Episode 21: Customer Service and Profit Growth with Angie Strader

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

You're finally legal to drink. 21. 21. Party time.

As you blow out every microphone in the studio, I know you've been sitting.

There playing with the dials tweaking, like, I gotta get the sound perfect. And then I scream.

I'm like, yeah, can I get your sound level? And you're like, yes, this is my level. Is this sound good? Start the show.

21.

Welcome, everyone, to the the Profit first podcast. This is the little Mayhem podcast show where you learn about profit. I'm Chris Curran, founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit first, among other books. And it's on this show we talk everything about business, how to make more money. At the end of the day, the bottom line, it is the most important element. I get so angry. Yes. Last episode, I'm like yelling at people. I got so angry with this. But it does. What matters is how much money you're making and why this ma. Why you're getting scared. Why this matters. When he gets scared, he starts laughing. He wets himself a little bit. Why this matters so much is that everyone talks about more marketing, more social media, more this and this, and then they're barely surviving. So, yeah, all those elements are important, but unless you're getting the bottom line straight, you're done. Stick a fork in you.

Because you won't even stay in business if you're not making profit.

No, that's exactly true, brother.

That's it. If not, you're done. So we're available as a podcast on itunes and Stitcher, and if you give us a little rating and review on itunes or Stitcher, that helps us a lot. And the website is Profit first podcast dot com. Easy to remember.

Yeah. And when you go there, you may even see a reference to our sponsors. So thanks to nextiva, Fundera and Tsheets all for back in this show. They're long term sponsors now and I appreciate that.

And they love us and we love them.

Yeah.

So how you been, man?

I've been all right. I.

Hey, by the way, I have a. I just. Can I say something to our audience?

Yes. I'm not gonna say a word. I'm walking away from the microphone.

I want to tell our audience to remind. I want to remind our audience it's a little thing about driving. Driving a car, right? You drive a car. Most of our listeners drive. Here's the thing. When you're driving your car, if there's ever someone. And can you tell I. You are angry, passionate about this.

Yeah. Your forehead's getting red.

If there's ever someone in front of you that is tapping their brakes. Okay, they're trying to tell you something, and it might be one of a few different things, but please be aware if someone's tapping their brakes. Maybe your high beams are on. You need to turn them off.

Classic.

Maybe your lights are not on. Maybe you need to turn your lights on.

Mm. Maybe you're tailgating.

Maybe you're tail. Maybe you're tailgating.

Yeah. Just. Hey, dude, ease off. Ease off my ass.

That's right. So don't. Just ignore it.

Yeah.

Anyway, thank you.

And I said I'd walk away from the microphone, and I didn't.

I needed help. Thank you.

So we'll skip your update. That. Is it your angry rant. My dude, I stink. Like I'm odiferous or odoriferous, I think is the word. Not odiferous. Odoriferous. I smell. The reason I smell. I didn't shower this morning. The reason I didn't shower this morning. I had a call at 7:30 in the morning because we do some international business. I had to be on a phone call in Germany. I wake up at 7:30. I'm like, I'm just gonna run into the office, and then the call will be done by 8:30. I. I'll shoot back, take a shower, be back in the office by 9:30. At 8:30, call wraps up. Germans are so meticulous about perfect timing. It was like an incredible call. They wrap up, and I'm like, I just got to do a few more things. A few more things left. A few more things. I got to come to the studio. I'm stinking like Lincoln. I'm stinking like Lincoln.

See, I showered for you this morning, so.

Yeah. But Jatal getting my ass the whole.

Way here to work through the snow.

Through the snow. So, you know, we have a very cool guest today.

I'm psychedelic.

You are psyched.

I am.

Because we did a little preamble with Angie Strader. Oh, my God. Edit that out.

Yeah, we did a little start there.

Angie Strader. So Angie, she's another Texan. You know, last week we had Daryl on, and he's from Texas. Now we have Angie from Texas. We're, like, working with everyone from every major city in Texas. She's from the Dallas area. Interesting background. She was a police officer and. And a hostage negotiator for eight years with the US Air Force. Hostage negotiator.

That's awesome.

Yeah. She's now the CEO of 360 Raps. It's a very popular rap band based out of the Dallas area.

And it's not vegetarian raps, either.

No, no, no. The raps, it's not either. It's not a rap band. It's not vegetarian raps. What she does is rap cars.

Yes.

So you ever see those advertisements, like, a car comes by and it says, like, you know, Sandals Resort all over the car? And it's like, wow, they put a lot of time painting that car. No, no, no, dude. First of all, stop tapping your brake lights over this. Right? That is a wrap. That is a car wrap. It's a very highly effective way to advertise your business. And for Angie Strader, it's a very effective way to bring in some money. With no further ado, Angie Schrader. Angie Schrader, welcome.

Oh, okay, bro.

No, I'm good. I'm good. Was that the best welcome ever?

That was incredible. Incredible. I don't. Can I just stop now?

And.

Yeah, it was a pleasure.

When you graduated from high school and they did the. The ceremony. The Pomp and circumstance. I was about to say the Pomp and circumstance. Right.

Yeah.

When they did that and they announced your name, what was that like?

Oh, my God. Considering that I only had one credit to spare to even walk across that stage, and that was because it was on a wing in a prayer. It was. Myself and the principal were crying when I walked across stage.

Oh, God. Really?

I was not. No, absolutely not. I was not into that whole school thing. I was too busy trying to find other things to do.

Talk to me. Not a good student or just distracted by things or issues that we can't talk.

Yeah, no.

Issues.

Yeah. Issues. Yes. But that's another whole. Like, that's another show.

Okay. No, it doesn't have to be another show. I think we may have some music for this. We're looking. So tell me about that.

How does that make me feel?

Good. How does that make you feel that we threw you back into that phase of life?

Well, other than the twitching that I can overcome. No. I'm really actually proud of what I did overcome. I was one of the, quote, unquote, least likely to succeed people in high school. And just because I was bored, I was looking to stir up trouble and come to find out later in life I was adhd. So that hasn't.

That's classic. And then we're gonna fast forward real quick. Cause fast forward quite a few years or very few years, you start 360 raps and do you want to go back to your high. Have you gone back to a high school reunion and kind of rubbed it in people's faces?

You know, it's awesome. I am actually on the 30 year reun organizational committee for a reunion. Love it in June. Yep.

So are you seeing the pictures of your old classmates?

Oh, I love. Don't you love Facebook so you can keep up on whoever's on diets right now. Who's tanning, who's doing all that stuff to get ready? Yes.

Now tell me if this is true with your high school. All the jock guys that were like total studs and athletes are all now short, fat, bald, non athletic. And the women, the women that were like the prom queen and stuff. Short, fat, bald. I mean, do you experience the same thing?

I gotta say, the women in my class, awesome. They have aged so well. Men, if they don't have those little name tags with their picture from high school, I will not know who they are. Yeah, yeah, I won't.

I think it's a reversal. Some of the biggest nerds from high school but became like rock star studs, successful, charismatic. Like the people that you're like in high school were shunned upon. Like, oh, nerd. Like that person now is ruling the world. I saw this role reversal flip. Like people burned people that were high in high school, not stoned high, but like living the high life. Kind of burned out at high school.

Exactly. Yeah. I agree with that completely. Or people like me who was having fun in high school, by the time I got out and got serious with my life, they're just now starting to party and have fun. Well, it's a little late now. You gotta get your act together and you gotta be in a, you know, participate in society.

Is your. Is your high school crush gonna be there?

I didn't have a high school crush.

What?

I didn't. I didn't.

Look at you guys breaking down high school on the profit first.

I know, I know, I know. Chris keeps us on track. Wow. All right. I did want to talk more about high school, but Chris is totally right. So let's go into business. After high school, you joined the military.

Yes.

You were a hostage negotiator. What was that all about?

Well, the reason I went into the military is because my prospects for doing anything else was pretty slim. And I decided when I went in, if I was going to go in, I was going to change the whole Persona. Who I was so going in in law Enforcement and then specifically with the hostage negotiations. I'm really good at focusing laser focus under high stress, intense situations. So it just was a natural fit for me.

Interesting.

Thanks Chris for that robust input. Really, really appreciate you diving in with that comment.

The listeners will understand.

So did you actually negotiate real life hostage situations or were you just trained for it?

I actually had one in the Philippines when I was stationed there. But other than that was training.

Okay, so tell us about the Philippines. What's that like? Because I think this is going to translate into what you do in business.

Well, the Philippines was during the Marcos revolution. So back in the late 80s and it was there was the new People's army was killing Americans and taking hostages and so forth. So it's a little intense. I don't want to get into all of that because it's a really hard time. But yeah, it was a really hard time to live through in my career field in the Philippines during a civil war, basically.

But I can only imagine how difficult that must have been. But those skills you learned in hostage negotiations, I assume that translates into different forms of negotiations and communications in business?

It does. And funny thing is when I was in the corporate world later, I would always ask supervisors or bosses to please don't share my resume with because I was in sales. Please don't share my resume with customers because they will automatically assume I'm trying to pull one over on them.

Yeah. So that title puts you at a disadvantage.

It can, yeah, absolutely. People will automatically think I'm either trying to psych them out or figure them out or what am I trying to twist. And that's not the goal. The goal is a win win situation. Everyone benefits, comes out fine.

But.

But people automatically get a little defensive.

So you started this business. 360 raps. What inspired you to start that business?

Actually my husband started it. I was still in corporate doing the corporate thing. I was in specialty coffee for a number of years. My husband started it. He's extremely creative. He had been working in marketing for nascar. He was exposed to the rap industry for a long time and he's always been an entrepreneur and I was always the steady income corporate person.

Okay.

Until I burned out in corporate. And I said I really hope that little business that you started is going to survive because I'm quitting my executive position. Blah, blah, blah.

How big was the company when you joined? Just to give us a sense.

Oh, it was tiny.

Just him.

It was him. A receptionist and off and on another installer to help.

So that's Not a million dollars.

He didn't pay our salary. No, no, no, no, no, no. And the business started in. We're coming up on our eighth anniversary. So it started in March of 2007.

And when did you join?

Around the end of 2009, beginning of 2010. We don't have a hard date. I kind of just evolved into the position and then one day said, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it all in and let's make this happen.

Okay. So you come into the business, it doesn't even have enough money, I think you were saying, to even pay your salaries. Like you left a corporate job to go into this, and so this sounds like an all in bet. Do your husband have children, too?

I have a daughter from a previous marriage. She's grown adult married, but she's actually been in the company longer than I have.

Oh, so this is a family affair. Okay, so this business is supporting you and your husband. It's supporting your daughter. You go into the business, you leave your only secure income. Why would you do that? Crazy kind of bet on life.

For me, I think that I truly am an entrepreneur at heart. I was doing great in corporate as long as I had flexibility of my calendar. The higher I got in the corporate ladder, the more they controlled my time and the unhappier I got. So it finally just came to a point of saying, this is enough. I need a break. Let me go see what this is. Little businesses you got going on and see what I can do to help. So went all in.

Okay, so you went all in. Now tell us. I want to know about the money side of this business. 360 wraps. You're putting advertising on vehicles, I assume private and commercial vehicles. How did you start growing this so that you could actually start taking a salary and an income?

I guess it sounds silly, just one customer at a time, but it really. We grew from word of mouth. We've never done any traditional advertising or marketing other than our own vehicle wraps. But we had connections in the industry, especially in the racing industries where we started. But it really was just getting out there, meeting people, networking and doing one wrap at a time. We started with small mom and pops. One or two vehicles. People were putting any scraps of money they could to get their vehicle wrapped to. Now we're doing fleets for 800 vehicles at a time on a daily basis.

Oh, my God. That's why I love Angie. Isn't that amazing?

It's pretty cool.

It's freaking really cool. Every Time I get your email, I don't know if you can hear me screaming in excitement for you. When I email you back, I'm like, this is effing crazy. This is awesome. So you said the racing industries where you got started and then you said, I work for anybody. I believe to have that kind of growth, you had to have a niche. Did you target the racing industry? Did you favor that industry? Did you have something specific more than just anyone that wanted to wrap or was it really anyone that wanted to.

Wrap at the beginning? It was anyone who wanted to wrap.

Okay.

And we still do. If you're a plumber, if you're to any kind of thing, air conditioning, H vac, anything you can think of, we have wrapped.

Okay, so they're small business owners. But then what sprung board you from anyone needs a wrap to did you start making money that way? Did you start supporting your salary by doing anything for anybody?

We started, yeah, actually we did. Meagerly. I mean, we did. It was. It was tough. It was tight. Money was very tight. We were very frugal. You know that concept. Our home life was totally different. We didn't even think about what we were doing at home because we were focusing all on the company. But what it really the change for us is again another cliche. But it was really when I did meet with you or meet you the first time and helped us get a laser again, that laser focus of where do we really make our money? And once we put it out there, that's what really helped.

By the way, never use a cliche. Say the word cliche when you say then I met with you. That's not a cliche, that's just awesome, quite frankly. All right, so yeah, so you start crushing. There's a certain point where this business goes from now bringing in a meager salary because you'll serve anyone to now you're doing fleets of 800 vehicles. What was that next stage of growth?

Next stage was focusing on fleet accounts specifically. So meeting with fleet managers at car dealerships. One of our best accounts is enterprise leasing. So the enterprise rental car, but they're leasing side. So really getting in and working with the fleet managers. And so not just one or two vehicles, which we still do and we still love those customers. But looking at multiple vehicles, easy to do. We can design print one time, you can design it one time, print over and over again. And it's just clockwork on the installs.

I got you. So profitability is in the repeatability that's trademarked. If anyone Wants to use that term. I just own that now. Profitability is in the repeatability. Yeah. Chris is like, why you trade. You should see his eyes, Andy. No, his eyes. Yeah, I put TM next to it so you can't use it.

Yeah, I'm already on uspto, so hurry.

Oh, damn it. I don't have access to it. All right, That's Angie. Yeah.

My quote, Angie, were you the one to go into enterprise and are you like, you know, kind of heading up sales and go using your entrepreneur skills to get into these companies, into their specific departments and do this?

I'm actually the background person. Believe it or not, I am the one that works. We have a very strong leadership team. So I took everything I learned in corporate and tried to replicate that in a very small business, to have that foundation. So within our leadership team, our sales manager and production manager.

How many work in there now?

We're at 17 right now for just our location in Dallas, but we have over 100 independent contract installers across the country.

Okay, so I suspect you're over a million dollars by. By a long shot now, right?

Pretty. Yes.

So, okay, so you start growing by focusing on these repeatable type opportunities. But how were you getting in the door? I mean, here you're a mom and pop before this. You're this little company. They'll do anything for anybody, for God's sake. You'll wrap a sub sandwich if you have to then. Now you're doing these big things like what? What was the strategy? Maybe it wasn't you doing those calls, but what was the strategy for getting in?

One of the things that we do is we really work on making it easy to do business with us. So once you work with a large company and you get that ability to work with a large company, because some of our competitors don't know the inner workings of, say, an enterprise or a large auto dealership like Ford or whatever. Once you can establish with them that we can talk the talk, we can make their lives easier, and we have an outstanding product quality. They really want word of mouth. I mean, they'll share that word of mouth. They're our own advocates. They go out and preach from the mountains for us. So it really has been. We have never done outside sales. We've never cold called. It's all making our customers happy. We have a proprietary software for project management that really enabled us to have an edge on any of the other competitors of the ease of going through the whole design process, the whole thing.

So you built these systems for efficiency so when you install a wrap, since it's repeatable, but you also. It sounds like you built this system, you can get it done faster than your competition and the same or better quality. Is that what I'm hearing?

Oh, absolutely. Faster, it's easier to follow. There's not, you know, think about if you're getting a. If you're needing a proof for a design and it goes out in an email, but you have about four, at least four or five other people in your organization. So like an enterprise that need to look at the market, you know, they need to look at that. If everybody starts replying to emails with changes and so forth, you know that somebody's going to forget to say reply all, or it just gets lost. But with our system, project management, easy flow, everything is chronological order any changes, any approvals, any. It's all very simple. So any of our customers at any time can go in, reply to an email. It goes into the system, we can track it. Once it's done. They just say, we need five more vehicles in Charlotte, we need five more in Sacramento. We just hit print and ship them.

I love that. Do you plan on selling your company one day?

Absolutely.

And, you know, I think it's something like that, Angie, that software you've developed that makes you so distinct. There's a lot of companies that do car wraps, but a company that can systematize it, this, well, that's where the value is. So we heard you're a hostage negotiator, and we know you've been trained on this for eight years. So we wanted to tell you about a situation we have going on here. Don't be uncomfortable. You are a negotiator. Chris and I, this is not a podcast. We are actually hostage taker people, and we have a hostage here.

Okay.

We're in a very sticky situation and you need to help this situation. Sit down. I said sit down. Shut up. Shut. Okay, so what is the.

What are you. What is the.

Who am I talking to?

Yeah, who is this?

Is this the military?

No, absolutely not. This is not the military. My name is Angie. Who is this?

Oh, hey, Angie. My name's.

Oh, my God.

I almost told her.

My name's Mike.

Hi, I'm Mike.

Hi.

I didn't. I'm. I'm not Mike. I'm Matthew.

I'm gonna tie.

Hello, Matthew.

Hello.

I'm gonna tie their hands a little tighter right now.

So who else is there? Who's doing the tightening of. Who is with you, Matthew?

Oh, who's with me?

Yes, I'm Bart.

It's Bart Black Bart.

Bart Black Bart.

He goes by Barbie.

Is everything okay? Guys, right now, is there anything you need?

Oh yeah.

Here's what we need. I'm gonna make this real simple. Angela, Angie, Lee, because we know your plan. We want $50 in individual denominations, non serialized. One from every country, please.

One from every country?

Well, minus Mexico. I had a bad experience there at the food, but that's a whole different thing.

Have you factored in exchange rates on each of these different countries? No, I just want to make sure that you're getting what you need.

I actually need to use the bathroom. I'll be right back.

Come on, you're leaving me hanging? No, I didn't factor that in.

Listen, here's the look, we want this money now. Well, actually not now. We want you to drop it off by helicopter, please, in 30 minutes. On the. On this. On the roof. I was gonna say ceiling. On the roof of this building.

Okay, and what's that address?

Oh, she's good. It's in Parsippany, New Jersey. I'm saying too much. I mean, I don't know.

Your detectives are right outside. Please.

Angie, we have 30 seconds. We have 30 seconds before this lame bit ends. What do we need to do?

I will be happy to get this for you. It will take me some time, but I first need to know is the hostage. Whoever this person is that I don't know and why it's worth the $50 in. But anyway, I need time to put that together. Okay, Can I talk to the other person that's tied up tightly?

No, cause they don't exist.

We need the money in 60 seconds in my email account, or else.

Oh, but I had the helicopter lined up.

God, Chris. I mean Bart. Alright, here's the deal, Angie. Our hostage was non existent and you figured that out pretty quickly. I think we're good. Oh, there is the gunshot.

Oh God.

God, that was the worst.

So Angie, Matthew shooting Chris or whatever. Bart.

Yeah. So here's the deal. First of all, you're a trooper to go along with that ridiculously pathetic bit we put together last minute. How did we do? As hostage takers, what would be your rating?

You would get me more frazzled than the true.

Really? Is this our pure incompetence?

Absolutely not. You're completely confident?

No, it's a hostage taker. Listen. What? Flaws, no.

Judgment. No judgment.

Oh, see, that's why you're so good. I felt very comfortable. Yeah, I felt comfortable with Angie. And I was trying to be mean. And angry, but she was very calm. Chris. Yeah.

You couldn't. It was hard to be a hostage taker.

And she said, what's your name? I'm like, it's Mike. I'm like, oh, God, it's Matthew. Where are you located? Huh?

And she's like, what do you want? It's like, I don't know.

Haven't gotten that far.

Yeah. So, okay, that was kind of lame.

Hey, Angie, do you ever have to deal with business calls where someone freaks out and they're like, oh, we gotta get Angie on the phone with this guy?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

What things do people get fired up over in the wrap business if they.

Don'T feel that the wrap was installed properly? They're usually small things, but to the customer, they're huge. And I understand that. So there's never anything we can't really overcome. It's just, let's talk it through and let's figure out how to fix it.

So.

So things like feeling like they didn't get things done in time, or there was. We've had misspellings or a phone number that was wrong, or, you know, these things happen. So I have no problem getting on the phone and talking with a customer if I need to.

So what do you do to mitigate or prevent those situations?

Well, first of all, if a phone number's wrong, let's just. I mean, this is not putting it on a customer. But if a phone number's wrong when they approve the design, that would be something we really need them to be aware of. Are your phone numbers correct? Are these things. So it is making the customer aware you did approve it. So we did what was approved. But let's figure out how we can fix this or work for both of us.

And then do you make a double effort? There are certain sticky areas, like phone numbers. I could see that people, they skim through because they're so familiar with their own number. Do you do something special to say, we're going to read the number to you even though you're looking at it? To make sure you want to prove.

This, we do a lot of our designers do interviews or consultations with the clients. So they will go over all those things multiple times? Yes.

And then you said, sometimes there's a mistake by 360 wraps, maybe doesn't get installed properly. What do you do to fix that? I mean, do you instantly just bow to the customer and say, I'll do whatever it takes to make it right and it'll cost me everything? Or is there some other way of negotiating that situation?

If it's our fault, we'll fix it, whatever it takes.

Okay?

I mean, there's. It's just sometimes the only issue we might have is the timing of how we can get them back in. And it is inconvenience for some of our customers to take a vehicle out of a route, off a route or off the road. So we work around that.

Have you ever had a customer that you messed up, but now they're one of your best customers because how you fixed it?

Yeah. No, I wouldn't say so. We've had customers that we've let go. I've fired several customers.

So why would you fire a customer?

Number one would be disrespect towards my team. So we're all human, we're all trying to do the best we can do. If a customer is belligerent, demeaning, disrespectful, any of those variations, I don't tolerate it. It's just not acceptable.

Thank God you didn't hang up during the hostage situation we just put you through.

So I have a question. Clearly, when it's your fault and you make a mistake and you have to fix it, that affects your profitability. Besides that, what in your business can negatively affect your profitability?

I would say one of the number one things is our material waste. So when you are, when we print, so we have large format printers, if a print comes off and it's not caught, that it has banding or rippling or any number of things that can go wrong in the printing process, we have to trash that. So that waste is really adds up. And there's other inefficiencies. I mean, there's labor inefficiencies, but wasted material is a really big one that we really do watch.

Can you give us a sense, just percentage wise, maybe on your profitability for your business at the end of the day, how much is left over?

Well, I just figured that out to make sure I was on track. And this year we were a little over 10%.

10% profit. This is after you and your husband take pay. Your daughter takes pay and my daughter, all the employees, there's 10% leftover. And you're over a million dollar company. We know that that's huge amounts of money. A company that's taking that much profit, you know, I hear can't grow, you can't grow with that. Is that true?

No, it's not true. And in fact, this last year we paid out. We're a completely Debt free company. So we don't have any. We had a small SBA loan a few years ago. We had a private loan from an Investor. And in 2014 everything was paid off. So you can still grow. And that does pay for the salaries for the leadership team, which is the five of us. I mean, we compensate well and we grow, we're growing.

And what's the percentage growth year to year in the last couple years?

Oh, well, that's another story. In 2011, we, we didn't make any profit. 2012 we had a loss. 2013 we made a little bit, but it was more than a loss. And then we really blew it out of the water this year from going from, let's say about $100,000 more in profit this year.

The top line, I mean the growth of revenue, it's also skyrocketed. Or has it been, have you been growing consistently?

Our growth year over year for 2014 was 51% growth. Year before that was around, I think it was 37%, 32% then 41% or 51% this last year.

So nearly doubling the size of your business consecutively. I mean, maybe not doubling, but pretty close to it. Not doubling 50% growth every year, but profit. This is the year took off. What caused you to continue that growth but be profitable this year? Besides reading my book or maybe was good. Oh yeah, that's right. How to get it much successful.

One of the things that really helps for me, because I do, I'm all the numbers, so that's what I do. But I've always set a budget and I sit down every third quarter, fourth quarter of the year, and I work out the budget for the next year, but it's sticking with that budget. So in your book you talk about, well, there's extra money there, where can we spend it? How can we put, where can we, you know, oh, let's go buy new computers, whatever. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to focus on where we are, what we have and of course, driving sales, that always helps. So you drive sales and you maintain your costs. Plus we've negotiated with some of our suppliers. We do things like our materials are on consignment now, just things that just make us more efficient and wiser decisions.

So what I'm hearing is you forced yourself to stick with the expense plans and this is the most we're going to spend. And when the money wasn't there, it forced you to think innovative ways of renegotiating terms with vendors and Stuff like that.

Yep.

Love it. Angie Strader. Where can people find out more about you and your business?

You can find us at 360wraps.com so www360wraps.com or on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. We're out there on all of them. So 360 raps w r a P.

S. And Angie, we have, we. Everyone listening in has a car and we even have truckers and stuff like that with fleets. So for God's sake, give Angie a call. She'll take care of you. And if you're in a hostage situation, you get a two for one deal.

So I'm there for you.

Yeah. Angie, thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks, guys.

We'll see you.

All right.

So, dude, nice. You know, I don't think we've ever had a bummer guest. Like, we've never. I've never been like, oh, didn't learn anything new.

Oh, wow.

I got. Look at this. Look at that page full of pink notes. My pen's pink.

You like pink?

No, that's the pen you gave me.

Oh, I gave you.

Oh, no, it's the one I stole from you.

Yeah, I gave you a blue one.

So I was about to go down filthy path. I want to recap what we learned. I want to thank our sponsors before we kick into that. And I got some other stuff I want to talk about, too. First of all, Nextiva Primary Sponsor Episode 21 now voiceover IP phone provider. It gives you the quality phone system that all the big corporations have. But you can do it at a small level. It's a per phone cost. So if you're a one man band, it's very affordable. If you're a 10 man band, it means you have a larger company. It's still very affordable. It's just now for 10 people. Nextiva is n e x t I v a dot com. Go there, do yourself a favor and just check them out. Second one, Fundera, one source of funding. Angie, she needs more wraps. There's going to be certain points where she needs the money now. She's very profitable and doesn't need the money. But if she needed a loan, she, she could go to Fundera and they'll, they'll provide the funding for the raw materials, you know, so it's one stop shop for funding. And in the last Company two episodes again, Matt Rissel was on here from T sheets. Yeah, you still love that episode. One of Chris's favorite episodes of all time. He just love that we were horsing around a Lot. But T sheets is time tracking. So your business have if you have employees and you need to track time for projects or just for hourly tracking, T sheets is the place to go. Yeah, dude, what'd you learn?

Oh, this was a great episode. I mean she said she's an entrepreneur at heart. And you know, I don't know, I think that goes a long way because I think when I think about myself, I don't think I am an entrepreneur at heart. And I think, I think that's good to know. It's good to know if you are or you aren't, that's one thing. And also she talked about when they have big clients and they please them very much. Yeah, the big clients then start talking and basically spreading the word about 360 wraps just by themselves.

Dude. The best form of marketing is happy customers. Like invest in making your best customers even happier. And that's the marketing they will tell people. Here's what I love. The reason I was digging into high school was partly as living realistically again through high school. I wanted to recount my own experience. I had a similar experience. I wasn't the bad student with grades. I think that's who is indicating. I was just like a lame ass nerdy kid that no one wanted to hang out with or talk with. When I graduated college, when I graduated high school, I decided I'm going to change my life. And what I heard in Angie's story too is she left high school and said I'm going to make a big change. She joins the military and same thing. You see this pattern in her life again. She says I'm going to make a big change again. I'm going all in entrepreneurial, all of us listeners. And now I'm getting fired up at you. I get fired up every time. Put your ear next to speaker. Shut up and shut up and listen to me. You can change your life on a dime. Now put that, put the coffee down. Listen to me. You can change your life on a dime. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Have to be the day you graduate high school or I have to wait five more years before things change or my kids are out of school. None of that stuff. No, you listen to me. You can change your life today. You can change your life today. Pick today to be the moment if you want to change your life. That's what I heard in Angie's story. I thought that was powerful. Look at the results, dude. That company, 17 employees. The rule of thumb is multiply. I didn't ask her numbers. But if you multiply that company by 150,000 to 200,000, that usually represents a healthy company. I suspect her company is doing well over 2 million and perhaps even approaching $3 million in revenue. This company rewind only a few years back as her husband struggling and can't take home a salary. That's how you can change your life on a dime. You just got to go all in.

That's awesome.

That's what I learned from her.

She also talked about the project management system she they devised and they use and manage their projects so well.

Yeah, that.

That's how they avoid, you know, the printing waste mistakes and the labor inefficiencies you talked about. That's important, right? Systems are important.

Systems are critical. Critical. We came up with that little saying, repeatable. Repeatability brings profit. The money is in the repeatability. Once you get the perfect quality done, then you can just repeat it and it's like a printing press. Bloom, bloom, bloom. It comes out last thing. I want to share a little funny story. She said misspellings, right? They got to pay for misspellings. First company I had was called Allmec Systems. I start this business with a business partner. We go to a printing company. Not too different than 360 wraps in their early stages. This guy would do anything for anybody. He prints business cards. He's all proud. He's like, I finished your cards on time. Here they are, 7,000 cards. Olmec stysoms. He switched from Olmec Systems. He switched the T and the Y. Olmec Stysoms. And we said, dude, you made it wrong. He didn't do any proofs, nothing. He just went with it.

Wow.

I saw that one single tear dripping down from his face. Oh, my God. Because he had to eat all this. He had no way out.

It probably cost him a lot of money.

It cost him a lot of money. He was so proud. He was wearing his big boy tie and jacket, and he's like, here are your cards, gentlemen. And he hands over the invoice. And this cards weren't cheap back then. It was like $500 or $1,000. This was a lot of money for the 7,000 card. A tear came down when he realized, oh, McStysoms. And he's like, well, oh, God. I give up, dude. I got tip. But we're running too late. I'm gonna save it to next week.

There you go. So tune in next week. This is the Profit first podcast. Thanks for listening. We're available as a Podcast on itunes and Stitcher.

Yeah. And listen, we're also available for you personally. If you want to have your own podcast, have a blast like I do with Chris. Go to fractalstudio.com and sign up, man.

Fractalrecording.Com or go there too.

That one also works. Fractal Studio is no. 1, but go to fractalrecording.com and if you're an accountant or bookkeeper or you want to hire an account or bookkeeper, that can help drive profit, just like Angie's doing in her business, go to profitfirstprofessionals.com it's worth spending the time there, dude.

There you go. You're helping a lot of people with that.

Yeah, no, listen, this may sound cheesy, I think. No. Our mission is to change the mindset of all entrepreneurs throughout the globe. This will take a lifetime, but we're changing it. Take your profit first. It's the most ridiculously simple method, but if you take your profit first and reserve it just like Angie was, but you're forcing profitability and to become more innovative in how you do things. Now listen to me. Take your profit first.

You're becoming like the angry coach.

I mean, yeah, yeah, we're gonna. Next few weeks, we're gonna be angry coach, man.

It's awesome. So thanks, everybody, for listening.

I love you, though.

I love you.

I love you. You're my favorite podcast listener ever. Yeah. Yeah.

I love you.

Listen to me.

Gotta get Bill Clinton.

We'll get Bill Clinton next episode.

Ready for the pause?

Yeah. I love you. He snuck it in. He snuck it in later.