Episode 19: Time Tracking and Maximizing Profit with Matt Rissell

From the studios of Fractal Recording, this is the Profit first podcast, episode number 19.

Oh, boom. Oh, boom. I like that. Oh, the offbeat.

Yeah, baby. Helps. Being a drummer.

Are you a drummer? Yeah.

Yeah, boy.

Are you better at paradiddles or flamadiddles?

I like flammadiddles better. I'm not that kind of drummer. I'm a rock.

Bang that out.

I can.

Yeah, like something like that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was. That was my attempt at a paradiddle.

That's cool. So welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. We're happy to have you here. I'm Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowitz, the author of Profit first, among other books. And on this show, we talk about all the ways to make your business profitable, and we do with lots of energy.

That's right, because we want you to be profitable, because then you can.

Dude. It's the alpha and omega of every business. You know, I am tired of hearing, hey, I'm in business because it's my passion. I'm in because of my purpose. I'm not tired of those facts. Those are important. They're absolutely critical. But you're ignoring the most important part of your business. To stay in business, you must make money. To achieve the lifestyle that you deserve and want, you have to make money. Your business was designed to serve you. So that's what we talk about on.

The show, by serving others. So, yeah, so we're also available as a podcast on itunes and stitcher, and you can give us a little rating or a review in there too, if you want.

Yeah, they're starting to come in nice and strong now, but, man, keep them coming.

Profitfirstpodcast.com that's our URL. And how you been, man?

I've been doing pretty well. I've. You know, I kind of lost my voice a little bit. I think I got. I think I got a cold going.

I know. What? Oh, no.

Yeah, no, I think it's a cold or something, and I think it's a little bit more sexier. It's a little bit deeper.

There you go.

What you been up to, bro?

Well, this morning I was happy to wake up and find out that there's a leak coming into my living room, and my whole. The whole living room floor is wet carpet.

This whole winter season has been a disaster. Was it related to winter?

Oh, yeah, yeah. The ice freezing on the side and the gutters filled up, and then the what? Then it Rained. And then.

So I have an idea for one of our future guests. Why doesn't someone invent a pipe that can expand and contract with freezing temperatures? So it's not this copper pipe that busts all the time. That's my idea of the day.

Right?

Yeah. I mean, amazing. Yeah, I have bursting pipes all the time too. I just call my guns. Look at these muscles, baby. So I got to first thank our sponsors. Oh, yeah, we got three primary sponsors. Why are you saying quickly, quickly?

Because we're gonna get well.

Okay.

We have a special guest.

I know.

And we talk about our sponsors in the middle of the show mostly.

Yeah, no, we do. We dig into it. Army on the back.

Like I'm stretching, brother.

No, you're. You're doing the speed up cue. All right, so here's the deal. We got three primary sponsors. Nextiva been with us since day one. You know who joined us on day four? Fundera and another company called Tsheets. We're gonna talk about them a little later, but it took me. It took me 19 episodes to finally pin down Matt Rissel. Matt is the founder. The co founder, actually, and CEO of tsheets. This. This guy is like one of those cereal entrepreneurs that actually understands it's not cereal like what you eat, it's cereal like doing repeatedly. Like, he's actually figured this out. This ain't his first successful startup. It ain't his second, ain't his third, fourth, or fifth. It's his successful startup venture. He now employs 45 plus employees at TSheets. He has a passion for startups, a passion for high growth industries, a passion for our speakers. With no further ado, my buddy Matt. Welcome to the episode.

Thanks for having me, Mike.

Wow, look at the fans.

They just love you, Matt.

Yeah. No other episodes received applause like this, but when a sponsor comes on board, it's unbelievable.

They're holding up signs with your name on it and everything. Wow, look at them. Take a. Holy cow.

Have you ever got a grand welcome like that ever?

Never. Never have had anything like that. But thank you for having me on the show.

Yeah. We hear you're traveling right now.

I am. I'm in Colorado. Yep. I've been traveling a lot lately. Yeah, it's. You know, I think you were saying your voice is a little bit low. So is mine. You know, I'm a little bit tired, a little bit jet lagged.

You've been traveling for business. I know you had some family stuff too, but if you had business all around, you're traveling too.

Yeah, you know, last week I was in Australia for about 10 days. We're going to be opening up an office down in Australia. So we're down there checking out the market and figuring out which employees and what kind of employees we want to put down there. It's an exciting opportunity.

Tell us about tsheets. We talk about you literally every single episode. But now we can hear from the horse's mouth. Tell us a little more details, what tsheets is.

So what tsheets is, we are a software company. It's cloud based. It's a time tracking system for small and mid sized companies. So basically we track time for employees and that time is typically used for payroll. So if you've ever heard of a little small company called Intuit that owns a product that's really small called Never.

Have heard of them because they're not a sponsor. So we deny their existence.

They're dead to us.

Got it. But yeah, sorry about that. We maybe can work on it. But anyway, with QuickBooks, we are QuickBooks. Number one, add on. For small businesses that want to track time for their employees for payroll, why.

Is it important to track time?

Well, it's interesting, number one, if you're an employee and you need to get paid on an hourly basis, you've got to track time so you can actually get compensated. But also from a really high level, starting at the very top. I mean, if you're a small business owner, typically in any actually small, mid or even large size, typically your single largest expense item on your P and L is labor. And as a result of that, and when we started T sheets, it was actually all wrapped around and designed to help small business owners get control of that cost.

And when you say get control of it, is it because employees are lying or fudging or missing or all the above?

You know, I think we take the stance that employees generally are coming from a good place. And so I don't think that any employers want to believe the worst about their employees. But it's more just about accuracy. It's about protection of the employee and the employer. It's about also job costing and making sure we allocate time to the right projects so that we know where our largest resource is being invested.

There's a story, and Chris, this goes way back of an attorney who built 6,000 billable hours in a year to different projects that by the way, points to there's not even that much time in the year he was caught for this. He was double triple billing. Does a system like this Prevent that from happening?

Well, I mean, yes, because if you're actually real time tracking time, you can't double up. Right. Unless you create two employees and you bill against two different employees. But essentially what it's designed to do is while a lot of accountants and attorneys use it to track time for billable hours, and it works fantastic for that. The majority of folks that use tsheets are small businesses and midsize companies. So anywhere from two employees to say 200 employees that need to track time against projects, customers, tasks like service items, payroll items, and have it also calculate overtime and then that time is used and leveraged for payroll. So then that goes into a payroll system and that's how the employee gets compensated.

Yeah.

Chris, I have a question about how it looks. I mean, just can you just describe, like, if I'm an employee and I'm tracking my time, do I have an app on my phone? Do I have to log it into a computer? Do I scan a badge? Like, how does it actually work physically?

Yeah, it's really cool. So it's one of Cheat Sheet's differentiators is you can enter time from just about anything on the planet. So from a computer screen, we obviously have like a little clock in and clock out button where you can push the button. We have kiosks so that multiple employees can come up to a kiosk and just enter in their information. And multiple employees can clock in from a single device. Then we also have iPhone and Android applications where basically the same app comes up. You can track time against the project's task, etc. And then it'll also ping a GPS coordinate as well. And then you can even text message a time in and it'll actually punch the clock. You can tweet your time in and.

Punch the clock and the whole world will see it too. I'm done with this effing day.

Everyone will say, you're late, you're late.

I can see it on Twitter. Do you have, and I know I'm throwing like curveball questions at you because I didn't prepare you for this, but I'm an employer. I have full time and part time employees. Part time employees are hourly. Full time or salary. It's really the part timers I'm concerned about. Do you have any tips or tricks for me as the employer of how I can maximize my profitability via not necessarily your software, but just by implementing time tracking properly?

No question. From a profitability standpoint, I'll use my personal experience, if it's okay on how tsheats got started.

We will accept that because you are a sponsor.

Is it a personal example of in its real life. And this is how businesses leverage tsheets. So my last company, I had about 35 employees. I had four locations and I had mobile employees as well. Well, one night I was actually working, I was working late, and one of the employees signed their time card and left. And it was one of my most honest employees. Like, you could give this person $10,000 cash, they would never steal anything from you. And I thought to myself, should I check their timesheet? Yeah, I'll just go check really quick. So I walked over, looked at their timesheet, looked at my watch, and I was like, oh, no. They gave themselves like 15 minutes, which doesn't seem like a big deal, right? But when you have 30 employees, you have tight margins. And there was 15 minutes on the in and the out. So when I said, you know, not a big deal, easy problem to solve. So I went to go Office depot to buy something, there was nothing that existed. Went to Google, couldn't find one that existed. So I had one built. The very first time we processed payroll with tsheets, the version that we had of it, we saved over 2% of the top line of our payroll.

Now, just to put that in real numbers, what kind of salaries were you paying out on a monthly basis, would you say?

You know, I think our payroll was running around like $70,000.

So you're talking, you say $1,400 just with software.

Yeah, exactly, right.

Oh, my God. And so I find that too, that employees. And I actually include myself in this, you know, I like to round in my favor. I'm wrapping things up. I don't mean it to be belligerent or stealing or stealing. But what I do is I justify in my head, I say, well, you know, I did some work at home, I did this. I'm thinking I deserve the time anyway, and who's going to notice 15 minutes? Is that what you find to be the story for employees fudging time?

They can, I think they just end up giving themselves the benefit of the doubt at times. They just kind of round in their favor. Sometimes for folks that are running with a lot of hourly employees, especially multiple locations, margins are tight. Small businesses, a lot of times margins are tight. The American payroll association says that if you implement an accountable time tracking system like ours, you save on average 2.3% off your payroll.

Now, what about the flip side? If I'm an employee and now I feel the Boss is being so critical of my time. This sucks. I'm going to be resentful and try to hurt the company. Is there backlash when we're tracking that? Specifically?

No. And as a matter of fact, our mantra, our slogan, if you look at our website, it says we heart employees. And while we do love the employees, internally, tsheets, it's actually talking about the actual employees of customers. Because one of the things that we did is when we were building T sheets, one of the things that employees would often say is, hey, did you change my timesheet? So we actually created a log so they can't be deleted by anybody. And actually, logs are requested in court often for any kind of disputes that happen. And it protects the employees so that the employees can. No one can change the employee's time when they enter it for payroll versus if it's just on a piece of paper. There's usually errors on the employer and the employee side. So I text both.

Okay. So I, as the employer, if you say you're my employee, Matt, if you enter your time in T sheets, I can't modify even though I'm the employer.

Well, I can modify their time.

Right.

But it's tracked in the law.

It's logged. So the original entry is in there. Oh, you know, this is fascinating, Chris, because a prior life of mine, I was a expert witness for trials and so forth. And this was a common litigation, was employee employer disputes. And where you were at a certain time or what were you doing was always tracked. And it sounds like this tool is a powerful way to do that. Is your software. And I'm not trying to. I am kind of trying to promote your software because you are a sponsor. Thank you very much. But is your software used in litigation and stuff like that?

It's used a lot. It's used all the time, actually, in labor disputes because those logs can be submitted. And anything that anybody tries to do or attempts to do or actually does, it's recorded in a timestamp, who did it and what was done or even attempted to do.

And our listeners are all employers. We all own businesses. They sound like this protects us too, because the facts can't be disputed.

You're exactly right. It protects everybody. And that was the goal for it. Absolutely. And the other reason that we have the. We heart employees as well, we love employees. Is that tsheets was always designed for the end user in mind. So our big, hairy, audacious goal is to become the number one employee rated and requested time tracking system on the planet. What's funny is if you talk to most employees, they respond just like you did, with a very visceral response, like, ugh, I hate time tracking. Right? And you get just the opposite with tsheets. One of our largest referral sources are the actual employees. When they go to a different employer, they're like, hey, I used tsheets at my last company. It was awesome.

That's not what I expected. One thing that's interesting, you referenced a bhag, not all our listeners. I don't know, Chris, if you're familiar with that. A bhag is a big, hairy, audacious goal coined by Jim Collins. You know, Matt, I heard another term. Tell me if you like this one. Big bang. And I'm not even sure who coined this, but big hair, audacious goal misses one component. And you say it in your tagline. We love our employees. It loses that nobility. So a big bang stands for a big, bold, audacious, noble. That's what the N is goal. Sounds like you got a big bang going on, my brother.

Thank you. My wife says that about me all the time.

All right, stage two of our show. Usually I'm the one who has to bring us that level, but, Matt, you're my kind of people. Okay, so you've had multiple successful startups. I mean, literally six. Six successful startups. All of us listening in right now. That's what we want. What is your formula to doing this over and over and over again?

Well, I mean, success is, you know, some of them are much smaller than others, and so it's all kind of relative. But, you know, one of the things that I say to folks all the time is that. And they ask, you know, when I get interviewed or whatever, they'll say, you know, what is the key to success? And I personally don't think that there is one. I don't think there's a personal formula. I think it's just one is that you have to be persistent. There's so many times that just. People give up. Actually, my favorite quote, like literally my favorite quote that I quote all the time that my staff get sick of is by Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States says, nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. So anyway, I think that person.

That was good. You were leaning into it too. I heard your phone, your chair creak. When you went back, you dropped the microphone.

I'm excited. I do. I like that.

I think you called me a bitch after you said that too. That's what I heard.

No, I mean, here's the reality is that there's people that are always out there that are smarter than you, that are better funded than you, that have a better education, they got a better pedigree or more talented, whatever, but you get to choose if you give up or not.

Did you want to give up with tsheets at a certain point, or was this just an easy ride the whole way?

Oh, my gosh, no. We had. I mean, the truth is we had three go to market failures. We at the very beginning, raised a very nominal amount of angel funding that we ran out of about a year and a half in. And there was a day where I actually saw the end of the Runway. And my co founder and I, we had eliminated all of our employees except for what was absolutely necessary. We were down to like four and a half employees. And my co founder and I walked out on the grass and we just stared up at the sky and we looked at our. We just talked back and forth saying, you know, what do we do? Are we even in time tracking? And we were completely lost. And, you know, we said, should we just. Should we just wrap this up? And at the time, we were receiving a whole bunch of criticism on our product. And so it was hard. So, no, I mean, it wasn't easy at all. And so, but we did. We looked at each other and said, you know, let's sleep on it and see how we feel in the morning. We both came back in the next morning and we believed.

When did that happen? What year was that? When you and your co founder had that come to Jesus?

Oh, it was 2009.

It's so funny, Matt. Entrepreneur after entrepreneur, we talk with the success isn't like 50 years of, oh, we've been crushing it forever. It's, oh, in the last six years, we really nailed it. But leading up to that has been struggle. And are you really committed to its success Moments. It's interesting that tsheets, it sounds like your growth started only five, six years ago. Is that accurate?

That's exactly. We were growing. It was just very modest growth versus now.

What about a co founder? It sounds like those are moments where that can break up businesses and partnerships. It sounds like you and the co founder, your business partner, saw that moment and said, we're pushing forward. What do you Think about how do you build a strong partnership with my co founder.

Yeah, Marriage counseling.

Nice.

Are you serious? Because I'd be totally dead serious. You guys go to a counselor?

Well, it wasn't like a counselor, but basically we had a business coach that helped us communicate for the first two to three years because it was really difficult. I mean, it was very difficult. We're very different people. But once we were able to hear each other and actually really do a good job of communicating, manage, it actually changed the company dramatically. And so I would say that coach was pivotal to helping us grow.

Because your partner. I've been doing some research and just checking things out. It sounds like you're the outward facing, brand building, the corporate cheerleader. At least that's the sense I'm getting driving points forward. Sounds like your partner. He's the technology, the infrastructure, developing the software, leading the technological stuff. If that's accurate. How do people that are so divergent in background and skill set actually have a good marriage?

Well, I think that the differences can complement each other if you can learn to listen. And that's reality. You're right. We are polar opposites, as far away from the spectrum, both on a personality and basically a skill set standpoint. But if you can find a way to work together, it makes it a very, very strong partnership. And I have the utmost and deepest respect for Brandon, and he has it for me. And that's kind of the underlying foundation that I think is required to have a successful relationship and partnership.

I'm sure he's come to you with ideas. Brandon says, hey, Matt, we got to do this. And you're like, that is total bull. Or vice versa. How do you navigate those situations?

You listen.

Yeah, but how can you listen when you know it's total bull, or at least you feel you know it's total bull.

No, I mean, you tell them we have open, honest communication. And there's times that Brandon's come to me and said, look, you know, we should go. I don't remember, do something. And it's mostly me. I'm usually the guy that's saying, you know, squirrel, shiny object. And usually he's a great strategist. And he would look at me and he'd say, okay, Matt, we've got six months of projects in front of us. What do you want me to focus on? These other 10 things are what we decided to focus on. He had a way of always kind of keeping us focused.

So 2009, there's four folks there, you, Brandon, two employees today. It's over 45 employees. How has your role change in the business to make sure that it's on track and being profitable throughout?

Oh, that's amazing.

Who, me?

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about me. I'm like, that is a great question. Thank you.

It was.

Exactly. That's a good question. You know, it's amazing what's had to have to change. I mean, a, I have to continually fire myself out of my positions. Two, I have to change my communication style. I have to change the way. You know, there's a lot of books that talk about different stages of companies. And one of the big stages is when you get over 50 employees. And we're there now, this month we'll cross over 50 employees. And it's a different animal. And you just have to constantly figure out what season you're in as a company and do the best you can to build it.

Yeah. When you go over 50 employees, the government kind of steps in and says you have to have equal hiring rights. That's actually not the term, but you have to have a certain mix of employees and stuff like that. I assume the regulations that are enforced upon you now, Matt, are radically different than it was simply three, four employees ago.

Well, we actually complied with all of those regulations 30 employees ago.

Great.

That wasn't that big of a deal. But really just from a communication standpoint, making sure everybody in the company understands where the company is headed, what's priority, and how what they do fits into the big picture anyway. We run lean and mean. It's really easy to be able to show what one person does and how that's going to affect the future of T sheets.

At the end of the day, you and Brandon, of course, benefit. You had the courage to start this business. You benefit from the profits in the business. And maybe there's some other equity owners, you have some investors. But how do you drive or instill this with your employees? I know some of your team members over there. I assume they're not walking home with a portion of the profits. Maybe they are. How do you instill that mentality of profitability and efficiency with employees that may not be even directly benefiting from it?

Well, one, for us, what we've chosen to do is we've gone to the extreme in taking care of our employees whenever we can. We add more benefits to the employees. So our health, our vision, our package, basically a benefits package for our employees is for a small company like we are, is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, we were always buying lunches. They've got free gym memberships. I mean basically it's as much of a Google esque as that we can afford. And so in return they're that committed to TSheets and they do everything that they can to help TSheets succeed. And I think that that's what happens when you're committed to the employees. I think it's intrinsic. If you have good people on your team, they're going to turn around and they're going to want to do everything they can to help the succeed.

It's funny, in an upcoming episode we're going to invite in Bobby Knight, his younger twin brother, but he's going to be talking about that exact method of reciprocity. It sounds like the more you give to your team, that sounds like inherently they're wired to kind of reciprocate in kind to your business.

I don't know if I would say it. The more you give to the team because then you get in a trap of they're going to keep asking for more. I think it's just basically treating them the best that you possibly can and also having really high expectations of them. I mean employees naturally want to be held to a very high standard. People with a drive and a work ethic, they do. They want to care about what they create and they get that opportunity at tsheets. One of the things that I tell folks in all of our interviews is that if you need to be micromanaged, this is not the company for you and everybody. This is my own personal theory now, but everybody always says that they don't want to be micromanaged. My theory is that about only 20% of the population can actually handle an environment where they don't need to be micromanaged.

Yeah, I believe that now. So Google has 50,000 employees. You got 50 employees, but you got to deliver the same suite of things. How do you ensure that your employees are driving profitability in their different categories, like what they're responsible for?

So two things. Number one is you have to have a structure. I'm a firm believer in the.

You don't know what you're a firm believer in, do you?

No, it's basically the structure of your organization is going to determine how big it is. So if you, you need to have a structure that makes sense for your organization. All of my companies have had a different structure. So have a really good. What I mean by is an actual organizational structure, at least a plan for it. And you may only have like four or five employees, but you should have basically an idea of a division that that employee is going to either develop or work inside of. I don't know if I'm doing a great job of articulating that. But the other is a pro forma. So I basically allow the pro forma to control my company and make decisions for me. I have a very detailed pro forma that I update at least weekly, sometimes twice a week, where I'll update all my forecasted numbers into the current months and the future months. And I can always see how what one decision, whether it's hiring an employee, investing in a new project, new marketing, whatever, will affect my budget for the year and will affect my profitability.

So is the pro forma, is that your KPIs, your key performance indicators? Is that what that is or am I not understanding that?

Yeah. What is that? Proforma.

A pro forma? Yeah, basically what that is. It's a financial outlook for your entire company. So it's basically a high level. Typically it's a high level overview of your PL and then it's forecasted out month over month for the next year. And then after usually a year, it goes up even to a higher level where you can easily forecast from a super high level the next three years.

And do you have KPIs? Again, that's key performance indicators, which are very specific numbers. Do you have certain KPIs that you track? That's the question. Do you have KPIs that you're monitoring?

Oh my gosh, yes. We have KPIs for our executive team members. And then not only do our, but our executive team members have KPIs for all of their employees. Good.

And so, yeah, I'm just curious, the KPI, how does that serve you? How does that make your job easier or more efficient as the leader of the company?

Well, So I pick KPIs that are meaningful to them and to me. And so in other words, we pick KPIs that are going to actually move the needle. So if they. For instance, on the marketing side, one of Our high level KPIs is the number of traffic, the actual visitors to our website. So that's mainly the one that I track and I track it from a high level. But marketing then has KPIs to whether it's organic, direct, and which keywords and how they got to our website. So I think that they all have to line up with how you're growing your organization. I'm a growth focused CEO.

Yeah, no, I know. Because you've built and Sold. Six companies. One of those common questions, Chris, you get here in the studio. Besides, is Mike available for a date from our lady listeners, which I'm sorry, ladies, I'm not. Well, maybe. What is the secret to building a company that you can sell? You've done this so many times. Matt, how do you build a company that someone wants to acquire?

I think you create something of value. I mean, some things that make companies valuable are systems and processes. They're loyal customer bases. It's growth. I mean, things that are growing are valuable. And as you would probably say, things that are profitable are valuable. But then again, there's those companies out there that the anomaly where you have Snapchat getting offered $2 billion in. They've never seen a dollar version.

I know, I know. That pisses me off because I wish that was me. But when you say something valuable, I think my company's valuable. I know you think everyone thinks their company's valuable. Everyone listening in is like, my company's valuable to me. But what are the key things? And maybe you just listed them off and I'm asking you to repeat, but what are the key things to make the other guy see that I'm valuable and pay premium for me?

I think those are the ingredients and I think also the business model, basically. Tsheets being a subscription business model is much different than my last company where it was basically in the printer cartridge refilling business. We had to hunt and kill every day, both from a retail and from a business standpoint. And while we had some repeat customers, they weren't on a subscription basis. A subscription model for, let's say, a business customer base of some sort has a certain value on it versus another that is at hunt and kill every day.

So last question for you. What's the outlook for T sheets in the upcoming years? Where are you going to take it?

Well, I'm having a blast. I mean, to get to do what we get to do from head being headquartered in Boise, Idaho is actually a dream come true. We're having a blast. We're growing at about just over. We're doubling just about every year. And I think we can do that for the next five years. What?

Hold on, hold on. I'm doing the math real quick. I just want to challenge you. Five years of doubling. So you're 50 today. Next year's 100, next year's 200, next year's 400. Two mergers, less than 800 and 1600 employees. That's what I'm seeing is doubling. You think you can take it to that size that quick?

Well, actually, I was talking speaking to revenues, and I do think that we can double our revenues every couple of years.

Nice comeback.

That was a test on you employees. I'm hoping we can find economies of scale.

Awesome. That's great news. Matt, we are seriously humbled and honored that you have elected to sponsor and support. We love that you're a corporate partner of the show, and we want to thank you for that. Our readers, our listeners. We have no readers, actually, but our listeners, when they want to learn more about tsheets, we keep saying the tsheets dot com. What else can they do to learn more about you and your organization?

Oh, I mean, they can go to tcheats.com if you want to learn a little bit about me and things that I'm working on, you can go to the About Us under the About CEO section. I'm always. I'm on Twitter often. I'm always evaluating the latest business article and giving my thoughts. So you can check me out there. But that's basically it. Oh, and I'm also contributing to the Huffington Post as well. So if you want to read some of my thoughts where I pontificate.

Yeah, that's awesome. And a popular keynote speaker. So if you're traveling around, check out tsheets. They're posting stuff about Matt all the time, but you're at all the major conferences that are out there. Just a phenomenal guy, amazing speaker, and. And you can throw back a couple beers, too. I understand.

So well, now I feel good about myself, especially because of the beard. But Mike and Chris, thank you very much for having me on my show. Honestly, I'm honored to be on it, and I really appreciate you having me.

Oh, brother is a fun time. Having it. Safe travels back home to Boise, and I hope to see you out in the blue turf one time. I want to come out for a game out there.

Yeah. Come check it out. Thanks a lot.

All right, later on.

Oh, the fans go Matt Russell.

They're loving dude.

They loved it.

Dude. Matt's awesome.

Wow. He's like, oh, and by the way, I write for the Huffington Post, too.

I know. Like, like, yeah, I know. Like the 29 job. Oh, yes. By the way, I've had 17,000 successful companies now, but, you know, no arrogance, right? This guy just hits out of the park. Hits out of the park. And he is a humble, nice guy. I had breakfast with him out in. I don't even know where we were out in Vegas or somewhere. We're at A conference. Listen, this guy hits it out of the park over and over again, and he is hanging out with everybody, including muckety muck, Mike McCallow. It's loudmouth and just a regular, normal guy. Very approachable and tells you everything. Oh, here's how I did it. Here's how you should do it.

He makes it sound simple too, which is not easy to do. That shows what level he's like, oh.

I just do that. But, you know, it's the confidence that he has in himself that he's like, oh, this is what I did. And he has his. He has his moments. 2009, he's out there. I can just picture him and Brandon are outside. Maybe they're smoking up a doobie because we don't. We don't have a chance to make this happen. Let's just. And the next morning, they're back in. They're like, you know what? It was just a bad day. We're back on track. Push forward. 50 employees that day. He could have said, you know, Brandon, what are we doing? Let's give this up. Yeah, and give me my joint back now.

Now that you mentioned that they're going to cancel their sponsors.

I. Drug references. No, Matt's an awesome guy.

That's awesome.

So what'd you learn, bro?

Well, I learned a lot. I took a whole bunch of notes here. I might have to. I'm gonna listen to this one again too. I like listening to our shows to remind myself, you know, the whole persistence quote that he gave was awesome. I actually quoted that in my book as well.

Yeah. And you can tell he. He lives that because he. He said word for word, the whole thing. And then you hear the chair go afterwards. That's a guy who's leaning forward into his microphone.

And he was pointing at you.

He was pointing at me.

But I also.

Listen to me.

Listen to me. Oh, there's a booby night coming soon.

Movie night coming your way.

But. There's no but. He also talks about learning to listen and the relationship he had with his co founder. Seeing a business coach learning how to communicate. That's big. I mean, it sounds like a small thing, but think about that.

Two different guys. You know, it's a human tendency that for us to like people who are like us, to look for commonalities. What I'm hearing in Matt, he looks for someone that is a complimentary, not commonality, but complementary person, has different talents that kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. These two guys fit together and yeah, you meet them in the street. You're like, these guys are hanging out. These guys? Yeah. Oh, they're hanging out. Right. And they're making a killer business. That's kicking your ass, pal. So I love that. The other thing I learned too was I put Uber care for your employees. Like buying one. I know more employers that say, buy my employees lunch. Screw them, they're on their own. Brown bag it. But Matt is like, no, no, we'll do it. And it costs what it costs 20 bucks a person. But it's these things that he cares beyond anyone else. And in return, his employees, his colleagues recognize that, and they care about the company more than anything else. Yeah.

Because you. He even clarified. You mentioned giving your employees more. And he said not. Not necessarily giving them more, but treating them better. Yeah, I thought that was a neat. Neat.

It was neat. It was neat. That's very hip of you to say that.

Powerful. Yeah, I love powerful distinction.

Your car outside is a sharp looking car.

Hey. But when you asked what makes a company valuable, he said four things. Systems, loyal customers, continued growth, and profit.

Profit's always in there, brother.

We should start three other podcasts about the other three areas.

I love it, bro. We got a rock and roll. You got a meditation to get to. I got an angry wife to get home, too. She's not angry. I'm just late.

Yeah. Okay. So, well, this has been awesome. And our other sponsors are nextiva.

Oh, my God. Almost forgot.

Yeah, we didn't freeze.

Yeah, well, we didn't forget because you remember nextiva is a voice over IP phone provider. If you have a phone system, check out nextiva because you're probably getting a bad deal. Nextiva will give you a better deal if you don't have a phone system, if you have like a cheesy thing like Ringcentral. And I'm not saying that's a bad company. That's why I used to use this. Nextiva blew it away. Check them out. Fundera. It's one stop shop. If you need funding for your business, for God's sake, go to fundera.com. that's right, check them out.

Yeah, you sign up at Fundera, they shop. They do all the shopping.

They give you, give you the price. Yeah. And listen, I know to scale your business, to grow your business, you need money. I'm not a big fan of borrowing money because you're panicked and you're desperate and you can't make it a profitable business. But even profitable businesses, once you figure out your formula, those businesses need money, too. And you can Scale on that funder is a source. It's the source in either situation. But I don't like the desperate situations. Use it to scale your business. And you listen, listen, listen. I mean, you just heard. I know. I get all fired up. Matt Rissel, how often do we get a CEO of a company that's a nice sized company? He spent a good 40 minutes, you know, waiting, and then 30 minutes on the phone with us. Check out T sheets. Just go to T sheets. You heard from Matt. It's a real company. It's real people doing really amazing things. And now you can track your business. And listen, 2%, 4% is nothing to throw chicken scratch at. Yeah, that's real money. You can be saving using a product like T sheets.

Yeah. And it's the letter t. And then sheets.com, t sheets, tsheets.com. so this has been awesome. Mike Michalowicz, you're. You're rocking the profit first professionals.

Yeah, I'm rocking it out. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com. you can see what we're doing with accountants and bookkeepers. If you're an accountant or bookkeeper, for God's sake, contact me. We gotta be talking together. And, Chris, you are crushing it with fractal recording. And there it is. Oh, you're crushing with fractal recording, man.

That's right. Because I'm producing podcasts for businesses. A lot of businesses. You know what I find? Blogging is difficult. Talking is easy. You know what? If you find that's the case, call me. You can start a podcast show. Leverage content. Rock it.

Yeah. If you like to talk with friends, you know, some of the best conversations come out. You have a bottle of wine, your eyes roll up, you're sitting there with some friends, and all of a sudden, it's that moment. It's a fun, light conversation, and there's those two words that change your life. That's what this show has been about since day one. It's a fun conversation, and you hopefully you find those two words. I'm sure Matt delivered it today.

Oh, it was tremendous. And you can find us on itunes. And stitcher. Listen to the podcast. All our previous episode, our great guests. A lot of cool guests coming up too. So thank you, Mike Michalowicz.

You're very welcome. I love you.

All right, thanks, everybody.

See you.

See y, Sam.