Episode 216: Deciding to Start Your Own Business with Patrick Rauland

So, Kels.

Yeah.

When you stepped out, it was so funny. You're like, I gotta step out for you said you're not gonna step out of the studio because you'll get distracted. Yeah, I went to the bathroom. I come in the bathroom. You had stepped out and you're clicking, clacking away. And I'm like, kels, we gotta go. Our guests on the show. You did the old person run where you kind of hunch down, the arms are shuffling, shuffle. Yeah. And the feet are shuffled, literally shuffled.

People say I'm an old soul. I guess you must be. Applies to my physical preference.

Have you ever run level?

Yeah, that is the way that I run.

Seriously.

Can you picture me being a good runner?

I didn't. I never thought about you running.

Yeah.

Do you, do you ever run?

No. Oh, I run like Phoebe from Friends. You ever see that episode where she's like all flailing like.

Oh, that's funny.

I'm an awful runner. Yeah.

So I told you to ask me something. What did I tell you? And this we forgot last week.

Yes. So you said you bought something cool from Etsy for your house.

Unless. Unbelievable. So I was on Etsy and I type in doghouse. We want to get a new or dog crate. So we have a crate for our dog.

Yeah.

And we had like the wire crates which most people have. And I'll tell you, our dog loves it. Like she will. I don't even know if we have a door on it. Yeah, we just saw the door.

It's like her safe space.

Yeah. She'll like, whenever she's like wants, like when it's raining outside, she goes in the crate. Or if she just wants to chill, she goes in the crate and just hangs in there. It's like a little cavey type thing. So I went on Etsy and I typed in, typed in dog crates. And someone takes wine barrels, whiskey barrels, and makes it into a dog.

Oh, that's awesome.

So I bought one.

Yeah.

And now Daisy, our dog, goes in there all the time. It's this big wine barrel and it looks so cool. Now it's late because our dog is a medium sized dog.

She's probably 50 pounds.

It's on its side and there's a little stand so of course it doesn't roll around. But she crawls in there and the little peephole is where the cork is on the side of it so she can peek out. Yeah.

Does it close? Is there a door in it?

No. We did it. We sliced off the toe front so it's just open on one side. She's too big. Smaller dogs, you can. They'll take the top of it and make like an arc way, an archway for the dog to go in. Aw, yeah, yeah. So there you have it, Kelsey.

That's awesome.

All right, kick us off here.

Well, welcome everybody, to the Profit first podcast.

Yeah, that's a good one. It's time, Yamadama.

Do I like that?

Yeah. I'm getting jacked up, my friends. You know why I'm jacked up?

Why?

Because you joined for the Profit first podcast, the show where we talk about all elements of profitability. But you're like, with who? Who do I talk with? You talk with myself. Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first, the author of Clockwork, a brand new book out there about business efficiency. Pick up your copy, along with some other books. And it's not just me. I'm joined in the studio by my dear friend, Kelsey Ayers.

Hello, everybody.

It's the longest. How many S's are at the end of your name?

One. Singular. Yep.

This one seems like there's 100. And you, you were listening to the first podcast, right? So any profitability angles, any consideration of profitability, we tackle it. We spoke with Ryan Holiday recently on how ego hampers profitability and the difference between ego and confidence. Fascinating insights. Brittany Conner came on her show. A small photography business that was struggling implements probably first massive turnaround. She actually got emotional on the call about the changes she's made. And now she said as her mission to help other photographers. What about your story? Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about the startup days. You know, you're thinking about starting a business. You're ready to leave that job and start. How do you do that and pull it off successfully? That's what you'll find out in today's episode. I'm throwing it to you now. Callous. When I look at you like that and I start winking, it wasn't a twitch in my eye. That was trying to throw it over to you.

Everybody. You can find us on itunes. Still, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google Play, profitfirstpodcast.com or Castbox, Castbox, any podcaster anywhere.

I miss my neighbor. That's the one downside.

I know Art.

He sent me a text. It's funny. He's sitting there and he kind of like, you ever see someone that put a cork in their mouth? Like they're gonna pop it out, like, you know, they make that, like, fish face. He did that with a strawberry. And then below it says, I just plucked a strawberry from your old garden. Because we left our garden.

Yeah.

I went back. The strawberries are massive.

Oh, yeah. Is nobody living there yet?

No one's living there. Almost to the point where it's. It's sad that no one's living there. Because I love you. You worked in the house for a while.

No, I didn't.

You never worked at the house?

No. You were here for like two weeks when I started.

You were so lucky. Have you been to the house though, right?

Yes.

So lucky. We also all worked in that basement we were cracking. It was like seven of us in this basement. Well, I had a garden out back and I planted strawberries about three years ago. And they would yield some strawberries. But the animals. I don't care how netted. You have your strawberry patch, forget it. Every animal. Bird, gopher, I think moose were coming down from Screaming Fox. Like moose were coming down from Canada just for a bite.

Lizards were coming up from south.

Exactly. Like, what is that iguana doing there? He's the wild one. Don't touch him. Eating it. And so I yield maybe two or three strawberries and these puny ones that they missed. Oh, this year I go back. It's an abundance. It's strawberry fields.

The whole time was your son eating them all. You were blaming on the animals.

I gotta tell you a funny son story.

Yeah.

My oldest son, Tyler. I must have told you a story. We lived in a town called Sukasana, New Jersey for a year. I'm sorry about. For eight years. It was our first home that we bought move in. And across the street was this house where the. We never saw the people that lived there. We knew people lived there. It was a couple. They had young children. But our definition of odd, never. All the shades were down during the day and at night all the lights on, like till 3 o' clock in the morning. And the children, you see them run around the house. And what we heard is that the husband, he worked a job where he was only home at night.

Yeah.

So they changed her quality time. Yeah. So this is weird. Well, one day a tree limb falls down in their yard. A massive one. A massive one. And is it massive? No, it really wasn't that big, actually. I just do a fis. It was pretty big. A pretty big tree limb. And I'm driving to work one morning and I see it laying there. I'm like, oh, that's gonna be a job to clean it up. I come home at night. It Was dragged into our yard. Someone had. They had left their house and they dragged it into our. Into our yard.

Stop.

Yeah. No, serious. And so it could have been them.

They were sleeping.

No, not at night. 3 o' clock in the morning. Oh, that's true. During the day, they probably were sleeping. I didn't think that far ahead. You made a good point. But whatever. There it was. And I don't. It's very tough to make me upset unless you drag a tree limb into my yard. That's my. That's my trick.

A massive tree limb. Most on their yard.

Most people's like, you get punched in the face. That makes you mad. Someone you know hurts your f. For me. None of that stuff. You can punch me, you can spill me.

Good to know.

Yeah, good to know. Just don't carry a tree limb into my yard. So I'm like, this is nonsense. So what do I do? I drag it back. I drag it back, right? It's there. A tree lim. I saw it go down. I drag it back there. I'm like, there, that will settle it. Clearly they know I'm. I've drawn the line of sand. I go to bed, leave for work. I see it there. Next morning, I confirm it's still in their yard. I'm like, good, this has been settled. I come back from work and it's back in our yard. And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Because they're wasting so much energy dragging you back and forth.

Are you kidding me? I'm like, this is it. I am not a confrontational type person. I was. I have to be. So I'm like, this is it. I pull the pants, I tighten the belt like two notches pulled up over my nipples, like, too high. And I go, mark, did the grandfather shuffle? My grandfather shuffle over like you. It's like a race. My hands are flailing. I knock on the front door. I'm like, I'm like, I need to speak with you right now. I hear, like, scrambling behind it, like, here, right now. I go, it's your neighbor. I'd like to speak with you, please. I hear this.

Stop.

No, this is all true. As a piece of furniture gets moved.

In front of the door, like, you're gonna break it down.

The front door was blocked by a piece of furniture. The door opens maybe less than a foot, and they look out. They look normal, by the way. And she goes, hello, I am. I know. I'm sorry to interrupt. I am your neighbor next door. I live in that house. Like, oh, yeah, we've seen you before. I'm like, creepy. And I say, I really don't know how to say this, but I saw this tree limb fell down. Like, yeah, we saw that. You did, didn't you? And I said, somehow I don't know who is magically doing this. It gets dragged into my lawn and I've returned to your lawn. I'd really appreciate if you take care. And I'm like, absolutely. That wasn't us. And they closed the door. And I'm like, now they're liars.

Yeah.

I'm like, right, it was your son. The whole time I get home, I'm yelling at Kristen, yelling through Kristen. I'm like, I can't believe this is such nonsense. And like, they're liars and this stuff. And my son's at the bottom. He's like, that's my dinosaur tail. That was his dinosaur tail. Oh. So I lectured my neighbors, yelled at them.

Oh, man.

They subsequently moved out immediately.

They're scared of you now.

All right, I want to thank our corporate partners. Made the show a reality. So thanks to Right Networks. I'll tell you about them in a little bit. I want to pregnant and pause them because I don't want people to fast forward through it. It's too important. So write networks nextiva and Receipt Bank. We'll tell you more about those folks in a little bit. I'll throw write networks in a little later when you're not expecting it because I really want you to listen. And we're gonna share what we learned today. Plus we got some listener questions I think that came in right.

Yes, indeed.

Alright, do we have any shout outs?

We do. This one comes from EcoPro LLC on iTunes. Again, Bazinga. He says as an entrepreneur, profit is a huge priority. I love how this show is far from stuffy. It's so relevant in business strategies. Keep up the great interview and content.

Bazinga. Love you.

Thanks.

Eco Pro llc. I like when people throw in the llc. Yeah, it makes it feel more, I don't know, as opposed to Eco Pro. Because Eco Pro sounds like, oh, I'm Eco Pro. That sounds like back to Ryan Holiday, a little egotistical. Oh, I know everything about the ecology or whatever Eco Pro is, right?

Yeah.

But we throw an llc. It's like I'm a business that does it. It feels. I don't know, this feels better to me.

I question your logic.

Okay. Yeah, I do too, actually. All right, let's get to the show. Here. His name. Oops, I'm looking the wrong nose. His name is Patrick Rolland. I was looking at Ryan Holidays again. I was like, oh, his name is Ryan Holidays back again.

How do you say his name?

Roland? Did I say it too quickly? Incorrectly?

I thought you did it first. You said it right.

Patrick Rolland.

Yeah.

Is an e commerce educator. He creates easy to learn courses for LinkedIn learning in Lynda.com. that's the L Y N D A the learning site. He's written books about E commerce, he organizes conferences about E commerce, and he's the co founder of. Of Lift Off Summer Summit and an online event designed to help new store owners get their store off the ground. This is the guy when it comes to getting business started. Once you leave your job with no further ado or muff ups. Welcome to the show, Patrick.

Welcome.

Hey there. Thanks for having me.

So, hey, listen, this summit you have, these are. These are people that want to get a. The store going.

Yeah. So the summit is all about someone who wants to sell something online and they don't know how to get people to their website, which is honestly the hardest part. So it's all about getting people to your website so you can run your own business. That's awesome.

Excellent.

So let's get right into the meat and potatoes here. There's so many people, Patrick, that are listening to the show that I've run into my life that on the perpetual cliff, meaning they have their job, they're looking over the cliff, the jump down to entrepreneurship. They're terrified, and that's where they're frozen. They want to do in the worst way, but they can't. And some people think we'll just push them off the cliff. I mean, how do you, how do you get past that part, Patrick?

So I, I just recently left my job. And by recently I mean like a year and a half ago. So. Just recently left my job about a year and a half ago. And it took me about six months to pull the trigger because it is really, really scary. And even though I to sell things online, it took me a lot of preparation to be ready and to take a step off the cliff. I don't know if that metaphor works anymore, but it took me a while to be confident enough to do that. I think what really helped me was mapping it all out and then saying, if I want to leave my job, how much money do I have to bring in every month? How do I get all these jobs and services lined up in advance so I can leave my job and still make the same amount of money? So sort of I Built a list of all the money I wanted to make, how I wanted to get it, how I could get that work. And I set all that up in a sort of like a spreadsheet and my to do list until I got it all working and then I left my job.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't have that documented plan on the transition. I think they plan out the business, the new business. This is what's going to do. They plan the departure, but not the synchronicity between the two and the transition.

Right.

So how did you first determine what you wanted to do in your new endeavor?

Yeah, so it actually was something that I used to do before. So right before this job, about two months before I started that job, I was already creating courses for Lynda.com and I knew them and they were great to work with. And then when I started this job, they're like, you know, they didn't want any sort of conflicts of interest, so I couldn't do that anymore. And as I was leaving, I was like, hey, we used to have a great working relationship. You know, I'm going to be leaving my job soon. What do you think about rekindling this relationship and doing more, doing even more courses? And they had a opening and a spot, and I know a lot of stuff about E commerce, so I just started preparing a whole bunch of courses for them. So I basically knew I could do two courses immediately, which was like almost my monthly income, and then I could do more courses down the line. So it was sort of like I knew for at least the first two to four months I would be good to go. And this was based on previous relationships. I think once you make a. Once you sort of get your foot in the door in an industry, it's easy to go out on your own because you have so many connections, so many relationships that you can leverage. There are so many people that I could reach out to and say, hey, what can I do to help you meet your goals? And in this case, I knew I liked working with them and I knew we could both help each other.

And was this company you started, this business you started for yourself, was this very similar to the prior job you had? I mean, you said you had always contacts. Was it the same thing but on your own?

So actually not at all. So I used to do product management, which is sort of like planning software and all the features that go into them. And then doing courses is obviously online education. But I used to be a product manager for E commerce software. And then when the company I work for, they don't have that role anymore. So like, hey, Patrick, your job doesn't exist. Okay. It's a good time to start looking for a new job. And then I. I basically started teaching all the stuff that I. That I had to learn to do that job.

You know what's so fascinating? I think this serendipitous. It is serendipitous. I think it's the new reality to Kels. More and more people are becoming entrepreneurs. Not because that was their intention or even ambition, but it's become a requirement. I mean, Patrick, do you think if that job continued to exist and you continue to flourish there, would you have ever left?

At least not for a long time. I think I would have been there for a long time if. Yeah. I mean, really, the company I worked for was bought by a giant company and that bigger company doesn't have my position. So they acquired this smaller company and then they said, hey, Patrick, your position doesn't. Doesn't exist. And they were nice about it. Like, I want to give them kudos. They didn't fire me, but they sort of moved me to a different job that I didn't really like. So that was when I decided to leave.

So entrepreneurship was thrust upon you. But Patrick, you know, one of the things people don't know is one of your hobbies is you like to paint tiny toy soldiers to tune. I think of 40,000 of them. You've painted.

Yeah, my brother. No, it's Warhammer.

40,000.

It's. Yeah.

Oh my God.

My brother in law paints. That's the brand plays with them. Yes.

But I might have painted 40,000 of them by now.

Okay. Okay. So you paint and play with these tiny soldiers. That's a passion of yours. There's definitely a community that likes this. That may be an obvious business decision. Why did you choose Linda over the Warhammer?

Yeah, I could totally. I could have totally gone into something Warhammer related because it is. It is one of my favorite hobbies. I've been doing it for like 15 years or something. But it's. I think it's hard to. Hard to do something that someone else would do for free. Right. Like there are people that give free painting lessons and free assembly lessons and all this stuff because it's this really fun hobby. There aren't many people that give out free e commerce courses, so it's a lot easier to make money that way.

Gotcha. So you did this financial analysis determine the transition and then you went for it. But I assume that the leap over hasn't been that smooth. It's been. It's a year and a half later. Has it been smooth? Has there been bumps in the road?

It's been pretty smooth. I'm a little bit paranoid when it comes to finances. So I actually saved up about $20,000 before. So as soon as they're like, hey, your position doesn't exist, I was like, oh, God, I gotta put money in the savings account. So I saved up quite a bit of money, and I knew I could probably get by on the 20,000 for a year. And then, you know, I could always go, well, 20,000. Plus, I had some other small side projects.

Okay.

But I did. I cut all my expenses way down. I saved up a whole bunch of money, and I sort of reduced my risk, if that makes sense. And then that let me take a shot at being an entrepreneur for at least a year. And then if it didn't work after a year, I'd probably run out of money and then I'd have to find a job. But I gave myself. I saved up all that money and gave myself a year. And honestly, most of my income was pretty steady. I think there was only two to three months where I didn't quite make enough of what I wanted. And I pulled a little bit out of that 20,000.

Wow.

But. But I'd say nine out of the 12 months, I think I made my goal.

And do you attribute that successful transition financially to the planning phase?

I attribute to the planning. And also, as it happens, your book. I read your book right around the time where they said, hey, your job doesn't exist anymore. And it was just this perfect sort of, oh, God, I have to go on my own. And I'm literally reading a book about, like, how to save money and put it in the right places and not to take out too much money accidentally. And that was so helpful for me. It was just. It was serendipitous.

Oh, that's awesome.

So I'm thinking about people listening right now that are in this. This situation where they. They have a job. I think there's one of three scenarios. Either they're being forced out, immediately terminated. They're being pushed off, or laid. Laid off. Like you were pushed out. Or maybe they just don't desire to work there anymore.

Pushed off that cliff.

Pushed off that cliff. Yeah. So what if. If. If something happens today? Now, I know this isn't your personal experience, but maybe you've observed it in others. If someone today gets fired and they got to replace that income Is it even smart from your experience to pursue entrepreneurship or the States start looking for a new job?

I know plenty of people that are really, really good about, about handling money. I'm just so paranoid with that. I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to do anything. I wouldn't want to do entrepreneurship if I was just sort of fired and had no savings. Like, I think for me it was really, really helpful to have money in the bank and know that I could give this an honest shot and then I could. I can always find another job somewhere else. But I wanted to give myself time. I think I would have made bad, sort of like I would have found a client who wanted something urgent instead of like the best client for me if I had to worry about money in month one.

Right, gotcha. So you weren't desperate.

Gotcha, yeah. Now your business, the new business, are you able to continue to grow? What's the future looking like since you've replaced that income you needed?

The future is good and I am really, really enjoying it. And I think probably in the last year and a half, I think I've put out like 12 or 14 courses. And I can always. What's great about it is Linda, Linda and LinkedIn learning, which is sort of the same thing. Now I can go into any area, they have courses on anything. So if I want to. So I talk about E commerce, but if I want to have a Kickstarter course, that's totally possible, or if I want to have a this course or that course, I can always expand and grow into sort of. As long as I can become an expert in it, then I can teach a course on it. And that's something that I love. So as long as I can keep teaching myself new things, I can keep teaching it to the lynda's audience and they find it useful, and I find it useful.

So for our listeners that maybe have expertise in a certain category, how wide of a breadth of expertise are we talking about?

I mean, so lynda does everything. They have courses. So if you want to learn Microsoft Word, they have courses. If you want to learn web development, they have courses. If you want to learn data science, they have courses. They have a lot, a lot of stuff on their platform. And if you don't like Lynda, like I love lynda, but even if you just go a little bit outside lynda, there's so many other course platforms that teach you anything from painting and cooking to computer science skills. There's just so much room for growth. In the online education area. And what kind of is great. Let's say you are, for lack of a better word for start of your company. Let's say, let's say you're gently nudged out of your company. You can, I mean, you can teach what you know. Right. Even if all you know is project management. There are tons, of course, people don't know how to do that. Right. There are tons of courses on how to, how to lead a project, how to finish it, how to get it done under scope. There's lots of people have a lot of knowledge and I kind of wish that they would spend a little bit of time sharing that with other people and making money while you do it.

Yeah, yeah, but you know, say project management, there's, there's so many courses that already exist. If someone brings out about a new, fresh project management course, maybe it's new, maybe it's fresh in regards to a new flavor. But isn't. Isn't that already been done? Can't the market get saturated?

I think the market can get saturated. You can't just like write a book that's called project management and sort of be at the top of Amazon. You know, it's not, it's not that easy. But you can probably find some little, some little niche, maybe project management in project management for developing e commerce applications like I did. That. That's obviously very, very small. But you can start there and then grow out and build your expertise and your, your knowledge and your courses over time.

I do know they made a course for Warhammer 40,000 painters. There'd be at least one buyer. You'd be all over that.

Oh, oh, definitely.

There'd be more than one.

There would be more than 1. 40,000. So what about tech skills? I mean, did you, were you already familiar with all the different recording devices and processes? Or is this something that you just kind of had to learn as you went along?

So I'm actually really lucky. Linda does a lot of the stuff in house. So they have a recording studio. I live in Denver. They have one in Boulder which is just 40 minutes sort of north. But they have recording studios and you can just go to them and record your stuff there. And they love it because this way their thousands of courses are all sort of. They're all the exact same quality. And I love it because I don't have to learn what microphone is the best. They sort of handle all of that. And, and I should say there are other platforms that also do this. So I am solely responsible for content and not so much like, if the production team has a question, I'll answer it. But for the most part, they handle a lot of the production. So I was really, really fortunate. The thing that I had to do is I had to be the subject matter experts. And in this case, they wanted a course on WooCommerce. That's the software I helped design and create. It was pretty obvious that I knew all the ins and outs. So that was sort of how I got my foot in the door and why I could teach that. But yeah, in this case, I don't have to know any tech. It was all content.

Nice.

Yeah, that's awesome.

What about communicating with your prior employer? Do you tell them, hey, I'm starting a new business and I'm gonna need some flexibility or is that too risky and they may let you go?

You know, I actually, I actually had this weird little issue. So the company, they have this once. They have this once a year sort of meetup around the world. And I didn't buy my tickets because I knew I was leaving. And I had this like, horrible dilemma in my head. Like, should I buy a ticket and pretend like I'm going to go to the company retreat, but that would obviously be wasting money or. Because I would leave before the retreat or should I not buy the ticket and then, you know, basically have to tell them two months before I want to leave that I wanted to leave. And I thought about it for weeks because I was, I was. I think I was just terrified they'd fire me and I wouldn't have all that money saved and I wouldn't be ready. And in the end, there was this great advice. Oh, boy, I'm forgetting who said this, but it was, you can either think about consequences, and if I was thinking about consequences, I would have made the waste $300 on a flight, but don't tell them. Or I thought, who is the person I want to be? And even though it was way, way, way, way scarier, I think it, I think it really helped. I think it really helped me and my relationship with my previous employer to like, hey, I'm leaving in two months. I probably would have. Wouldn't have told you exactly right now, but I'm telling you because I honestly don't want to waste your money pretending to buy a plane ticket to the meetup. And I think that really paid off because I continue to do work with this company over the last two years and I have an upcoming project with them probably later this year.

Wow, Company.

Yeah. Oh, my God. When you leave a company and ask you to work for them again. It is the best feeling in the world.

Oh, my God.

I did add value.

Nicely done, Patrick. And I presume they even pay you a little bit more now. It's not salary anymore. It's project.

It is project based. Obviously, I don't, you know, I'm not working 40 hours a week all year round, but yeah, it's not a bad chunk of my income.

Oh, my God, that's amazing. So the technical skills, so the tech skills were addressed. Linda helped you with those. You told your employer in advance. What about the resources that they have? I don't know. Maybe there's certain people you made through the network you established at that company that could benefit you, but also maybe you're now, you know, stealing or pilfering some of their resources. Did you have any. Was there any value in maintaining relationships and resources with that company and were able to use it?

I think there's always advantages to maintaining relationships because I honestly believe you don't know when you'll need someone, but at some point you'll need their help. So always give someone else a little bit of help. And then, you know, someday when you might need to ask for a favor, they're sort of there for you. It helps that I sort of. I was an early hire at this, at the sort of the initial company before the acquisition. And so I knew a lot of people and I had a lot of connections, and I've helped out lots of different areas of the company. And yeah, when I had a service to sell them, I said, hey, I know this part of your business is really hard for you. I will take it over and here's my fee. And I had people inside the company advocate for me. So there's just always benefits, Always, always a benefit to leaving a company on good terms because you might be able to work with them for the next three years or longer.

You're getting that situation where it may happen in this case, where they keep calling you. I remember I left a company to start my own endeavors, and when I did, they were very disappointed leaving. But I said, listen, if you guys need help in this transition, I'm here to help. Well, they need help not just for next week. It was like months. They kept on calling me. At a certain point, I had to tell them, like, I cannot do this for you for free. You haven't paid me for two months and I've left. Did you get called upon in that regard? And if you have or haven't, what would be your experience around or your suggestions around managing that.

So I didn't have this with this company, but a company boy, I worked at, I worked at an advertising agency probably three, four years ago, maybe longer, but I worked at an advertising agency and I did leave them. And when I left, they sort of have. They have an E commerce client and they know that's my thing. And so whenever they have a problem with this ecommerce client, they always call me up again. I'm sort of maintaining this relationship with them, but right now they're only asking me to do, let's say, a couple hours a week on average. So it's not a big part of my day and I'm fine sort of doing a little bit of work and getting paid for it and maintaining that relationship. But let's say they had a really big project or they kept asking, or let's say they had an urgent issue every day and I had to respond to them. That would not work for me. And I, I would, at a certain point I would just tell them, hey, I'd love to help, but I just, I just can't manage. This amount of time is too much. So either A, you need to have me, you know, we'll write up a contract and I'll do 20 hours a week for you, or B, you need to find someone that can dedicate the time. I would just be honest and say, you know, for the amount of time I'm putting in, we need to have a formal agreement. You know, if it's just a couple hours a week, I don't mind doing a little bit of extra work for them. But anything more than that, I think you, you just have to stand up for your. Yourself, your hours and your. What I want to say, your process. Right. Like, I think it's important to. I always have three to four hours in the morning to start writing my courses, and in the afternoon. I like little odd jobs from previous clients.

Say someone listening decides they're going to leave their employer, start their new endeavor, but maybe the new endeavor fails, maybe it fails badly and they need to go back to that original employer. Is there a way to position yourself to go back after you make this commitment to leave?

I think it's really, really tricky. I think it's possible, but I think it's tricky. I'll share one thing. One of my romantic partner, Christie, she left her job at a university and she wanted to keep the door open. So she said, hey, I'm leaving my job to take this sort of this data science boot camp and for them, it aligned to the university's values of education. Let's say this data science boot camp didn't work out. She didn't get any jobs in the data science field, and after six months she had to go back to her previous job. I think because it aligns with what the university believes, which is, you know, education and bettering yourself, it'd be very easy for her to go back to that. So I think if you sort of align yourself with what you know, if your company believes, always learn, always teach yourself new stuff. Then if you say, hey, I'm honestly bored and I just, I need to keep learning, I think they'll totally get that and maybe it'll be easier to go back to them if you, if the reasons for your leaving are in, are in their values.

I like that idea.

And I think it goes back to his original quote where he said, you know, do I think about the consequences or do I think about who I want to be? I think if you're integral in that whole process. So he was super integral in the leaving process. Yeah, he left a good taste in their mouth. He probably could return there.

Yeah, yeah. Have you seen any of this gone bad, so to speak? Have you, have you seen anyone leave the business you were with or other companies to start their own endeavors and it was just a, you know, a disaster?

Oh, yes. I think when you get angry or, or when you sort of deny or when you just sort of like paint a one sided picture of what happens, I think that's. It's very easy for a relationship to sour when you, you know, I think, and I think you do it so. And I think I could have very. If I. Let's say they said, hey, Patrick, your position is, your position is going away and we're happy to move you to a different part of the company. I could easily have talked about Woe is me and all the, and all the bad things and, and how it's unfair. I could have easily gone very negative in that moment.

Right.

And I think, and if I did that, I would have never been able to continue working with them. That bridge would have been burned. I think you have to be the bigger, be the bigger person. And even if it is unfair, just, I mean, maybe that's business. Right. It's unfair. What, what is, what is the best thing you can do with the cards in front of you? Yeah, I think, I think I could have burned bridges and I'm really lucky that I talked to a lot of friends because it was stressful. Right. Like hey, Patric, job doesn't exist anymore. So it was really stressful for me and I had to talk to a lot of friends and they sort of got me on the right path to make sure I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't react and I wasn't overly negative towards the company.

Now how are you ensuring that there's money going into your pocket with the new business we're doing with Linda, how are you ensuring your own profitability in this new startup?

So with Lynda, it's about sort of the, or really with any online education. It's basically how many people are, are watching these courses, you know, determines your revenue basically. And I, I basically looked at some of their courses and I saw a couple of them were actually old and outdated. Said, hey, do you need someone to redo these? I will redo them. And I already knew they had like tens of thousands of views. So I knew there was basically an opportunity there and I'd get, I get paid a fair amount for creating these courses. It was again and again like it's a win, win for them. Like it's a popular course, it's out of date. And their original teacher was, I think he was busy doing other stuff. So, you know, it's an opportunity for me, it's an opportunity for them. It was, it was great for everyone involved.

Oh, that's smart.

So smart. So smart.

Are there anything that, or lessons that you've learned since you've left that you would maybe do over differently?

Oh boy, that's a tough question. I, I think leaving on the, on good terms is the best thing you can do. And I think, I think I did that pretty well. I honestly, no, I think you just have to leave on good terms and then just maintain relationships with that company for as long as possible so you can keep doing work with them and keep doing maybe, you know what, maybe keep all your connections open in all, let's say across the industry so not just the company you work at. And sometimes I get burned out on going to a million conferences a year, but it's really important for me to go to, I probably go to like a dozen to two dozen conferences a year. It's really important for me to go to all of those because I maintain those relationships and I never know when they'll need work or when I can help them, but at least I can sort of keep the door open.

And are those conferences you're going to, they're outside your industry?

They're basically anything in my industry or Adjacent. So I live in Denver. I've done a lot of traveling and now I've sort of taken the policy. Anything that's at all related to web development, if it's a design conference or just a WordPress conference, I will go to it because it's local. And then outside of local, I sort of go to the bigger e commerce conferences.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Very smart strategies. Patrick. We're actually out of time, so we had to rock and roll before I let you go. Where can people learn more about you and the conference that you have coming up?

So if you want to learn more about me, there are my courses of course, on LinkedIn Learning or Lynda.com youm can just type in my name. Patrick Rollins. That's R A U L A N D. Or you can follow. I talk about e commerce. If you want to sell something. I talk about it all the time on my personal blog. That's speakinginbytes.com and that's b y-t dashes.com. so I believe I talk about e commerce all the time there. If you want to talk about shipping or taxes or any of that boring stuff, I love talking about it.

So. Yeah. And we'll have us all in our show notes too. So Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Patrick.

Thank you.

Kelsey, I don't know if you know this. We have a recorder that we have. You actually have been manning it for quite a while.

Yeah, I do know this.

Someone went to Patrick and said, I don't know if I can leave my corporate job and start my own business. Here's his response.

Come on, man.

Wow. A little different. A little different. I got you on that one. Okay. Got you, got you. Kelsey, you were so staged for that. It's called the priming effect. I keep on dripping. You dripping Pavlov. It was a pavilion response. You were sitting there, you started salivating because you know what's coming. And then gah.

Gotcha.

All right, cows, here's what we gotta do now. We gotta recap what we learned. I would. We got to do the listener question. But first I want to talk about. Right. That's good response. I want. You should have seen the way she flung her hand out like Wonder Woman. I want to thank right now. Did you see the Wonder Woman movie?

I'm pretty sure that is not Wonder Woman. Like.

Oh, like this. How she shot her hand. Did you see the Wonder Woman no movie.

Did you?

Yes, I did.

Wow.

She People are lauding it to be one of the Most phenomenal movies of all time. Yeah, I didn't see that, but maybe I saw a different version. I don't know. But. But it was impressive. It was impressive. It was good.

It was like a fake out for.

You, only it was a little fake out. But, you know, I'm a 70s kid, so I'm like. I was expecting the wonder woman from the 70s, Linda Carter. Yeah, it was not like that. Right Networks gets your current accounting, base desktop, and legacy applications into the cloud so it's easier and more secure to share sensitive documents and data with your clients. Think about that. We share data with our clients, Right? The sensitivity of it, you need to protect it. And you can have it in the cloud with Right Networks, you don't have to send those files. Worse as emailing. Oh, my God. Stop doing that. Send it through a secure transfer. This new flexibility allows you to cost effectively grow your business and even reach new geographies. Right Networks knows your reputation's on the line, so go with the only solution in the world that's backed by Intuit.

Do it.

Do it. I was into it. You can give Right Networks a call. Do you know the number? Do you know the first three numbers?

8, 8, 8.

That's right. 469-5905. It's.

What?

Do the first three numbers again. Oh, 8, 8, 8-469-5905. It's 8, 8 8-469-5905. Yeah.

Is that the right number? I feel like they gave us a new number that was like a. Oh, really? One number? What is this sheet, Zach?

I don't know what sheet you're pointing to. Oh, let me push that over to. Can you reach it? Okay, I got to keep the. Keep it going. So call that number. 8847.

Don't call that number. Call 888-2100237.

Then what number is this?

I don't know.

Are you kidding me?

I think it's just older one.

Can you call them on your cell while we're doing. But hang up real quick. Yeah, Profit first.

No, I'm gonna yell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go private first. I want my 10 off. So Kelsey's calling the number so we can verify if we've been messing up this number. That's the best thing ever. Could you imagine? It's like one of those chat lines or something worse. It's like, oh, your Viagra subscription.

Great idea.

Yeah, Making some horrible. Maybe it's our own phone number. Can you imagine? It calls us. We're like, hello. While Kelsey's calling to make sure we have the right number there. Good catch. Nextiva VoiceOver IP. That's our voice. Our phone system is Nextiva VoiceOver IP and Receipt Bank. And. Oh, I hear right Networks in the background. And receipt bank, if you have a voice, any receipts that come in, you can scan in your receipts and immediately, immediately have it tied into your QuickBooks and so forth. So you don't have to worry about the hassle of carrying around receipts, tracking it, submitting the monthlies and all that stuff. So, Kelsey, you tried one number just now. Which one was that? That worked.

The 2101 number.

Okay, here's another one. Just the big reveal. She just dialed 888-469-5905. Oh, they both work. Oh, thank God. Oh, my God. We almost got the sponsor almost pulled out of the show. They may be keyed. I wonder if they're keyed.

Yeah, but they would both be keyed to us.

I hope so. What if they're king? The other one that they gave us originally, it's like some other podcast. It's like a brand new startup. They do one episode and it fails and they cancel the show. And they gave him that number. But all the coming into the number that we're saying now, and you're like, profit first Podcast does nothing. But this other show is amazing.

I bet you that's what's happening.

Yeah. Why roll the dice? Spending money advertising your small business only to have your intern Dylan, check his Instagram all day while he waits for your phone calls to come in. Based in the customer service hub of Las Vegas, ABConnect provides you with a team of elite receptionists at a fraction of the cost. Your callers get world class service and a lasting impression of your business. And poor Dylan becomes your new summer assistant. Now that's executive decision making. Call 833-ABBEY wow. To experience the difference. All right, Kels, let's pull out the mail.

You've got mail.

And then we'll do what you learned. Let's do what you learned first. I take that back because it's not flowing right. What did you learn today?

What did I learn? I feel like, hey, I love that platforms like Lynda or like Udemy or skillshare, they exist. I love that people who are experts in their industry have a chance to teach others. They're in it. They know it firsthand. It's completely relevant and timely, and it gives opportunity to somebody who is an expert who now, you know, has to completely shift the way that they do their business gives them an opportunity to teach in a way that they probably wouldn't otherwise.

It's a great equalizer.

Yeah. I love that.

And there's so many skills out there. Do you remember we had an episode of that woman who started to teach how to. I think it was sourdough.

Yeah.

Unbelievable. She. She had. I mean, her circumstance, I think, was an extreme story. Right. She had many children. Was it five? She. And she talked about this on the show. Had an abusive spouse who she left. Good for her. But now she was living in a warehouse. It was a bizarre.

It's like a garage or something.

A garage with her children. They're trying to get by. She had to raise her kids. She had to, you know, do all these motherly duties.

She's a special needs son.

Special needs son. Make money. And she found. I don't know if it was Linda.

It was Udemy.

Udemy. And she starts teaching how to make sour bread. And that was the salvation for the family.

Yeah.

She gave a skill that so many.

People want doing something that she loves.

Yeah. Out of her place now I think she owns a home. Wonderful children.

Independence, freedom, liberation.

And she has so much effing sourdough at her house.

Yeah.

Like, you could just. You go over there. She's like, oh, here's more Sourdough. I did another U to me.

But more importantly, you could hear the joy in her voice. She was living a life that she loved.

I love sourdough.

Yeah, me too.

Could you sign me up to do a course at Linda?

Yeah.

I mean, if they'll take me on profit first. That's L, Y N D A Linda.

Thank you.

Okay. Okay, now what'd you learn, Kelsey?

That was what I learned.

Oh, no, that was pretty lame.

But I will say I really loved that quote that he said.

Yes.

You can either think about the consequences of something or think about who you want to be.

Yeah. I shouldn't ask you what else you learned, because that's what I learned. But I changed it. I changed it.

Backfired.

I know. Backfired on myself. But I wrote the quote is, it's either consequences or character. I used to see. Right.

Yeah. And La ti da.

I think I'm getting a little. We're getting a little punchy, the two of us. It's hot in this room. It's like 100 degrees in this room. We're both exhausted and we're getting punchy. But consequences versus character. And. And Patrick made the character selection every single time. And look at how it's paid off. And I'll tell you, even if the company backlashed to him, he knows interior inside. He was integral.

Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of your life, I feel like that's what matters anyway.

That's all that matters at the end of the day. You know, my wife went to one of those medium people recently.

Oh, yeah.

So she's not into that. And I hope her. She's not listening. And her neighbor, our old neighbor, who's a good friend of hers, is really into it.

Yeah.

So they went. And I'm not gonna say who was. My wife said it was interesting. She says two things. He brought four people on the stage. There's a thousand people in the room.

Oh, she went to one of those, like, massive ones.

Yeah. She goes, two of them were so spot on. That. And the people were shaking and crying, but you don't know if they're plants or not. And she was two. The other two were so generic, like it could apply to anyone. And she goes. But here's the shame of. She didn't think there was anything immoral about it. She goes, here's the shame of it, though. There was people in the audience that could not afford to be there. It was very clear that they had begged, borrowed, or stolen to get there because they're so desperate. They're so.

So you just need that hope, that.

Inspiration feeds on the desperation. You know, people have lost a spouse, lost a child, and they're just dying to reconnect in some way, and this is the outlet they have, and they couldn't afford to be there. Like, there was desperation in many regards. And she said that's what made it feel so bad. She said. On the flip side, the medium was the nicest, most authentic person. He did not come across as a money grab by any stretch of the imagination. He was truly here to help. But you can't help a thousand people.

Yeah.

It's just not the venue.

Well, do you remember when we had the woman come here to the office?

Yeah.

I missed her, but she was awesome.

She was good.

Spot on for everybody.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, it was a small group, and I feel like that's how you have to do it, like individually or in a small group, otherwise.

And did she do it with everyone in the room? Yeah, I wouldn't mind doing that again. Hey, what are we doing that ride the 30th.

July 30th.

July 30th. So what we did, guys, you gotta check do you know the name of the place?

I forget now.

Okay, so what we found. Ron found this. There's a company that takes old abandoned railroad tracks that run quite a distance. I think it's a few miles. We're gonna go right? And then they make this cart that sits on it kind of like the old pump one. Like we did. Pumping up and down. That's the one Kelsey and I are using. Everyone else has the pedal ones, right? So you get. We'll be pumping the whole way. You'll be old woman run shuffling in front of me. But no, we all have the. Everyone has a pedal. I think it's four to six people per platform.

Yeah, you can either do two or four.

Okay.

Yeah.

So we're gonna be hat. We're gonna. Hopefully we can bring some drinks with us and just. We're gonna have such an amazing fun.

I have this imagery of, like, Scooby Doo when they, like, go into the caves and they're riding on this little trail cart that takes them, and there's.

Ghosts and stuff, and like, Thelma, what was that?

We're like, the meddling kids.

Yeah. I want a medal. I just want a medal. I just want a medal. Okay, so that's what we learned. What did you learn? Meddling kid. And let's talk about listener mail. I think we got some listener mail, right?

Yeah, we do.

Pattern baldness.

What do we got?

So this comes from Rodney Wallace. He's an electrical contractor and has about 30% of gross revenue in materials. I thought I heard on the audiobook that you take out that out of expenses before you start trying to cut expenses down. Is this correct, or do I lump that in with other expenses for my contracting company?

Yeah, so great question. And this actually plays in parallel to last week's question. Like, when do I take it out? 30% of material costs in a business, we take it out first to do a real revenue adjustment. That's the only part where I think profit first can get a little bit kludgy and clumpy. But it's important because we got to make your business flat and clumpy. Kludgy. You never heard of that one?

No, I've never heard that.

Google that one.

You educated me.

Yeah, well, look it up. Look it up. I want to make sure it's word is C, L, U, D, G, Y. Kluge. Kludgy. Maybe it's just that it could be an urban. And by the way, if it's in the urban dictionary, I still claim it to be Accurate. So Once you're over 25% of your income is going toward material costs. What's happening, Rodney, is you're taking money from your client and basically giving it to the person that provides those materials effectively. They could go and get the electrical supplies on their own. You're providing the convenience of acquiring it for them. That's basically what's happening. So if your company does, let's say, $100,000 in revenue, round number, but 30%, $30,000 is being used to buy materials. You don't have a $100,000 business. You have a $70,000 business that part of its service is you handle $30,000 of money of your clients to buy stuff. So the answer is yes, take it out, put into an account I call materials, and you only use that to accumulate and purchase materials. The remaining 70,000 in this example is then goes into income and follows the profit first method. And that's how you do it, Rodney. Boom. All right, it's a word. An English word or an urban word?

Yeah, it's an English word. It's spelled K L U K L. Yeah.

I thought it was a C and.

It means awkwardly or inelegantly made or done.

I wanted to get the Jeopardy Music playing while you did it, but I missed a little late on that, so. Wow. I got that one right. So score. Kelsey 15, Mike 1. I finally got one. All right, I think we want to know what you learn.

Leave us some comments and ratings on itunes, stitcher, TuneIn radio, profitfirstpodcast.com or any podcaster anywhere. I think maybe.

Yeah, or email me or email. Kelsey. It's Kelseykemicalitz.com. here's the deal, y' all. We're looking for more people now that have experienced profit first in their business. We got your feedback. We got your comments. You love the experts. We get it. But you want people who've gone through the experience. How do you combine those twos? Those twos? Those two. What we're doing is we're bringing on people who have experienced profit first, maybe are challenged by it right now or struggling altogether on the show. And we're starting to bring in guest hosts when we can. We had Adrian Dorris in here. We had Ryan Lee. Do we have anything else lined up?

Ryan Lee's coming back.

Oh, my God. Did you listen to the ones with him? Did you hear the Ron McDonald one?

No, I just listened to the one today. Oh.

I listened to the one last week with Ron McDonald. Almost sold myself. He is. That man is funny. He's funny and smart.

You guys are funny together.

Yeah, but he is smart. Yeah. So if you have a profit first challenge or you want to share your success stories, we want to interview you. Email Kelseykemcallows.com and listen. We want to get you the best guidance you can get. And to do that, all you have to do is one simple step, and that's go to profit first professionals.com. so go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on find one, and we will introduce you to a certified professional who drive profitability in your business. One last thing I want to point out before we let you go is my watch just said I hit my move goal, and I've been sitting for the last three hours. Ridiculous.

You've been moving your hand a lot.

That's right. Keep adjusting this microphone. All right, Kelsey's get out of here. Bye.

Bye, everybody.