbers versus percentages here. So roughly, at the very most it costs me, it cost us here probably under 50 cents apiece to produce one pattern. Now granted, that's not my design time figured in there because that would be next to impossible. But that's all cost of goods, everything in there. And we sell that for 450 wholesale.

So you said it was 50 cents and you sell it for $4.50 wholesale.

Yes.

What's the sell for retail?

$9.

Oh, the old hundred percent markup.

Right, but darn right.

Yeah, that seems common between the wholesale and the final retailer is 100% markup. So, Chris, so you know when you buy, you know, something at Walmart, like that T shirt you're wearing, say you spend $12 for that, right? Well, they, they bought probably for $6. Actually, Walmart probably bought for $4, but they probably bought for $6.

Interesting.

Now, traditionally, Julie, I hear that the manufacturer does 100%, so you get the 100 markup and the 100 markup. You're going from $0.50 to 450. That's a significant markup. How do you pull that off?

I just did from the very start.

So you want to call me bitch or something? The way you said that to me, you're like, mike, you idiot.

Okay, no, When I started it, when I came up with what the end retail price of the pattern should be at that time, like, average quilt pattern prices out on the market were at about $7 a piece.

Six.

$7 a piece. And so I just cut that in half and said that's what my wholesale price is going to be. That's what I did.

Are you looking at 50 cents? Are you trying to find ways to get down to 45 cents? 40 cents, or is the number good and you're looking maybe to get. Instead of selling for $4.50 for $5, or are you just fine, keep things status quo and say nothing?

Actually, when I started the business in 2004, my actual cost per pattern was roughly at about 46 cents apiece. Today, my cost is like less than 25 cents. My actual physical cost today is about less than 25 cents apiece. I know. Little fib in there. But in the re. What I've done to bring that down was actually to publish in house. So I have a ginormous digital color printer that you would see in any copy store. Right, but we have that in house. And so my rates are, you know.

Yeah, but there's a big capital investment to buy that piece of equipment. Right?

We lease it. I would never buy it, but we lease it. But, yeah, yeah, that's. I mean, that's a big expense. But that's taken into account, too. And I'm not dependent. I'm not dependent on driving after my. After my stuff and having to buy in certain quantities. We can print just one of something here, or we can print a thousand of something here.

You know what that's called, Chris? Print on demand pod. And that's the new trend. Seriously. Because manufacturing, if. If Julie, if you were outsourcing, I assume you had to buy quantity. Fifty units. A thousand units. But when you bring this stuff in house, you can do it when you need to do it. And there's huge cash flow savings there because you just. The cost of one.

Yep.

Sabrina, how. Julie, if I recall correctly, is in St. Lucas, Iowa, and she's a favorite Mexican restaurant on the corner of the street. Sabrina, how do you find a great employee in St. Lucas, Iowa, or Riverton, Wyoming, or anywhere that's more rural than New York, where we are?

Well, here is the challenge. And it's a challenge no matter where you are in the country to hire a great employee. You got to think about a players, those, those resourceful people who go the extra mile for you. They're really good problem solvers who can think independently. That's about 10% of our population at the most. So when you're in a rural area and especially a rural low population area, finding those a players is challenging. But the another thing that you want to consider in your business is your culture and what your business does and who your ideal customers are. So you want to hire employees who are a players who fit the culture of your business and who get why you do what you do for your ideal customers and are a good fit to work with your ideal customers.

Hey, Sabrina, it's Ron. A question for you. How do you go about evaluating those individuals out there?

Well, that's a complex process, but let me give you a couple of simple things to think about. When you're looking at resumes coming in, you have to assume that a lot of them are fluff. And so talking with people and asking them specific questions that get at their values and going through their history with them. And this is something that I learned from Mike a couple years ago. You want to do what's called pattern interviewing, where you ask them about, say, their relationship that they had, like who was their favorite teacher in high school and why? What teacher did they have the most trouble with in high school and why? And then you come on up through the years, it disarms people. They're much more likely to be honest with you and they'll tell you about Mr. Smith in high school, who drove them crazy and why Mr. Smith was such a bad person. Well, while you're listening to that, you need to be thinking through, well, did this person, did this applicant that I'm talking to, did he ever accept any responsibility for the situation that he had with Mr. Smith in high school, and did he learn anything from that situation? Has he continued to have other people in authority over him through the years who drove him nuts like Mr. Smith did? If he did, that's probably a candidate that you want to weed out. The other thing that I like to do with my clients is help them figure out what are the core values or immutable laws in their business. So like Julie, she and I were just having this discussion the other day. She has a very strong value around giving in her business. And so she's getting ready to hire someone who's going to help with her graphic Design and we talked about some ways that she may want to screen that person to see what their values are around giving to make sure that they're a good fit with the culture of her business.

What about the big businesses in the area? There's the big players. They can offer all the benefits and stuff and it's a very small employee base and these big businesses are in this rural area. They're trying to get your folks. How do you pull them away from the, the big companies?

Well, certainly in Wyoming, it's the oil field, because the oil field can pay top wages. And small business owners have a very hard time competing with that. So one of the things that I tell my clients, because we're always focusing on profit, you want to hire A players as much as possible and you want to pay those A players top wages in the 90th percentile of wages for that particular position so that you can compete. But that means you want to let go and weave out your C and D players. Because an A player can do the work of 9 to 12 C or D players.

But you got to pay them more, right?

You pay them more. But you don't need as many people when you have A players because A players are resourceful and they're hard workers. So when you can pay top wages to your A players and accompany that with some intangible perks. So for example, what a lot of small business owners don't play up enough, are there intangible perks in their business? Somebody who's an A player can come into a small business and rise through the ranks of that small business very, very quickly. If you go into the corporate world, it can take you 10, 15 years to rise through the ranks. So that's one of the intangible perks. Another intangible perk that a lot of small business owners have is flexibility that they will work with their employees. If their employees want to be able to take off Wednesday afternoons to go to a son or daughter's basement game. Maybe if there's, as long as there's coverage, maybe they can accommodate that time to time. Maybe not every single time, but there's more flexibility built into small businesses.

Julie, looking back at your business, last question for you. Besides the Madonna question that's coming, looking back at your business, what's the best thing you did, the smartest move you did that drove profitability, that drove the numbers?

I'm actually going to say two things. One thing was diversifying my business and becoming the distributor for the add on products because that Served my best clients really well. They no longer had to make multiple phone calls and pay multiple shipping amounts to different companies to get all the goodies that accompanied my product. And then number two, you know, we're still early yet in, we're still pretty new yet in bringing the full time gal on board, but I have no doubt that bringing her on board and bringing the part time girl in social media on board. So taking me out of the pivotal role is we're definitely going to be bright. I can focus more on what I'm good at and what I want to do versus, you know, working on the business.

Gotcha. Rapid fire series of questions now. Best book you've ever read. Best book that you've ever read that I wrote.

Nice one, dude.

You like that? Okay, no, here's the, here's the rapid fire question. Best Madonna song and everyone gets a shot at this. Julie, you're up first.

Best Madonna song.

Yeah. For you.

I still like la isla bonita.

Okay, so there's one. Sabrina, best Madonna song, like a prayer. Chris.

Oh, God. What's that one?

Is it this one? No, that is like a prayer.

By the way, I like the beat for dress you up live.

The beat. The beat for dress you up live.

Yeah.

Oh, I got to hear that one. I don't know it.

Oh, you don't know that one?

No, I, you know, mine might be like a version I think is the best ever. Okay, Ron, your choice.

Wasn't allowed to listen to Madonna.

Two word run. No. Now we know the cause of all the problems. Really? You weren't. Why? Well, he grew. He's got a brother. It's all men, you know, and you're like, dude, what are you doing? Madonna? Well, I grew up listening to the bee Gees because my sister and this stuff.

Actually I was a Whitney Houston fan.

Oh, she was awesome. She was awesome. All right, Julie and Sabrina, it's been a real pleasure having you. Julie, where can people find out more stuff about you?

They can find me at our website, which is www.patchabilities.com. or they can really get a good glimpse into my little world on our blog, which is I think. Is it Pat WordPress?

Yes, it is. I think I know it better than you do. All right. And Sabrina, this is your theme music now.

Thank you. I love that music on the outro.

Where can people find out more about you? I heard you got a special goodie too. What is it?

Yeah, I have a video training series, the five secrets to exceptional employee performance. It's a Free video training on the homepage at www.tapthepotential.com.t A P T H E P O T E N t.

I a l.com it'll be in the show notes, guys. Julie. When I say guys, that's New Jersey talk for Julie and Sabrina. One thing we did a brand new game that you didn't know was coming. We did what's called word swap. There was one word that I had to swap out in exchange for another word. Julie, I think you caught it early on. What was it?

What was it? The silk blouse?

No, no. Did you catch it, Sabrina? I had to swap out a word.

He had to pronounce a word.

Quilt and kilt.

Yes.

Yes. The whole show. I was required not to say quilting. Yeah. Julie's like, this guy is the biggest asshole ever. He thinks I make kilts. I know. Oh, God, it's going crazy here.

I was figured you were a bad speller.

You're like, God, why is the guy keeper referencing kilts? And why does Chris sniff and scratch kilts? It was weird. Sabrina, Julie, real pleasure having you. We hope to have you back again. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you, guys.

We'll see y' all later, guys.

See you.

How badly they hate us, right?

They loved it. Ron's playing with the Pac Man.

The Pac man sound effect. Very nice. Another 80s reference.

Yes.

Yeah.

What's your favorite Pac man board or Ms. Pac man board?

Yeah, I don't even remember the boy. You know when they did these changes? When they'd run up and kiss each other. Yeah, when you. I like that. That was my favorite scene, Mr. Pacman. They were kind of like roaming around and then they bump into each other and kiss.

Yeah.

I'm like, one day I'll have a girlfriend and it'll be Ms. Pac Man. All right, lessons learned. You're up first, brother.

Lessons learned. But before that, sponsors. Yes.

Right.

T sheets.

T sheets.

Tell me about T sheets.

T sheets does time tracking software. Right now, you just spent about 40 minutes listening to this episode. Did you track the time you could have if you were using T sheets? And more importantly, for client tracking, for tax purposes, for project tracking, part time, full time T sheets of the system. Second sponsor, nextiva. Nextiva. Nextiva is voiceover IP phone systems. Ron knows that we use it all the time in our office, right?

Absolutely. It's wonderful.

It's wonderful.

You rock nextiva, don't you?

Yep. All the time. Our support is second to none that I rarely use it because we don't have problems but when I do call them, they're wonderful.

Phenomenal. We needed international calling because we do a lot of international business. Ron's like, we need international calling. Pick up the phone. Can't do it. Literally within 10 seconds of calling them, they said, oh, we've activated, it's taken care of. And by the way, we'll pay for it because we're sorry, we didn't realize you needed it. And they covered it for a month for us for free. Is that freaking. You can't get that support? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Fundera. Fundera. It's one stop financing. Ron actually just met with the folks up in Rhode island for Fundera I did.

And you know what I learned? They have funding options available for all size based businesses from individuals that need maybe only 5,000, all the way up to the major players where they're looking for a large capital investment of 5, $50,000 or more.

Yeah, one stop shop for the funding needs you have. That's awesome, dude. What'd you learn today, Chris?

Oh, this was a good session. I, well, one thing Julie just said she was hoping to, you know, bring, bring these employees on to, to free her up to do more business building things. I think that's a big part of any business is making sure that the owner or the principal has time to work on the business, not just in the business. And the other thing was I learned, you know, she's kind of ramping up the social media to drive sales and stuff. But you know, that's not so easy to track. No, but it, it dawned on me, it's almost like a billboard. Like if you, if you paid for a billboard, like, and I think I've mentioned this before, if someone drives down the road, they're not going to stop the car and dial the number off the billboard, but maybe they're gonna open the yellow pages later or see a website later and it's gonna be the second touch. So the billboard was the first, now second, and now they pick up the phone. So the billboard plays a part, but how can you quantify what part it played?

Yeah, she's very strategic. She stays in her vertical. Stays in her vertical. She's in a magazine that you wouldn't think your Quilters or as I was saying, Kilters will be focused on. But she knows if she constantly drives in that arena, she's increasing sales. Ron, I saw you taking notes, man. Anything you want to share, brother?

Yeah, I just learned a lot about the industry in general. I didn't realize that it was such A big field out there as well. The fact that she's growing the business, always working on her margins, trying new, innovative ideas to get new customers and diversify her offerings. Wonderful.

Yeah, I like that. She's found the balance where you can sell to markets where there's a void of suppliers and she can get suppliers. I think that's an important lesson for all of us. If you're distributing through a network of retailers and there's no one in an area where there's demand, that's a negative consequence associated with that because people can't get your stuff. It sounds like she found the void to fill in there.

Wow. So much good info. Thank you. Mike Michalowicz.

Thank you. Chris Kern.

Thanks, Ron.

Welcome.

All right, man. Let's call it a day.

Let's do it. So just a reminder, I'm Chris Curran, founder of Fractal Recording. And if you're a business and you want to host your own podcast show, I can do the whole back end, the whole technical part of it and make it easy for you.

Chris will give it to you right in the back end. He'll give it to the front end. However you want it, packages it. And don't forget to visit Profit First Professionals. Profit First Professionals is an organization that Ron and I started up around this whole Profit first concept. It was funny. We found accountants and bookkeepers. We're generally just doing accounting, bookkeeping and coaches were doing coaching like Sabrina, but they weren't driving profit. So we said, let's build an organization around it. We now have 70, 80 plus members and growing quickly, but we're working with those people and we're global. So join Profit First Professionals. Check it out. Profit first professionals dot com.

Brilliant. And check out all our past episodes. We've interviewed so many cool guests and Ron has been on the show a bunch of times too. So that's phenomenal.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. That has been phenomenal.

Thanks, guys.

Yeah. If you're, if you're loving this, please send us some challenges to do some stuff to include in the show and if you questions you want us to get answered, send us the questions.

There you go. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you next time.

Woo.

Sam.