Episode 17: Profitable Tax Deductions with John Thomas

Lips, teeth, lips, lips. Where's it go? How's it go?

The lips, the teeth, the tip of.

The tongue, the lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. Lips, teeth of the tip of the tongue. Lips and teeth, the tip of the tongue.

From the studios of Fractal Recording, this is the Profit first podcast, episode 17.

Yeah, I tried to play Winger 17 over the music, and it was just a disaster. You can't. You can't have both going.

That's how we start shows here.

She's only 17.

Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. Yes, we're a very professional show. We are very upstanding and.

And for our lack of professionalism. Seven thousand downloads. Dude.

Dude.

And that's not counting the. The. The JPEG. That's literally legit. 7,000 plus downloads. Right?

So I'm Chris Curran, the founder of Fractal Recording.

I'm Mike Michalowicz, the. The author of Profit First. And on this show, we talk about the alpha and omega of all businesses, which is profitability and all the ways to get there. Let's actually expand a little bit beyond that. We're talking about all different business topics, but the essence is always this. How do you become profitable doing it?

That's right. And we're available as a podcast on itunes and Stitcher. Those are the two big podcast directories. And our website is profitfirstpodcast.com all kinds of previous episodes, all kinds of information about our sponsors, about Mike's personal life and secrets. Yeah, pictures of funny pictures of Mike. There's funny pictures of you on your site.

There's funny pictures of me on my site. There's now funny pictures in the office on the wall. Yeah, we basically have the wall of shame at our office. Christina, who's our special guest in studio third week in a row.

I just love you guys.

So Christina has just brought in pictures, Actually brought them in today. I haven't even looked at him yet, but we have pictures that. That if you work at our office, you have to bring in embarrassing photos of yourself back in history, back in time, and people are starting to bring them in, and it's becoming a funny wall.

That's cool.

Yeah. Do you know what we're talking about today?

I actually do know.

What?

Well, tax deductions.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, and more. But no.

But, yeah, no, today we're talking about tax deductions. You know, you gotta pay taxes legally. You have legal requirements, but you have the legal ability to reduce your taxes, reduce the Tax consequences, and you should take advantage of it. Fact is, most people don't know. So we're gonna bring in John Thomas. He prefers to go by J.T. he's the CEO of Deductor in a little bit to talk about that. But before we do that, I know he's listening right now. Kris, could you put him on mute, please, so he can't hear us? Yeah, yeah, hold on. You know the whole routine and we still are ineffective at this.

So we got it. He can't hear us now.

Okay, we're doing word of the day today. You. Did you pick a word for me?

I'm going to pick it right now.

Okay. Is that the word? I'm going to pick it right now.

Oh, yes.

Yes. I'm going to pick it right now.

I'm going to pick it right now.

I'm going to pick it right now.

And now, for those of you who don't know, Mike has to use that phrase in the conversation of this interview in a very awkward way. In conversation.

Yeah, I'm going to try to go for an awkward pause with him. I'll let him say something. I'm going to pick it right now. And into science. You know what I'm saying? Let's see if we can get him stumped on that. All right, let's bring him back.

All right.

All right. And we're gonna introduce John in about two seconds. But we do have to make amends to Canada. I think I offended the entire nation last week. The comments have streamed in from Mike, you're a genius. To which was not Canadian saying that, by the way, to you were the biggest jerk on. On the planet. So when we introduce JT officially, we're gonna introduce him via our vocalist here to the ode of O Canada.

Yes.

Okay. So get ready. Get the fingered on the. But let me say his name. His name is John Thomas. He prefers to go by jt. He's the CEO of Deductor. He has spent his career in small growth stage technology. Small growth, I guess small growth stage technology companies. God, I didn't read that properly. That copy.

The teeth, the tongue, the tip. The tip. What is it?

The tip of the tong. He's a tech guy, right? He builds tech businesses and deductors a tech company. And when he's not doing his business routine, he's an athlete. He likes running, hiking, cycling, and hanging out with people from Canada. So with that, with no further ado, Jon, we're going to introduce you with our favorite song here. Just hold tight. Here comes the song.

Oh, my intro. O Canada, we'd like to welcome you, John Thomas or J.T. the CEO of Deductor.

Welcome, J.T. to the Ode Vocanada. How are you?

Never better.

Yeah.

Standing up during that.

Yeah, of course.

Remove your hat, please.

So where are you calling us from?

I'm in the great state of Utah. It's kind of, you know, it's close to Canada.

Are you originally from out that way?

I'm originally from Texas, as you're going to tell you know, as soon as we get into this a little bit. But I've been in Utah for over 30 years, so. Second home.

Is that the headquarters of deductors in Utah? It has to be.

It is. Yeah, it is.

Tell us a little bit about Deductor. What does your company do?

Our company helps small and independent business owners maximize their deductions. And that, you know, eliminates tax time stress, and the end result is really putting tax dollars back in their pockets. That's what we do.

So we have tons of listeners, at least 7,000 that we've counted so far, that own small businesses and want to take advantage of all the available ways to reduce their taxes. What's the basic premise of deductions and how do you go about getting deductions?

Okay, well, it all starts really with tracking because there are a number of things that every small business owner needs to track. And if you're not in the habit of tracking, then either you're missing out or you're guessing, which really means you're missing out as well. So if you're not tracking, you're missing out. And so Deductor is designed to simplify the tracking process and let small business owners, you know, take advantage of the deductions available to them. And whether they're in the US or they're in Canada, it doesn't matter to us. In fact, you know, some of the. Some of the guidelines and the procedures are the same. And with a tool like Deductor Works in the US And Canada, we support both tax codes, but that's really where it starts. You've got to track to maximize the deductions, and that gets you quicker to profitability.

I want our Canadian listeners to know that to make amends. That's why we brought you on this episode to show that we actually support Canada. What are the common things that any business can deduct from their taxes?

Okay, so three general categories. First, it starts with expenses, and we'll drill down a little bit on that. Second category is mileage and mileage is huge. And then the third thing we'll talk about briefly, not necessarily in the aspect of deductions, but every small business owner really needs to track their time. So going back to expenses, you know, you have office, you have business expenses. You know, if you're running your business out of your home, then many small business owners wonder, can I take the home business deduction? And maybe you've heard that, oh, I don't want to do that because I had a friend that was once audited and, you know, he blames it on taking the home business deduction. Okay, that's a fallacy. And anybody running a small business at their home really needs to take that home office deduction. This year, the IRS has simplified that. You can kind of go right off a rate schedule, or you can do it the old fashioned way, more of an itemized way. But start by looking where do you operate your business? Second, some of your typical business expenses. You've got travel, you've got meals and entertainment, you've got office expenses. And people, they're on their cell phones, they have Internet access. All these things can be a valid business deduction. But you got to, you got to track it, you got to be able.

To back it up. Let's go to the home office. We have a lot of home office businesses listening in. And you said there's a rate schedule. Like, how do I deduct my home office? I pay a mortgage. Do I deduct a whole mortgage? Like, I don't understand this.

Okay, the first thing, the qualification is that that area of your home is used regularly, exclusively for business. So you can't deduct a 10 by 10 foot area of your, your family room. Okay. Because occasionally you sit in the, the Archie Bunker chair. Okay.

How did you know?

I knew it. I knew it.

How do you know? My wife is eating.

So that's not going to qualify. It's got to be, you know, an office that you use for business. If you're, maybe there's an area of your garage that you store inventory or product or something like that and that's dedicated for business, then those areas are going to qualify. So that's the first thing. Do you qualify?

And just to qualify, does it mean 100% of the use is for that purpose or that the majority of that use of that space is for that purpose?

It has to be used regularly and exclusively.

Okay.

Okay. So it can't be that you, you know, in your garage. Well, you know, you've got a boat parked in the garage and Sometimes you sit in the captain's chair, the boat, and, you know, work. Yeah, that's not going to do it.

Oh, that would be cool, though. That would be cool. That would be really cool.

I know a guy who bought a camper.

Oh, and worked out of a camper?

No, he just, he wanted to have meetings out of it because he wanted to write it off. I don't know if he ever.

Would that work, J.T.

Probably not. Unless, you know, selling campers was your business.

No, I got you.

See, even the boats would work if that was your business.

Okay, I got you. Okay, so we're totally throwing you.

Once you qualify.

Yep.

Then what's going to happen is you're going to take the square footage of your home that you use for business and you're going to calculate, it's very simple. Calculate the percentage of your home that that represents. Let's say it represents 10% of your home. Then what you're going to do is look at your expenses. Your home insurance, your utilities, everything related to your home. And then you're going to take 10% of those as eligible business deductions.

But what about the mortgage payment? The use of the space beyond the.

Not the, yeah, yeah. Not the actual mortgage pay payment.

Okay.

But home insurance and anything of the like. Again, utilities, property, you know, property tax, all that kind of stuff.

Okay, I got you. Now, you also said there's a rate schedule. What's that?

Yeah, so. So this year the IRS came out with kind of a. It's almost like going standard versus itemized, you know, your deductions. And so there's a. I think the, the categories are like, you can very easily deduct $500 or $1,000 or $1,500 simply by just kind of checking a few boxes and not going through the whole calculation of what's my square footage and what's the percentage of my home that it uses. And then my utilities are $373 a year, so that's $37 and all that gyration, just kind of do a standard form. And that's a great thing that just came out. But what I would advise our listeners here is, you know, don't just default to this kind of standard deduction because you may be eligible for much more. So spend a few minutes and go through the process to see if you qualify because again, you might be able to deduct hundreds of dollars rather than just, you know, a few hundred dollars by taking the standard approach.

Now, our one brand new thing, our one Remaining Canadian listener that we have, I want to address their concern. And it's probably an expat from Utah.

He's family.

He's family. He's family. Does this apply also in Canada or other countries that you know of besides.

The US I'm not familiar with that, unfortunately.

Okay.

Wish I was, but. Yeah. Don't know.

Yeah, it's Canada, after all. Oh, gosh. I know. I got this whole issue. Okay. I understand that. Now, you also mentioned travel, meals and entertainment. I'm really curious about meals and entertainment. How do you take that as a deduction from your taxes?

Okay, so if I take a client or a prospect or a business associate out to lunch, then typically I can deduct 50% of that expense.

Okay.

And I need to document it. I. I need to, you know, capture the expense, you know, through my credit card receipts or through a paper receipt, you know, and document who it was and the business purpose. There is a. It can get a little tricky. The most common thing is. Yes. Going to a restaurant. Right. And Mark, you know, Mike, taking you guys to lunch, and I.

Was that an offer?

That's a 50% deduction. It is.

Oh, okay. We're ready.

Now, let's say that I am involved in some kind of direct sales or network marketing opportunity where sometimes I invite people into my home and I explain my business opportunity to them. The reality is that's treated a little bit differently. Okay. I could run down to Costco or something and buy a veggie tray and bring it in my home. And now the food that I'm offering as a refreshment is a marketing and promotion expense, which is different than me taking you to a restaurant and buying you lunch.

Okay.

So there are tools out there like deductor, but you just need to categorize those. So when you go into some of these tools and you say, hey, I'm going to take a deduction for a meal, then what you need to clarify is, did I go to a restaurant? Did I have someone into my home? Did I bring, you know, did I order Jimmy John's and have it brought into my office? Because all those things may be slightly different in the amount of deductions you're able to take.

So we have a home office. There's four of us working the home office. We like to have a summer barbecue, fire up some hamburgers for the employees. Is that. That's an expense, right?

That is. That is an expense.

Okay. And that means that's 100% deductible. Is that effectively the Right. Relation or. That's totally different.

It's a little bit different. It's going to depend on your. The structure of your business. You know, again, are you sole proprietor? Are you an llc?

Okay.

Are you a sub S or you're sub C?

But the important thing is I can go to an accountant to get the details, and I should be tracking that purchase for that.

Absolutely.

Okay.

That's the most important part. Yes.

Now, you also mentioned time is deductible. How does that work?

Well, let me clarify. So I said every small business owner wants to track their expenses, their mileage, and their time, not because time is deductible. And let me. Let's jump to that third category. The reason. One of the reasons that small business owners should track their time isn't just about time management and productivity. It's about validating you as a small business owner. Because here's the sad reality. Small business owners are three times more likely to be audited than a W2 employee.

Small business owners.

Three times.

Three times more likely.

More likely to be audited. So, okay, I mean, that's scary.

I know. I kind of wet myself just now. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm about to be audited. But, well, let me look at from another perspective. How often does that happen? There's 28 million small businesses in the U.S. how many are being audited every year? Just to put in perspective, if you know that. I don't know. If you know that.

I don't. Yeah, I don't know that.

Okay. Okay.

But so what happens in the case of an audit is the auditor. What's coming in. The first agenda that they have is to throw out to disqualify all these business deductions and say, you know what? You know, Mike, this. This is a hobby. You know, this radio show, this podcast, all this stuff.

You.

I've listened to you guys. All you do is joke around and clown around and have fun and make fun of Canadians. Okay?

It's a crappy show. And if he's Canadian, I'm screwed.

Yeah, exactly. So he's like, this is a hobby. Yeah, you guys just do this in your spare time when you're not outdoor, you know? And so tracking one's time is one of the best ways to validate the business. And this is truly a business, and I truly am eligible for these business deductions. This is not a hobby, okay? Look at my appointments. Look at how I've associated my expenses and my mileage to my time. Okay? Imagine if an auditor Comes in, and I can. I have on my calendar, okay, Profit first podcast with Mike, and it's there on my calendar. And I say it's an hour on my time. And let's say that I drove to your home office, to your studio, and I brought in lunch. So I've got mileage and I got an expense, and I have time, and I've associated all those together. An order looks at that, and he goes, you know what? Next case.

Right? Done. Stick a fork in you. Yeah, I'm gonna pick it right now.

Does that make sense?

Oh, yeah. Okay, now, hey, I want to take a little break for a second. It does make sense, but I want to take a little break right now to introduce you to a little game show we have, and it's called this Is that deduction legal? Starring J.T. john Thomas, the CEO of Deductor. John, what we do on this game show is we're gonna ask you about different deductions, and we want to know from you if they're legal or not, or you just complete the deduction as we set it up for you. Does that kind of make sense? Did that make sense?

Wow.

Okay.

Absolutely not. Let's go.

I'll ask you the first question, John. There was an ostrich farmer in Louisiana, St. Tammany Parish, and they depreciated their ostrich, which was allowed as long as the bird was used. For what purpose? That's the question.

As long as the bird was used to. To sell the eggs.

Bingo. Bingo. Holy cow.

I was gonna say. Yeah. Gave rides to the local kids.

Yeah. No, to use the bird to create products such as eggs or breeding purposes. John. J.T. j.T. One for one. Okay, here we go. Next.

Can we stop on my head?

Yeah, we're done. 100%. Now we gotta kill some more time. You're up, Christina.

Okay, this one's a little more morbid. In what state can a corpse in a mortuary get their makeup applied without being taxed, rather than a living person going into a beauty salon and getting their makeup applied that is taxable?

North Dakota.

Ohio is the correct.

We would say Ohio or Canada. All right, Chris, you're up. Last question.

All right, I have a swimming pool. In which of these circumstances would my swimming pool be deductible? I have business meetings around the pool. I dug the hole myself and installed the pool myself. I have been diagnosed with arthritis, and I've been allowed by my doctor to swim in my pool to rehab it. My uncle works for the irs. I have Cub Scout Pool parties for my kids or the water is fed from a nearby river. Which one of those is the difference?

There's like 600 options. What's your guess?

I think it's your uncle works for the irs.

That's funniest answer.

No.

What do you think is the real answer?

So there's two possibilities there. One, you know, you mentioned that you have arthritis and so it has therapeutic purposes. Now, is that a true deduction? It really comes more into, you know, catheteria plans and HSAs and all that kind of thing. So if it's a medical expense, you know, ordered or prescribed by a doctor, then there can be some eligible deductions for that.

You nailed it. Oh, my God. You are the winner of Is this deductible? Jt, the CEO of Deductor. Two for three. Wow. And your, your prize is you're allowed to deduct your time from this show, from your life. Like, basically you can say this would never happen or something.

Can I get that in writing?

Of course. Track it, drag it. Yeah, we have a great tool called the Doctor that will drag it for you. All right, so actually, and that brings us to the tool. So we want to learn a little bit about Deductor, the software that your company has developed that does this tracking. What exactly does your software do?

So it's a web based and a mobile based app that again, allows folks to track their expenses, their mileage and time. And we talked about expenses a little bit, but, you know, it's tedious, it's cumbersome, and most people don't like to do it. They may start, you know, here we are in February. We may have some people listening in. That said, you know, okay, this year I'm really going to track. And here it is February 6th, and you know, they already quit like 30 days ago. So Deductor makes it easy, simplify the process. One of the ways we do that is we allow the user to connect Deductor to their bank account, their credit card, their debit card, and thus we'll pull in the transactions automatically. So when I come out and take you guys to lunch and I hand the server my credit card, doesn't matter what credit card it is. We Link to like 45,000 financial institutions in North America, including Canada. So important question, twice my card, then deduction is going to automatically import in that transaction. And then later on that evening, the next day, Saturday morning, once a month, whenever I want, I log into the ducks or I can do it on my phone. I can go to the computer. And I see that expense, I see the restaurant, and I see the charge, and I go, oh, yeah, that's when I took the profit verse team out to lunch. And I'm going to drop that in the right category. Meals, entertainment. And I can put in the notes that I was with you three. And then I've now captured that deduction. And it's easy because I've already got the date, the merchant, the amount. All that stuff came from the credit card company. So that's one of the ways that deductor makes it easy. We will pull in those transactions, and rather than putting our users into data entry mode, we're just going to put them into click and confirm mode.

Okay, now I got a question. I got a question for you because you've dropped. You've dropped that idea of taking us out to lunch a few times. He's hungry. First question is. You said, by the way. Well, that's one of my questions. My first question is, you said three of us, but we want to bring our families and our children. If you're buying, is that deductible? All right, second question.

Trying to maximize my deduction.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're taking care of you. Look at that. The second question is, do we get to pick the restaurant?

Yes, absolutely.

All right, I'm gonna pick it right now.

As long as it's barbecue.

Oh, I don't know if New Jersey is really known for its barbecue. I guess we'd have to do it on New Jersey.

It really isn't.

No. But we are known for. We are known for our Taylor ham, egg and cheese killer. Have you ever had a Taylor ham, egg and cheese, jt?

I don't think so.

Yeah. Hey, what if we had a.

What if we had a barbecue in your backyard, Mike and. And J.T. bought the meat. The meat and ingredients.

Yeah. Would that be deductible for us, you, everyone?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Really?

You. You could deduct it because it's your expense. We could deduct it, but that'd be called fraud.

Yes.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm starting to understand this. Jt if people want to learn more about you, where do they go in your company? Are you personally. Yeah.

Deductor.com. now, guys, it's a little bit strange name. I got to spell it out. It's D E D U C T R dot com. Now, if enough of your listeners will go to the site and check us out and maybe even subscribe, then by the time we do this again, I might be Able to afford a vow for that last syllable.

Well, you know what? One other thing you can deduct is a sponsorship. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Yeah, I heard you.

Marketing expense.

Yeah, marketing expense. Yeah, it's cheaper than lunch. Well, not for long, J.T. also, if you want to learn more about deductor also, check me out on Twitter. It's deductor spelled the same way at Twitter. They also have a Facebook account. J2JT. Or J2. That's your twin brother's name. JT. An absolute honor having you on the show. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you guys for having me. A lot of fun and love talking about this and hope everybody out there, you know, I know about your show. Passionate about a business. Take advantage of all the deductions and get the profitability as soon as you can. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Thanks, J.T.

Great job, man.

Oh, my gosh, man, I. You know, that was interesting.

Scary. Some of it.

It's scary. You know, for me, initially felt overwhelming because he says, like, you gotta track all this and you gotta track that. I'm like, oh, my God, I barely can track. Like, supposedly I supposed to bring home, like, stuff for my wife, and tonight we're gonna make dinner at home, and I don't even know what's going on. Like, I can't figure that out. To track all this stuff, it feels overwhelming. Yeah. And I'm not trying to plug the doctor. If they were sponsored, plug the hell out of them. But it's a tool, Right? And there's these tools out there to do it, and it does mitigate the effort you got to make. Right.

And the risk.

All right, let me look at our script here. Oh, my God. We gotta talk about sponsors.

Yes, we have great sponsors.

Yeah. Do you sing a little more? Christina.

Christina, come on. We've got. How many emails have we gotten saying we want Christina to sing more?

It's funny. Maybe over 500.

Seriously?

Yeah. So sing the sponsors. I'm not gonna say who they are, just saying.

Okay, so we have Thundera and who's our.

Oh, but no, you're the. Sing the connection to Fundera and, you know, sing it all through it.

Sing all three at once. Okay. Ooh, Funder, Auntie sheets.

That's beautiful, man. Isn't that beautiful? No, no, don't downplay yourself. There's a tip for you. If someone says, you did a nice job, and then you say, oh, that really wasn't that good, you're actually insulting the person that complimented You. Someone told me so take compliments. I'm telling you. Yeah, now you're insulting me even more now. I'm just saying you're a badass singer. You gotta own it. When someone says thank you, you just say, I appreciate that or you're welcome. Not, oh, I could have done better. You nailed it.

Thank you.

Okay. You're welcome.

Yeah. And now you probably people are gonna hear your rendition of O Canada and you might get called up to sing at a sports event in Canada.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

Right? And you could plug, then you could plug our show.

Canadians. Be the bigger man here. Okay. Be the bigger man and step up and say, okay, Mike's a J. But we're not going to get mad at Mike anymore. Instead we're going to bring Christina up to Canada sing. Oh, Canada, Right. As the Maple Leafs or something beat the, the.

The Devils.

She's a Devil's fan.

I'm a huge devil fan.

Oh, yeah. But all the good hockey players are from Canada.

That's true.

Most of them.

Most of them, yeah, absolutely.

And Utah, ironically. So our sponsors next. You just sang them. Nextiva is a voiceover IP phone system. Fundera is a one shot funding for small business. And T sheets is a time tracking system, perhaps the perfect complement to our friend at JT at deductor.

Right.

What did you learn from today's show, Chris?

Well, I thought it was, you know, he talked a lot about tracking and that to me, that was a big eye opener. Again, it's a simple concept, but I, I didn't have the guts to ask him, like if I don't track, I mean, I guess I do track some things. Like your bank account tracks things for you. But I don't really track anything. I don't really save receipts. But I'm not a, you know, I'm not above seven figures or anything. So. Yeah, I mean, I know that doesn't mean I won't get audited, but.

No, there's a real consequence. What I'm hearing is there's a real consequence when the audit happens. Right. You can deduct whatever you want. If you don't get audited, you're fine. But when you come audited, when you get audited, you need to have the records and if you don't have the records, they're gonna slam you. That's what he's saying. It's a protection. That's what I heard. It's a protection mechanism.

Definitely.

The one thing I loved was, you know, home office more and more People have home offices. We run out of a home office. But you don't need. You don't need big corporate space. You're actually moving your facility here. We're in a corporate space now. You're moving to a home office. It's way less expensive. But you get this additional benefit is you get to deduct the use of your home.

That's right.

As long as you're not having some sex parties or something in your podcasting room.

Wow. Where'd that come from? Christina, my goodness. What kind of show is this heavy breathing, king tip, tongue, teeth thing?

I'm just saying your podcast has to be used for business purposes and not your own.

That's right.

Oddities.

Thank you. Because we know I'm into all kinds of oddities.

What'd you learn, Christina?

I mean, this was a lot of information for me, but I was relieved to hear. And I'm not a small business owner, but the fact that they made it so easy for you to use that you don't have to sit there and plug in everything. They connect to your credit card and they take care of everything. Everything's done for you. All do is pay attention to what.

Yeah, you just gotta prove it. You gotta say that's accurate or not. Yeah, it helps when a system's doing that automatic for you.

Stuff like that is. You need that these days. Individually, none of us can keep track of everything without this kind of automation.

Yeah, yeah. You know, the one thing that threw me off is he said, oh, this is great. February 6th, he starts throwing the day out. I'm like, this is not broadcasting for another month. And now we look like he's like, oh, we got months before tax time. So now everyone knows. The reality is that this is recorded way in advance.

Well, not too far. Few weeks.

Few weeks. This will probably be three, four weeks. Yeah. Maybe even less.

Even.

Christina, Christine is the one who posts them online.

I do.

She does. She does the show notes. Preparation, all that stuff and all this. All the links that were mentioned will be listed in the show notes.

Yeah.

Plus a big picture. JT will be in there too.

And are we gonna ever see pictures of the Wall of Shame in your office?

Oh, you wanna do a blog post about that?

Sure.

Yeah, that'd be fun. We hired a brand new employee who probably is hearing this now because she starts on Tuesday of next week. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about her?

I think she's. I'm so excited to have another woman in the office.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why?

Watch yourself, Mike.

Well, now it's an even playing field.

Yeah, there's. There's more men than women.

Really?

Yeah. There's two men, one woman. And now it's. It's.

Does your wife ever come in and.

Yeah, she comes down.

She backs me up sometimes.

Yeah, she comes down.

She backs you up.

Oh, my God. Okay.

When they have you pinned in a corner, she comes and saves you.

Oh, it gets pretty crazy. I. I mean, there's some of the comments that happen in there. I don't think it's harassing, but there's some funny jibs. And it's teasing, lots of teasing. But that makes the place flow. And when we interviewed our new colleague, her name is Aaron. When we interviewed her, my sense was that culturally, she fits. And that's a big deal when it comes to profitability. And that's my tip for the day. So if you want to crack your. Does someone want to crack the.

All right, Christina, at the same time. Ready? Three, two, one.

That was the biggest, grossest.

That was gross.

Actually, the biggest crack here is if you have a big crack and you're listening in right now. Here's the tip for your business. If you hire an employee that's a cultural fit, they will improve the bottom line more than someone that is not. Think about this analogy. Say you have a sports team, a soccer team, or something like that. Could you imagine a soccer team where half the players were actually trying to play for the other team because they were trying to kick the ball the other way, trying to subvert what was going on because they didn't like their team? That's the reality. What happens in companies when you hire people, they're not a cultural fit. They build a. Not anxiety, but they. They can do activities actually hurt the company. It happens all the time. When you hire people that are cultural fit, you get that natural flow. Great efficiencies come about, and everyone elevates their game. Hire employees that are cultural fits.

Nice. Thank you. Mike Michalowitz, Right? You feel good?

I feel.

That was a good episode.

That was a great episode. Yep. What are you doing?

We let that awkward silence sometimes. Christina, it works.

Did it work with him? With the JT when I did the. I'm going to pick it right now.

I don't think. Yeah, yeah.

He didn't get it, but, yeah, he felt like he had filled the.

It was great.

Yeah. That was cute.

Classic.

It was good.

It was cute.

I do. Christina, I'm going to give it to you. What is Profit First Professionals? Our organization. What do we do.

We match entrepreneurs who are looking for people certified in profit first in accounting, bookkeeping, and coaching. And I just lost my train of thought.

No, that was good. That was good. I'll tell you what fractal recording does. I'm gonna take your bit. Sweet. So Fractal Recording, founded by Chris Curran, based out of Parsipity, New Jersey, supports virtual production of podcasts. So if you want to have your own podcast just like the one we're doing right now, Chris will do it for you. And listen to the quality of the podcast. I'm not saying the content, by the way. I'm not saying what we're talking, but listen to the quality. And this little show out of nowhere, 7,000 downloads. By next week, it's going to be 8,000 downloads. Kier Fractal Recording. Kyre, Kyre, Kyer. And higher Fractal recording.

And before you said consequence.

Did I say that?

I almost pointed it out.

I'm losing my mind.

Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Christina.

Thanks, guys.

This country.

Thanks, Bill.

I'll see you later.

Thank you to our sponsors, as always.

Thank you, jt.

We love it. Check out all our other episodes again. We're in itunes and Stitcher and our website, Profit first podcast dot com. We've had so many other cool guests, so many other awkward moments.

Yes.

Don't miss out.

Get your pets neutered and spayed.

Okay, thank you. See ya, Sam.