Episode 27: Business Growth and Profitability with Jill Salzman

Rolling, rolling, rolling, roll.

Hide from the studios of fractal recording. This is the Profit first podcast.

And we stretched to episode 27. Oh, there it is. Dude, this is like aerobics exercise.

How's that feel?

It feels good, man. Wow. I love it, bruh. How you doing today?

I'm good. Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curry. I'm the founder of Fractal Record and.

Also clearly an aerobicist, the way you're stretching out there. And I'm Mike Michalowicz. I'm the author of Profit first. And you're listening to the Profit first podcast, where we dig into all aspects of making a profit from every angle that you can take.

Mike.

Bruh, I love that one.

You get excited about profit. Well, think about it. How long did it take you to write your last book called Profit First?

Two years. Two years. It takes me about two years to write a book.

Really?

Yeah.

That's. See, we know why you're excited now.

It's off my shoulders.

Profits are just a little bit important to business.

Oh, my God. It's mission critical. Well, listen, if you're listening to this podcast, you can listen here@profitfirstpodcast.com and also.

On itunes and Stitcher, which are the two big podcast directories. And there's other podcatchers you can use and all that. But profitfirstpodcast.com, that's the website where all the shows are, all the previous guests.

And if you come across this on one of the blogs, we have mikemicalicz.com or profit first Professionals, there's all these huge buttons now. Chris, up. This is available on itunes. But it's like the size, like, if you're a geriatric, you know, it's just massive and you have no eyesight. So. Dude, what have you been up to, man?

You know, I literally. Last night, I got back from a weekend retreat that I facilitated for our organization called Pause youe Life.

Oh, I love it. Where was it?

It was right up in New York State. You know, take a pause. When is the last time you. Mr. Or Mrs. Listener? When's the last time you literally hit the pause button on your life and went away for two or three days just to be with yourself? Well, with other people, but Right, right, right. To be collectively stepping away from the day to day. Anyway, it's a breath of fresh air. The attendees loved it. I love it. I meditate.

Yeah, no, I love it. So for me, dude, you'll notice my hair is getting kind of Raggedy daggity. I did not get my hair cut today because we started huddles at our office where there's five of us now. We tired, someone started today. We all get together and we go over the plan for the day and so forth, but we also say, what' big thing you'll accomplish today? So we did our huddle on Friday. I didn't accomplish my thing, so I had to get up at 5 this morning to make sure my thing was done so I could report it at 9 o' clock this morning. So I had to skip my haircut.

Right, yeah. All right. You always get your hair cut on Monday morning?

Monday morning? Yeah, I do. Because, yeah, I go to Lou's here in Parsippany and there's like three barbers. You can only get Lou himself on Monday mornings, otherwise he's booked solid.

Wow.

Yeah. So sneak in there at 8 o' clock. You know what we're talking about today?

What are we talking about?

We're talking about the riches in the niches. My mother. So listen, dude, thank you. You're on that one. So if you want to be successful in any business, you got to explore the niche. We have a really cool guest coming up. But before we introduce Jill, I want to first do a quick shout out to our sponsors. You know, the Fabulous three.

Yes.

Who are they?

Nextiva.

Correct. IP phone systems.

T sheets.

Yep. Okay. Right. Hourly, you know, track your hours and your billing and so forth. And.

Fundera.

Yeah, we're doing some cool stuff with Fundera.

Shut the Fundera.

Shut the Fundera, you son of a. Fundera. Yeah. All right, so we'll give more details on them in a minute. First, I want to introduce Jill Salzman.

Now, the crowd's getting psyched for him.

I know. But before you get them all jazzed up, I'm moving my thing over the sound buttons. There we go. That's premature.

But before you get off fire, you can't hear anymore.

Your ears are blown out. Jill Salzman is the founder of the Founding Moms. It's the world's first and only collective of online meetups and online resources for mom entrepreneurs. You're a mom entrepreneur, right?

I've been called mother something at times, yes.

Well, as a result, her site, her business was identified as the top 10 website for women entrepreneurs back in 2013 by Forbes. That ain't no easy accomplishment. She's a Brown graduate, she's the author of Foundit, and she's one of the best speakers on the circuit. With no further ado, Jill Solves Men. How are you?

I am so jazzed. I couldn't have more energy right now. Thank you for that introduction. I want that sound effect to follow me everywhere.

Oh, it will. What's the first profound thought that comes to your mind now that you heard that crazy introduction that you want to share?

I'd like to correct you guys that if you are not mom entrepreneurs, maybe your mother founders.

There you go. Profound thought of the day. Tell us about the founding moms. What is. I understand it's this collective organization. You're online, you're offline, it's mom entrepreneurs. But what are you doing as a group?

We are doing so much to help women build their businesses and make more money. Essentially, it's pretty simple.

What kind of businesses?

We range, we are probably about 75% service based businesses, 25% product. We have daytime monthly kid friendly meetups. We're now in 40 cities. We have 8,000 members and growing.

What?

Yeah, it's crazy pants. How every woman around the world who has kids and is trying to run a business has very similar questions to a woman in another geographic location.

Yeah, it seems like there's these top 20 questions that come up in any specific niche, but how did you get started in this one, Joe?

I had been running two separate businesses unrelated to this. I was managing bands for a living. And then after my, like that type of band, like drummers, sure.

That was kind of lame.

All kinds. All kinds of bands. I started it in Chicago in 2005.

Right.

And then I, after I, I had my first baby two years in, I started selling baby jewelry online because why not? There's a whole long story to that, but we probably don't have time. So I was doing both of those things at once. And I was pregnant with baby number two and thinking, how do you run two businesses with two babies in a home office? And that was really the start of it. So I went to meetup.com and I started a meetup in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. And then somebody came to me and they said, hey, I hate driving all the four miles from downtown Chicago to Oak Park. Could you open one up there? And when they said that, light bulb moment. So I opened one up in New York, where I'm from. I opened one up in la, where I went to grad school, and I just kept going. And now we're in nine countries. It's ludicrous.

All right, so we gotta break this down because that is what Profit First Podcast is all about. Our listeners want to Know, you come up with an idea, then how do you. You gotta nail it before you scale it, as they say. How do you do it?

Love it.

Okay, so rewind to. You got the concept started because it was a. It was a challenge you were facing for yourself.

And I want. Exactly. It was a very selfish need that I had. And I want to say it was an accidental business because I had no intention of launching the founding moms. I literally just needed the meetup for myself. I was still doing my other businesses, but once it got about six months in, we reached about 200 members in this tiny village in Illinois. I thought, wait, this feels a lot bigger than anything I've ever done.

Now there's a million different meetups on meetup.com there are. Right, so. And they all are on the same premise. People getting together. I understand you have a niche. It's mom entrepreneurs. What are you doing that's different than all the other outlets that they could go to?

I think, number one, we know our market really well. So when you don't just say entrepreneur or you don't just say working mom, and you say you're a mom entrepreneur who specifically started her own business and is raising a family, it's pretty niche. So we're already speaking to a very specific set of people. And then beyond that, I've discovered through much trial and error, having speakers at every exchange, which is what we call our meetups, is a big boon to getting members to show up and having it be organized and facilitated by a host who is lovely and cordial and knows her stuff.

Okay, so how did you discover these things that helped you differentiate yourself, have a speaker at every single event and so forth?

I mean, literally, trial and error. There were some meetups where after a group chat, I went like, huh, that was kind of boring. Maybe I'll bring a speaker in. Just literally off the cuff. You would think that I went to other meetups and studied how they did it, but in fact, my way of running the meetups comes and came from me attending all kinds of networking events that I hated. I didn't like how they did X.

Y, or Z. Oh, that's interesting. And did you lose members initially when you're going through this kind of founding period, trying to figure out your formula?

I don't know. To be perfectly honest, it felt like a very slow snowball. And of course, people have dropped off, but people have also joined. The big switch happened when, about a year ago, we flipped to monetizing, so we didn't charge anything for the first three years.

Okay, so both Chris and I both looked up at each other simultaneously when we heard monetizing.

Hello.

I didn't know you could do that on Meetup. I thought they had some kind of strict rule that you can't monetize it, but maybe I'm wrong.

No, you can. It's funky. You can't charge like a. An annual membership fee. You can either charge dues. And how hysterical that I used to charge $10 a year in dues, which means that I can't force anyone to pay it. They just can if they want to.

Okay.

You can charge to attend that specific meetup and you can make it so that they can't RSVP yes. Unless they pay.

Oh, that's nice. So then did. What formula was the better one for you?

We do buy Meetup because we're very busy mamas with often sick kids or sick selves. So I don't want to have people commit to a whole year if they're going to have to miss three.

And what are you charging now for a meetup?

Depends on the city. It's 10 bucks ahead per event per month in a lot of our cities, but of course in different geographic locations. So Australia, they charge a little bit more. Mexico, it's slightly different. We just launched in Turkey. They're doing the most expensive we've ever charged. $11, 25.

Oh, wow. Okay.

I know.

So I like that, though. Oh, yeah, No, I do like this. So you got 8,000. I'm doing the quick math. 8,000 members, time, even $10. That's 80,000 a year.

A month.

A month.

A month, that's right.

Because I want to be completely transparent, the 8,000 number, that doesn't mean that they all show up every single month.

Bazinga.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, I love the Bazinga, but yeah, no, totally. And we're going to get there and that's going to happen at some point. But a lot of folks don't show up every month.

So, you know, there's old 80, 20 rules that apply here. Do 20% of the people show up and 80%.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Okay, so you got 1600 people showing up. That still ain't too shabby. That's 16,000amonth, minimally.

Right. And then we just happen to be talking at a time where we are about to launch an online platform that we've never had before that's going to be a paid membership platform. So for 60 bucks a month, you're going to get video courses, a Forum to meet all of these women in all of these different cities instead of just your own. A directory to hire each other. Lots of goodies coming.

So as you're moving this organization along, first, here's a recap that I've heard in my head so far. First, you have a challenge or problem with networking because you have two infants in the house as a home. So you're like, I gotta form an organization that supports moms in my same situation. You track these people, use an established platform, meetup.com, so I assume there's very little expense. Is that true? Okay. Then people start coming and you're like, eh, it's not working the way I wanted. We should bring in some speakers. So you change the formula. When did you know you had something that was scalable? I understand you had an inquiry to have it in Chicago.

Sure.

But how did you know that you could grow it? What was that moment?

I think the moment was when I made a couple of. Once we had the 200 and the woman said, can I do this in Chicago? And I had that light bulb moment I was talking about. I called some folks in New York and la and when they jumped on it, not just, sure, I'll try this for you, Jill, but this sounds really great. I really need this right there. That said to me right away, okay, if this is needed in more than one place, more than just me. And every woman who comes to my exchanges, hugs me afterwards, is thrilled in thanking me for what I feel is doing very little. I knew that this was going to be really big. I mean, it's really a gut feeling. I can't really explain it more than that.

So maybe very little in execution is necessary. But it sounds like you're doing very much in connecting people.

Lots of connecting, lots of promo, Lots of promo and pr.

And so do your members age out? I mean, these are moms with infants. At certain points, infants become big infants like Chris.

We have grandmas who attend, we have folks who are just saying goodbye to their kids off to college. We have women of all ages. Where we sort of see them leave is that they grow their business enough that they get so busy and they have five to 10 employees and they're moving into an office and they don't really need the support anymore. And a lot of them leave. But a year later I see them come back.

Fascinating. Fascinating. Now, is this a full time business for you? I mean, do you have to be managing it the entire time?

I closed up my music business and I sold my baby Jewelry business. And here I am.

Okay. And is this bringing in the lifestyle you want or is it that you need to bring in some other revenue streams?

I absolutely love my life right now. So, yes. But of course, I'm often very competitive and money hungry too, like a lot of us entrepreneurs. So, you know, once I hit that 5 mil mark, I'm going to call you guys back.

Close. Back with the what to share how you did it.

To just tell you guys we're going to a private island in my jet.

Oh, nice. Yeah, nice. So tell us the keys to scaling something like this. Clearly you're not flying over to India collecting $25 checks. How are you doing this?

That is really the best question ever. Because that's the crux of what I feel I do by day. So I feel I am the manager of our host program. So when somebody says, I'd love to host in my city, we need this here, There's a long onboarding process. I really vet the host to make sure she's a fit. And then there's a longer process, sort of getting her involved, meeting the other hosts and getting her into the program so that she can run it in a similar not same way to the way I do it.

And so these hosts, they're representative of your brand. Are they managing the money locally too, on your behalf? Pardon me?

No, they're not.

Okay, so you manage the money.

I manage the money. There are probably exceptions where, say, a member doesn't RSVP online and shows up with 10 bucks cash.

Gotcha. Okay. But that's rare.

Correct.

Okay, so someone else is managing the event, you collect the money, then you pay those hosts for what they do.

I do. Yeah. We keep the first five member payments at headquarters and then they make all the rest. And we even go so far as to say if you bring on sponsors or if you host much bigger events than our regular monthly meetups, we do all kinds of splits that are very favorable to the hosts.

Oh, that's fascinating. So tell us some lessons here. To grow a membership organization in such a unique niche, how do you attract and vet out people to represent the brand the way you want it represented?

Well, first of all, you tell everyone you know that you're looking for hosts, and it's not something that you post in two places online and assume everybody's going to reach out.

That doesn't scare off your members saying, oh, my God, she doesn't have any hosts.

We're screwed. No, no. And we often take the host on and then we launch so if I'm looking at it in, like, Omaha, Nebraska, we don't have one. If I was looking there, I tell everyone I knew in every state, everywhere. I'm looking for a host in Omaha. Please send her my way.

So, ironically, I may know someone for you in Omaha, Nebraska, named Melissa, so.

No way.

Yeah. No, seriously, so offline.

See?

See, I'm telling a.

It works, Chris.

It really works.

This is amazing.

Plus, ask Peyton Manning, Omaha.

Oh, there you go. I'm sorry. We totally stepped on you. What were you saying?

In fact, I don't even know we.

Were Omaha, Nebraska, and how we're stopped any conversation, the referral network, how it works. You said you were going out seeking by sharing with everybody.

Yeah. And then. Oh, the other one I wanted to mention to everybody, and this probably applies to every business, is don't ever assume that you know what's right for your market. Because all I ever did at the beginning was create it and form it in a way that I wanted to experience it. And it turns out that I'm often wrong in the way that the collective wants to do it.

So how do you get over the ego, though? I mean, your ego says, let me. I gotta be right. This is my idea. How do you.

I don't really have much ego about this because it's a community organization, so it's about all of us. And so while I am more experienced than everybody and I'm leading the charge, if they all say, I want to watch a webinar about how you build this business, I'm going to create a webinar for them and I sort of follow them.

Okay, so your community. And how are you soliciting this feedback from your community? I mean, before you answer that, I got to tell you, Chris, this stuff is so applicable to any business.

It is, right?

We got to be dynamic. I think it was Eric Reese who talked about the pivoting. Now, while I'm not a big fan of pivot alone, you got to make sure you're true to your core values. You do need to adjust to the customer demand. Jill, what is the secret for that?

I'm going to go against the grain and say there's no pivoting that should ever be done because that's too confusing for the consumer. But it really is just about tweaking as you go. So you find out a new piece of information, it might change in your head the entire course of your business. That's probably not likely. If it's a tiny tweak, I was.

Looking for A good sound button to play. On top of that, I found nothing. All I found was this one, Chris, which is horrible. I love it. So I'm not a big fan of the word pivot either, because. Jill. And tell me if you agree to this or not. My thing is that if we as businesses keep adjusting to what the customer wants but ignore what we. What our purpose is, why we're doing this in the first place, we can pivot our way into a business that we resent and hate. So I believe in aligning. You got to listen to your customer tweak, maybe is the word tweak to their dynamics, but you always got to be in alignment with what you want for yourself.

Every single time I've ever heard a business tell me, oh, we pivoted three months later, they're either not making any money or they're completely out of business.

Exactly. And they're playing that in the background.

They wake up in the morning. That's what they hear.

Yeah, exactly. So, okay, so what's the key to tweaking? Meaning meet the customer's needs but not change so much that your business goes off the cocktag.

Right. You don't ask once. You ask many times in many ways. So I'm not a big fan of surveying. We've done it once in five years. But every single exchange I go to, I ask the group questions face to face. I ask the hosts to ask their members questions. I might throw it in a newsletter and say, hey, do you want to come fill out this Google form? And maybe that's technically a survey, but I don't call it a survey. And just constantly, literally talking to actual people, either in person or over Skype.

Yeah, I love that insight. Never ask once, because when you ask once, isn't the response you get? Their feelings perhaps in the moment, be a lie too. They could just be answering anyway, but their feelings change. I mean, the next day, the same person, same question could be a different answer.

Absolutely. Bingo.

What's the biggest insight you found about your business? The founding moms. That you didn't come up with your own, and the group gave it to you?

I think the biggest is nobody's ever asked me that, probably that I used to absolutely hate. I abhorred the word networking. And I thought I wasn't creating a networking organization. I was creating an educational platform where people would come and learn, and they do. And that's pretty much how we run it. We don't talk about babies. It's very much a business education experience. But I'VE come to face facts. And it's also a networking organization where the networking benefits have been astronomical for a lot of people and life changing.

I got you. So you abhorred networking, but your community said, this is what we have to have. And you're like, okay.

And it turns out that talking about also including the emotional side of running a business and. Or needing emotional support while you're doing business things super important. And I'm a very practical gal, so this was really hard for me to accept.

So let's dig into the numbers a little deeper without you having, you know, don't disclose something you don't feel comfortable disclosing. Obviously, it is your own private organization. But a lot of businesses that I've observed grow very quickly and they get into more financial trouble because they have more responsibility. Have you experienced more financial pressure as you've grown?

Once I experienced it. So I'm a bootstrapper.

Who's.

This is my third business. I'm really good at not spending money.

I like when you talk dirty to me like that. I love it.

So did I. What did you just say?

I said love when you talk dirty to me like that.

I just want to be on the same page. So I basically, at this point, only had one experience where I freaked out. And it was when we threw our conference last October. Because to hold a conference, you need a lot of money. Thank goodness. Getting some major sponsors on board very last minute. And maybe that pressure was great because that's why they came on board, but I didn't love it. So we've pushed it off to 2016 for the next one. And so we don't really spend a ton of money. And we're always looking for ways to make more of it.

Oh, that's an interesting insight. So you. You attempt your first live conference for these 8,000 members, not all of them, obviously, to attend.

We ended up having 120.

Okay. Okay. Not bad turnout, actually. Right. So 120 people. These people are flying in. You bring 120 people out. 120. That's a 20, $30,000 conference I'm hearing already. Okay. See, I know my numbers. So you got. You got to. Now that's a lot of. That's a lot of dough. How do you get sponsors on when. When you're in a panic situation to make money, our brand money.

So maybe I was shortening the story. I had started looking for sponsors a year beforehand.

Okay.

And so if you start looking for sponsors a year in advance and they're not that Interested, they'll tell you it's too early. Then you hit what you think is the sweet spot, and they tell you it's too late. So there was just a lot of runaround until I just happened to run into. And again, this is that whole you gotta know people to know people game. But I ended up getting three recommendations from friends, business friends, to people who had money, and they said, this looks interesting. Let's do it.

It's so funny. So I've been involved in some conferences too. Jill and I found the exact same thing. Like, oh, we can't consider this yet. This is too many quarters away. And then you reach out to them and they're like, nop. Times passed, opportunities passed up.

Totally. I kind of want to publish the templates for the emails they must send to all of us.

Oh, my gosh. It's just interesting. There's these common themes throughout every business. I don't care if you're working with accountants and bookkeepers like I am, or if you're working with entrepreneurial moms like you are. It seems like there's these common themes over and over.

Totally.

As you look back at your business, any tips you'd have for your earlier self as an entrepreneur as you built this business on things you should have done from the get go that you didn't.

I mean, if I. If I came up with them, that would not have. That would have changed the course of where I am now. And I love where I am now. So I don't. I mean, you know what, to be honest, if somebody had said, here's five, $5,000, go.

Mm.

Maybe things would have happened even faster. But we've grown pretty fast.

I mean. Oh, so you. You bootstrapped it without even $5,000. I mean, you.

Correct. I mean, literally, it was a meetup that I organized and I just paid. Meetup. The. I don't even remember what it is now. The amount of money it is to just organize a meetup.

$72 for six months, I believe.

Exactly. Wow. There you go. You know what?

Actually, Chris got all cocky, just stuck his chest out and kind of shook it around.

I have a good question to follow him.

He's roostering.

Oh, do it. Do it.

So what do you attribute your success more to? Is it the good idea of the group that you've created and the actual effectiveness of those in person, group meetings? Or is it your success more because of your energy and your pushing this thing forward?

I don't know. I would like to think it's taken A lot of energy and a lot of pushing. But I would like to think that there was a point at which, and I don't know what that point was, the women sort of took over and sort of made it its own thing. And people started meeting each other for coffee and doing business deals together and going, hey, I met her at the founding moms, and now we're writing a book together. At some point, it sort of fell out of my hands and started growing because of them.

Well, give us a secret here. What is that point, Jill, when it took over on its own? How many members?

I don't. Oh, man, I wish I knew. I want to be three years in. Okay, we can say 67. No, I think probably around 2,000 members.

Okay. Oh, is that so before that point, Jill, were you the center point? Everyone's like, oh, I'm in Jill's group. And then after 2000 members.

No, not in the other cities. No, no, no. I mean, in Chicago, I'm well known because I host two of the exchanges. And then I came out with the book in end of 2011, and that helped. But a lot of women everywhere get my newsletter, but I don't ever meet them or see them face to face.

And just so our listeners know, the book is called A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs.

Yeah, yeah.

The way I said that sounded like I was building to something else.

Right?

A field Guide for mom Entrepreneurs who.

That you can read in the bathroom.

There you go.

With crickets.

With crickets. So I can't stop this damn thing.

Quick. Yeah, right. Quick question, Jill. You have different women hosting different groups in different cities. Is it ever hard to manage them? Meaning? You know, I mean, obviously not every facilitator of a local group is going to do an A plus job. Is it hard to handle everybody? Is that managing those people is that difficult?

Totally. I mean, that's the thing that I think I'm working on every day. And as we grow, I mean, we're in 40 cities now, so that's 40 women. It's a lot to manage and handle and find the right technologies to communicate with them and keep them up to date. So we're always trying new things, and I'm always figuring out what. What makes them better. But as we've gone along. So looking at the hosts that I had in the first year, relatively speaking, were terrible and almost all gone compared to the hosts I have now.

Do you ever have someone that went totally rogue on you?

Oh, yeah.

What was her name? What's her name? So what's her Twitter handle. He just shared it. Kathy.

No, I was joking. There's no Debbie.

No Debbie. Oh, Debbie. Debbie.

Yeah.

No. So what did you. When someone went rogue, how do you control that situation?

Well, the lovely part about holding onto all of your own branding is that every time we have a host come on in a new city, I'm the one who brands their meetup page and gives them access. So the moment anything goes awry, I just shut them down.

Boom, boom, you're done. See you later.

Drive through.

I love it. So I need a gunshot sound effect, just so you know.

Jill, I need to talk to you offline because my. What? The Pause youe Life organization. I mentioned the meetup. We want to start having meetups in different cities, and they could work out the same as yours.

I'm your girl. I mean, last year, two years ago, the Ricki Lake show called me because they wanted to do offline meetups in tandem with the launch of the new show.

Really? So did you consult with them?

I consulted with them for a little while, and then the show is no longer. So that didn't work. Let's blame me. I don't know.

Yeah. No. You ruined their show.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. It had nothing to do with Ricki Lake.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So if you could give one tip to our listeners who are growing their own businesses, not necessarily organizations like yours, but they're rooted in the same fundamentals. What tip would you have for growing profitably?

I love the question. And I'm saying that because I'm buying time.

Buying time.

You know, I always tell folks, people don't get out enough and talk to each other. And so my favorite tip ever, always. If it's not even a networking event, even if it's a Starbucks and you lean over and talk to somebody, share your ideas more often, Keeping them secret is not going to better your business in any way, shape or form. And telling people some new idea you have does not mean they're going to steal it. I have literally never experienced that happen.

Wasn't it Woody Allen who said. I think it was Woody Allen, Jill, who said 90% of success is showing up.

Yes.

Yeah.

Bingo. And I think 100% making profit is talking to other people about what's going on in your biz, not keeping it to yourself and your employees.

Joe, people that want to find out about you, where should they go to join your organization and learn about you?

I would love for them to go to foundingmoms.com and if they are, I don't know. Unable to leave their house for some reason. Go to foundingmoms.com fmc where we're launching our new online portal.

Oh, there you go.

Okay, that's gonna change everything. I have questions about that. How do you transition and grow a new platform and stay profit at the same time?

I have questions about that, too, in all of these hosts.

Well, can we have you back in the show once you get that thing started?

I love it. You guys are. Are too much fun. Keep the sound effect.

Oh, yeah, we'll keep. Oh, ah, I missed the button again. There it is. There it is. Yeah, we are. We are crazy fun. Hey, Jill, listen, you are true to your. Your commitment to your children. You even told us you got to get going because you got one at.

The two nurses office. Action over here.

Jeez. Well, go take care of your children. We're going to talk about you behind your back. So you're going to listen later.

Yeah, can't wait to hear it.

Thanks, Jill.

All right, talk to you guys soon.

See you later.

Great job.

So, dude, the founding moms. Chris.

Founding moms.com.

Founding moms.com. here's. Well, actually, we got a couple of administrative things. I want to talk about what I learned from this episode.

Me too.

I want to share a thought about experience. So when we're done with that, tell me the importance of hiring people with experience or perhaps the lack thereof. Importance. That's right. That's a teaser. First, I want to thank our corporate sponsors, Fundera. They're the last one we talked about. Fundera provides funding for your business. So if you need money, instead of going bank to bank to bank to bank, one call to Fundera, they go bank to bank to bank to bank. Now here I went behind the scenes. You know, most of these web companies, they think they're very sophisticated. What I found is when you type a request in, it gets converted to email. It gets to Fundera. They send this guy out in the street. He runs. He knocks on every bank door. He's like, hey, excuse me. No. Damn it.

He gets rejected looking for funding here.

They call him the damn it guy because he gets rejected. Damn it. Damn it. He gets rejected all the time. And then finally they accept. And he's like, oh, thank God. He runs back to Fundera, says, we got one approved. I say, we got 50 more. Get back out there. And he's like, damn it. Damn it. They call him the damn it man at Fundera.

Nice.

That's all a lie. If someone thinks that was real. Damn It. You know who other sponsors are?

T sheets.

T Sheets. I love T Sheets. We had a call with them at our office last week. We've implemented the system throughout our massive organization of now five. Now five people. It's awesome. It is awesome. I had to do my first payroll. I even tweeted out about this. I look for this Twitter to confirm it. I had to tweet out about it. I was so happy with it. I did tweet out about it. I didn't have to. I got my time stuff done within minutes where usually takes me about a half hour to an hour. So that was kind of cool.

That is cool. T sheets. Yeah. Yeah. We did a whole episode on T sheets.

Yeah. With Matt Russell. He was awesome.

Yeah.

I subsequently went to breakfast with him and he bought. He paid. He paid.

Did you do the old, you know, Tyrannosaurus? Yeah, I know.

The chat came. I was like, oh, my. The alligator claws. Like, oh, I can't reach that check. He did it, too. It was like three hours of alligator claws.

I have to go to the bathroom.

I know, I know, I know. And as I stood up, my. I pushed my plate away from me. It happened to push the bill into his lap. It was pathetic. And then my. My favorite company of all time. Not that I don't like Fundera or Nextiva. I mean, or Tsheets. Nextiva is my favorite company of all time because I got to know these guys over the last five years. I use their phone systems exclusively. They are so freaking powerful. It's voice over IP for 100th the cost of a traditional phone system and the sophistication. It blows your mind. We now have set up our phones where we can record calls. One button bloop. You start recording the call. I think all these functions, like, these were big call centers that did that. We're doing it right, by yourself?

Pretty much, yeah.

By yourself, right? Yeah. So, dude, what did you learn?

You know, I really like the fact that she's talking about. Well, her, you know.

I love what you're saying.

Yeah.

Really connecting.

I really like that she encourages everyone to talk about your ideas and tell everyone and network and, you know, tell everyone. Like, she tells everyone she's looking for hosts. And I think that. I don't know, as a. Maybe it's different for women and for guys, but as a guy, like, I don't. I mean, maybe I don't talk as much or maybe some introverts don't talk that much at all. So I have a lot of ideas. But I don't go out and really tell people, but I should. That's what she's saying, right?

No, you totally, dude. Here's what I learned. I got six, seven bullet points. First, I won't share them all, but one of them is about the power of the label. There is money. Harry Commons right now, booby McKnight. There is money in labels, people. Now listen to me. Pull over your car right now and listen to me. There's power in labels. She labeled her community mom, entrepreneurs, people associated with it and others like you and I don't. That's the way to polarize, people. And when you polarize, that means you have a community that connects with it, that is very committed to it. So one profit strategy is assign a label for your community that makes them feel and realize that they're distinct, and they'll be attracted to you. It's easy marketing. Never assume you have it right. I love when she said that. She goes, you know, I started this business, but she didn't have the ego so great that she assumed the way she was doing it was right from the get go. No business gets it right from the get go. And if you want to make some serious money, you got to respond to what the customer wants, but you got to stay truly aligned to your values and your goals. It's that big balance, dude. Never heard this. Never heard anyone, anyone say this before on our show. Oh, damn it. I missed the button. Never anyone say this before. Never ask a question. Just once. Yeah, dude, I ask questions once, and they start doing all these different things. And then I'm like, oh, they didn't really mean that. They're having a bad day or something.

Or they were the only one who thought felt that way.

Oh, exactly. Bazinga. Bazinga. Share ideas. I love it. You know, a lot of people say, oh, someone's gonna steal my idea if I share my idea. Ideas are rarely stolen because someone else is doing their own goddamn ideas. They're already working on Booby McKnight. They're already doing something else. They can't take your idea, but if you share your idea, it makes you think about it more, perfect it, and it forces you to actually do it. So, I don't know. You got more notes there you want to share?

Yeah. Well, one thing, I just think that building a community of women is, like, she was one a mom with kids trying to be an entrepreneur, and that's why she was able to build this community, and then the community took over. Right. She said when these Women started to, you know, take over and make it what it is. The women would meet on their own outside of the meetings and start promoting it and everything. So, I mean, not every business is gonna have a community that's that engaged with each other. Right. I mean, if you're selling widgets, you, you know, people aren't meeting at Starbucks to, you know, rub widgets or anything, you know. Yeah, but, but anyway, I thought that was building a community is. Is. Is pretty important these days, no?

Oh my. Yeah.

Yeah, A little bit.

A little bit. A lot of it. I think it's pretty huge. Dude, you got a question for me? That told you right down as we're recording the show.

Mike Michalowicz.

Yes, how can I help you?

That's a tongue twister right there.

Yeah. What is the importance of hiring people with experience or with this? Yeah, go.

Yeah. Okay. Did you want to keep building on that?

No, go ahead.

So this is the profit tip I wanted to share of the day. Hiring experience is not necessarily a good thing. And in many cases it's a bad thing. Think about it. If Jill was hiring experienced group leaders that were running this event, Experience means they come in with a pre formulated process that they apply to their group. It may not be the same as Jill's. So Jill then has to unwind what they're doing, retrain them what you're doing. It's nearly impossible. And you pay a premium, usually for experience. So here's the crazy thing. Pull out your corn cob pipe, Chris. Start smoking this one. So this is what if you hire people with inexperience, but they're very intelligent, they have the right attitude, high degrees of energy, they meet your cultural values. If they have all those elements, they are extremely trainable. And guess what? You can't give people intelligence. I've tried. You can't give people energy. I've tried. You can't give people values. Oh, I've tried that one big time. So what you have to do is hire people that you, as you interview them, you identify those components and then give them the experience. The best part is because they're not experienced in your field, they'll follow the process the way you want it. That brings about consistency. Consistency from driven people that don't cost you a lot because they're inexperienced means the steps are you're taking the appropriate steps to being profitable.

Wow.

God.

Jeez, people. Rewind and listen to that again. That was too much value in like a minute and a half, dude.

Yeah, exactly.

That was awesome. I'VE heard that there's a saying to what? Hire the smile and then teach them the technical part of it or something.

There's a saying, it's gotta be a rhyme, like, hire the smile, then teach him for a while or.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah.

No, but it was like, hire someone with a smile and a nice attitude and then teach them the technical part of.

The only thing you can give to someone else is the education you listen. I've seen people try to make other people smart. It doesn't happen. Usually it's a dummy trying to teach a dummy anyway.

Oh, the blind leading the.

Yeah, the dumb leading the dumb.

Oh, God.

Okay. Do we gotta get out of here? Before we do, I want to know a little about the studio where we do this. Cool.

Yeah. Fractal recording. We're in Northern Jersey right now. But I'm going virtual. I'll be doing it all from home. I have. Yeah, baby. I help businesses host podcast shows. It's a great marketing channel, great addition to your marketing mix and all that jazz and whatever. Tracktherecording.com.

Yeah. And go there and do your own podcast. This podcast, 21,000, 22,000 downloads. I mean, literally, we had a podcast go live last week. Monday morning, I turn it on 10 minutes after it goes live. Over 100 downloads. 20 minutes later, 150 within an hour past 200 downloads.

Right. And podcast listeners are very. They're filtered out because somebody. You know, it's not like radio where you need 100,000 listeners. You need a small number with podcasting because those people actually chose to listen. They found the show, they chose to listen. They want to hear you. It's almost like they're pre qualified.

I mean, and think about you right now, listening. You're listening. We got you. Hey. Profit First Professionals is what I run.

Yeah.

Profit First Professionals is an organization of expert accountants, bookkeepers, and financial experts. Coaches who help guide businesses to greater profitability. So if you own a business, listen, you need an accountant, bookkeeper, coach, you need those guys anyway. Or gals, you need them anyway. Come to us. We'll give you someone that does that stuff but has the unique ability to drive profit. Of course, if you're an accountant or bookkeeper, for God's sake, come to my website, profit first perfectionals.com. i'm waiting for you.

You open your eyes.

Open your eyes, and there's some funny surprises up there.

Dude, this has been great.

It's been a fun time.

Thank you, Mike Michalowitz. Thank you, Chris and everybody listen. If you want to hear our previous episodes again, profit first, podcast.com overwhelm your.

Your iPhone on itunes. Just download every freaking episode and share.

Our show with other people if you want to.

Exactly.

So thank you for listening. We really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun.

It's been awesome, as always.

You got something for us, Mike?

I do. I'm waiting for this time beat. I'm trying to stretch.

Okay, Right. He's bopping his head. Wait, wait, no.

I'm waiting for the field. Where's that this time?

Yeah. Another.

Keep listening.

Three bars. Yeah.

Yeah. Here comes Bruh. A little bit premature.

All right, so, yeah, there's one more.

Here comes Bruh. Yeah. That was good. That was good.