Episode 43: Content Sharing and Budget Management with Nathan Hecht and Gregg Hollmann

What the.

Chris, are you ready?

See?

Okay. All right. Everything's restarted here. Okay, let's go.

You're listening probably in your pajamas, to the Profit first podcast, episode 43.

Oh, and he missed the music cue. Oh, I made you. Wait a gosh. What is going on?

Oh, my God.

You know what happened there, Chris? The entire band and all of our musicians sat on the side listening to you spout out the introduction while they smoked their corn cob pipes.

Dude, I pointed at the drummer, I said, go. And he just sat there. He was smoking a corn cob pipe.

We're not paying them enough money. You know, if this was the Roots from Jimmy Fallon, they'd be on it, right?

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

And I'm Mike Michalowitz, the author of Profit First. And on this show, Chris, we. We talk about everything about profit. Like, how do you make your business more profitable? Because I'll tell you at the end of the day, you didn't start your business to make lots of revenue and then spend it with someone else. Ultimately, you wanted to get some of that juice in your pocket.

That's right. And we're available as a podcast in itunes and Stitcher and Tunein Radio and of course, the website profitfirstpodcast.com and if you haven't heard the last handful of episodes, or really, they're all great, but some of these were off the hook, Mike.

Oh, my God. Chewbacca. There he is. Chewbacca showed up. Yeah, no, it's been insanely good. And thanks to who's our new one? Not itunes. Who's the new one brought in?

Radio, brother.

Dude, we are dominating Tunein Radio. We're one of the top shows, you know, we're in the top 100,000 shows.

100,000.

They love us. Hey, who's that female voice There? Mike McAllister.

Christina.

Hey, she's back.

She's back. Dude, we got some killer guests today. Christine is one of them.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Nathan Hecht is here. Chris, do you know that company Destructs?

Yeah.

You know the band Destructs?

He's in the band, isn't he, Nathan?

No, no, he's not in the band. The band Destructs was the. I think the preliminary band that turned into Anthrax. But Destructs is a business that does. Helps you self destruct files. You ever send that email with that file and then 10 seconds later you're like, what did I Do well, now you have an opportunity to destroy it. So we'll tell you how to do that then. You. I hope you're wearing your big girl panties, Chris, because we have Greg Hallman, who's coming on. Holman. Holman. Holman, Holman. Well, there's no pronunciation. Damn it, Christine. I'm staring down Greg H. Greg. Yeah. So Greg H. Is coming on with. He's got a DJ business in East Windsor, New Jersey, right outside Princeton. And this guy took profit first in the DJ business. He applied it and is cranking out some profits. So we're going to learn all about that. First, I want to thank our sponsors. Thanks to Nextiva, TSheets and Fundera for backing the show. You guys are a little bit crazy for doing it, but we love you and we'll give more details on them in a little bit.

Totally.

Dude, what have you been up to real quick?

Well, hey, I set up my profit accounts in my bank accounts. I have, I have my all the different profit accounts and every month tell me if I'm doing it right. Every month, when I basically tally up what came into my checking account and then I do the percentages and I move the money over into the sub accounts like the tax account and the profit account and the owner's pay account. Right. Is that the right way to do it, bruh?

That's perfect. That's exactly how you do it, bruh.

Dude, so I thought you were gonna need to take me to therapy.

Oh boy, you love that sound effect.

He just likes to talk and hear.

What does it feel like, Chris, to finally be profitable in your business? So. No, that's good. And are you seeing a benefit in. In your emotions at least you feel more confident that you've control your numbers?

I do. Because the other maybe yesterday I looked in the accounts and I really forgot that I had put this money in other places and I was like, dude, I got a few thousand here. I got this there. I was like, this is cool.

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it brings confidence right away. And only took you 43 episodes to get there?

No, actually I've been doing it for a while. I meant to say it on the show. I just haven't for at least three months actually. So.

Okay.

So what have you been up to?

Mm, kicking my neighbor's ass. That's what I've been up to. This morning I got back from a bike ride. He and I bike three days a week and it's ridiculous. Like hill climbs and all this stuff. I don't like Biking that much, he always beats me. Today I brought it. I brought it.

You smoked him?

I smoked them like a corn cob pipe.

With a corn cob pipe.

Yeah. Yeah. So that felt good to kick my neighbor's ass.

Christina, you said you have a corn cob pipe.

I do, I do, yeah.

Off the air, she was explaining corn cob pipes.

That public knowledge?

No, I don't use it. It was my grandfather's and now it just kind of sits on a shelf in my living room.

All aspiring opera singers have it. All right, we're killing time here. We got to bring on Nathan Hecht.

Yes.

So let me give you a little background. Nathan is the founder and the founder of Destructs, his platform, his acclaimed platform is designed so you can share self destructing files on the web. And when you're about to hear from him, you're going to learn how to use that to make your business more profitable. With no further ado, Mr. Nathan Hecht. Welcome to our show, Nathan. Thank you.

Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Good. So you're out in Long island today, I understand.

I am in fact, yes.

Enjoying a nice summer?

Yeah, summer's been beautiful actually. Thank you.

Is your business, Is the, Is Destructs located in Long Island?

No, Destructs is located in Brooklyn, New York.

And you serve clients in Dumb. Oh, never heard of dumbo?

Yeah, Dumbo, it's. It's an up and coming area of Brooklyn on the Brooklyn waterfront, looking at the city.

Is that an acronym for something like south of this?

Yes, it's. It's Down Under Manhattan Bridge something or another.

That's a Tribe Twister right there. Yeah, Barry, that's right, Barry. Like Tribeca, soho, they have all these acronyms for where you're located. Tell us about your software, specifically what the application is of Destructs.

Sure. So basically without Destructs, when you share something on the web via email or post stuff on social media, whatever it is that you're. However it is that you're sharing it, you're essentially giving that information to the platform that you're sharing it on. So you share something with Google, Google takes it and they scrape all that data and then they use it to advertise to you. Same with Facebook and Twitter and so on. That's the first thing. Second thing is the recipient that gets it can keep it. There's no way to call it back, no way to make it go away. We thought there would be a good use case for people to have a way, number one, to avoid the platforms Themselves, keeping it and accessing those private things that you share. And also for the recipient to be able to, for you to be able to turn off the recipient's access to it at any given time.

So that's the platform I got you. Is it just the email content itself or are you able to control the attachments?

It's actually specifically not the email content itself at the moment. It's only attachments. About 35 different file types, all your usual business files, all the way through PDFs and some funky file types too.

So when I attach a file, does it pull the file? I assume it puts it somewhere on your system, stores it there. Is that how it works?

Exactly. So you upload a file to our system, it's encrypted for the moment, you upload it to us, then it travels via ssl, which is a. Another fancy form of encryption. It's like a tunnel, an encrypted tunnel. It comes onto our servers at rest, it's encrypted as well. So we have zero access to whatever it is that you're sharing. And then the person that views it, they see it in a secure fashion as well. And then when the sender decides that they want to make it go away, it goes through what's called a shredding process, which is very similar actually to taking something and sending it through a shredder in the physical world, where you take a piece of paper and it gets shredded so that we no longer have access to it and the recipient no longer has access to it.

So one of your guys, I say I want to delete a file. Does one of your guys pull the hard drive that file's on? Starts bashing with a hammer.

Close, you're not so far off.

I mean, it's a great business model, but it really is so costly for you guys.

Well, listen, you know, we got a lot. That's the way we interpret the word.

Hacker.

Hacks at the hard drive.

Let's talk about the application, the application for profitability. So the folks listening in now, all entrepreneurs, business owners, they want to be more profitable. How can a tool like yours be used to retain money or make more money?

Actually, it's imperative that you use destructs if you're running a small and mid sized business, because your small business is all about your intellectual property. Regardless of what business you're in, everything that you're sharing is valuable to you and to just sort of give it away the way it's being done today and hope that the recipient doesn't keep it or hope that he doesn't share it with somebody else and hope that he doesn't learn from it in a way that you don't necessarily want him or her to. If you use Destructs, and you really should, it remains your intellectual property. And when you keep control of the stuff that belongs to you and you charge for it or you limit it, ultimately your business is going to be a lot more profitable. We're seeing this in so many different use cases. I'll throw one at you really quickly just to imagine how you can apply this. Let's say you're a graphic designer. Let's say you're a photographer, you're an artist, you're a musician, and you're sharing this stuff. You want people to see it, you want people to have it, but you don't want them to necessarily be able to keep it and or use it for their own benefit. This is a great platform for something like that. That's just the beginning of many, many, many.

One thing we suggest to our listeners is to send proposals with a time frame. I send you a proposal and I say, hey, Nathan, look at this. But within two weeks, this expires because I want the urgency, I want you to make a decision. And after two weeks, I want to bump the price up. Could I put an expiration date on files like proposals?

Absolutely. You have a clock, the default time frame for something that you send on the structs, and it's something that we're playing with, trying to figure out what the right time frame is. Right now it's 12 hours, but there's a little clock. You can set it anywhere up to 30 days or hours or minutes and extend it thereafter for as long as you want. So absolutely, that functionality is built in.

I love it. Hey, Nathan, if people want to learn more about your software, where should they go?

It's destructs.coM-S-T-R-U x.com or any of the app stores, Google Play, of course, and the Apple Store as well. You can download our apps. They're really cool, a lot of fun to use and you know, we hope people download it.

Oh, yeah, no, I hope everyone downloads it. And I heard he's taking payments and corn cob pipes. You'll bargain for that bitcoin right now, by the way. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. All right, Nathan, it was a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Nathan. Awesome.

Bye. Dude, I'm already pumped about this software. It's the applications out there, dude.

It's so needed. Like these, the security of files and everything. It's nutty. And this is something that it's so handy. It sounds like.

Yeah. And it sounds like you can make it part of your process. You know, if this was a one off, like every so often, like, oh, I need to secure this file. I think you're going to forget it. But I wonder if Nathan's software or software similar, if you could set it up that every time you send an attachment, it always goes through a system like this. And then you never have to worry about it.

Right.

Christine's loving it.

Plain and say, I just. Technology just blows my mind.

Like all those rants you send to me like, this job sucks, Mike. Now you can do it.

You are attachment. You are full of lies.

You make me carry books up and down the stairs.

You should have seen me before. Before, it was like a seussical thing. I was like tipping over with books, trying to walk out the door.

Oh, my God. You guys see this? I think the most book stacks you've ever had is in boxes. I think I saw you carry six high.

No, that's true.

Six. Dude, that's taller than like most humans. That's taller than Chewbacca. Freaking sake.

Dude, if a cop saw that, they'd arrest you.

Michelle, probably.

Oh, yeah. She drives with them in her lap to save time. Dude, we got another awesome guest coming on.

Dude, let's rock it.

I've been. Dude, we're saying dude a lot, by the way.

That was so lame. Let's rock it.

I know, I know. Welcome to.

That was horrible.

Cause he's a TJ.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, yeah.

The 80s just came back and slapped me with feathered hair.

You can hear the people turning off this podcast.

All right, so this guest we have, Greg Holman, is a music lover from New Jersey. I know. You think, how is that possible? He sounds like an oxymoron. New Jersey music lover. Like what comes out of New Jersey? Bon Jovi.

I don't know, Nathan.

That made no sense. But this guy is dripping. New Jersey. You know why? He went to the College of New Jersey, tcnj, which actually is a very elite college, probably the most beautiful campus next to Princeton, and has a thriving, thriving DJ business called Ambient DJ Services. Does 350 events a year. But here's the deal, yo, Chris. Greg implemented profit first in his business, is having success with it. So I want to learn what's working and where he stumbled with no further ado, Chris, I want Greg Holman on our show.

Greg, what's up?

Hey, guys, what's going on?

Oh, man. Thanks for joining us.

Nothing, we're just recording a podcast.

Just recording in front of 70,000 people, that's all.

Hey, what are you doing? What are you doing today? So, Chris, tell us about your DJ business. What kind of people do you cater to?

Greg?

Did I say Chris?

Yeah. So my DJ business. So let me tell you. Mike.

Greg, what about yours?

Yeah, for my DJ business, we cater to weddings in particular, but we're full service. We offer the full spectrum of parties, everything from sweet 16s to bar and bat mitzvahs to corporate events, bar club, karaoke, and so on. But we focus on weddings because that's where the money's at and that's what I personally enjoy working on.

Now, you're the founder of the business, correct?

That's correct. For about the first nine years of the business, it was just me. And it was in 2008 that I added my first DJ. And fast forwarding to 2015, we're up to 15.

Whoa, that's amazing. So you started in roughly 1999, right. You ran the business. Okay, I hope your first record you played was Princess 1999. What was that period of time like from 1999 to 2008, when you're running the business solo? What was it like to run the business that way?

Right. Well, the first stage, which would be from 99 to 2003, was what I would call the hobbyist stage. I was just doing it for fun at first. I did it for free house parties for friends and found that I really loved it and I had a knack for it, so I stuck with it. And then it's 2003. That's when I decided to buy some real DJ equipment and also get my first website. It was done by a college student, also from tcnj. And looking back on it, it was a laughable website. But it was successful in attracting our first batch of clients that help take things to the next level. And then it was about 2007 when I got a real website by a professional website designer. That's what really took business to the next level, in particular for the higher end events like weddings and so on.

So they truly do judge you by the website over everything else in the DJ business, at least for you, right?

Well, when you're starting out, you don't have any referrals because you have many past clients. So you use friends and family. And then A website and hope to that some people discover you in the search engines when they go to Google. No one uses the phone book anymore. For weddings in particular, there's a couple big sites, Wedding Wire and the Knot. And those are like the go to places for brides looking for wedding entertainment and all sorts of other wedding services. So it's important that you show up highly in those sites which we pay to be on, but they really work.

What our listeners are interested in, and I am too, is the financials. Running a solo first a hobby business and then being a solo practitioner. Maybe I don't want you to share numbers you're uncomfortable sharing. But what was it like financially during those periods of your business up until 19?

No, I'm sorry. 2009 it was really easy for me because I was also working during the week in a full time job in finance and was pulling down a six figure salary.

Gotcha.

So I really didn't need to be that disciplined and it was just like extra money. In 2009 I ripped the cord. I left my corporate job. I was just burned out from the grind and the bad politics and I felt that I had a real chance to succeed with the DJ business since I've been doing it and it was growing and I seemed to have a knack for it. So there was a stage after I left where I had a pretty big drop in income and things were tough for a few years because I had to adjust. I still had those overheads, the mortgage and the car payments, but I had a lower income. So we struggled for a couple years, kind of muddled our way through and are coming out of that. For the past couple years, I've eliminated 80% of the credit card debt that our family had. And early this year I implemented profit first as well.

Now Greg, how did you make the transition from running your business as a hobby and doing it more as a favor for friends, getting referrals for them, to starting charging people for your services?

Right. Well, it was something that I felt I wanted to do more of and that I could charge to do back in the very beginning when I was looking for my first private gigs. I mean, I had to practically beg people to DJ for free or for a very discounted rate. I just wanted to be out there and getting my name out. And you know, over time I realized that there was a strong demand for professional DJ services in New Jersey. And I've been gradually increasing our company's rates to where now we're at market average plus a little bit of a Premium. So we're not at the ultra premium segment, but we're not competing at this point with the Thousands of backyard DJs in New Jersey that are on Craigslist and are willing to do a party for a hundred bucks.

Right.

And looking at your financials. So you were making a six figure salary plus bonus money through your hobby as a dj. When you went all in on this, your salary dropped. But you said you had the mortgage, the car payments. What's that experience like when your lifestyle continues on but your income drops so much?

Well, it's a stressful experience and requires a leap of faith. And I would say at its worst, I had some bill collectors after me. We modified our mortgage and that's a terrible experience to go through. They call every day, first thing in the morning. I hated it and I hope never to go there again.

It sounds like when you're saying we. Do you have wife, children?

Yeah, wife. I've got two boys, 13 and. And 10.

Nice. I have a question. It sounds like the hobby stage of your DJing was so important for you to learn so many things and probably, you know, do you think in terms of learning how to plan, how to, what to charge, what to bring to a gig and how to do everything, like you learned a lot in those hobby years that helped you after that. Right, right.

And I really learned a lot when I started going to DJ conventions and listening to people who are successful in business talk about how they do it and implementing some of those ideas.

Nice.

Bring us up to the point. Right before you implemented profit first, you have 15 DJs at the time. What was the business financials like at that stage? Right before you implemented profit first, which I assume you did in the last year or so.

That's right, yeah. Just to give you a timeline, I first heard about Profit first. I don't know if you were calling it profit first back then, Mike, but in your toilet paper, Entrepreneurial.

Yeah.

So the light bulb went off and I very weakly started. I have a safe here in my home office. I would actually put some money in that safe, but unfortunately it was in the safe and not in bank B. So when I got short on money, I would reach into the safe. So it didn't work. Last summer I read your book when it came out, bought it right away, loved it. But I still sat on it for a while. I had to digest it. And then late in the year, maybe January, I reread it carefully, took some notes and then said, at that point, now I'm going to Give this a try. So some of the problems we had prior to Profit first, number one, I had not been allocating money for taxes like I should have been putting money aside during the year. So this past April, I got hit with a pretty big tax bill and that was a barrier to getting started with Profit First. So the early part of the year I just started with a nominal 1%. Just to. Just to get started, I opened up an account at Bank B. It's far across town. It has very bad hours. It's an old school style bank. And that's the way it should be.

Right, right. So Bank B is. So you have a primary bank, you work with. Bank B is this secondary bank. And you actually, while you put money in there, you want it to be inconvenient so you don't steal from yourself like you were from your safe. So it sounds like you found a real crusty old bank for yourself.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So let's talk about the taxes. As a business generates more profit. Is that a call? You gotta take a DJ opportunity there. Okay, so as your business starts growing and making more profit or there's more revenue coming in, your taxes increase was this last year. Did you have your highest tax responsibility you've had in a long time or maybe ever?

That's, that's right. We grew a lot last year. And again due to some poor financial management on my part, the money was not reserved for the tax bill that was presented to me in April.

How are you managing your taxes now? Have you changed your strategy?

Right. Well, now I've calculated based on the budget that we have for 2015 and the growth that we expect, and some calculations from my accountant. So now when I do my profit first allocations twice a month, there's one for the profit and then there's one for the tax account. That should put me whole or not owing any taxes or getting a little bit of money back next April.

When people hear this concept of profit first, what many people and listeners say is like, okay, Mike, I have X number of dollars coming in. Say, just for easy numbers, $1,000 of revenue comes in on average every week. And you're allocating, say $200 toward a tax reserve every time money comes in, maybe $100 toward taxes. That only leaves me $700 to run my business. I'm sure, Greg, you've experienced the same thing. You're allocating now money for taxes and profit up front. That means there's less money for expenses. Doesn't that F up your business? You can't run it that way. I'm setting you up to say no, absolutely not. Just in case you get that hint right.

Well, the plug in the profit first system is expenses. I've been on a pretty tight budget this year. Revenues were up 11% in the first half of this year, but I've cut my expenses by 22% year over year, which has led to a nice increase in profit of about 16%. And where I've been finding room to cut is on DJ gear, which is, you know, it's a lot of fun. It's very expensive. I was just down at the DJ Expo in Atlantic City earlier this week. There's about four to five thousand DJs there. And one of the main features is a big exhibit hall that's full of the latest and greatest DJ gear. And I'm happy to say that I didn't spend a single dime on gear down there because I've already figured out what I need this year and I'm sticking to that. So, you know, one of the big recommendations to myself and others is just to avoid impulse purchases.

And has it compromised your business? I mean, now you don't have the cutting edge equipment and maybe your competitor does. Does that hurt you?

I don't really feel so. I believe as far as wedding DJ entertainment goes, the guest experience, what they feel and hear on the dance floor is what they remember. Whether you accomplish that from behind the DJ facade in your booth with a $10,000 cutting edge controller or a $1,000 controller, they don't really know. It's what you know. It's if you deliver the, you know, that exciting party for them, I love it.

And since you've implemented profit first, have you taken a profit distribution for yourself yet?

I. Since I started kind of a couple months into the year, the way I've decided to do it is that my first quarter or first half is going to be cut off at the end of August. Okay. And then there'll be September through December will be the second period. And then from 2016, I'm gonna go on a calendar year, quarterly basis. So I'm planning to make my first distribution at the end of August or on September 1, the day after the month's over. And, you know, it's looking to be a very nice figure and nice. A big check.

Nice. And what's your intention? How are you going to use your profit?

Well, I'm planning on giving half of it to my wife for suffering through some of the years that we went through, number one. But some of the things that we have planned, we're big tennis fans, so we're going to bring the whole family to the US Open up in Fletcher, New York.

Yes. Yes. I love it. So has your business. You've been in business, let's see, cumulatively, 16 years up to this point. Have you ever taken a profit distribution before?

No. I think what I usually did, Mike, was when I had that extra money, I spent it. I just plowed it back into the business blindly. I think one of the huge concepts of your book and your curriculum is the concept of having a business serve you rather than being a slave to your business. So I understand that now, and I'm in the process of modifying my behavior. So rather than plowing the money back in, we're going to take some out and use it for our family.

I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. There's hundred, Chris, there's hundreds of thousands of DJs in the world. I don't know what the stats are in the us I don't know any that are profitable. And I'll tell you, when I pick a dj, I want a DJ that has a secure, strong business and will definitely show up for my event. I want a profitable dj. Greg, this is a phenomenal story. I want to congratulate you and your family, your wife and your kids for sticking out through such tumultuous times. But I think your future is very bright and I think you're going to have an amazing time at the U.S. open. Congratulations to you.

Thank you very much. And it was an honor to be on your show.

Oh, pleasure having you. Hey, our listeners, Greg, need to hire a DJ that's amazing in the New Jersey area. Where do they find you?

Well, Mike, they can find me on the web at www.ambientdj.com. that's a M B I-E-N-T-DJ. We're on Instagram, at Ambient DJs, Facebook, Ambient DJ. And if you just do a Google search for our company, we'll show up all over the place.

Fantastic. So much to learn people from Greg's story. You can emulate the story. And why not use some of your profit to celebrate with a killer party? And dj Greg can hook you up. All right.

Thanks, Greg.

Thank you.

Thanks, man.

Thanks.

We'll see you.

See you, man.

You too. Bye. Wow. Yeah, that one. Actually, his story brought chills to me.

Right? I love that.

He hit home with me for sure.

Yeah. Look, Christine's got goosebumps.

I got goosebumps I do.

She has a part time DJ business, Chris.

I do with my dad.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Sweet. Resonated. Right.

I'll tell what I learned.

Oh. In your updates. Okay, so we're gonna do what we learned, but first I want to thank our sponsors. Okay.

Please. You know, we're so fortunate to have such awesome sponsors. And what's cool too is that when we talk about our sponsors, our listeners actually go and use our sponsors and they love it.

That's absolutely right. Nextiva has gotten many clients through our podcast and they, for the most part, absolutely thrilled. When I say the most part is because one person called nextiva, which I guess is a competitor trying to like, you know, play off of him, and it's like, this is no good. I'm like, not even the right company. So nextiva is N E X T I V A Right. We, we've been using them for years now. And actually Christina we're talking about, she's moving into a new home. And home almost sounds like an adult place. Like new, new residents maybe. And he's going to work from home a little bit. And the nextiva phone system will have us set up for that.

Right. So literally you can run your business anywhere. Yeah. So nextiva is a full voice over ip. Voice over IP phone system for business.

Yep.

Correct.

Yeah. Love it.

It's fantastic. Fundera. Listen, dude, Greg's figured out the formula to success. Now, you don't buy the glitzy, popular DJ equipment. You find the few pieces that work perfectly and you exploit those, you build on those. When he brings his next DJ on, he knows the exact equipment he needs. It's not this high end, fancy schmancy, latest gray stuff. There's a core set he needs. Well, once you find out what's working, that's the stuff you want to invest in duplicate. What's working? If you need funds for that, Fundera does it. And then T T T sheets.

Bazinga.

Bazinga. I'll tell you, if you don't use tsheets software, you're crazy.

What are you doing?

What are you doing? It's the, it's a profit center for us. I used to spend realistically 30 to 45 minutes during pay periods just figuring out the numbers, approving stuff. Now it's all online payroll takes me less than 10 seconds.

Yeah, I'm actually so used to handing Mike my timesheet, I printed it out every time, pay period. And I hand it to him, he's like, I don't need this.

I'm Like, I'm sorry.

It's just happened.

I know, but you like because you know your pay is coming when that's put in front of me.

Wasted paper. Christine.

Never been late. Pay's always on time. Perfect, right?

Excellent.

Did you get paid? Tomorrow's payday, right?

Today. It was today.

Did you get it? Boom.

I can picture her walking up the steps with six boxes, and Mike's trying to slip her check in between the boxes and stuff. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Well, no direct deposit stuff. It's all automated. Boom, boom, boom.

Sweet.

I mean, it sucks for me because all of a sudden I look at my bank account like, where's all my money, dude? What we all learned today. Let's start off with Christina. I want to hear. I want to do in reverse order. Let's start with Greg because you're all fired up.

No, I just. It's interesting to talk to another dj. I mean, my dad's really. He started back in the 90s, too. I mean, when I was a baby, he used to bring me to gigs. So I was raised in the. In the industry. But he was also one that did it as his hobbies. And I'm flabbergasted that he cut his expenses by 22% every year. Every year. Just by buying, not buying, the new and expensive stuff. And it's so true, because I went to that DJ Expo two years ago at the Taj Mahal. It's this giant, like, expo hall, and they're set up like a maze, and it's just like, oh, my God. Like, you want everything. It's just so hard not to spend your money. But it's true. You just got to look at what you need to get the gig done. And you keep to the core stuff.

It's just kids in the candy store.

Sometimes you just need to be reminded of the basics.

Yeah, but it's that simple. He takes Greg, takes his profit, puts it off the table. He can want the stuff as much as you want. The money's not in his bank account, can't buy it, and he doesn't. And look at the guys. What floored me and my takeaway from Greg was he's celebrating with his family. I suspect every quarter before or year end was, we don't have enough money to pay taxes, hun. The conversation was, we don't have enough money for this. The conversation. This year's. Oh, our DJ business is taking us to the US Open and doing all these other activities. Oh, that's your timer, Chris. Oh, that's my Timer. Oh, can you hear that?

I did not hear that. Oh, I did not hear that.

I did not know. Chris, what's, what's your takeaway?

Well, I really appreciate Greg and his story because he persevered. You know, he. This has been a 16 year journey for him and he has persevered. That, number one, impresses me. Not everyone does that. Number two is that when I. He learns from experts. So he, you know, he's not going to go and make all the mistakes on his own and not listen to anybody. He said he goes to these conferences, he learns the new stuff, the new deal, what's good, how he can, you know, what the experts are saying. He takes that good advice from experts. And not everyone does that.

Yeah. And there's a lot of naysayers around profit first saying, well, that's not how businesses operate. You can't do that. You got to grow. And profit comes. The fact he was able to fight the tide and say, you know, I'm just going to do this. Sometimes you have to be at the point of desperation. Sometimes you have to be able not to pay your tax bill and have more credit card debt than you can deal with for you to say, I'm not taking anymore. And the turnaround happens. The other thing too is I found the turnaround. We have members telling this it happens overnight. Not that you become rich overnight, but the next day you have confidence saying, okay, at least I have control over this. And then the wealth does come. All right, let's talk about our buddy Nathan. Any thoughts you have, Christina?

I love the idea of his business. The fact that now anything that you send, no one can steal from you, it's strictly yours. Even if they can open it, they can look at it, can't save it.

That's a very profitable thing.

Fantastic.

Yeah. You invent it, you keep it. For me, it was this expiration. When I send someone a proposal, the big thing for me is to say, you got 14 days to make a decision. Because, listen, if they're not going to move with me, I need to move on. But I had no way of expiring those contracts. So I would get calls sometimes six months later saying, oh, we want to proceed. Now we have your proposal. It said 14 days, but that's nonsense. We wanted the old price. Now I don't even have that conversation. I can just have the thing to say, voop, void gone. See ya.

Peace.

Yeah. What do you think, Chris?

Totally. I like the security aspect of it that, you know, in these days where, like he said, Google and everybody's looking at all your email and electronic stuff, sniffing it, as he said, yeah, no.

Longer do I carry around your Smith and Wesson and try to tip people.

You can't shoot Google, I don't think. Well.

And they take your keywords and they'll like, I noticed, they'll plug it into stuff that you're searching on Google and be. And they track where you've been. And they're like, oh, do you want to buy this? Because we saw you were looking at.

This and I'm like, oh, that's so frustrating.

Right?

And then that, you know what the psychology there, that's a great point. It makes you spend money. It's like, yeah, I was just talking about that. I really should buy it. And it's here in front of me. And then I spent more money when I didn't need to.

Sorry, Chris, I didn't mean to cut you off.

That's really it. I was done. I mean. Well, I think the security aspect of email and files and stuff is overlooked mostly. So it deserves attention because it could cost you money at some point. Things can go wrong. Yeah.

Hold it there, Cracker boy. I'm not finished. No, I am finished, Cracker boy. It's time for us to get going. Chris, great time with you today. Thanks for this episode.

Profit First Professionals. Mike, tell us about it.

Only during the fade music.

Oh, and you like.

Thank you.

And you like the way the fade music comes in. So let's listen to the. The fade in.

Yeah.

Oh, I love that. Ready?

I love the guitar.

Here comes the drum fill.

There it goes.

Profit First Professionals.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, we're the Proffers. Professional Professionals is a professional organization. Unlike our band, who misses all the cues, Profit First Professional is an organization of accountants and bookkeepers throughout the globe. What we do is we help people just like Greg. You heard Greg's story. So if you're an accountant or bookkeeper and want to help entrepreneurs achieve what Greg's doing, that's what our membership is. Come to profitfirstprofessionals.com and if you are Greg, if you have a business that's not as profitable as you want it to be, that's basically every business. Go to Proffer First First Professional, and we'll hook you up with an accountant or bookkeeper that will guide you through this process and finally put Cha Ching in your pocket and we'll see you.

At the US Open.

That's right, bruh. Bruh.

I was totally forcing that US Open line Because of the break in the music. Anyway, so I'm, by the way, Mike, I'm producing podcasts for business authors these days. Business authors who want to rock out with their.

Oh.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, look, I'm sorry. But anyway, Fractal Recording.com is my website. Thanks, everybody, for listening. You can find us again on itunes. And Stitcher and tune in. And our website, Profit first podcast dot com. Right, Mike?

Yeah. Thanks for joining us. I hope you learned a lot today. I feel safer already. That's fantastic.

Thank you.

Okay, see ya.

You're listening to the profit first podcast.

And you're listening to episode 5:43, stick that in your corn cob pipe and smoke it. Yeah, that's how you start a show. Who.

Who has a corn cob pipe? Mike mc.

I don't know.

Seriously, from my grandfather. It's my china cabinet.

Did he smoke from there? Yeah, yeah, he was smoking the wacky tobacco.

That's why he was an awesome grandparent.

Yeah, some Jamaican plum, I hear they call this. That's the code name for.

You know what? Hold on a second.

Hold on. What? Do we fail? No, something went.

Something went wrong.

Dude, that was such a good one.