Episode 180: Profit in Management Consulting with Peter Laughter

Welcome to episode 179 of the Profit first podcast. You know, we're doing our greatest hits and, man, we're getting some great feedback, so why not another one? Today we talk with Peter Lafter. He was the CEO of Wall Street Services, a company that subsequently has been acquired. Well, he joined us back on episode 15 A Ways Back, sharing how the staffing industry works and how he makes a profit from his business. A lot of new information to be gleaned here. So enjoy this episode with Peter.

Laughter from the studios of Fractal Recording. This is the Profit first podcast, episode.

15. Oh, I did. I already messed that up. I know, I say episode.

Yeah.

Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh.

Can you believe it? We're back. We're back again.

Who are you?

I am Chris Curran and I just want to welcome everyone to the Profit first podcast. If you knew how much fun we had in the studio, you'd want cameras in here.

Yeah, we were even talking about that, but then we said, well, that costs money.

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

Yeah. Which is awesome. Studio here in Parsippany, New Jersey, soon to be virtual. And I'm Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First.

Yep. And this is the Profit first podcast. You can find us on itunes and Stitcher and on the website profit first podcast dot com. And this show is all about what? Mike McKellar.

It's all about Profit First. It's all about the. What I call the alpha and omega of business. It's driving profitability in your business. But quite frankly, we found it to be more than that. It's a discussion around all the elements of business that ultimately bring about profitability.

That's right.

So what you been up to, bro?

You know, I read a great book called in the Heart of the Sea. You ever heard of that book? No, I never heard a whale ship in 1821 left Nantucket island, went her all the way around South America to the Pacific Ocean, got rammed by a sperm whale. Our guest, our in studio special guest is. No, they got, they got, they got rammed. I mean, that's what happened. And the ship went down and they were in there.

True story.

True story. 2500 miles. These, the three little whale boats, the little, like, lifeboats. Oh, they went and starved and they had to almost. They had to like, eat each other.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

But seven or eight of them out of 21 made it back to South America.

Seriously? Yeah. That's amazing.

18:21 yeah. And it's crazy what you'll do when you're in a boat and you're hungry. You haven't eaten in a month.

Oh, my God. I read the Life of PI. It's a similar story. I mean, it's a fictional story, but the guy from India who gets on a boat and he doesn't get rammed by a sperm whale, but he gets attacked or threatened by a tiger that he's stuck on this boat with and he has to survive it. I read the book. I didn't see the movie. It was pretty freaking great.

That's cool.

Yeah. So, dude, guess what? We have a special guest in the studio today.

We do.

Her name.

I'm happy to meet her.

Okay.

I've seen her emails all over the Internet.

You know who she is? She is the person who actually runs the show. Her name is Christina Bulduk and she is my colleague and personal assistant and facilitator of the Profit first podcast.

Hello, world.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

It's good to have you here. Yeah. So I asked Christina to come down to see what a mess this is.

Fantastic.

She organizes everything behind the scenes and then this is just a train wreck.

She's already hanging her head in shame.

Yeah. Hey, we got some cool community feedback. We've gone a full 180 since the Harry Glasscock days. This email came in from Ken Adar. Ken, hopefully you're listening as you're driving your long haul truck, because Ken's a long haul trucker. He says, I've been self employed for 14 years now and he's been struggling financially like everybody. Like, I get it. And he says, I started listening in last November, which was our first episode, by the way, to the podcast. I listen to it every week now. With these systems I've learned in place, I can pay down my debt, allocate money for myself, and I have money for everything. But here's the net effect I haven't paid myself for in over eight years. Now I have the money to do so. So, Ken, this is a shout out to you. Thanks for listening to the show. We knew there was one listener somewhere.

Thanks, Ken.

Yeah, and if your rig is carrying computers, come by this way and maybe some will fall off the truck because I need some.

Right. We're not far from Route 80 if you want to stop and have coffee.

A major throw, actually. Come on. On our show, Ken. That'd be pretty cool.

That'd be pretty cool.

Guess what we're going to be talking about today?

Besides profit?

Well, someone's a dude.

See, I got to give them a hard time here.

Christina.

Right?

We're going to be talking about staffing companies. There's a company called Wall Street Services, and we're bringing on Peter Lafter. Peter is a good buddy of mine for many years now and runs a staffing business on Wall street, hence the name Wall Street Services. So we're going to be digging into that industry and how it works, if you've ever been curious about it. But before we do that, I got a little something I want to talk about. Is he on?

He is on hold. He can hear us.

He can hear us. Okay, so just, you know, mute him.

You want to. Okay. Okay.

Sorry. Peter, if you can hear us, see it. Okay, so Eric McDonnell emailed us and said I want the word of the day to be flux capacitor. Flux capacitor. Okay. So, Chris, that one's to you.

Okay.

You must use that word inappropriately as a verb or some way without our guest detecting it.

Right.

Okay.

And then we can see if he figures it out by the end. Or not.

Or not. Yeah, exactly.

Flux capacitor.

Oh, I forgot the story. Yeah.

Okay, we're five minutes in.

Oh, are we? Okay, so plus five. Okay, I forgot. I hit the timer. This show's gonna go long. All right. Sorry, Ken. Sorry. To our one listener, Ken, who's like, dude, I'm between two exits and I got an extra five minutes. Okay, so let's bring our guest back on so I can introd him.

All right, he's up.

His name is Peter Laughter. Used to be Lauder. He changed it to Laughter. Same spelling. Just change the pronunciation.

Nice.

Peter Laughter is the CEO of Wall Street Services. They provide high skilled project managers, business analysts, and other subject. Subject matter experts their clients. Peter found the business back in 1995. But beyond just the business, he's also a founding member of the New York City chapter of Conscious Capitalism, something I've been interested in. And one of his favorite things to do is. Is to do those moth story slams. He's a storyteller. It's freaking really cool. So we're gonna dig into that. And he loves riding the Cyclone, which is an awesome roller coaster with his daughter Eddie. So, Peter, with no further ado, we'd like to do a grand introduction.

Welcome to the show. Peter. Peter. Peter Laughter.

I tell you, that is one heck of an introduction.

You like that?

I like that. I rarely do. I get singing. Usually it's tomatoes.

How often do you get this Tomatoes? Does Anybody remember laughter? How many times do you get that one?

No, that. That is. That is. That is new. Robert Platt should. Should introduce me always.

Does anyone remember laughter? He should. So, Peter, how you doing today?

I'm doing great, man.

And where. Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling in from my office. Downtown Manhattan, right by.

Right.

Right outside of the statue of the bull.

So are you literally on Wall Street?

I'm right around the corner on Broadway.

Oh, okay, nice. So you see that bull every morning?

Every morning. The, you know, shiny balls that people rub everywhere.

Have you ever seen that, Chris?

No. The ball rubbing? No.

You know the bull he's talking about, Right.

Well, it's near Wall Street.

Yeah. That famous big metal bull. How many people actually grab the testicles of the bull, Peter?

All right, so you know how brass gets that dark, almost brown color?

Yeah.

And then there's a part where everyone touches.

Yeah.

And it's like that pure brass color. Balls are, like, polished.

Is that hysterical?

Really?

Everybody's gotta get a picture holding the balls.

Is it more women that do this? Or men? Or can you.

Everybody. Everybody's gotta touch the balls.

Is there any nationality? Because that's a huge tourist area. Any nationality that does not touch the bull balls.

I haven't done that in depth of a study, but I'm gonna start looking at this. But I would gather. No, I think pretty much everyone.

That's fascinating. So it's be funny I would take that picture and I think I'm so novel and I'm the first person to do this.

Yeah, but you'd think that the shiny balls would give it away, but no, no.

So you've done it, Peter. Right? Have you?

No, I have not. No. No. I'm. I'm. I was born in New York, so I look down at my nose that I know this touristy stuff. Only when I go to another city do I touch balls.

Have you ever done any of the tourist activities in New York, though? I mean, as a New Yorker, like the bus or anything?

Well, yeah, when. When I have friends who are visiting and they want to, like, I want to see the Statue of Liberty, I'm like, I'm so excited because I never get to do that stuff. Yeah. So, yes. When I have people from out of town, as much touristy stuff as I can, because then I have an excuse. But otherwise, you know, that's a funny.

Kind of oddity that all of us have. Like, oh, I'm a New Yorker, so I don't tour my own state. Yeah, yeah. We Take it for granted like what is. Okay, yeah.

So Pete, I'm guilty of it.

Yeah. And well, welcome to humanity. You're one of us. I'm sorry. So tell us about Wall street services. What exactly does your business do?

So we work with management consulting firms and program managers at investment banks and we allow them to take on projects that are beyond their capacity. So if they've, yeah, they've, they've got initiative and they just, they don't have a bench of people to fulfill that strategic plan. I provide them with the professionals to do that or they need a subject matter expert or they're coming up on a deadline and they just need more hands on deck. They call me now.

Is it staffing services? I know that puts a bad taste in your mouth already, but.

Well, we live in the space in between management consulting and staffing. So our roots we came from temporary staffing and actually my career started doing administrative type stuff. And we're gradually moving into more financial people who are doing back office work in trade processing. And then in the late 90s, I worked on a project with very signature investment bank where I put together a team of about 20 analysts to work with the bankers to have the bankers have more time with their clients. So the team that I found was doing a lot of the modeling and research and it was so much fun.

Because it's already going way over my head in my simpleton mind. Does your company hire employees and then put those employees inside other companies? Is that basically it?

Exactly what we do.

How do you make money doing that?

I charge my clients a bill rate that is higher than what I'm paying my employees and then I take all the benefits and other costs related to. That's how I make money.

My whole job is to pry. At least that's what my wife has told me. What do you charge your clients typically for a client to put an employee in there?

Yeah, so I generally charge about anywhere. I mean obviously there's volume discounts that come into play, but generally charge about 40 to 50% over what I'm paying the employee.

And what, what's a typical employee cost you all in?

Well, a good project manager is making annualized about anywhere between 120,000 a year to 250,000 a year.

I would like one day in my life to make 250,000 a year. So someone you bring in, we'll say for 200,000 because it's a round number, you add on, you said 50%, that's 100,000. So you bill your client 300,000. Yes.

On those rare instances where I do get that top margin, but know that I got to pay payroll taxes and healthcare and vacation and all that other fun stuff out of that too. So it's not all going into my pocket.

No, I got you. But what about these companies? Why don't they just hire an employee directly? Why do they have to go through you and pay that premium?

Well, I think there's a lot of different factors. So one, these are project based. This is project based work. So I need someone for the next 18 months and I don't know if I'm going to need them past 18 months. So they'd rather them come through me in order to have that privilege. Or in certain situations where I've got one engagement and it's going to go 18 months, but they want the option to look at it in six months and say let's evaluate at that point and so they can get out. But also the other thing is most of my clients don't have the ability to move as quickly as I can. So I've got a. Yeah, if I've got a mid sized management consulting firm, maybe they've got a recruiter but Suddenly they need 20 project managers right away. There's no way they're going to be able to staff up that well. Now my entire company is designed just to find specialized people quickly so I can deploy a lot of resources and get the 20 people a lot faster than they will ever be able to do it.

So people hire you if they need someone very quickly and, and on a short term basis it sounds like is the ideal situation for them.

Yeah, short term. My average project is. Is nine months okay? Yeah. So not forever is what I would say.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So they don't. I'm sorry. Yeah.

I have a question. It must. To be so nimble and to be able to serve service your clients quickly, you must have over the years been able to sort of like flux capacitor your business and develop. Is it by developing relationships or is it by developing systems within your business?

Yes, relationships and systems. I think it is both a real critical factor so particularly in finding the very hard to find people having. They are they, they're not going to add, they're not going to respond to an advertisement. You know, they're not looking on Craigslist for a job. So if I know someone who knows them, that's my only way to get in front of them. So relationships are key. But then I've got a lot of great recruiting systems With. Yeah. How we manage what we call our inbound resumes, we manage that process, we do it very tightly and we've got a lot of systems around that. And then the third thing is why they pay us is we have very, very in depth screening.

And these people are certain types of people because listen, if I'm looking for a job, I want to get a job I can get cozy and comfortable with and stay with for hopefully years. But these people must be expecting this high kind of rotation. You're in and you're back out, you're in, you're back out. Kind of like a sperm whale. From your story, Chris, right?

Yes. Yeah. It takes, there's not, this is not for everybody and it's a lot of our screening is really looking at, you know, can they be successful as a consultant. So there's the. Yeah. People need to know that they can have that flexibility in their life. And most of these are specialists so they know there's going to be work for them. It's not really a concern. There's more, there's more, there's more opportunities than there are people who can fill them. So they're not really concerned with will I be able to find something after this gig is over? Because they will. And also this is what I do. So more often than not, before someone rolls off a project, I'm already looking for the next project for them.

I got you. So your job is to keep filling jobs for them. Ideally for you, you're the same person. They do a nine month project here, they do a six month start and you had the same person that you're applying to other company after company after company.

Exactly, yeah.

And how. I have a question. Over time, how have you sort of monitored your business and tweaked your business processes to increase your profitability over the years? I mean, apparently there's things you can do that will waste money and drive your profitability down. What have you noticed and have been able to do in the other way?

I've done a lot in both of those categories. The driving down and driving up the biggest thing recently that's made the biggest difference is specialization and focus. So making sure that we. So we always viewed ourselves as very focused that we focus exclusively on investment banking in that world. But really having a focus on exclusively a particular segment, business analysts, project managers, subject matter experts, is made the biggest difference.

Are you saying you started with a broader offering and now you're kind of making it more narrow?

Yeah. I loved your. Just to give you a plug, Mike.

But it wouldn't be a show without that.

Exactly. Pumpkin plan was great for us because we were really struggling because we would have to find accountants and entry level people and project managers and compliance professionals. And having to have such a wide spectrum was very, very challenging. We would get jobs and it would be very difficult to fill them. But being able to focus in one particular market segment has made a tremendous difference for us.

Okay, tell me about recruiting. So if you do fewer things, so that means. Just tell me if my logic is right here, you offer less variability in the people that are available to do services. That means you have. God, this is just drifting aimlessly down a road right now. But basically you have customers with a very narrow demand. And you're saying that makes it easier to hire.

Without a doubt. Without a doubt. So one, I can work off referrals a lot more, a lot more effectively. So getting the people who work for me to refer people that they've worked with in the past is a lot easier. If I'm spending money to market on nine or ten different categories of have people come to our door and I can funnel that money into just two or three categories, it's a lot more effective.

Are you getting recognition for being a specialist on the other side? Meaning these employees, these candidates, they come to you and say, oh, Peter's known for doing this one thing, I'm going to get me some Peter. You know what I'm saying?

I think people say, I'm going to get me some Peter is pretty common Wall street services. I think why people come to us is we take very, very good care of our people and we have an understanding of the job searching process that is uncommon. So to support people through the interview process. We know a lot about the pitfalls associated with working as a consultant. So be successful when they're on the job. These are the reasons that people come to us.

And then looking back, what would you do? Say someone listening in right now wants to start a staffing company. So similar vein of what you're doing, looking back, what would you recommend to get started and become profitable very quickly?

It's a business that needs a lot of capital. So I think that's one of the things you have to be aware of because I'm paying my employees and then my clients are paying me. So.

So you have, you put money out front to pay your people first and then you got to wait for the check to come from another company.

Exactly.

Do they ever hold those checks on you? They ever pay you late or not.

Pay you It's a good thing about working with banks is they. That's where the money is. So they're pretty good at paying on time.

Have you ever been screwed, though?

I think, yeah, everybody has. Yeah. It's happened. I think usually we had a client, this was in the 90s, that went bankrupt, and they went bankrupt owing us quite a lot of money. But then we found out that the bankruptcy laws are written for and by large corporations. So the executor of the estate came after us for all the money that we had been paid in the 90 days before the bankruptcy. And that was almost.

Oh, that's called a clawback.

Yeah, it was awful.

Yeah. What they do, Chris and Christina, is a company will pay money to you for services that you rightfully owe you. But if they go bankrupt, the corporation has ability to get that money back from you, even though you're just a. Just a vendor. That's it. You did nothing wrong. They legally take the money back from you to pay off other debtors, and it can. It can wipe you out.

Wow.

Yeah, it's called clawback.

Not cool.

Yeah. I call it an F over, but.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, Peter, I have a question. When you go home at night, are you happy with the amount of profit you're making in your business?

That's right. That's. Hits to the bone. That's a shot to the.

Yeah, no, I am very much so.

What would you. Anything you do differently?

Yeah, it's interesting. Like, so I. I think profit is as important as oxygen. So, yes, I would always do differently. But. Yeah, as is to us. But I don't think. I don't live to consume more oxygen. Yes. So I think when I do good work and my clients are happy, I make more money. And when I'm true to the mission of Wall Street Services and I take good care of our consultants, they're happy with what we're providing to them, and more business comes my way. And so I think. Whereas I could never make a choice that would be insufficient oxygen.

Right.

Sound like a big cliffhanger there, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think you just experienced insignificant oxygen. Your voice is cut out totally. We heard nothing from you. Really?

Because that was incredibly profound.

Yeah, I'm sure it was. Yeah. So, well, Peter, one last thing I'm going to ask you, then. We got to wrap up. If you have one suggestion for a company to improve its bottom line, looking at your own company, what's the one best suggestion that comes to mind?

Hire fantastic people.

That's it. Oh, that was profound.

Yeah. Yeah, that was profound.

Did you have a moment of silence? Another moment.

I think Skype will afford that to us anyway. Yeah, we'll never get Skype as a sponsor now.

Yeah, I was about to say, I hope Skype's not a sponsor.

Yeah, I know. They were actually in the past. They were. So I totally screwed that over just now. Why hire. Just give us the why behind why hire fantastic people.

You find good people who are aligned with your values. They are excited about what they do. They work harder, they take care of your interests without you having to tell them everything. Because you know there are good people who are aligned with your. Yeah. With your interest. I mean, it's. It's as simple as that. And you trust them and you enjoy going to work with them.

Peter, it was a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Thank you.

All right, Peter, we'll catch you later.

Take. Thanks, Peter.

Great job, Chris.

Wow.

What do you think, man?

Well, we're gonna give our wrap ups or what? We are our takeaways.

Yeah, after we talk about our sponsors.

I was gonna say after we talk about our sponsors.

Yeah, and we're gonna sing them in. Right. Are you ready? No. Well, you have to. So the first sponsor I want to talk about is our primary sponsor. The company's called nextiva. Let's hear it.

See, that's not fair because Lisa Robin Young sang them and now I have her tunes in my head.

Let's sing her tunes go off hers. Yeah.

Okay, so I'll sing Lisa, this you next.

That's awesome. I love it. I love it. Now she's singing. It's the first time I've heard her sing. Besides a little earlier today.

Right.

But she at the office, she's like, oh, I'm a professional opera singer and I do.

In training.

In training.

She's probably in the car. Blessed and Metallica.

Oh, in the shower every day.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, stuff like that comes on all the time. And you hear humming. I'm like, why don't you sing? And she's like, I don't sing. So next diva. They've been with us, Chris, since day one. This is episode 15, bro.

That's right upped again. They love us.

They love us and we love them. Yes, they are voiceover ip phone system provider. And I don't care listener, I'm talking to you. If you have just yourself or you got 100 employees or anywhere in between, Nextiva is truly a great value. We just got Christina you can vouch this. We've got two new nextivas coming. One is going to Christina's house or apartment because we had snow days. And I'm calling Christina. I'm like, do you mind still working from home? And she's like, but if I call our clients, they're going to have my personal home number. And I'm like, oh, next diva to the rescue. Next diva to the rescue. So we have a nextiva phone that's going to be at your home desk now.

It's going to be great.

Isn't that cool?

It's awesome.

It's going to be great.

She's like. She's like, oh, yeah, Wonderful.

Saturday night, her boyfriend's over, they're cracking a bottle of wine, watching a movie, and then boring bling. Christina.

Mike McCallow. It's calling.

I do have the intercom button. Could you imagine? A romantic moment breaks out and then you hear, Christina, are you there?

Right.

Mrs. Who Wiggins. Do you know what I'm doing? Mrs. Who Wiggins. You know who that is, right? Carol Burnett show. Oh, Tim Conway. Mrs. Who Wiggins. Mrs. Who Wiggins. Do you know that?

No.

The joy of being in your 20s.

Yeah.

Okay, so next team voiceover over IP system. Second is Fundera.

Fundera. We love Fundera. It's so easy.

It is.

One and done. Fundera.

Oh, I love it.

Wow.

Yeah, it's getting better and better. Fundera re upped. You know why? Because of the singing that's on the show.

You're welcome.

So, and Fundera actually got a client through this podcast.

Oh, cool.

So Fundera is one stop funding. If your business needs money for any reason because you want to expand your business, you want to get office space, sometimes you got to cover payroll. I'm not a big fan of borrowing money to cover payroll. Actually maybe have too many employees. But even if you're in a sticky circumstance where you need to do that, Fundera provides the funding for that. And the last company, last sponsor is tsheets.

Tsheets. No, no, no, no.

Do it again. That was horrible.

You talked about it again.

Please, one more time.

All right.

Tsheets. Better. Much better. So tsheets is a time tracking system for employees. If you have hourly employees, you need to do projects and so forth. TSheets can track the time for those employees, and it's necessary for all different reporting purposes and project assignments and stuff like that. TSheets is awesome. We've also brought in clients through the podcast for T sheets. That's why they re Up.

Can they help us time our show better?

Oh, my gosh. Five minutes already. Okay, I'll hurry up, bro.

Yeah, you go first.

All right, recap. Here's what I heard from Peter. Laughter. Does Anyone remember laughter? 50% margins in that industry. Huge. Huge.

I, I, you know, I forgot to ask him. Does he get that? He doesn't get that lump sum. Does that come over?

It comes in periodically. I think he gets it bi weekly or monthly. So 50% margins, which is great. But here's the risk. He's got to manage the cash, and that's a real challenge when you got to put down your own money and then wait for someone else to pay you. If they're having a bad day and don't pay you, you can get stuck. So that's the risk. I heard of that industry. My favorite quote was him is, I don't live to consume more oxygen. And then he started choking. I thought that was funny. Then we lost him. He's like, I don't care about. You know, I thought that was funny, Christina, how you were writing down tons of notes.

You know, I'm having trouble reading my chicken scratch. But the two things that I have sticking out are profit follows purpose, which was a good point. And I noticed he also said, which I think a couple of your past interviewees have said, that when you hire fantastic people, when they believe in the overall vision of your company and are committed, that that's when they do the good work.

Yeah, I totally am with you. I totally agree. What'd you learn?

Yeah, he said, hire fantastic people, and then he.

Oh, I didn't, I didn't just hear that from Christina. Were you listening? I mean, that's verbatim what she said.

But I don't have anything else, so I don't know.

It is great, though, right? Yeah, Maybe I told the story already, but Garrett Boone, founder of Container Store, I met him once, and he drew a map or chart out. I said, A equals 3B, 1B equals 3C. And he says, One A player, one committed employee that believes in a purpose can perform at the level of three people that are there for a job. B players, and one B player person is here for the job can perform the level three people that are there just for the money. So hire people that feel a cause in what you do.

Right. Well, I also learned a lot about that there's a bull down in Wall street that people visit the brass and rubbing, which I never heard that before.

Everybody loves black balls, I guess.

I had no idea.

Okay, terrific.

Next episode we're doing next week is with Melinda Emerson, the number one small business expert in America. She. She could be anywhere. She could be on any. She could be on cbs. She could be in the Today show with Matt Lauer. She's elected to come to our show, which now makes her the number two small business expert. She's kind of dropping down.

That's right.

By. But she will be joining us next week. One final thing is I want to share a tip on profit because people been asking, hey, we love the fortune cookie at the end. Yeah, give us more fortune cookies. So I thought I'd give a fortune tip.

Love it.

But it's in the cookie. So do you mind cracking open for us?

Wow.

These cookies, they snap, snap open. They snap open, snap right into it. And Christina, you can vouch to this right now, listener, open up an additional checking account. If. I don't care how many accounts you have at your bank. If you have two, set up a third. If you have four, set up a fifth and call it your profit account. Then every single time a deposit comes in, if you don't have a profit right now, if you haven't made money in the past and saved it for yourself, start allocating 1% of every deposit into your profit account by sampling separate accounts, by removing it from your main account, the temptation to use it is removed or reduced at least, and the profit accumulates. And you've been doing this, you say?

I do. Actually, when I started with you, I believe I did. I think it was only 10%, but I put in a completely different banking account for direct deposit, and I don't even touch that money. It's like, I don't know. It's there.

Can you see the money that gets deposited?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a deb. It's a checking account. And I mean, I technically could use it whenever I wanted to.

Have you dipped into it.

I have not.

Ha. Wow.

It's awesome.

It works. It works.

Yeah, it's that simple. Set an envelope for it.

That's right.

There you go, guys. Thank you for joining us for episode 15.

Wow. This has been awesome.

This has been fun.

Thank you, Mike Michalowicz.

Thank you.

Chris, you're the author of Profit first.

And you are the founder of Profit. No, you're not. Of Fractal Studios.

You know what? Hold on a second.

Yeah.

I want to ask you about the profit first professionals. Oh, tell me about that. Yes, quickly.

And Christina actually helps manage this. How quick?

Really?

Yeah. She manages the introduction of entrepreneurs that are calling us, wanting to work with a profit first professional.

Nice.

Profit first professionals is an organization we set up now. It's over 70 accountants and bookkeepers and some business coaches, too, who've become certified in the profit first method and now are helping businesses grow their business doing kind of as we talked about, separate accounts and more advanced methodologies. So if you want. If you're listening in, you want an accountant or bookkeeper to help you with this, you already are hiring. You're already paying for this service with someone else. Why don't you hire an accountant or bookkeeper that can do that? Of course, the bookkeeping and accounting, but also help drive profitability. That's what our organization is all about.

Awesome.

What about Fractal Studio?

Yeah, Fractal Recording. I was going to say here at Fractal, I produce podcasts for businesses as to get more credibility, to create content, to get more exposure on the Internet, to get more leads. There's so many reasons to brand yourself as the expert with a podcast.

Yes. Huge exposure. There's people listening all over the world. It give you exposure to people you never expected you get exposure to.

It's amazing.

Yeah. Hire Chris.

Yep. Frack the recording dot com. And yeah, you can find our show in itunes and stitcher. Those are the two big podcast directories.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, y' all, it was nice seeing you.

Yes.

Episode 15. Come back for 16.

Thanks, everybody.

See ya.

Sam.