Episode 31: Business Relationships and Profitability with Scott Weintraub and Jennifer Dawn

Check, check. What do you want to do, say, episode 31?

No, we could say you're listening to the Profit first podcast, episode 31.

Oh, God.

Let the grunting begin. Right? People are gonna be like, why do you always grunt at the beginning of your show?

Why do we always grunt?

Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast.

You hear that giggle? That's Christine in the stud. Hey, everyone. It's good to have you back.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, it's great she's here. There's good karma going on here, right?

So welcome to the Profit first podcast. Our website is profitfirstpodcast.com and, Mike, this show is all about profit.

Yeah. Kind of the alpha and the omega. Like, how do you make money in all aspects of your business, from the marketing to the sales to hiring people to every aspect. Profitability is in every corner of your business. You just need to uncover it.

Yeah, man.

And if you ain't profitable, Christine's like, yeah, that's right. You. Well, you don't have much at that point. So our show's available on itunes and stitcher. And soon we're going to be on tunein radio as well.

Oh, I heard about that.

Yeah, I'm gonna get us on Tunein. And profitfirstpodcast.com is a website. So what have you been up to, brother?

Dude, I had a hamburger. That was the worst.

I came into the studio, I saw.

It, so I'm starving. I tell Christina. I'm like, I'm gonna be late. I'm just gonna grab a hamburger on the road. I don't like to go to. I won't say their name, but it rhymes with Fendi's. I'm like, I don't like to go there, but I'm like, I'll go there. I order it up. I get here, open it up, it looks decent enough. I take a first bite into it. I'm like, hmm, I didn't know I ordered a filet of fish or whatever. I look at, it's a hamburger that tastes like fish, and I eat the whole thing. And so if I get sick during this episode.

Lovely.

Yeah, yeah. There was something wrong.

Do we need to take you to therapy real quick?

Oh, boy.

Oh, here comes. You know, when I bite into a hamburger and there's a flavor of fish, something's just not right.

All right, we're not therapists here, but, hey, I went hiking. I haven't had a tick on me in literally 20, 25 years. I went hiking last weekend. Three ticks, bro.

Yeah, it's getting intense.

Weird.

Yeah. You got up your way. You're up in the woods.

Oh, yeah. Well, I was late to work this morning because there was a bear right outside my front door.

That's how big their tanks are. They call them bears.

Couldn't get it off her leg.

That will suck the living crap out of your bl.

So this is great, Mike. We got some great guests for this episode.

And yeah, so we got Scott Weintraub coming in a few minutes. This guy grows. Grew a company to $10 million in revenue since 2007. This is 2015. Eight years. Crushing it. Why are you laughing?

I'm just looking at you. You're so happy today.

You see my shirt?

Christina said you're all jacked up. I love shenanigans.

I love shenanigans too. Yeah. Our second guest today is Jennifer Dawn, Business coach extraordinaire. Does incredible things to bring profitability to business. Now, before we dig into our guests, which I don't know why you dig into them. That sounded kind of weird. But what I did want to tell you is we got three sponsors that are awesome. I actually had a call with Fundera minutes before coming here. They just said. They just said now they haven't signed the contract. We're in for one more year. Oh, they were on a month to month basis.

Yeah, baby.

They said, I don't know if I can share this. They have one of their best clients because of the Profit first podcast. We have sophisticated, smart listeners that take advantage of the stuff we have. So they were pumped. But we'll talk about them later.

That really excites me. And as an audio engineer, when I get excited, I just like to hear a 1k tone and I just like to let it keep playing in the background. Do you like that guy?

So freaking annoying. Yeah. You're playing it when I came in. Yeah, you audio engineer. It's crazy. T sheets, time tracking software. We're using our office. We're going to tell you about some cool stuff that they're doing. And then of course, nextiva, who has signed up for Profit Global Con. They're going to be at our global conference. Profit first, global con. That's October 1st. October 2nd. They're the premier sponsor.

Nice.

They're going to be there doing tons of crazy stuff.

Cool.

And they bought the first round of drinks. Literally the first round. Okay.

Cranberry and water for me. Thank you.

Yeah, you know, I don't have my timer. My.

Oh, we forgot the timer.

I'll do it on another clock.

We're at five minutes. I'll hook up the timer now while you're introducing. Okay, our next guest.

Yes, with no further ado.

Okay, welcome.

We both the sound effects. His name is Mr. Scott Weintraub. He has built a $10 million business in the health industry. And with no further ado, here he is. Scott Weintraub. Scott, you there?

I am here.

Was that the most confusing introduction of all time?

I was gonna say best introduction of all time.

Yeah, I think you were, Scott. Okay, this. We're a little bit off the rails. We're already off the rails. All right, Scott, your business. You are the founder of Healthcare Regional Marketing. It's an hrm. Branding is a brand management company for pharmaceuticals. Not every listener is going to get that, especially because I stuttered through it. What exactly do you do?

So pharmaceutical companies obviously market medicines. And what we do is we help them figure out why a product is doing better in city A versus city B and what we can do about it. And the reason this is important is some of These products are $1 billion in sales. Literally a billion dollars. One of them we worked on was $8 billion in sales. So if we can figure out that Dallas isn't doing as well, and if there's something we can do in Dallas, we can grow their business by 10, 20, 30, $50 million. Just in Dallas. And we look around the country, we have a mathematical model, figures out what's the biggest driver city by city, and we focus on where we can win.

So I don't know if you can specify any brands that you're working with. Can you?

So brands we've worked with in the past, we talk about brands that are now generic. So we work with Lipitor at the cholesterol medicine, Plavix for stroke. So brands people have heard of.

All right, so let's start with Lipitor, just so our audience can understand what your service is. Lipitor sells nationwide. Worldwide, I'm sure. And so it sells here in the New York City area where we're recording. It sells in the Chicago area. How do you treat those differently? Just give us a better sense specific to that product.

Okay, so that product helps with cholesterol. So when we do our analysis, we might learn that in New York, the best way to grow your brand is focus on physicians who treat lots of African American patients who in general have more high cholesterol. But in Chicago, the best way to grow your brand might be to have cardiologists educate primary care doctors. And in Dallas, the best way to Grow your brand would be to convince doctors that Lipitor is the best product for your patients who have both high cholesterol and high blood pressure. So every city, the analysis will tell us what's the greatest lever city by city. And the African American one is the most obvious example is if you have a product that works better in African Americans, you're probably better off focusing on that LEVER In Washington D.C. that has 30% African Americans than Portland, Oregon, that has 3%.

Oh, there you go. I mean, that's pretty obvious. So, all right, you and I, this is last weekend, we're at the Spring Lake five mile run, and I think it was you who beat me, but in the race. But you were telling me about a strategy you used when you started your business about getting advice. And this has made your business very profitable. Tell us, tell us about that strategy you used to.

So when I started the company, I really wanted to make sure I had a strong conceptual idea that people would actually purchase. So, you know, living in northern New Jersey, lots of friends and acquaintances work at pharmaceutical companies and I used to work at one. So I called all my friends, show them a 15 slide PowerPoint presentation of, hey, here's a company I'm starting, Can you give me some advice? And people would say, oh, change this, change this, change this. I like this, I don't like this. And then I would say to them, hey, can you give me another name of another person at your company that I can get advice from them from? Because I find that advice from people I don't know is different than my friends. Sometimes my friends have a harder time. You're telling you, you know, something you're doing is stupid or ugly, etc. So then I went to friends of friends and friends of friends spoke to about 50 people and every time tweaked the idea got more and more input. And then finally after maybe 40 or 50 folks, people started saying things like, how much does this cost? How long will it take you to execute this? And it made me think, okay, I'm on to something here. So that's how it started. It was tons of market research. Basically it was one on one market research. I did 51 hour interviews to get research on if I had a strong conceptual idea.

The research basically turned into sales. Did you ever approach these people and say, hey, I got something you got to buy, or was it always, hey, I want your advice?

It was, hey, I want your advice. I thought that these would turn into future sales. And what happened is it was actually a friend of A friend who was the chairman of Johnson and Johnson North American Farmer School. I didn't know it at the time, but I went in to see him, and his assistant met me in the lobby, walked me up to his office. And as soon as you got towards his office, you can tell you were in executive row.

How is that?

Like, the carpet's thicker and, you know, the walls have paintings of ex president. Everything's expensive. Expensive looking.

Yeah.

And I start going through the presentation, asking for feedback because that was my mission. And five slides in, he's like, you know, I think it would be good if we got the vice president of marketing here. He'd have. He'd have some good feedback on that. Do you mind if I invite him to join us?

Right?

No, that'd be fine. The vice president of marketing comes, we go through the same five or six slides, and then he says, hey, two people who report to me need this product. Can you come back next week and let's meet with them and they need to hire you to do this. So that actually turned directly into sales. And then after that, I stopped asking for feedback and I started calling people up and saying, hey, I have a really good idea. Can I share with you? And went from research to selling, based all on that 50th interview.

Okay, so you go to selling, but how are you doing these selling? Is this cold calls you're doing to now sell your product? Now, you defined.

Started off with. It started off eight years ago with it was all networking. So, like, I know you, Mike. You would say, hey, I have a friend, Chris. I have another friend, Christina, and you'd introduce me to them. So we did that for the first many years, it was all networking. And now we're to the point where we ask our clients because we've had many, many clients for referrals, so very little cold calling.

What's the strategy for asking for referrals? And let me just couch that by saying, I believe if I go to a client and say, hey, thanks for letting me do service for you, may have a referral from their perspective. They're like, hold on, dude, you just took a check out of my hands and now you're asking for more? Is my money not good enough? You need my family too? Like, how do you. What's the right way to ask for a referral, bruh?

So I don't know the right way, but this is what we've done. And over time, it's worked for us. And we tweaked it over time so I would be working with you. And most of our projects take six months. So after a month or two, I'd say, mike, the way we grow our business is all through referrals. Next time we talk, would it be okay if I asked you if there was anyone else in your company that would be interested in this? And when I say next time we talk, they always say yes. When I used to ask for it on the spot, they would say, I can't think of anybody.

Right. Okay.

Next time we talk, they always say yes because they're assuming I'm going to forget. I never forget.

Nice.

Then, you know, if we're going to talk, you know, next Friday, on Thursday, I'll say, hey, Mike, looking forward to talking tomorrow. This is what we're going to talk about. And remember, one of the topics we're going to talk about is you said it would be okay for next week for us to talk about referrals. So then I planned to see twice. And then when we talk Friday, nine out of 10 people say, yeah, I was thinking about it, and I got this friend, Chris, I think he'd be good. And then I'll ask him, would it be best, Mike, if you send Chris an email? And actually I have one you can cut and paste and send to Chris. Do you want me to call him? And my preference is you might send Chris an email that says, I have a friend, you know, I know the guy, Scott. He's doing work for us. Would it be okay, Chris, if I gave Scott your name? And sometimes Chris will say no, and I'm okay with that. Also, if he has no desire to talk to me, I don't want to waste his time or mine.

So. Okay, so just so I understand this, you go to your client a week or two in advance, say, hey, next time we connect or talk, may I, may I ask you for a referral? Is that the words you use?

Correct?

And then they say, yeah, yeah, sure. Then you go to them, you say, hey, remember last week we spoke, you said you would be able to give me a referral. Do you have someone in mind that you. That you thought over the last week? And they say, oh, yeah, I thought of so and so. And then you're saying, I have a form email you can send to ask their permission. That is the part I'm hanging up on you ask.

So I would, you know, I wouldn't use the word form, but when I say, hey, Mike, what I think would work best is I'll send if you could. If, Mike, if you could send Chris an email introducing me to him. And I'll send you an email that you can cut and paste and forward to Chris. And in the email, it would say, chris, we're working with this company, Healthcare regional Marketing. You know, I've become somewhat friendly with the owner, Scott Weintraub. They do great work, blah, blah, blah. And then you'd end it with Chris. Would it be okay if I gave Scott your contact information so he could reach out? And 8 out of 10 people say, yes, but the 2 out of 10 folks like Chris who say, no, thanks, Mike, we're not interested. I just feel like I saved myself and Chris time and it gives. It makes it easier for Mike because he's giving his friend an out.

No, I totally got you. And Chris is kind of a jerk anyway.

I was going to say, talking about referrals and profit together is like chocolate and peanut butter, man.

Right?

Referrals and profit. Just bam, bam, bam.

You know, I'm a big fan of, like, all the vendor. Like Reese's. It is. I'm a big fan of the vendor. Well, but I love Scott's. Your strategy. One last question about this. That form email, even though you don't call it a form when you give it to them, when they ask permission, your email goes to Kris to ask Chris's permission. You, Scott, are not included in that email. Right. He's not bcc you or something.

Correct.

Okay, so do you have another strategy to make sure they followed up on it? You just call them and say, hey, did that email go out? Or how do you get the response? Yay or nay?

So every single time, this has just been our experience. Mike would then forward me the email saying, chris said, not a problem. Here's his email and contact information. Or he'd forward it to me, say, hey, Chris was not interested. If I don't get that forward email, then I'll write back again, hey, Mike, what did Chris say? And that would remind them, oh, yeah, I promise to do this. But almost every time they forward it to me, like I said, 8 out of 10 times, Chris says yes. So then Mike just forwards me the contact. And the two out of 10 times, Mike will write back, hey, sorry, my friend Chris is not interested, and I'm okay with that.

And so the last kind of set of questions I want to ask about is profitability. And when we did that race, we met up at your house. Clearly you're very profitable. From the pair of shoes you were wearing. Chris, you've seen these things. Really, his soul was falling off his shoe.

Oh.

How old were those things, Scott?

They were quite old. 15 years old.

15 year old. Whoa.

Sometimes they're the most comfortable.

Yeah, I don't know about that. I mean, why shoes are so old.

So I bought these slip on sneakers 15 years ago and I wear them as slippers and I only wear them in the house. But even after 15 years, even though I only wear them in a house, they start falling apart and I just can't find and find another pair of slip on sneakers for in the house. So I'm about due for a new pair.

Yeah, I totally think so. Or duct tape. Yeah. So. But so obviously you're frugal in your shoe selection, your business. How did. What's the profit. Profit history been like? And how have you made it a profitable company? Like I know it is.

So profit history is a great, great story. When we started, we had revenue. So year one, we did $400,000 in revenue startup.

It's my kind of first year.

Quite frugal with our expenses and myself and the co founder said, hey, we're not going to take a salary, but come December 31st, whatever's left, we're split. Perfect. So come December 31st, and he was the, you know, CFO role within the two of us. I'm like, hey, Jeff, how much money's left? He's like zero. Zero.

Oh.

So it was totally revenue minus spends equals profit. And there was no profit. Then the next three years, revenue exploded, went from 400 grand to 4 million the next year to 8 million.

So you did 4 million your second year?

Yes, I think year.

Bingo.

Wow.

Wow. So we made profit, frankly, without thinking much about it because we couldn't spend fast enough even if we tried because, you know, the, the revenue just grew so much. Then after, you know, four years, revenue slowed down in terms of growth and expenses continue to grow. And all of a sudden our profit margins got smaller and smaller. And I'm guessing five years, six years into it. So, you know, two, three years ago, our margins started getting smaller. And not knowing, we took an approach similar to what you're advocating, Mike. We said, okay, we're estimating this year's revenue is going to be, you know, X, let's call it 10 million. If we want to make a 20% profit, we can only spend 8. Can we get all the work done for 8? And at first I was like, oh my gosh, that's going to crazy. How can we do that? But it just forced us to get smarter. So when we started demanding of ourselves we need to make this much profit. We just became more efficient in doing the work.

Love it.

Yeah, I love it. God, you're bringing a tear to my eye.

He's weeping over here.

He's made me weep twice this week. Just now and when he beat me at the five mile run. Scott. Hey, where can people find out more about you and healthcare regional marketing?

So we have a website, hrmexperts.com and on the website is my personal email address, swintravrmexperts.com.

That'S a tongue twister right there.

We'll have the link in the show notes too.

Yeah, we definitely will. Hey, Scott, thanks so much for joining us and sharing these amazing tips. We're gonna be definitely talking about this later. We'll catch you later, Scott.

Have a great day, guys.

Bye.

Thanks, Scott.

So before we bring in our next guest, I know you had a question for me.

I do. Because we want to. I wanted to make sure we get our profit tip of the week in here.

Yeah. And here's what it is.

So give it. Give it to us, my brother.

Get ready, get ready. I love it. I love the hands. Come on. It's like you fondled me there.

Whoa.

No, it just the hand gestures.

My hands were bringing it to me, but in my direction, but just for the listener to know that.

No, I got you. It's great. Did that look awkward?

Did you see the handdressers from both of you today? You're pointing at everybody.

I am.

Why am I pointing?

I'm like throwing that burger.

That's how you. Yeah, that's how you throw the voice. I'm like, hey, it's you or you. Yeah.

Wow.

Here's what I want to do. I'm going to give you four tips, one per week, all based around this concept of questions. I saw this thing, this is actually this morning with Anthony Robbins. It was like a video from like the 80s or something. Like, you know, his teeth were even bigger back then type thing. And he goes, look, he goes, I want you to ask a question and you, if you're listening right now, as long as you're not driving, do this. I want you. Don't do it yet. Don't cheat. I want you to look throughout this room for everything that's red and ask this question. What's red? What's red? What's red? And both. You both can do it and do it for five seconds. So right now, go. What's red? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, now come back.

Yeah.

What do you See, that was brown.

The table.

That's what you're playing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I didn't see anything.

Because the table is what we're. Our elbows are on it. Nothing. Right. I mean, brown is. Your blouse is brown. The shades. There's so much. When we look for red, we find red. Now if we do the same thing, five seconds, look, what's brown? You'll find more than just the table. You'll find like 10 or 15 things.

Yes.

Our questions dictate what we see. And a lot of times we're asking the wrong questions. We're asking, what is red? Or when brown is the resolution. So I want to give you four questions you can ask your clients become more profitable. We're going to start with one today, and I'll give you one each week.

For the next three, four weeks. Yep.

Exactly. Here's the first question. Meet with your best customer and ask them, what am I doing right? Okay. So go to your very best customers. Kris, I know you're doing this right now.

Yeah.

Go to your best customer and say, what am I doing right? And your customer will give you feedback. They'll say, you know, you're so responsive. The quality of work, whatever, dig deep into it, learn about it. But here's the key to that question. They are not telling you what you're doing right. They're telling you what they are observing. The color that they are looking for. And the power in this is. Listen, you and I know each other now for a year. You know 0.0001% of who I am, and I know about 0.001% of you. But I've made a judgment about your entirety based upon my little understanding of you. If you know what that 0.0001% that I recognize about you is, you have the ability to turn the heat up on that. So ask your best customers, what am I doing right? They will tell you the 0.0001%. But now your job is to do better at that. They're not telling you what you're doing right. They're telling you what they observe and what you need to actually improve. If you're responsive, become more responsive. If you do great quality work, do more quality work. If they say the way you hit the A note's amazing, hit the A note better. You have to ramp it up. And I will tell you, when you do, they will notice because they told you so.

Yeah.

Stick that one in your forehead. That was a good one.

There's a tip for you.

Just got Choked up there.

Oh, we got double. All right. You know who our second guest is?

I do, actually, but these people don't.

These people, our listeners don't. Yeah, when we say these people, we mean that condescendingly to our listeners.

Oh, you people.

You people. You people don't know who we have. Jennifer Dawn. Couple things about her. First of all, wait until you hear her audio equipment. She is remote. You'll think she's in the studio right now. She brings it when it comes to audio equipment. 23 years old. She looks like she's 23 now. I'm not saying she is, but when she was 23, she founded her first business, a software company providing point of sale systems. Or as the cool in the know kids call it, POS systems. And then the cooler kids say, well, doesn't POS stand for point of shit or part of shit or piece of shit? No, it stands for point of sale system. And she did it for amusement parks. Then she goes on to grow that business that she started at 23 to 7 figures plus. Then she hops over to a large accountability kind of mastermind group for women, nationally run organization, elects to leave that to do the most important thing she's doing in her life right now, which is mentoring business owners to grow healthy and profitable businesses. With no further ado, Ms. Jennifer gone.

Jennifer, Hello.

Wow, your audio coming is badass.

You're damn right it is. Hey, you said bring my A game, so I brought it. I brought my big fat, happy microphone. So here I am.

What kind of microphone is that? That's our first tip.

Oh, my God. It's a audio Technicia. It's like a fancy radio microphone. And one of my clients turned me onto it because her sound quality was so good. And I said, oh my God, what are you using? And she told me and I bought it immediately. And it's fantastic.

I'm literally gonna go out and buy the same thing.

Yeah, Audio Technica.

Oh, you know this one?

Yeah. I wonder what number, what model number. We could talk afterwards.

All right, yeah.

Chris is all about the link.

There we go.

You got the audio engineer all fired up. What?

I love it. All right, sorry.

Oh, that took a lot of setup time. So, Jennifer, tell us about the businesses, the type businesses that you specialize in coaching.

You know, my clients really run the gamut. Product people, service people. I have clients who line of clothing, skincare, makeup, a sex therapist, an intuitive healer, a global women's network. So really I run the gamut across the board.

So it sounds Like a sex therapist and an intuitive healer. That's a good combination package.

I knew you were gonna pick up on the sex right away.

You know me. So you make businesses more profitable to the point where I got an email and I told you about it. I got an email yesterday from Gina who said Jennifer dawn came in. I was trying to make my business more profitable. I was struggling with it. I was gonna give up on it, and Jennifer came in and turned things around. You know who I'm talking about, right?

I do, absolutely.

How did you do that? How do you make people do stuff that they know they need to do, but they're not doing it?

Well, you know, part of it is really just a little bit of tough love and explaining to them that, you know, because a lot of times when clients initially come to me, and Gina was one of these ladies, they want to increase their sales. It's all about sales, sales, sales. I need more revenue, need more revenue. And I so get it. But I really just explained to them that, look, we can absolutely work on your sales, get it rocking out. But if you don't have a sound financial money management system in place, it isn't going to matter how many more dollars we bring in the door, because you're just going to be pissing them away the way that you are now. And I just explained that to them very frankly and upfront that, you know, we've got to attack it from both ends. We have to get sound money practices in place and we have to work on your top line revenue. And when they understand it and it makes sense to them, and we sit down and we just go through it step by step. And then once they really start to see the results, and then, I mean, it makes my job so easy because it literally changes their lives.

It almost sounds like what our earlier guest, Scott Weintraub, was sharing. I don't know if you heard that. He said, first year, $400,000. And the year comes, they get together to celebrate and share the proceeds. And there's zero.

Exactly.

So size, Size doesn't matter. I guess size doesn't matter, right? People want more sales, they want to be bigger, but that doesn't necessarily translate to profit.

It doesn't. I worked with a lady who, her business was. It's a $2 million a year business. She didn't pay herself a salary. So it's not at all uncommon to have businesses that are grossing large amounts of money. But the founders, they're living check to check, they're not making any money. And it's shocking how often that actually happens.

So let's go into that scenario, dawn, because a lot of our listeners, that is the status that you're in now, you've built a business, you're working like an animal, but you're still surviving. Check by check, it sounds like you can get out of it pretty quickly. What would be the first step to.

Becoming profitable for the people that I work with, the very first thing that we do, we do a business assessment firm, Profit first, really, to just get a picture of where things are at and what's going on. Because really, before I give them any sort of recommendations, I like to get a clear picture. And to me, it's more about the numbers. I really dig into kind of a little bit at what's going into their lives, what's going on in their businesses, and then, of course, we take a look at the numbers. And for me, that's really the very first step.

What's their reaction? I mean, I assume it's a little bit like a. Like a nice bucket challenge is what I call it, a bucket of cold water. What do people say to you when you go through that assessment and the numbers that they have aren't even close to what your assessment's suggesting?

Yeah, fear. That fear is the very first thing. Absolutely. That we have to deal with. And there's a lot of hand holding that goes along with it, because bottom line is you're not going to be successful. You're not going to earn the kind of money that you want to earn in your business. You're not going to have a business that's full of love and joy as you grow it day to day. If you don't, you know, if you don't look at these numbers. And so there's a lot of fear there right in the very beginning. And truly, I just. I do my best to really take that fear element out, give them support and encouragement and let them know we're just going to. We're going to make this as comfortable as possible and we'll just take it little piece at a time and just work through that. But the great thing is that usually in a very short amount of time, I mean, really within a couple of weeks, they start to see a difference. And then look out.

I love that.

Look out.

Yeah.

All right, so, but also, I heard kind of between the lines is it sounds like you turned fear on itself, because what I heard you saying is that if you continue to do what you're doing, all this stuff you're experiencing is Going to continue to happen. So get more scared of that and trust me. Is that a fair assessment?

Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the best compliments I ever got from one of my clients was she said, it's like growing my business with my best friend. And you know how when your best friend will give it to you straight and you listen to them because you value their opinion. And so in a lot of the work I do, there's a real trust element there. And so I work hard to build up that trust so that they can be in a place where they can listen and they can get the help that they need.

I assume to build trust, you are vulnerable yourself and share your own challenges you face growing your own businesses.

I do, absolutely.

Okay, so now we're at the fear stage. You said within two or three weeks, people start to see rewards or a change. What's happened so quickly? What do they feel, what they experience?

You know, I think that the biggest thing that's happened is that they start to have a real understanding of how their money actually works. And for years in my software company, I felt like a failure because I. And even to this day, I can't look at a financial statement, an income statement, a cash flow statement, and really make heads or tails of it. It means nothing to me. It's a bunch of gobbledygook. And at the end of the day, I'm like, well, do I have money in the bank? I mean, it just comes down to that. And so many women don't want to look at their numbers. They're afraid of their numbers. They don't understand their numbers. And so the beautiful thing about starting with the profit first is that they start to. It's like a light bulb goes off and they start to actually understand how their money can work for them. And it's huge.

I don't know why. I had a question and just shot out of my mind.

You know the Stephen Covey little maxim begin with the end in mind. Yes, that's it. Like, if you help your clients focus on profit first. Yeah, baby. Then it. It provides a structure for everything.

It really does. And for some of these women, it is seriously the first time in their businesses where they've ever been able to actually look at their numbers and have some understanding of where it's going, how it's coming in, how it needs to be spent, and really say, oh, crap, I can't just buy everything I need because I have money in my bank account. I have to make decisions differently about how I'm going to Spend this money. It's a huge light bulb moment when they start to see how it works.

Does the game change from you guiding and coaching them to now them saying, hey, Jennifer, can we do this? Hey, Jennifer, can I do that? Like pushing forward in the profit aspect?

Yeah, absolutely. Once, you know, you know there's a learning curve there where they have to get into the groove and figure out how it all works and we tweak their percentages and we monitor and we go along and then absolutely, you see them start to pick up the reins and go, oh, well, maybe it is possible to increase my owner's pay. And it's a beautiful thing.

So. And you're one of the most successful coaches implementing profit first in the nation. I actually got a call from Laurie Peterson this morning. I didn't even tell you, Jennifer, and just saying how phenomenal you are. And now I think you're even working together with two clients. She from a bookkeeping aspect, you from a coaching aspect.

That's correct.

What's the biggest roadblock or maybe the first roadblock that comes to mind? So people listening in, they want to implement profit first. Where do people get tripped up?

You know, I think that sometimes they get tripped up. When they start they think it's a numbers book and they aren't going to understand it. And so they hear about it and they think it's great. I've had several women who say, oh, yeah, I've heard of it. They might have even bought the book, but it's sitting on a bookshelf and they haven't cracked it open. And really and truly, I'd say the first step is to crack open the book and start to make an attempt to understand really what it's all about.

So, Jennifer, if you want to find out more about you, where can they go?

They can go to my website. Jennifer dawncoaching, did you just do the voice?

Kind of go to my website. I got infomercial.

Well, I have to have the voice with this fancy microphone.

Mike. Oh, my God, I love it. We'll say it again because I totally stepped all over what you were saying. Jennifer dawncoaching.com Jennifer dawncoaching.com It's a really badass website, Chris. I was just there. It's a brand new website. I mean, not that the website's new, but it's been replaced with a fresh skin.

It is. And it is lovely. Sometimes I just open it up and look at it because it's so fantastic.

Probably smells nice too.

It does, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, odor generators.

It smells better than Mike's lunch today. Let's just.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

No, yeah. Anything smells better than that? Jennifer, pleasure. Mother of three, by the way, and married to Douglas Robbins, who's a fiction author. Jennifer, an absolute pleasure having you today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks, Jennifer.

My. My pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your crazy afternoon.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

How did she know it was gonna be crazy?

I don't know. There's that little kid laugh.

All right, nice.

Dude. You know, I'm messing things up left and right here. We didn't have word of the day. We really got on the game. We haven't done that.

We haven't done word of the day in a while.

I know, I know. Or sound of the day or something. Okay, we got to go over tips. We got to go. We got to do tips from Christina. She's got the app of the day. We got to do a recap of this. But first, let's dig into our sponsors before we.

Please.

Okay, so listen. So Fundera, they said this is work. This podcast is working out so great for us. We want to be an annual sponsor.

Nice.

Now, why. Why is it working out so great? Not because of us. I mean, listen, if you have a show that has all this stuff going on. Yeah. Here. I pushed everything that was scary. Yeah. I pushed all the buttons that was.

Almost like, you know, scary. Like this. When Mike Michalowicz has his hands on.

The soundboard, I'm assuming he just said Mike McAllister.

That's the best. Oh, at the end of this episode, you got to stay tight. We're gonna fade out, but after, you gotta hear this thing that happened with John Woodard. John W. We'll share a little bit. So, Fundera, it's not because of us and our crazy sounds. What it is is Fundera offers funding. It's one stop shop funding. They land big deals and small deals. If you need a little money to do something or you need a lot of money to do something, they get it. And when I say do something, they help fund capital purchase of equipment, office space, rent. They actually covered. One company was tight on payroll. They got great employees. They went through a seasonal diplomatic. Fundera covered them for the entire season. So awesome company. Ask for Meredith Wood and tell her that you were sent by the folks here at Profit First Podcast.

Nice. Second company play sound clips for her, too. Over the phone.

Yeah, any kind of sound clips is good. I love that. Second sponsor.

T sheets. T sheets.

And here's what's so cool about T sheets. And actually you busted my chops about this. I logged in, I do my time tracking. I click on T sheets, track it, and Christine's like, mike, you haven't logged out in eight days.

Like 340 hours.

I totally forgot to check out. It starts emailing. It says, I got an email. I started laughing my ass off. I got an email at like 8 in the morning. It says, it says, good morning. Mike says, you must be exhausted. And I'm like, what? And he says, you've been working for 180 hours straight. Very funny.

Right? Not cool. It's his own company. He's trying to.

No, but T shirts, it caught me. I'm trying to make as much money as I can off myself. It caught me. And then nextiva. Nextiva is the premier global sponsor at Profit First Global Con. They are a voice over IP company. They are huge. They are having their first partners event. There is 75 million dollar company, by the way, having their first partners event in Scottsdale, Arizona on June 1st. Yeah, that's Monday, right? June 1st.

Yes.

They're having a huge event. So when this goes live, actually it'll already be over. Yeah. Clearly I shouldn't have mentioned anything about you. Yeah. So Nextiva's awesome VoiceOver IP system. We have five or six phones on them and we're now maybe bringing on another person. Seven phones. Just plug and play.

Right?

Plug and play.

I called your office. It's nice. It's like a little answering service thing. And it says, you know, click, press this for directory, all that stuff. It's nice.

Christina hunted us down this morning. She was late for our morning huddle. All of a sudden we're in the huddle room and then. Boring. The phone in there is ringing. I'm like, what? And say, hey, it's me. I'm here for the huddle. I'm like, how did you find us? She's like, next Diva. It's awesome.

Next Diva.

It tracks people down.

All right, thank you to our corporate partners.

Yeah, we love them. We love you guys. Christina, what'd you learn from today's episode?

Oh, my Lord. I don't even know where to start.

Can you sing it as well instead of just saying it?

That would be kind of good.

Pressure's on. No, what I liked about what Scott said was that they didn't really start. Well, I didn't like that they were doing this, but they didn't really start taking profit until after their honeymoon phase was over. They grew their business so rapidly within the first couple years. And then they saw the profit fizzle out and it's like, what do we have to do to get our business owners to take their profit first so they don't have to go through that honeymoon period and see it trickle away?

Yeah, I love it when profit comes last. It doesn't come at all. Right.

Oh, yeah, well, yeah.

Hurry, quick, move on. You're up.

Oh, I'm up. Okay. Well, I like the fact that I also like that. Christina. What your point? And he also said they go city by city, they do analysis and then they focus their growth. I thought that was pretty interesting, focusing on target markets and also target cities. And I thought his. His taking advice from friends and then talking to friends of friends. He really went through. He fractaled out through this tree of possibilities and he branched through to fight to tweak his business to get it ready to sell more of what he's selling.

The easiest way to get prospects is to simply ask people for their advice. Everyone wants to share advice. That's why podcasts like this exist, because we're just spewing advice. My favorite tip from him was the next time we talk, ask for referral. What a great idea. You staged them. Of course they're going to say yes, but they're going to be thinking about it. And now they got fulfilled their obligation. I thought he positioned that perfectly. Jennifer Dawn's turn. What do you think, Christina?

She said that if you don't have a sound financial system in place, it does not matter how much money you're bringing in.

Yeah, right, exactly. Isn't that funny? You can do 400,000 as Scott was and make $0, or you can do 4 million and bring in zero. Yeah. You got to have a financial plan.

Right. And theoretically these concepts are simple. But until like when Jennifer helps her clients understand though, that's when it hits home with them. She said she's very frank and upfront about 2. One, she helps him with profit strategies, obviously to make more profit. And two, also revenue generation because that's obviously needed in the business as well. To balance out. Yeah, to bring it in first. I love it, obviously.

And my favorite tip, the fact, looking around, you got all surprised. The fact that if you start taking your profit first now, she listen, she's one of the best profit first coaches we have out there. John Best is actually another one. Ironically, Best is his last name. Jennifer Dawn. John Best. We have quite a few folks out there. Jennifer is kicking ass. And what I found fascinating, she has so Many implementations of Profit first out there, that it's within weeks that people start to turn around. Years of fear, years of not making money. You start taking your profit first. You have to face that initial fear that things are going to change a little bit. And then within weeks, she says, people are all fired up, wanting to increase their pay and things are kicking along. That's how fast this stuff works.

Actually, Jennifer's still on here. Oh, Jennifer.

Yes, dear?

Did you like, did you like what we said?

Chris and I like sunk down in our chairs. We're about to get lectured.

Of course I liked what you said about me. I'm having so much fun. I just had to keep listening.

Right. And I also like Jennifer, what you said about trust, the trust you have between your clients is, you know, and they trust you. You trust them is paramount to getting stuff done.

So, you know, it really is because you gotta get down through the ego, the bullshit, all that to get real before you could really fix stuff. And when you're just putting on a show. I can't help those people. And so I've gotta find ways to get them really to create trust between us so that we can really peel away those layers and go deep and do the work they need to do.

That's right. Hey, Mike. I hope, I hope people trust us as hosts of the Profit first podcast.

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. There's so much social posturing, but that's how society works. We all want to, you know, pound our chest. Hey, Christina, App of the day. Lay it on me.

Keepass Password safe. It is a password protected software to protect, well, your password and your usernames. But you can put all your information in there. You put the location of the website, you put your username and password in there. That way all you have to do is copy and paste in there. There you go. And it's password protected so no one else can see them.

And what's it cost?

$00. And they have a phone app too. Not just.

What's the name of it again?

Keepass Password Safe.

Yes. Our whole Christina's implemented throughout the office.

Really?

And I think you even got Ron on it. Who is the most technology resistant human being on this planet if you can get Ron on any kind of technology? It's amazing. And Christina, or maybe you double team with Jackie.

Yeah, with Jackie. She helped.

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Talking about cool things. Next week. Next week we have Gary Turner. You know who Gary Turner is?

I do.

Okay, then tell me. You have no idea. Gary Turner is the Managing director, AKA president of the UK division of Xero. Xero is accounting software that is really making a big footprint here in the States. Started out in New Zealand. I cannot wait to talk with him. We also have Noah Fleming. He is the author of Evergreen how to have Enduring Customer Loyalty. And we also may have a space alien visit us.

I'm a huge fan of the alien podcast.

He peters out at the end.

Yeah. So these. These sounds you got to listen after we wrap here to this. This what happened. That was John Wood, by the way, who was our 911 poop guy who was on about two episodes ago. The phone did the connection over Skype didn't work and it was all effed up like this and making these weird sounds. So we made him talk with us for about five minutes of just insanity stuff and he said stuff like this. So listen into the whole thing. All right, man, we gotta get out of here.

This is awesome.

Yeah. Good times as always.

Very cool. Yeah.

Thanks for being here, Christina.

Yeah. And Mike, where can the oh, my God. Profit First Professionals.

Prop First Professionals. Real quick. If you're an accountant, if you're a bookkeeper, if you are an expert like Jennifer dawn, go to Profit First Professionals. Click on the become button. It simply starts the step to becoming a Prop First Professional. We'll talk with you, see if you're qualified. We'd love to have you on board.

There you go. And fractal recording. I just picked my niche. I'm focusing on business authors now. Doing podcast shows for business authors.

Riches in the niche. And you just. You just did a thing with a major, major author.

Yeah.

Who is now is interested in doing something with you. You have other authors on board. It's insane. Once you pick your niche, you make money.

Podcast shows. Thanks, everybody for listening. The Profit first podcast. Profit first podcast dot com. Check out all our previous guests and also comment on the the episode on the show pages. So thanks for listening. And by the way, a quick shout out to AJ From Colorado. Good to meet you through email, brother. Oh, and even a baby left for you. See ya.

See? So we gotta talk to you just for a few seconds.

So I'll tell you, man, it's really digitized for me too. I can hardly understand every other word you're saying.

Okay. But let's just try a little bit longer. Just tell us a couple words. I want to hear you say the word. The name Mike Michalowicz.

Mike McCalowitz.

Now say this is too. We're catching us on audio. This is too good. Now say Mike McAllisch.

I'm assuming you just said Mike McAllisch, which I believe was his nickname growing up.

This is great. This is great. What state are you in?

I'm in Oklahoma.

In what state are you calling?

I'm calling from Oklahoma. I'm in Oklahoma.

That's it. John, thank you for doing. Stick with us a little bit longer. This audio is too good. Could you say, this is my favorite podcast in the alien world? It's the Profit or something like that. Go.

Oh, yeah, it's totally my favorite podcast in the alien world. I'm a huge fan of the alien podcast, Profit First Podcast. Let me try.

Say. Hold on. Wait. Don't fix it yet.

Is this any better?

No.

Thank God. Say that one more. Say, is this any better? One more time.

I'm gonna take it as note.

Ask, is this better? One more time.

Is this any better? Is this any better?

All right. One more thing. Say, my leader, Zentar, makes us listen to the Prophet first podcast.

I heard Centaur listens to Prophet first podcast.

Say, my leader.

Keeping in mind that I'm hearing about every third word you're saying as well.

Say, my leader. Say, my leader, Zentar makes me listen to the Profit first podcast.

My leader is a Centaur who makes.

Me listen to the Prophet First Podcast one more time. Now. It's his name. So my leader named. My leader named Zentar makes me listen to the Profit first podcast.

My leader named Centaur, makes me listen to the Profit first podcast.