Episode 37: Drug Testing and Profitability with David Bell and Eric Greenspan

All right, guys, hold on. Here we get going. That doesn't even make sense. Here we get going. Here we get going.

And I'm recording, too. You know, that's going in the front of this episode.

Okay, guys, hold on tight.

Here we get going.

I'm not that good. Smart at math. Okay.

Oh, classic. All right, you're listening to the Profit first podcast, episode 37.

There we go.

Oh, yeah. Happy ending. Love it. Welcome.

That was a scream of a start.

We never rap. We never rap at the beginning. We always grunt, and Christina sometimes sings.

You know, I. That you. If you want to do rap, you really are prepared for it. Like, no, you got to know the lyrics. You can't just start rapping freestyle.

Christina, tell them freestyle.

Start freestyling.

I'm awful at freestyle.

Yeah, it starts off the head jiggling back and forth, and you start kicking into it.

Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. On this show, we talk about all angles of profitability. This one's going to get to go, go. This one, you're gonna go for a loop. We're talking about drug testing and how it ties into profitability. And we're gonna talk with the founder, eric Greenspan of S.O.B. not, we think, his school of bookkeeping on how to get to the fundamentals of managing the books. It's gonna be a cool conversation.

Very cool. Yeah. We're available as a podcast on itunes. Stitcher Tunein radio.

That was our. My rap, like, you know, used itunes. Stitcher. You know, the old school rap, right?

Beastie Boys.

Do it again.

The Profit boys. We're available on itunes.

Stitcher. No, we have to do it together one more time.

Oh. We're available on itunes.

Stitcher.

Tune in.

That's right.

Profit first podcast dot com. Yo.

Okay, that was hard. That was the.

Save us, please. Could you say something. Anyway, profit first podcast.com, that's a website.

You can.

You could see all our previous episodes there as well. So if you haven't listened to all the mayhem, check it out.

36. Yeah, you know, there's a little mayhem, but the reason we have mayhem is because money can be so boring and people turn the stuff off. If you have a little fun around it, Money can be a lot of fun, especially when you're profitable.

Yes. Thank you.

Yep. Hey, what have you been up to, Brock?

Oh, my God. Well, I have one of my clients. See, I cleared My throat as he asked me again. Yeah, no. One of my clients, Laura Mattia, she does a show called Financially Empowering Women. Ye starting to do the show from her place, but she's starting to write her first book as well.

Oh, good for her.

She has a great show. She talks about finances for women, like investing. Not only investing, but insurance and elder care. I mean, so many things come into play. And she's a principal at a barren financial group. It's a firm where you can invest and it's everything. So she really knows what she's talking about.

I thought you're gonna say, I got high school. I said, principal. And the way you did a cliffhanger, I'm like, oh, what high school she a principal at? So, you know, for me, the big thing was you had a little party here, and Christina, you should have come. This was the closing of the studio. So Chris puts on a little party. We sit here. It becomes like this little circle of, like 10 people or so. And someone's like, oh, where's the drinks? And Chris is like, I don't have any drinks. And someone's like, well, can I have, like, a pretzel? He's like, I don't have anything. He had brought nothing. His wife. Chris's wife came with like. She's like, oh. She's like, I expected this. And she brought, like, a fruit platter.

And she brought like a one. A plastic one. Gallonade. Lemonade.

Lemonade.

Everyone's like, can I have some water? I'm like, we don't have water.

No water, just lemonade. And so I drank all of it. I'm a hoarder. I'm a food hoarder.

And you had chocolate.

Like 16 biscottis.

Chocolate biscotti.

How sophisticated of you.

So guess what we're talking about in today's episode. Oh, I already told us.

You told us.

So there's this guy. Oh, what about our sponsors?

Nextiva is number one, fundera number two.

And T sheets number three.

We love our corporate partners. Christine is making the heart sign. We'll talk more about them. We love them.

And there's one more that's so close to coming on board, but they're just. They're just. They're just kind of playing with us now.

We're charging big bucks, though, so.

Well, that's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah, we wish. Yeah. So on today's episode, we're gonna be talking with David Bell, and we'll get ready for this introduction. David Bell. You know, it's pretty funny. We Talk about lots of angles about. Of how to drive profitability in your business. A lot of it's from the accounting side, from the bookkeeping side. And sure enough, we're gonna do this episode again. That's the most important elements you need to understand. But there's these other facets you never think about, and one of them is the productivity of employees. And if you dig deeper, what drives productivity, and it's their availability and awareness and all this stuff, their participation when they're on the job, you got to do for some businesses in particular, drug testing.

Got to do it.

You got to do it.

You got to do it.

So, yeah, Christine's like, not shaking her head, like, don't worry.

Every time you walk in the room with a cup, she's like, not here goes silent.

Yeah, exactly. David Bell is the CEO of U.S. mobile Drug Testing. After seeing the damage caused by drug testing or drug testing by drug use firsthand, David sold his own company. Sold his own company and worked his way up through the ranks in the drug testing industry to help employers keep drugs and alcohol out of the workplace. With no further ado, Mr. David Bell.

Hey, guys.

What's up, David?

Not too much.

So what you doing?

Thanks for coming, man.

I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to get to talk to your audience and joke around with you guys.

Yeah. Well, would you pee in this cup first?

No. What's really great is at a golf outing we have, we set up tables, right? We sponsor them, and we put Mike's hard lemonade in urine cups.

Do you really?

No, absolutely. It's a lot.

See, that's fun.

And then we breathalyze test you on the 18th, make sure you're safe to go home.

That is.

That's cool.

That is actually, first of all smart, but also I think you gotta poke fun a little bit at yourself and it makes you much more real. Who you know US Mobile Drug Testing. Who are the people that you are serving? What kind of entrepreneurs use your business services?

Wow, that's pretty. Pretty wide range today. Now you're finding most employers are drug testing even as simple as a call center. Who has staff? Anybody who has contracts with any large organization. Insurance now requires companies to have drug testing as part of the regular everyday. Most people think drug testing, they think. They think of federal regulations. But drug testing is in almost every business in the country today.

When I think of drug testing, I think of there's a risk that my employees may get injured if it's a manufacturing line or something, because they're not fully conscious of what work they're doing. But when you say a call center, don't I justif a guy's a little slappy on the phone, wouldn't I just fire him? Like, what's the benefit of doing drug testing?

You have to think about, you know, people who consume drugs typically, right? This isn't every time. I mean, you know, we test drugs every day here, but it's a joke.

Every day. I was gonna say every day.

We're the testers, right? We have a whole line of drugs that we try. Seriously.

They don't have toy guys. They just have these receptacles. It all gets tested.

Hold on, here's the button I should pushed. There you go. There you go.

Exactly. So typically in call centers or really any job, you're training people and you're hiring them to perform a certain duty. If they can't retain that knowledge and you're constantly having to retrain them, you know that that could become costly and inefficient.

Right.

And what about the, the risk of liability if, if I have an employee who, you know, on their own accord, they take some kind of drug and it affects their performance even outside the business. Maybe they're driving back home from work and they get in a car accident and get hurt or killed, is there a risk of liability to me as the owner?

Well, in that case, typically not, right? I mean, if your employee leaves work, they're off the clock, they're not doing anything for you whatsoever, and something happens. It isn't really your responsibility what they're doing in their own time.

Okay, so say they're at the office though, they come in wasted and then they get severely injured at work, they fall and hit their head on the desk.

Absolutely. Any job related duty is your responsibility.

Okay, that's crazy. That's like people suing each other left and right.

Well, it's a very litigious country we're in, unfortunately. But could drug testing prevent stuff like that? Or what would be the value in scenarios like that? David?

So it's real simple. You know, lots of you see different regulations state by state, right? We see one of the big topics is marijuana being legalized in many states, whether it's medical or recreational. But the drug testing specifically, if you're running a random drug testing program, you're going to get the total benefit, right? I don't want to sound preachy or anything like that, but if you're monitoring, just like we were talking about earlier, the other guest has sets A drug test on his table for his son. You know, imagine in the workplace, it's the same situation. If people know that any day of the week they walk in, they could be asked to take a drug test. They're going to think twice when they're at that weekend party and someone passes a joint, they're going to say, well, I think I like my job a little too much. And as a result, that enforcement has people, you know, choose better choices, or if they get screened in some cases and are positive, employers have the option to get people, help, put these people that they care about, put them back to work. So, I mean, there's lots of opportunities there, but overall, that's the best way to keep drugs out of the workplace.

If I'm suspicious of Christina, my colleague here, Hypothetically. Hypothetically. Hypothetically. We've more than. There's quite a few employees now at our shop. Can I just test Christina because I'm suspicious of her, or is there some kind of requirement to be a little more liberal in the enforcement and not so selective?

Well, you know, since we were talking about liability, you really want to take appropriate actions. I mean, if she walked in today and out of the blue you just said, hey, you know, surprise, here's a drug test. And you don't have a policy that says you can do that, meaning you didn't notify your employee and you may be singling this person out. There's actual procedures that are best practice. Now, there's no real specific laws in the non dot segment on how to handle this, so it's really up to the state regulation or that company policy. But the reality is, if you're not using a company policy that says what you can and can't do, the employee isn't notified. You can find yourself in a lawsuit, and they will win every single time, even if they fail the law.

Yeah, Christina just got rich. I know I just made a slide of note saying drug tests tomorrow, but we won't do that. So let's talk about the financial impact of drugs and alcohol in the workplace. I don't know if you know the statistics, but can you give us a sense, either statistically or just from your own experience of the impact in productivity and therefore profitability that drugs and alcohol can have on the workplace?

Yeah, I don't have the exact statistics in front of me, but, you know, productivity levels significantly increase as well as company morale. Right. When you're working in a labor force, employees aren't typically going to be in a space where they're like, hey, so and so is using drugs and you know, they're not going to tell on them.

Right.

I mean, that's commonplace. But I can tell you as being one of those employees 20 years ago in a warehouse, knowing that the guys driving the forklift is getting high at lunch, that he could drop a pallet on me, I was concerned and didn't do anything about it. Right. So when the company takes the position that, hey, we're going to implement this, this program because it's going to make everyone safer, really, they become the hero. Right. And we step in to be, you know, the bad guy sometimes. Because employees look at this as, hey, you're trying to police us. And the reality is companies are looking at their profits and companies are looking at safety.

Yeah. You know, that's no lie. I'm a co owner in a business that's in manufacturing and while it was not a drug related issue, there were some issues and the employees felt uncomfortable saying something because there is peer pressure. So I love that idea of a company policy that enforces with everyone that I can see how increased morale. What about the cost to do this? If I wanted the drug test with Christina and I used the USA mobile drug testing product that you manufacture, what's the cost to using the product?

Well, you're going to find in this industry it's very fragmented. If you call one lab or if you call a clinic or if you're using USA mobile drug testing, you could see a wide range of prices. Right. There's obviously differences. For us to come out to your work site and test your people, that's going to be the best way to make it a surprise. Right. I mean, random drug tests are all about not knowing when it's happening. So if I, you know, if we say, hey Christina, it's time to go get a drug test and you send her out the door, she's gone for like four hours and she says, oh, I had to go here and you know, she had to stop at the head shop and get a, you know, Clint blends and she's trying to beat the test.

You know, he knows you inside now, Christina.

She's probably got one in her car just in case. Yeah. So, you know, so you're going to see a wider range. I mean, most employers can see anywhere from 50 to $100 depending on the type of test they're asking for, the type of drugs they're looking for. There are lots and lots of options. We have some standard panels and you're going to see right in that $70 average, so.

But do I understand your business? Actually, you come with a mobile team and they actually come to the apply the tests.

Absolutely. Every day.

I love it. They come in, it's a bright, bright truck. It has horns coming, racing down the road.

Rock music blaring.

Exactly, exactly.

I love it. You hear like guns shooting in the distance. Here they come. Do you have any stories of resistance? I mean, people see you coming in, blowing the horns and saying, hey guys, it's time for the drug test. Do you get people running for the doors?

Yeah, yeah, actually, you know, there's lots of stories I can sell. Try not to call anyone out personally. But, you know, we show up at some. Some companies have us go and we test ports, right? You know, or ship, and we'll show up. And in that policy, they test everyone at the port. So we show up and everybody's getting tested, right? Not just 10 or 15 people. And a lot of these places use contractors, so you never know who's on the job that day. And so we show up and, you know, we call it a runner. You know, really, they're gone. They totally take off. You know, they're, they're not a long term employee. They're just somebody who's maybe temporary. And they're like, wow, drug testing people are here and they disappear.

That's like the ultimate test. You just pull up and see who runs, like, okay, guilty.

Yeah, there you go.

Chris, you got a question?

No, I was just thinking, are you able to deny, like, decline, Decline a test?

Well, you can. And if you're in the Department of Transportation, you know, you're under one of their regulated markets like a truck driver. They cannot, they will lose their job. Typical employers, if their policy is written.

Well.

If you deny taking the test will be considered a fail. You fail the test and so you give up.

I worked at this place once and I was coming back in the afternoon or from lunch or I don't know what I think it was from lunch. And on the road, right in like a hundred yards from the building, one of my co workers was in a car pulled over by a cop.

Really?

He was standing there, he was cuffing him.

Wow.

And I just went back to work. I didn't tell anybody.

So what'd you do with your joint? So.

And David, Luckily I had just handed him something.

Exactly.

He'd put it all under his passenger seat.

Just take this brick from me, will you, David? Where. Where does U.S. mobile drug testing cover? What area?

Actually, we're located in 21 states. And we go out throughout the entire United States. We have an extensive network of collectors everywhere.

And if our folks listening in right now want to drug test their employees or perhaps themselves, where can they go to get more information about you?

The best place. We have some great resources for human resource professionals on our website@usamdt.com okay, David.

Absolute joy having you. Thanks for this knowledge and information and thanks for letting us joke around with you, too. It's a seriously heavy subject and it's absolutely critically important, and we realize that. But appreciate you showing us the light side of it, too.

Absolutely, guys. Appreciate it.

Take care, David.

Thanks, David.

See you later.

Bye, bruh.

Give him a little brown. Hey, see you later, Br. Yeah, you know, so I was praying. I want to get the Johnny Carson sound effect. I did not know that. I wanted to push that. Every time like this. I want to have that sound bit because I wanted to push 100 times.

Yeah.

He's like, oh, we, you know, we can drug test for all this stuff. I did not know that. So from drugs to the ultimate druggie on this planet. Eric Greenspan is our next guest.

I was gonna say our first guest was very polite. The guest coming on now has already called us morons.

Morons. Yeah. He connects. He says, are you there, morons? Are you there? Hello? I can't hear you.

Classic.

And I'm like. He goes, moron says what? I go, what? He goes, moron says what? I'm like, what? If you got that, you're a moron, too.

I unmuted him. So while you're introducing him, if he wants to.

Yeah.

You can say things.

Yeah.

He's not going to say a word right now. I'm going to stay out of this one.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you for the foghorn. So.

There'S a runner.

There's a runner. Yeah, exactly. Name the Eric Greenspan is a runner. Professional runner from all of his jobs. Employment. Whenever David Bell shows up from US Mobile drug testing. And he is the father of two boys. David was the father of six. Just so you know, by the way. Different wives.

Different wives.

He's a ferocious entrepreneur. Derek has a lot of successes under his belt. But I want to tell you about one of the most impactful things he's doing nowadays. It's called School of Bookkeeping. This place. And Christina, you know, this School of Bookkeeping is badass. Badass. So badass that their initials, School of Bookkeeping is S.O.B. son of a B. David. David. Eric.

David.

Eric. David Griespan. Is not only the co founder, he's not only the CEO, he's not only the chief clever officer, he's also the dean of delight. With no further ado, Eric David Greenspan.

Morons.

Morons. All of you are morons.

You guys are something else. You know, this is, it's awesome because I. And thank you for having me on, guys. But it's awesome that I get to segue into. The first thing that I wanted to actually mention is that the last thing I just did was go to zero con in Colorado. Drug test. How do you drug test in a town like that? I mean, obviously it's legal, right?

So, well, so here's the dealio. Would you share? Did you have an experience or no?

I wouldn't remember if I did.

Oh, nice. Well played, sir.

Right, thank you. Clever. He's a chief clever officer.

He's a chief clever officer. Yeah, that would be Nath. Research response. I would have chose. That was. I would choose the totally like call myself out, drop your head and discuss now in Colorado. Eric, would you have shared that if you did do that? Not saying you did, Would you shared with the folks out there while you were there?

Well, I mean sharing is caring. You have to take. It's a conference, you know, we're there to congregate. I mean it's. Of course. All right, let's move forward.

Yeah, let's move forward.

Brotherhood.

Quickly get me out of this. So tell us a little more about school of bookkeeping. Not all of our accountant bookkeeper listeners know exactly what you do. So tell us.

Well, I guess the most important thing to say is it's not a school for the student or somebody that's necessarily trying to start off in the bookkeeping practice alone. It's really more of a community for everybody in the accounting industry to stay fresh, stay on top. Stay on top of the hippest and coolest and most useful products from the GL packages to all the add ons and then all the practice marketing components and practice development components that make up a great accounting practice. And Seth and I have been building this organization to help accounting pros ignite their practice. That's our tagline, ignite your practice. And what we mean by that is obviously knowledge is power. Knowledge builds confidence. Knowledge leads to additional revenue. Additional revenue, when properly configured, leads to additional profit. I think that's the theme here. And at the end of the day, see how I played that? That was pretty well.

That was very well played. Right?

Okay, so you know it's working. Wait, did David, get back on the phone.

It's funny when our guests get on a roll, like you're getting on a roll, it's like, okay, this is good. We trash it every single time.

Oh, I feel like lots of sound bites are gonna be smacking at me here. So anyhow, so it's been working great. We've been signing people up every day. We're a little bit wealthier in our own sense in terms of our income and growth and profit. And more importantly, we produce more content every day. I just wrote an epic blog post while I was listening to this last session here about our Sage Summit appearance. Both Seth and I are going to be speaking on stage at Sage Summit in July. We're super excited about that. We actually are equally excited about speaking and equally excited about being in New Orleans and enjoying the warm weather and the beignets. We're big fans of that. But I just have to say, I mean, school of bookkeeping is rocking and it's changing people's lives and it's helping them become better at what they do, make more money and increase their profits.

Well, you, me and Seth have to hook up. I'm speaking at Sage 2, and heck yes, we're going to be firing down some beignets, which are awesome for sure.

And some hurricanes, my gal tells me, are very popular in that neighborhood.

Did you hear the story, Christina? I was in New Orleans for scaling new heights was just a few days ago. I go there, I sit down in New Orleans at a five star restaurant and I get my food and they say, what would you like to drink? I'm like, I'll have a hurricane. And the guy's like. I'm like, what? He's like a hurricane. And then. But everyone at the table looks at me, goes, that's so touristy. I'm like, yeah, a holes. We are tourists. So I don't know. So you and I, Eric, will be firing down some.

You and I, Seth. Seth will have a mocktail.

Yeah, he's a mocktail guy.

He'll bring the breathalyzers.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hey, so what is. When people join school of bookkeeping, what is the most common thing that needs to be fixed or improved for those folks?

Well, you know, there's a lot of different things. There's a wide variety, but the cloud has changed the dynamic of the accounting world in the sense that where you once had a desktop product that had a lot of features built into it and those add on products were connected by wires or on the same hard drive, now you have all of this cloudy stuff out there that are connected with various energy fields and they're somehow supposed to work together. So if you need like tsheets, who is a sponsor of yours, one of our courses, love this company. They have a remarkable add on to QuickBooks Online. But you have to learn how to get them connected. And although this one works really, really well, you have to learn both. You have to get that piece of the puzzle. And we get a lot of people that are coming to us that are saying, well, you know, I'm trying to put all the pieces together so that I have a very fluid practice and my clients have a very fluid company. And so it's the apps. So tsheets and transaction pro and expensify and so many are bill.com, all of which are courses on schoolofbookkeeping.com another thing and what I focus on largely is my role in the company where you mentioned Chief Clever Officer. And I also have another company called 74marketing.com and my role is to help them ignite their practice in the sense of finding clients. Accounting pros aren't necessarily the best at marketing. Granted, they're heads down, focused on numbers all day long. So I help them discover ways to find new clients, bring those clients in, onboard them, service them, and then I hand them off to Seth David who helps them take them to the next level so that they can properly manage an amazing practice and deliver great stuff.

So tell us about the technology side. It sounds like you're empowering bookkeepers and accountants, anyone that has an accounting practice, to really understand the technology side. What is the trend in the industry overall for accountants and bookkeepers, particularly with technology?

Well, they're not jumping on the Mac platform, I can tell you that. I wish they were. You're a Big Mac guy, I'm a Big Mac guy. I'm 100% Mac. And I started my career at 19 at IBM. So it was a, a real, real hard change for me. But once I made the jump, just everything works.

Okay, so you're a Mac guy, but they're not. So what's going on with the technology? Where is it going?

Well, the beauty of the cloud, truthfully is it kind of removes. It goes back to 2000 when I started a company called Push, where we were an application service provider using the Citrix platform and we really no longer cared about what type of device was people used. And today, truthfully, as the cloud continues to develop, it doesn't really matter as much whether you're using a Mac or an iPad or an Android or a PC because the cloud is operated in a browser and those browsers are more cross platform. Now. That would be a perfect world. We're just not there yet. It's evolving and a lot of companies are doing really well. A local company here in Santa Barbara that does cloud property management went public today. They did really, really well. And it was really exciting to see that happen. The beauty of it is that the cloud just has an explosive growth opportunity for all these companies. So I expect to see where it didn't stick in 2000. It's back again. And I absolutely believe that eventually, as School of Bookkeeping can truthfully say, we will run our business 100% out of the cloud. Which is also one of my talks at Sage Summit.

Oh, well, then you gotta come see that one. That's gonna be powerful. You have a huge presence. School presence. School Bookkeeping does. On Facebook, it's Abbo, which is accountant, bookkeeper, body odor, or business owner. That was a joke. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Here we go. Okay, so you have accountant, bookkeeper, business owner. This platform, Eric, hands down, is the most engaged platform I've ever seen. People are constantly up there. But the question I have for you is you've built this presence. Everyone's talking about School of Bookkeeping. Everyone is participating in sharing information there. But is that good for business? They're not your clients necessarily. Anyone can join. I'm on there.

It's funny. If I could charge for. Well, you'll be off after this. Yes. So the truth is, Abbo is. And the world today has changed. We can't be selfish business owners. We have to give and we enjoy giving. And Seth, David and I share that philosophy, which is why we work so well together and sometimes why we don't work so well together. But regardless of that, at the end of the day, Abbo is a place for our community to freely speak their mind. As long as they're not rude, they're not ranting, and they're not spamming, which we regulate very closely and we curate the audience. Not as much as a TED conference, but we definitely make sure that people aren't going to come in there and just dump and run with their Ray Ban ads. So we love all the conversation that goes on. But from a marketing perspective, I cannot lie. Abbo is a wonderful place. It grows every single day. And quite frankly, a large percentage of both School of Bookkeeping.com's enrolled scholars, which are our members and my clients at 74 Marketing who joined my Ignite program come from Abbo. So if you give, you get.

Yeah, I'm not too surprised. It was interesting. I'm at scaling new heights. I know you and Seth were not there. I'm walking around. There's 1500 people, Chris, that are at this event. I heard school of bookkeeping come up. 10, 15 different conversations, and they all pointed back to Abbo, the online presence.

Yeah. Well, you know what's fascinating at zero Con is the first group I bumped into, it was all about, oh, let's take an Abbo picture, or, let's get the Abbo group together for happy hour. And it's just abo, abo, abo, abO. And it really is. It's worked out great. And it was Seth's genius to create it and its format. And then I came in and just amplified it.

You know, I wonder. I mean, this is totally an aside, but when you have an acronym that can be pronounced like abo, I wonder if that has some stickiness as opposed to something that's not pronounceable. I don't know.

Right?

Yeah. But the truth. Truth be told, when I talk to people, it's abo, A B, B, O. Accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners. What the heck's the name of that thing on Facebook again? I mean, it does help. I think probably not as well as SOB that one stuck.

That one is that great. They're like, I'm proud to be.

We tried. We tried to stop it. We got a couple of emails early on that said it probably wasn't in our best interest. Of course I forwarded them to my mother and said, do you approve? Is it okay? And she said, son, I think it's hilarious.

She said, sure, you SOB I thought.

She was gonna say, sure, son. You need a drug test.

And we actually. I talked to Seth about getting rid of it, but the people involved in Abbo and SOB Wouldn't let it go.

Do you know, that's an awesome lesson, is the community has to drive it. Federal Express tried to be Federal Express, but they couldn't stop being called FedEx and move to that. I love that. Eric, if you had one thing you could tell the bookkeepers that are looking to join your organization. A strategy to become more profitable, how to make more money. What would be that one thing?

Well, in my Ignite program, we talk about a lot of things related to that. And I think probably the one thing I will never recommend to one of our scholars or one of my Ignite clients, that they fire a client without replacing them first. So there's my disclaimer that said you got to get rid of what they call PETAs on Abbo. I'll let you figure out what that means. And those that don't pay well or you do too much work for or you sold under your profit margin, you've got to replace those clients with better clients. So quality clients that pay your rate that you deserve, that make sense for you financially, that that generates a decent profit so you can live a happy life. Those are the steps that you need to take. And sometimes you can raise the price for those early on clients. And sometimes you just have to kick them to the curb. But just make sure you get revenue to replace them before you do.

I love that strategy. And you know, as you said, the PETA acronym, I'm like, either it's P I T A, like pain in the. Or it's P E T A, which is people eating tasty animals. Isn't that what PETA.

Oh my God, you guys, you guys. We need to get a moron on sound bite on this show going forward.

I agree.

Cuz that one, right? Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe we should edit that one out.

Oh yeah.

The only reason I say that, I saw a PETA sign up and someone just scratched out what it said under it, you know, the ethical treatment of animals and wrote that.

Right?

I was like, that's edgy. Edgy.

Yeah.

All right, Eric. Funny stuff. That's why I did not know that.

Eric, Can I go now?

Yeah, yeah, we'll let you go.

Run while you can.

The dog looks like he needs a walk.

So.

Hey, I kid. I kid. I kid. This was a blast. Thank you.

As people abandon me, Eric. And run to school of Bookkeeping, where can they go to learn more about.

Your organization, schoolofbookkeeping.com everything is there. There's tons of great blog content. There's a bunch of free content. You can start learning right now. You can sign up for a free trial. It's 24 bucks a month. After that, it's peanuts. And we've designed some of the coolest features in there to help make that pay back your tuition. Most of our enrolled scholars are getting more out of school of bookkeeping and revenue and profit than they're paying. That's our goal. That's a win, win, win.

I love it. And everyone, why don't you come down to the Sage summit, Be an accountant, be a bookkeeper. You can be a business owner. There's 7,500 people they announced. Eric, I think you Were on that call that are attending the conference and go see Eric speak. Wow, amazing speaker, very engaging guy and a little bit of a ball buster, so it's awesome.

Well, thank you very much. And do not miss Mike's talk as well. I will be at that one if I'm not speaking.

Yeah, if we speak simultaneously, my audience will say, don't listen to me. Listen to Eric. You'll be like, don't listen to me. Listen to Mike. And then we throwing people back and forth.

Well, if we do figure that out, Mike, just talk really loud. That way I can hear you.

You got it.

I'll heckle you both equally if I'm there.

There you go.

Awesome. Awesome.

Great to see you. Thanks, Eric.

Take care, Eric.

All right. All right, man. Take care.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

See ya.

You didn't like that PETA joke? That was too inappropriate.

No, I loved it.

I thought it was hysterical. I mean, it's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke, people. It's a joke.

For the love of PETA.

I was watching. Who's the Steve Harvey? Is that the comedian? He's got his own talk show right now. The Big Mustache.

Oh, yeah, I think so.

Family Feud.

Yeah, this Family Feud. Yeah, I saw. You ever see Coffee and Cars with coffee comedians getting Coffee and Cars with Jerry Seinfeld?

Yep.

He's interviewing Steve Harvey and he tells jokes like that PETA joke. And he's like. At the end of the show, someone comes up, is like, oh, that offended me. That offended me. And he's like, oh, I should have done this joke even bigger and better. He's like, everyone gets offended about everything.

It's a joke, especially for comedians. Everyone's up for grabs. That's part. That's. That's part of their shtick. Yeah, don't go if you can't handle it.

Yeah. And if. Listen, if you get offended, it means you can't joke at yourself.

Right.

You can't make for yourself. That's a tough life to live.

Seinfeld really hates that when people come. That's why a lot of the comedians now, they don't put. They don't do colleges anymore because apparently college kids these days are all, like, uptight and PC, politically correct. And you can't joke about race or gays or anything. You know, it's like, what do you think comedians do?

I know. It's all they do. They make fun of everything. And if you can't laugh yourself, that's an issue.

But it's okay. You Know what? If they don't want it, they don't have that happen.

Right?

Yeah. I mean, sure, there's a place for everything. It doesn't. It all doesn't have to be out in front of everything. Everybody.

Right. Okay, so what do we learn from today besides my awesome pita joke delivery? Chris, what'd you get out today's episode?

I learned that nextiva is a great corporate partner of ours. Thank you. Nextiva voiceover ip, where you do business partners plug. Now, we do that first. That's how we get people to stick around.

Oh yeah. I'm like, who was talking about that? I don't remember that. I was maybe detouring. No, Dave's like, oh, we do drug tests. Nextiva. Yeah. Yeah. So nextiva is amazing. Great company, great system. You know, one of the challenges that we. The phone, the Internet line we have is a crappy line. And in the beginning it was really difficult. It's getting better and better. Sometimes we still have issues occasionally, but then they get on the phone and they fix it. So even if you have a crappy Internet connection, you can do voice over ip, you can still pull it off.

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. So nextiva is awesome. We have Fundera. We spoke with Jared, if you remember, last week. Awesome company funding source. One thing I learned about them is when you are considering getting funds is the time to look, not when you need funds. And that they welcome that. And if funding's not appropriate, that's cool. It's not like they're going to pressure you or something. And then T sheets. Listen, Eric plugged them again. You hear their name over and over. They're a great company. They're great marketing force too. So if you're not using T sheets yet and you don't know if you need their services, just go and check out their website. Check out how they market themselves. They have a constant presence everywhere. Alright, so what did you learn today, dude?

I learned from David Bell that one of the reasons that drug testing is good and it helps drive profit is because training new folks is expensive. Like the turnover of employees.

Yeah.

Like if you have to, you know, if people are on drugs and doing things wrong and then they're gonna quit or leave or whatever, get fired, then you have to train new people anyway, so.

Exactly.

It's a good one.

Anything you learn from Eric? Eric distracted too much with the pita.

Well, actually, his Facebook group driving traffic to all his websites, that's pretty powerful.

It's probably the most active Facebook group I've ever seen. Not That I browse all these groups.

But really active, and that's not easy to do. A lot of people have Facebook groups. Everyone talks about Facebook groups. But to actually do it well, so.

Well engaged, so active, so supportive of each other, it's amazing. Christina, what did you learn today?

I like when Eric said, you know, if you give, you get. And knowledge is power, it's confidence, and it leads to additional profit, you know?

Yeah. I love it. Eric said, you got a fire, but make sure you have a replacement in place. You know, I'm a bit. I'm a major proponent, too. When you get the PETA clients, the PITA clients, that they're such a suck of time and energy that even though you may be making money, you're spending all your time worrying about them, there may be a feeling that you just got fired them on the spot. And I agree with that, that you got to fire them. But maybe not the on the spot part. Maybe I make sure that revenue is replaced first, but you got to actively seek it out, but then you got to commit to yourself. The second you get that replacement client, that you get rid of the pita.

That's becoming more of a recurring theme, I'm noticing as we talk to more and more people, people are realizing that it's important to have clients that fit you and not the other way around.

Yeah.

I even had a prospect, actually, earlier this morning, I talked to. And it just. The energy just wasn't right. And I was. I was. You know, I don't think it's a fit. So I won't even take them on as a client. I'm going to avoid the whole thing.

Was it David Bell from drug testing? Who? I learned from David. He said people don't talk about issues at the office. That was like, oh, my God, that's so true. You know, we got tons of problems our office, and Christina knows them all. She hasn't said a word to me.

No, it's true, though. People. I mean, I know myself naturally, especially if I'm struggling with something, I'm an introvert, and I want to fix it myself. I don't want to ask for help. And I think that that's not just in the business. I mean, a lot of people see something going on, and they're too scared to say something.

Yeah. Who wants to rat out an employee?

Right.

You know, Aaron's got issues. Let's be honest. She doesn't listen to our episode. So we can bust her drops. I don't know if she does.

I don't know she's listened to scattered.

She's a scattered listener. That's her issue. She's scattered.

Scattered.

But who would want to rat out Aaron? She's lovely. We all love her. If she had an issue that's affecting the office, you don't want to be the person says, you know, this isn't working out by just implementing a system where the corporation is doing it, enforcing a policy, including the owners of the corporation. So no one is avoid, you know, can avoid this.

Right.

That's a powerful implementation of it.

Totally.

All right, man.

Great job, Michael. We got a rock. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Our website is Profit first podcast dot com.

Gunfire.

You can check out all of our previous episodes. You can check out my website too. Fractal recording dot com. I produce podcasts for business authors.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're Mike Michalowitz, Profit first Professionals.

We it's like a gunfight going on in here.

Can we say it all at the same time?

On three, on two, on one. Profit First Professionals that come. Yeah. So listen, if you own a business and you want to be more profitable, just like funder is a single source for getting funds, we are the single source for getting profit into your business. Your own business. He wouldn't lend you money. Our team shows you how to make money inside your own business. So go there, Click on the find button. We'll find one of our members, one of our Profit first professionals that are somewhere in the bruh. Oh, God. It's out of sync. This button fail. But we'll find you a Profit first professional that can serve you. And of course, if you're an accountant or bookkeeper. Yeah, check out school of bookkeeping. But when you join them, also join us at Profit first Professionals.

There you go. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you next time.

Later.