Episode 184: Transitioning to Specific Business with Leticia Mooney

About eight months ago that I took a trip down to Australia, and during my visit down under, I spent some time with Leticia Mooney. Leticia and I knew each other for quite a long time, but never had met face to face. And this was my opportunity to check out what she does at her offices and spend some time with her. Well, the visit was nothing short of extraordinary. And the interview I had with her and my good old buddy Chris Kern was extraordinary too. You're going to learn in this episode how she set about growing her business, her own goals. But I think you're also going to derive some amazing tips to satisfy your objectives in your business.

You are listening to the Profit first podcast, episode 61.

Bring it. Oh.

Ow. Ooh.

Brought it. Yeah. This music gets me so jazzed. I love it.

Man, this is rough. Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. And it's on this show that we fix small business profitability issues. We're gonna have an awesome guest today. We are gonna fix her business. And you, listener, are gonna listen in and you're gonna learn tips to fix your business and bring those profits in that you always have wanted.

That's right. Profit is the name of the game. Like, revenue is fine, but profit is all the time.

All the time. That's right, baby.

And our show is available on itunes and Stitcher and Tunein Radio and of course, the website Profit first podcast dot com. So how you been, Mike?

I've been doing well, you know. So Christmas is over now. This is going to throw Letitia way off because she's like, hold on. I know they're in the United States and all that, but they celebrate Christmas already. Yeah. So we record this episode about four weeks in advance. So Christmas is over when you're hearing this. But I do know what's gonna happen. My Christmas tree. We decided to upgrade our lights to LEDs. You know, more efficient, less dangerous, last longer. These things are so freaking bright. It's like there's a Mack truck coming blowing through our living room. You can't go in there without getting blinded. Oh, my God.

That's great.

What's up with you, man?

I want to see that. Yeah, I've been good.

You can't see it. You'll go blind.

That's the whole thing through a camera with a protective lens.

Yeah, I've been good.

Everything's good. I might even start be starting a New radio show here locally in Colorado Springs, which is kind of cool, featuring content creators. There's a local community radio station that's starting and they're looking for shows, and I teamed up with this cool guy, Drew Smith, who lives in town and, yeah, might be starting a new show.

That's neat, man. I love it. You know, it was on this show that you made the transition from the great state of New Jersey to the amazing state of Colorado.

Yeah.

It's kind of cool to see you settling in over there.

It's awesome. Yeah. So I can't wait to talk to our guest today.

Oh, my God. So, dude, well, she's got a business in an Adelaide, Australia, right around the corner from Sydney. Um, and she's in the content strategy space. But, you know, business times aren't always easy in any space. And. And she's facing challenges and she's using profit first in her business to get out of it. But she's not actually out of the dark yet.

Right.

We're gonna learn all about her business.

Right. And then also, we can't forget because Christina's not here. We can't forget our corporate partners.

Oh, my God. I almost blazed right over. Yeah. So, yeah, Chris, you know, you know why Christina's not here. It's worth recording this east coast time, it's 8:15 at night.

Right.

Because it's really hard to sync up with Australia. So, you know, Christina lives like an hour from the studio and I'm like, you know, it's optional. And she's like, I'll choose the opt out option. So it's just me and you, brother.

Yeah.

But thank you to Fundera One Stop Loans. Thanks to Fundbox, they are invoice financing, thanks to Nextiva VoiceOver IP and in T sheet time tracking software for sponsoring yet another episode of Profit First.

Yeah.

Thank you, dude. Now I'm gonna go into the full bio. I guess I was going into the full bio already, but now I'm gonna finish it out. Her name is Leticia Mooney. She, by the way, is a doppelganger for Sissy Spacek.

Right?

Yeah. Well, she's like half the age of Sissy Spaceic, so. An old, a younger. Yeah. But she's. She's been through the round as an entrepreneur and I suspect you have been too, listener. This is her fourth business. She's a published author, she's a serial entrepreneur, she's a music critic. She's all these things. But her most recent business, the business she's running right now is a Australian content strategy company that focuses on strategy creation, risk governance and workflow. And of course, the content development that's related with that. So with no further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce Leticia Mooney. Welcome to our show, Letitia.

Hi, guys. Thank you.

Yeah, listen, when the crowd is cheering like that, you gotta come out like Anthony Robbins style.

Oh, I know, but it's really hard to do a bow and like kiss your hands and wave to people when you're doing it by audio.

Well, you can do. How you doing? United States, all the way from Adelaide.

What's up, America?

Welcome there. We should have done that. We should prepare for that. But tell us a little bit about your business. What's your business challenges right now? What are you facing in your business?

Well, it's interesting because Brutal Pixie has just turned 2 in September, so we're in our third year, which is awesome. And we all know that the rate of business failure is its highest in your first three years. So we're still experimenting and finding out what works. And we've got some consistent customers, which is rad. Our main challenge, I think, which is probably similar for a lot of people at this stage, is deal flow and sales flow and consistency in sales as opposed to that roller coaster of up and down and up and down and oh, shit, I'm working. And then, oh my God, I don't have any. Anything in the pipeline. It's that kind of challenge. So that's like our next 12 months is on. Growing that and evening out the roller coaster. That's what's right in front of us right now.

Okay, and so tell us a little bit more about the business structure. Is it just yourself? Do you have colleagues there?

It's mainly me. I employed my first person this year, which is fantastic. And I chose to employ, which is probably a bit, you know, out there. I chose to employ a 19 year old who is doing year 12, which is the last year at school whose dream is to go into medicine, which is not at all in content strategy.

Okay, so yeah, so tell us. That sound a little crazy, but maybe it is a good decision. Tell us a little bit about the business itself. What specifically do you do?

Okay, so. So Brutal Pixie, as you mentioned, is a content strategy company. What I actually early on in the piece quickly realized is that you can't sell strategy to small and medium sized business because mainly what they're interested in is core business and they're so like nose down doing the work that they don't see the big picture very often. So selling strategy to someone who doesn't care about strategy is a total failure. What they care about is content development. They all know they need to be blogging and they all know that social is cool and they know that LinkedIn is probably a good place. Most of them are on Facebook and don't understand where else they should be or how or why or when or any of these things. And then they go, okay, so I can write a blog. And they sit there for four hours in front of a blank screen and they're like, man, this is hard. Or they do it for a while and then they get busy and then their blogs don't work or their website gets out of date and then all they think is I need a new website doesn't feel right. And so they go to a designer instead of to the message. So what we do now is we sell content development at the pointy end we solve that problem for people and once it's happening and it's continuous and they don't have to think about it so much anymore, they start to go back to the business development and it's easier to sell. How does this work for you? Is it supporting your lead generation? How does it fit as part of your overall strategy? And those discussions are a bit easier. So that's one piece of the work. And on the other side, we deal with big clients. So like our business has dealt in the past year with startups right through to departments of the federal court and national companies. And their needs are quite different. They know that they need strategy and they know they need it because something about the connection in the business doesn't work. So their employees don't trust the information that they have, or the file share isn't working anymore, or the intranet is hard to search, or you know, there's something like that that's going on and they know they need someone with a strategic brain to come in and help them unpack the problem and put some fixes in place. So that's the scope of things that we do.

Okay, so let me make sure I understand the clients is the clients, they hear their government type entities that are hiring you or did I hear that right?

Well, well actually I'm gonna throw this banner in the works. All of our clients have the same personality, so it doesn't really matter what sector they're in. So our clients are risk takers, they're a bit adventurous, they, they are forward thinking future thinkers, they know they want to go places and don't quite know how and that mindset and that personality is true. From the government departments that we've worked in to major enterprise, to startups and even to, like, small physiotherapist shops. You know, like, they're all. They're all that same personality type.

Okay, and so is it true that any business could be a client for you?

It's true, yes.

Chris, we need a buyer.

We sell into law. Yeah. We made a decision because we work well with lawyers, and lawyers are good, fun to work with, and they're commercially minded and they always want to do things really, really well because they're high achievers. So we actively sell into law, but we will work with anyone who is a good fit with us.

Okay. So any client's a good client as long as they have certain personality traits. And the challenge you are facing right now is deal flow. You're not getting enough business, it sounds like. Or if you. Then sometimes you're getting swamped with business and then you have put all your effort and time on serving those clients. So you're very active, but then you're not selling. And then the sales, the work dries up because you finished the work and then you got a panic sell again. Right?

Yeah. So it goes in this work hustle, work hustle, work hustle kind of pattern.

Okay, and what's. So I got you. And you ain't the first. What. What does your future look like? What do you want it to be? I should say, what's your vision?

Right. My vision in 10 years is to sell the company as Australia's most valuable strategy firm.

Wow. So that sounds like a big company. The most valuable. How do you define that value in.

Terms of how people's businesses are functioning? So they're valuable to financially valuable, but they're also valuable to their customers, they're valuable to their staff. They have good culture, their communication works really well, and everything feels connected. So that's the value.

Okay. And then do you have a sense, like you want to sell the company? Do you have a sense of what kind of money you want to sell it for or what that will translate for you financially?

Yeah, maybe. It's absurdly high. It always is, right?

Yeah. No, if you weren't being absurd, you would have never become an entrepreneur. Right. It takes cajones, as they say in Australia.

Do they?

No, I know. They really don't. They really.

No, no, no, they don't. They say. They say.

What would you say in Australia?

Let's say that you have balls.

Okay. Thank you. That'll be it for today.

Thanks for joining us. Okay, so it takes balls to do that to start a business. It takes balls to want a big number. What's your number?

It's 25 million.

Okay, I like million. Australian or US or does it make a difference?

If it was, if it was US dollars, like, I think our current exchange rate, one Australian dollar, is it to 74 US cents. So if it's USD, that would be nice.

Yeah. Okay, so either way, it sounds like you're doing okay. All right, so let's start digging into this, and I'm going to give you some feedback. And Chris, you can chime in too, if other questions come up. But Leticia, as I share it with you, I want to hear your thoughts too. So, first of all, what you're experiencing is called the double helix trap. You ain't the first and you ain't the last. And what the double helix trap is. You know what a double helix is like the DNA code. Have you ever seen that?

I sure do.

Okay, so it's like that winding spiral staircase, and there's kind of two of them intertwined. That represents the typical oscillation that entrepreneurs have between the working and the doing. So as sales increase, the helix is increasing in sales. At the same time, the work decreases because there's less availability for it. And then as we start concentrating on doing the work, we can't sell. And if we're not selling, the sales slow down, but the work gets gobbled up because we're doing the work, we complete it. But now there's no sales. And we start this incline again of panicking and trying to increase sales because sales have declined. And it's this oscillation between sales and do. Sales and do it is the ultimate trap. And entrepreneurs that stay stuck in that will stay stuck in that for life. Now, if you want to sell your company for 25 million, let me pull out my handy dandy calculator because I need a sound effect for that in the future. For 25 million at a linear growth rate, that means you need to do 2.5 million a year. So end of next year, you got to do $2.5 million in revenue. If you grew at a linear rate, most people say, well, there's that hockey stick moment, like, I'm going to grow slow. And then the last three years, we are going to crank up to 25 million. By the way, that rarely ever happens. So for us to do this, we. We need to be in the generating at least. I would anticipate this next year. 500,000. The year after we got to be doing 1.5 million. And then 1.5 has to go to 3, 3 to 6. And we got to increase at a, at a rate like that where you have exponential growth. I assume this year you didn't do 500,000 in revenue.

No, not this year.

Oh. Did you do it last year?

No.

Okay.

We might do that kind of rev, right? Is this the dream?

It is the dream. We're going to make it happen. What did you do last this last year? The last 12 months.

The last 12 months we came in just under 100,000.

Okay, nice. That's not bad. And that's, that's pretty typical. What did you do the year prior to that?

The year prior to that? I don't even remember two years. So it was probably just under two years. So it would have been close to six. Seventy.

Seventy. Okay. So, yes. So you're doing what's called aggregate growth, where it's a small additive of growth that's also very typical. And that's typical of what's called a double helix trap. Here is what I suspect you're falling into. And listen, I don't know much about your business and every entrepreneur says, but my business is so unique, you got to spend days studying it before you can have an answer for me. I've worked with thousands of businesses now over my career and found that there's some consistencies. And here's the triggers that hit off first, the double helix trap. Well, by oscillating back and forth, you're not going to be able to get traction because you're working with. And you said here you can work with any client. That is the biggest red flag that's out there. When you work with any client of any type, what that forces you to do is called custom or one offs type of work. Yeah, it's all within content development. Yes, you're helping with some risk and governance, but it's not perfectly consistent. And I want you to think of a heart surgeon, for example, versus a general practitioner doctor. You ever go to a general practitioner doctor for like a checkup or something?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. In fact, I used to talk with them.

Oh, you used to work with them? What kind of stuff did, what kind of stuff did you see, like, come in, like people with coughs and a skin rash? Like, like stuff like that? Right?

Yeah. Like, and they're trained in everything but not anything particularly well.

Oh, you're getting ahead of me. You are. So what. And you saw, like, crazy stuff come in There, right?

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Did you ever see someone come in that was having serious heart concerns? At least they may have not known it, but they may have come in and. And one of the general practitioners diagnosed it.

Oh, probably.

What did. Yeah, I'm sure you did. What did that general. What was that?

Well, I was actually thinking of something a little bit more interesting, if you're.

Gonna say balls again.

No, no, I'm not, I promise. No, this was family that had been traveling overseas. This is during, like, Ebola outbreaks. Reasonably, like, you know. Right. And they had come back to town and their child, who was 18 months old, had a bleeding rash.

Oh.

And. And so they were like, what do we do?

Okay.

Yeah. So. And if the parent is describing a rash as bleeding, it's like, it's not just scabs. Right.

Okay. And was that. Was it Ebola? Did you find out?

The GP kind of went. You know what? I can't. I can't even just go to emergency. Don't even come in.

Don't even come here. And that is true for all general practitioners. The general practitioners, as you know, by definition, have to do generally everything. So general practitioners, doctors attract people with skin rashes that are just simple scabs, to people that have bleeding skin rashes, to people with a cough, to people that have a serious gastrointestinal problem and everything in between. But the default consumer, if they don't know specifically what the problem is, will go to a general practitioner first. Conversely, if the practitioner realizes something you're having is severe, they skip the general practitioner and go to emergency and. Or a specialist. So the general practitioner. Here's the irony. I don't know how it's in down under, but up here in the U.S. general practitioners generally don't make too much money. But the specialists, the heart surgeon, the gastrointestinal specialist, probably the eboli specialist, that there is someone that does that. Those people make a huge amount of money, and the reason is this. They attract the customers with very specialized needs. So what I want you to remember here is a general practitioner attracts the general audience with a general need for general things. And. And the generalist, once they diagnose something that's significant or life threatening, they refer them out to the specialist. Now, a specialist, say the heart surgeon, attracts someone with very specific special needs in a very specific special category and will pay a serious premium for those services because their life is on the line. Does that make sense?

Sure does.

I mean, if you're having eboli, like, if you're if your rash starts bleeding and they diagnose Eboli, I. I suspect you will find the means to get the money to cure this, because your life's on the line. And if you're just going to the general practitioner because you have a little scratch on your skin and it's infected, you're like, well, put a little Neosporin on there. But I'm good with that. Right.

It's true.

Yeah. So in your business, and I'm going to hurt you because I love you. In your business, do you think you're a general practitioner or a specialist?

That's a really good question. I think we're like the general practitioner who's studying to be a specialist. I think that's where we are. Because, like, in the last two years, we had kind of done exactly as you described. Right. So, you know, every business that starts up is the same. You work with anyone just to get the money in so that you can still eat. And after a while you kind of go, man, there are these people who are a pain in my backside that I don't want to work with, and how do I quantify those and get rid of them, or, you know, whatever the case may be. And you start to realize that probably you're spending too much time and not getting, you know, the return and you get stuck. And then, because no one can, no one understands what you do, or the appeal isn't specific enough, which is why in the last, or within the last three to six months, we've made a concerted effort to work with lawyers and to work in law. And that has, you know, the other benefit, that there's nobody else in Australia in our field who does work just with law. So, for example, I went to the Australian Lawyers Alliance Conference recently here, because I'm a member, and I was the only content person there.

Nicely done, Dr. Mooney. Nicely done.

So I think. I think with a GP that's. That's learning, that specialization is important.

And so, yeah, wonderful. And I just want to amplify that word. Important to life, critical. If you want to achieve, you have a grand vision. And I think it's freaking fabulous, Letitia. I think it's perfect. But if you stay a generalist, you will never, ever get there. If you become a specialist, there's no guarantee of the success, but the likelihood increases a hundredfold. You know, and I wrote about this in the Pumpkin Plan. I know we're emailing back and forth. I think you're digging into that book. Here's what I found with pumpkin farmers, Chris. Pumpkin farmers, there's two types of you have the ordinary farmer and you have these colossal farmers, these ones that make these pumpkins the size of a house. Here's one guarantee. In the pumpkin farming industry, you will never. None of us, Leticia in Australia, Chris, you in Colorado, me here in New Jersey, we'll never drive down any country road past a ordinary pumpkin farm and magically, a colossal pumpkin is growing out of the fields. It doesn't happen because the ordinary process absolutely prohibits the growth or colossal growth. Colossal farmers, and this is the lesson here, have the discipline of constantly removing the small pumpkins. They focus all their energy on the colossal pumpkin. And the second a small pumpkin starts growing on that vine, they cut it off because it's taking water, nutrients, attention, time, all that stuff away from the colossal pumpkin.

And can I point out that word discipline, Mike?

The.

The discipline is the hard bit. Yeah. Because when you start to specialize, you second guess yourself constantly, oh, I don't know if this is the right thing to do. And, oh, it feels kind of weird. And, you know, you have this internal conversation with yourself all the time, you know?

Yeah. What's the conversations you have in your head?

The conversation runs kind of like, ah, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, isn't it boring to just look after, like, one sector of people that's. That's one of them, you know, because there are lots of shiny baubles everywhere, and it's always that grass is greener syndrome. So I think, you know, it gets to the point where you're like, it's really nice to have a focus, but wouldn't it be good if that's the kind of conversation that happens and you just have to be disciplined enough to ignore it and go, no, like, this is the way.

Yeah, yeah, so that grass is greener. There's a great book out there about this. It's called the Dip by Seth Godin. And what he explains in the book is it's so easy to think or conceptualize an idea. But as we all know, 99% of a business, its success is not the inspiration, it's the perspiration. And so entrepreneurs are notoriously known for our constant inspiration because it's so easy to say, ah, if I just did this. But then when we start applying the effort we go through, as Seth Godin explains, this dip, this period of effort. But what's interesting is that on the other side is the greatest inspiration. Once you start thinking at the next level of serving a Business. And what the next level is, is digging into all the nuances, all the intricacies of service client. So if you target, just say, law firms, of what are all the things you can do to constantly improve their service? What are all the innovations in what you're already doing that you can bring to the next level? So I encourage you and all entrepreneurs listening in is if you're inspired with new ideas, don't focus on new ideas for new businesses. Focus on new ideas within how you're serving your existing clients. That way you'll still get that excitement. You're not doing blah routine. You're constantly innovating, but you're innovating for your best clients.

That's totally. That's awesome advice.

Yeah, you just touched on sort of like figuring out better ways to serve your special clients or niche clients, whatever. And that's sort of one of the things I've been dealing with too, is specializing. And I really haven't found out what. What is so special I can provide to my niche market. So. But what you just said makes a lot of sense if I really sit down and think about it. Like, in my case, it's podcasting. Like, maybe the actual recording and making the audio file, maybe that would be the same, but maybe there's ancillary stuff that can better serve my client. Is that what you're kind of saying?

Yeah, there's that. I can't remember the term of the three circles. What do they call it when the three circles intersect? A Venn diagram. Is that what it is?

That's what I think it is.

Nice. Okay. It's an Australian English word, so. But it's the intersection of who you do, what you do, and how you do. And like, a lot of us know how, what we do, I do podcasting, I do content development. But then who you do it for and how you do it is important and at the intersection of three things. And the very heart of it is the why you do it. Like, everything I do personally is my purpose is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. That's why I'm here. That's why we're doing this show today. Now, how we do it, One of the mechanisms is this show, the podcast, and there's other hows, who we do it for, very specific entrepreneurs. And what we do is we teach methods and methodologies to improving a business's focus and addressing its profitability. And once you start identifying the intersection of the three things, it becomes very clear what you need to do. And more importantly, the stuff that you can no longer do. Now, one last tip before we get going because time is blazing by. Here is as you start to focus and I love that you're doing, Leticia, I'm telling you, you've half the formula there. Start doing that. The other part of the formula is to get out of that double Helix trap is the realization of two things. First, if you start concentrating on one category, that is the way out of the double helix trap because no longer is it a custom one off for every customer. Now you're only targeting lawyers. You start getting repeating consistent needs. Now that 19 year old kid, if he's a kid, that 19 year old guy you hired, you can start teaching them the method and it becomes repeatable. That's a big way out. But the second thing is the realization is that it's not a switch from serving anybody to now serving a very specific category, those lawyers. It's a transition. So as new work comes in, you may continue to get work in other industries. You need that money for survival. Don't start turning it away. And that's what most people make a mistake at. They say, ah, I'm going all in. Lawyers, I'm going to say no to everything else. No, that's too abrupt of a change. Accept what's coming in, but no longer market that community. Only do like you did, only go to lawyer conferences, only speak to lawyers. Start concentrating your efforts there. Then you'll get what's called natural traction. By concentrating there, you'll start getting more and more leads from the legal industry. At a certain point, it'll become pretty obvious that you now have enough traction in the legal industry to fully commit. Only then do you fully commit and you've assured sustainability financially of your business. And you assured repeatability because you're in one category. And that's where classical growth comes. And you got a real shot at hitting $25 million in revenue and selling your company for 25 million plus in 10 years.

That sounds great. And actually that's pretty true because since doing that, since starting this, the transition has been like still getting all the other business, which is fine. But as I talk to my customers, vendors for example, I suddenly find there's a whole lot of them that are interest servicing only law.

Oh, there you go. So, Leticia, there's some lawyers listening to this show right now. Now we know who they should be using for their content development and other services. How can they get hold of you?

They can go to our website, which is www.brittlepixi. b r u t dash a l p I x I e dot com. That's the easiest way. And they can email us from there or hit us up on Twitter and.

They can see your doppelganger, Sissy Spacek, too.

Actually, I don't think I have any of those, like, comparison images. Maybe I should put them up.

Oh, you totally should. Yeah. The age thing kind of throws you off when you look at younger pictures of her. Yeah. You basically are twins.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not now.

No. No, not even close. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Pleasure. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Leticia. Great pleasure.

Do we. I came over. Do we have a hook for right now? Do we hook into this now? We hook into.

No, we don't have any stingers or no hooks. All we have is. Is Barry.

That's a tongue twister right there. Oh, my God. That's a beauty. That's a beauty. Well, first, I want to thank our corporate partners. And Chris, I want to discuss the top takeaways with you.

Yeah.

Thank you to Fundbox. I know I tore through in the beginning. You know, Fundbox is invoice financing. I know Leticia's facing these challenges and you are, too, listener. I do. In my own business, there's certain times that customers do not pay you. Right. You send them an invoice and they do not send the check. If you're in a cash crunch in those situations, Fundbox will release the entire invoice to you so you have the cash in hand. And then when you do collect the money from the client, you know, 60 days from now or whatever, you just return that money to Fundbox plus their service fee, which. Which is very reasonable, and it addresses cash flow. So check out Fundbox for that. Fundera a little slightly different. They're a loan provider, single stop shop. If you need a loan, small business loan to big business loans, go to fundera.com they'll shop it out for you. And then we got day sheets. Yes, they are. They're party animals, those guys. I just ran into them again at an event called Sleetercon and they hosted a killer.

A party, right?

Oh, my God.

It's marketing. Come on.

It's marketing. It was an incredible time, and I hope they were tracking the time of everyone there using their T shirts so you can figure out the. The time invested, but their time tracking software, and it's something we use in house here. It is powerful. And I'm not just saying that because they're sponsoring a show. It is powerful because we use it and it saved me time. I used to do it the old fashioned way to timesheets and all that stuff. Now it's just literally a couple clicks. Stuff's approved a couple more clicks, and it's. Their paychecks are processed. And it's more than just timesheet tracking for payroll. It does other things too.

But I'll tell you about GPS stuff, too.

With GPS, man. Yep. Yep.

Cool.

And then Nextiva VoiceOver IP. So I'm so into this company. I've been working with nextiva. I've been using them for about five or six years. I've got to know the owners now. I flew out there literally on my own dime. I'm so impressed with nextiva to tour their facilities. This was now a few weeks back to Phoenix. Yaniv, one of the owners in the business out there, he says, do you play tennis? And I said, no. And he goes, perfect, let's go play tennis. And he beat me. He beat me. Six, four, six, two, six, two. So I actually, you know, I won a few games, whatever it's called. Yeah. But I lost each set. And so in response, I sent him a trophy the size of, like, your upper torso. The massive trophy recognizing his win. And it is indicative of nextiva. They are a fun company, but they're serious, too. Like, they are when they come to play tennis and kick butt. They have a phone system that really is rock solid, and their support is phenomenal. Lots of technical things you can do, and they support it all. So thank you to our sponsors.

Yes, we love all our sponsors, corporate partners and. Yeah, and, you know, all of them. So it's not like just random companies giving us money to spout their message.

This is like, these are known companies giving us their money. Oh, man. So, dude, what did you learn today from Leticia? I mean, this is a whole new format. What'd you think?

Yeah, I like it. I like hearing from you and I like hearing the problems that people are having or the challenges, I should say, because it's real. And if we can focus on the challenges, the common challenges especially, and overcome them and give great advice. That's. That's, that's the reason people listen to the show. I think so, yeah.

Any particular challenge kind of stand out to you? Like, wow, I know what she's talking about.

Well, the whole. When she was talking about the roller coaster ride of, of a lot of sales coming in and then no sales coming in and that whole thing, you explained that really well. And especially the transition into her focusing on lawyers and Law practices. The idea that she should do it slowly and not just turn away other people. The other one other thing she said was that she noticed that all her clients are risk takers. Adventurous and forward thinking. Could that question for you, Mike, could that be a niche?

It's very difficult to do what's called a psychographic niche. So could it be a niche? Yes. But if I walk into a room, can you pick those people out? Easy? Can you say, oh, there's the risk taker? Very hard. And a lot of people classify that way. Like if you send an email out to everyone in this world, you say, do you like to take risks? Are you a forward thinker? Everyone's like, yeah, that's me. Right? So people misdiagnose themselves. It makes it very challenging. You can hit a psychographic. And I'll tell you, one company it has is Starbucks. Starbucks has hit psychographic. And what I mean in their case is they've hit people that want a sense of luxury in an affordable package. So there's people out there that they shop, you know, on a daily basis at Louis Vuitton and can drop a cool, you know, thousand dollars here and $10,000 there, but the more common folk can't afford that. Well, Starbucks figured out there's some people that are willing to pay 5 to $7 for a cup of coffee and they will feel the sense of luxury. So they are pining for luxury where a lot of people just go to quick check and get your quick coffee because I need to feel a quick spurt of energy. So there's a psychographic going on there that further gets defined into a demographic, a certain type of personality. So you can do it and you can do it very successfully. Um, but it's hard to diagnose. And I would argue I don't know the Starbucks stories well enough. Usually it reveals itself only when you hit statistical significance. Thousands and thousands of customers, right? Small business, you know, you five customers that act a certain way, you're like, oh, I hit the psychographic. I know, I know how they're thinking. It's, it's a sampling of five people out of potentially millions. So it's unlikely a realistic sampling for most small businesses if you're going for niche specialization. And I should argue, I argue that every business should go for niche specialization. Target a measurable demographic, an industry or an industry vertical. If you do business to business, industry vertical. If you're going business to consumer, go after a very specific consumer demographic so you can pick them out in that room. So to speak. It'll serve you very well.

Like podcasters in Colorado Springs. That's pretty specific.

Yeah, dude, there you go. Like, listen, if that, say that was your target, like, it's obvious where you should be marketing. Don't take that road trip up to Boulder. Like, it's not necessary.

So what did you learn?

I learned something interesting we didn't address on the show, nor will we. You know, she said, you know, I don't know if I made a mistake here or the greatest discovery. I hired a 19 year old that's not even interested in this industry. Here's the deal. When you hire people, it's not their background or skill set, it's their vision and impact they want on the world. So if someone says, you know, I want to become a professor at a college, the question to that person, if I'm interviewing them is, what's the impact you're looking to have? And then I ask myself, is my best, Is my business part of that path? Because my business had an impact. If this person is trying to help people communicate more effectively, if this person is aspiring to do whatever he wants to do to help people communicate more effectively, well, that may be in alignment with your business's purpose and mission, and therefore it becomes inspiring for that person. So I don't put much weight into where they're headed or what their background is. I put weight into what their life's purpose is. And they may have clarity. I may have to coach them around that, but I try to extract that. And I put a lot of weight into their intelligence and their attitude and their energy. Because if I find that they're rock stars. Here at Profit First Professionals, my company, we exist to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. That's our mission. It's absolutely clear every employee here is on that same path. When we interview them, we say, you know, what are you looking to do? What have you experienced? What traumas have you gone through in your life? And money has been an issue for every single person, including myself, in here. And we individually addressed it and now are trying to serve others in addressing it so they don't go through the pains that we as individuals did. It's a very bonding, powerful thing. Not a single person here has a background in accounting, yet we're serving accountants. Not a single person here aspired to necessarily do the exact job they're doing, because it didn't even exist a mere few years ago. But now we're creating these jobs, they're aspiring towards something else. But we found this common mission and it's pushing us forward. And our colleagues have been very loyal because of that common mission. So that was something I learned from her and think there's. There's something to be learned there in that age and focus or jobs they're seeking maybe actually not so relevant.

Right. Yeah. And I think the listeners might want to take a, you know, just kind of reflect on their own business and their. Their employees or partners or subcontractors and sort of reflect on it in that way. I think that would help a lot. Kind of eye open.

Yeah, totally would. And you know what else would help a lot? Leave. Leave your comments on itunes and Stitcher, because listen, this is a little new format we're doing. It's a little more Bobby McKnight or Booby. Booby McKnight. In your face. Because we got to help businesses. Yeah. We're gonna bring the experts back for episodes and shows, but we want to bring you on the show. We want to hear about your business. I want to fix it live on the show.

That's it. So send Mike an email. Go toProfit first podcast.com and you can. You can get in.

Reach out to me.

Yeah. Leave comments, reach out to Mike, send him pictures of you. And I don't know.

Yeah. And I'll tell you, if it's an indecent proposal, I may accept it. I'm just saying.

So. That's awesome. So, Mike, tell us quick about Profit First Professionals.

Yeah. So if you. If your business wants to be more profitable, Leticia is doing this. She read the book Profit First. There's another step you can take. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com that's my one company. That's the company I own. And it's an organization of accountants and bookkeepers that work at the ground level with you, the entrepreneur, in improving your profitability. They use the Profit first method, the book I wrote, and they've been trained on it in depth. They've had tons of experience on it. They know all the nuances, how to address every element and keep you accountable. If you're serious about profit, if you want to make your company profitable once and for all, go to profitfirstprofessionals.com click on find. We'll find you someone that's going to help you out. And yeah, we got folks in all over. Australia, uk, Africa, Germany, other parts of Europe, France. It's global throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico. We're everywhere but Malta. We're not in Malta. I met a guy from Malta. He's like you're anyone in Malta. I'm like, no.

What the.

We're still helping them. We're still helping them out. We're sending someone from Italy over to Malta.

That's awesome. Well, this has been great. And if you want to learn more about podcasting, you can go to my website, fractal recording.com. and this has been great. Again, our website, profit first podcast.com. and if you can, you know, you can find us in itunes and Stitcher and tune in radio and leave us a review and all that kind of stuff. So we really appreciate you listening. I hope you got a lot from this. I know I did. Please. So. Oh, oh, nice natural pause. So thanks for listening, everybody.

Yeah. And, Julie, it's time to get. I don't know what it's about to say, but get your vision out there. I love that Leticia had a clear vision. Get a clear vision for yourself. Let's make it happen together. Join us on podcast.

See you guys.

See.

Sam.