Episode 46: Cash Flow and Profitability with Rich Manders and Emma Bradshaw

As of now, we're on.

This is 46.

That's right, the drummer. You know what, dude? When you hear that drum kicking off, that means our team, our band is ready to roll. And this time, they're not going to mess up the timing.

You are listening to the Profit first podcast.

And if you decide so, this could be the most important episode you ever listened to. So get your ear close to that speaker and get ready for episode 46. Yes. Bam.

46.

The drummers nailed it this time.

Oh, my God. We finally nailed an intro.

I don't know if you knew this. The drummer is also the lead singer of this band. The thing is, he doesn't sing.

His mouth is going. We just can't hear him.

Exactly. They forgot to mic him up.

So welcome, everyone.

These guys are amazing.

Everyone to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, a Chewbacca imitator, the author of Profit first and the co founder of Profit First Professionals.

And Christina is a singer.

Hey there.

Yeah, she's our office admin and also a rock star singer for opera. And guess what, dude? On this show. And when I say dude, I'm talking to you guests, we talk about everything, about profitability, every single angle you can think of. We bring in business coaches who've guided companies to two episodes. One of our guests, 140 million doll hours in revenue. We've talked with last episode, if you heard that interview with Sophia Macius and what's going on in Mexico and how people are navigating some of their financial challenges. Amazing lessons from there. Make sure you listen to sleep and beauty content. And on this episode, you're going to hear stuff from what's going on in Australia and also with the business coach in this area. Every angle of profitability, brother.

That's right. And there are so many angles. You know, I'm always amazed at where profit can come from, whether it's from cutting down expenses or.

Or, you know, increasing sales, running more efficiently.

I was thinking of like, you know, getting subcontractors, getting different vendors. Right.

So many distortion. Holding a gun to someone. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I mean, maybe someone chooses to do it that way.

So we're available as a podcast on itunes and Stitcher and Tunein Radio and our website is profitfirstpodcast.com and you can.

I feel safer already. That's right.

And you can check out all of our episodes there, right, Mike?

Yeah. Well, yeah, you better go there because it has all the show notes, some fun pictures from our episodes and what we're filming here in the studio. And that is. That is the spot to go. All right, before we dig into our guests today, Let me tell you about our sponsors, please. It's the magic three. If you listen to any episode, you, listener should be saying their names right now. Let's do it together. Nextiva.

Nextiva.

Nextiva. Next one. Fundera.

Fundera.

And the last one. T sheets.

T sheets.

There you go. We did it together.

And, well, you know what? There's a funny thing that happens. If you go to nextiva.com and then go to fundera.com and then go to tsheets.com, something amazing happens.

Oh, my God. It is kind of funny.

Yeah.

So let that be a cliffhanger, and we'll talk a little more about what those businesses do at the end of this episode. But, yeah, definitely check those guys out. And thank you for supporting a show as zany as this and as educational as this. All right, let's get right down to business. Our first guest today, his name is Rich manders. I know Rich. Oh, I think we go back about 12 years. I knew him when he was the CEO of a business, and he'll explain the details behind it, Grew it to lots of revenue, sold the company, and then went into a true passion of his, which is coaching other businesses. He's seen every angle and every aspect of profitability, where people struggle and what it takes to get there. So with no further ado, let's get right into this. My friend, Rich Manders. Rich. Rich, welcome to the show.

Hey, Rich.

Hi, guys.

How are you?

How are you?

We're awesome. The crowd loves you, man.

Yeah, thanks. I like that. I don't know that I've ever been cheered for like, like that before.

80,000 people welcoming you to the show.

80,000 people.

80,000.

Wow.

That's really cool.

Rich, before we talk about third eye coaching, tell us about the business that you built and sold.

Yeah, sure. It was a company called I Automation. It's still in existence, and I'm actually still a minority owner in the business. It specialized in providing the hardware that people use to build automated machines, Especially in medical and semiconductor and homeland security applications. So all the motors and controls and so on that went in there. Started that business in 98 and grew it. Today it's around 80 million in direct revenue, and then we manage about another $20 million of business for other folks that we receive commissions on. So roughly about 100 million or so in revenues. And we grew that business relatively rapidly with a lot of help from learning from a lot of different places. I was a fan of and still am of the Gazelles program, which we used to scale the business up and built it up and sold it to private equity in 2007. The majority interest and then working with those guys took it to the next level and I retired in 2013 from that business. We set up a leadership team to run it and I was able to be free of the day to day of that business other than board meetings.

Nice.

And you mentioned Gazelles. If some of our listeners want to learn what Gazelles is, is there a website or something they could check it out?

It's gazelles.com and it's basically a framework that people can use to grow their business that focuses on really four areas which the last one you'll is the most interesting for this discussion, but people strategy, execution and then cash.

And what I was excited to dig into today with you, I love what you did with your business, but after that you decided to become a coach and you work, I think it's with a couple dozen companies now. Is that true?

No, not that many. About half a dozen or so at one time. And really it fell out of. As I mentioned, I retired. And after about six months or so of retirement, I realized I needed to do something that was going to be intellectually challenging, valuable to the world, and helping businesses was very valuable. It's a big driver of the economy and that would fit in with what I wanted for a lifestyle as far as traveling and doing meaningful work. And so I started the coaching business about a year and a half ago.

What are the type businesses that you're coaching?

So it's typically businesses that are somewhere in the range of 500 to 100 million in revenue. And the common theme are two things. One is that they tend to be companies that have grown to a certain spot and have gotten stuck and they need to figure out how to get unstuck or break free from what's holding them back. And that they have a curious, engaged and driven leader who's really in it and wants to turn it into something that will be fantastic in the marketplace. We recently came up with coined a term which I call free scale. What freescale means is a lot of times when you're trying to grow your business, what happens is you actually reduce your freedom at a rate that's faster than you're growing your business for both the CEO and the other people. On the leadership team, team in the business. And we're working hard to break that linkage and make it so that you can scale your business and get freedom at the same time for you.

That's interesting. So you find this almost direct correlation that as I push to grow my business, I start having a decline in my free time at an even faster rate than I'm growing the business.

And it's not just time, it's also finances, it's also availability to do other things that all go down and your choices go down as it gets bigger.

If that's the problem and you're working on the solution, what is the solution to that? Because I've seen that by the way, not just in businesses of that size, 5 million and up. I've seen that in brand new startups, a few hundred thousand in revenue. How do you break that link of grow yet compromise your life?

Right. Well, the combination is having clarity around the direction and the kinds of people you want in your organization and the means whereby you're going to do it. So that's setting up a common communication rhythm that everybody's working off of. They're all working off of a plan that is known to the entire team and that you have the right people in the right seats doing the right things inside the business. So it's a lot about self knowledge and awareness of what's going on both inside your company and in your marketplace. So that's a lot of the process and then crafting a strategy and a model that will make the business go forward from there to the next place.

You know, a few episodes ago we had one of your buddies on Tony Lillios and he shared this exact same comment. He said, you gotta get the right people in the right seats. And that's how he grew his company spec. Now, my question for you, Rich, is how do you know you have the right people and how do you know you have them in the right seats?

Simply asking, asking a lot of questions and primarily it's triangulation. So each person who's in the seat that they're in right now, I always use the analogy, what's a drowning man? See, all the drowning man can see is water, right? And so what you have to do is you have to ask the drowning person, how'd you get here? But you also have to ask the people around why things are set up the way they are, what's working, what isn't working, what should you start doing and stop doing and keep doing inside the business. And by assembling all that information, you get a well rounded view of what's happening inside that business and where it's functional and where it isn't. And then once you have that and by engaging many people inside the company in the process of recrafting and fixing what's broken and getting it to the next level, you then provide that world class framework of making sure that everybody's on the same page, of moving forward inside the business.

Now, one of the people that needs to be in the right seat is the CEO herself. How do you know? How do you evaluate yourself and make sure you're doing the right things for the benefit of the company?

So the first step with the owner of the business, which typically is the CEO in that range, they're one in the same, is just getting clarity about what they want. Which while that sounds really simple, it actually is quite difficult for them to declare. This is what good looks like five years from now or 10 years or whatever their time horizon is getting them really clear. I use an exercise from Cameron Herold called Painted Picture and now I think he changed it to Vivid Vision, which helps people get really clear about what they want their future to look like. Once I have that, then you can start to work with the rest of the team to make sure that the picture and the strategy and the model will support that. And then like I said earlier, you have to make sure that they are curious, engaged and, and driven to make stuff happen inside the business, otherwise it won't work. And it's often that they're not all three of those. And then it's probably not a good client for coaching if you're not all three of those.

So the book you referred to about Vivid Vision, Cameron Herold wrote a book called Double Double, Definitely. You should check it out. Now, a question I have for you, Rich, is once you get that vivid vision from a CEO, do you ever get resistance? I call it the I can do syndrome. Like the owner of the business says, I can do everything and I'm the best at it. How do you get them moving to only the category they should work in and allowing other people, contractors, employees and so forth to do the work that the CEO shouldn't be doing, right?

Well, for one thing, that is often the limiting factor inside of a business is that the CEO or some person or persons inside the business are the bottleneck. And so that when you get to the spot where you're doing this triangulation and you get everybody in a room and you start crafting the plan, you purposely raise this stuff up of we're stuck because nobody here knows how to do this thing or the CEO is handling these things and you force them to give this stuff up. And especially it's important for them to give up the things that they're good at because that's what they can teach to others. And. And you work with them to get better at the skills they need to do. Typically, people who start businesses are not necessarily great leaders out of the box. They're typically a technician of some sort. They may be someone who knows how to make the best bagels or the best software or whatever, and that was what got them into the world of doing their business. But they've never really been formally trained on how to be a leader or how to drive results and hold people accountable to a crystal clear plan. And so what happens is the business gets bigger and complicated, more complicated with more people in it. The message just keeps getting diluted and further diluted. The original idea of why the business existed just starts to disappear because it's so many layers of people and systems and challenges that they've lost their touch with where the plan is and also where their marketplace is going to shine a light on that.

I gotcha. This is a fantastic perspective. If our listeners want to get more about you and maybe even engage you for coaching, where can they find out more about you?

So the name of the company is called Third Eye Coaching and The website is www I I coach.com. so the letter I three times coach.com and.

Oh, that makes it.

There's a lot of info there and videos and all kinds of stuff.

Rich, I know I was the guy standing between you and a beer. So you go get your beer. Thank you so much for being on our show.

Sure.

Thanks, Rich. Great job, guys.

Take care. So, guys. Wow. Wow. I never. We never had an episode where someone's like, that was pretty sad. Like, everyone's always like, wow, you know, you know, we're done when we, like, we, we finished listening to a guest and like, that was pathetic. That was. Oh, that was horrible.

Thank you, Mike.

If we ever, if we ever do that, we're done. So. No, that was awesome. Thanks.

One thing, one thing I wanted to mention real quick because it ties to what you're talking about today and we didn't get to. It was.

Yeah.

One of the blind spots that most CEOs of companies have is they really don't understand cash flow. And so making sure that they're clear on that and that they dig through their model and, and actually Figure out where they're making money. And lo, money both on customers and on the things that they buy. Because over time, as the business gets bigger, that stuff gets lost in the complications of the business as well. So just a last piece is I really teach people how to look at their cash flow story inside their business, how the money flows and see where the leaks are and the waste is.

Right.

Yeah. You know what we'll do is, Christine, if you can make a note, I'd love to have Rich back. We didn't really avail enough time. We have another really important guest we need to get on. But Rich, maybe you can come back for another episode. Okay, good. We'll devote it just to talk about cash flow and what you're learning with these businesses.

Sure.

And it sounds like, you know, someone, you know, having a profit first professional by their side is a good way to understand cash flow.

That's right. That's right. Which is not a profit first professional. So I have to make him one now. All right, our next. Let me tell you about our next. Let me tell you about our next guest. Her name's Emma Bradshaw. I get an email, Chris. I'm sitting at my desk at, you know, like midnight. Like, listen, dude, no one works at midnight. I come down to the office, I hop my desk at midnight. All of a sudden, bling, an email comes in. I'm like, who is this bling? I've read your book Profit First. We're in, like the most rural part of Australia. We have a business where we photograph wild horses. And my husband and I have made our business profitable following profit first. So I write back immediately, understanding why now I'm getting an email at midnight. Because in Australia it's like, you know, noon. I don't know noon exactly. They're drinking a mojito and I'm sitting here on six things of coffee. And I'm like, you have to come on the show. I gotta learn how you turned around a business. Profit first applies to businesses of all sizes, and I would say particularly it applies to young small businesses, businesses that have been struggling to for years. These are the businesses that can benefit from it. So I don't want to spend much more time building up to it. It's with great excitement and anticipation that we have our guest here. Emma Bradshaw. Welcome to the show. Emma. Emma.

Hello, everybody.

Hey, how are. Did you say hello, buddy, everybody? Oh, everybody. Oh, yeah, it sounds like you said, hello, buddy. I'm like, who's your buddy? Am I your buddy called?

Probably sounded a bit wobbled.

Yeah. What's the temperature like down this winter down in Austin?

Down under?

Yeah, down under in Aussie land.

Oh well it's been really. They've had a cold snap. Probably nothing compared to what you guys have in winter. But yeah, it's been, I think got down to five last night which wasn't too bad.

Five Fahrenheit?

No, Celsius. Five Fahrenheit.

That's pretty cold.

Dude. We are the only country that sticks with this stupid English system. Everyone else has gone metric.

Okay.

There's a whole thing going on and you're outside right now. We saw you were emailing pictures while we were getting ready for the show. It looks like it's a beautiful sunrise coming up down there.

Yeah. Andrew and I have been able to get away for our first weekend. Oh God. In years. And everyone's in the house asleep so I've come outside to the campfire with the laptop.

Well, it's a privilege to have you at the campfire sharing your experience with us. We want to dig right in. Tell us em about the business you and Andrew have. What's the business all about?

Sure. So we, we met about five years ago and started, I was taking photos up in the northern part of Australia and, and we, when we got together Andrew was a photographer as well. So we started taking photos and build our business around equine events. So we would go to an event, take photos of everybody and on site and became pretty successful in that area pretty quickly and it became a full time job for us. So that's what we, we decided to do is go and go and pursue it full time. Dropped our full time like our other jobs and, and traveled around Australia doing that which was really fun. But after a couple of years it becomes less profitable because you know you're trying to sell to the smaller market. So we branched out into video where we were able paid to go to an event rather than trying sell after the fact. So now we get paid to go to events and video their equine events.

So how does that work? When you were photographing it, were you selling to the individual horse owner or rider? And now that you videotape it, are you selling to the event coordinator?

That's correct. Yeah. So we do both. Now we sell, we get paid to go, they pay us per run and then after the event we can also sell DVDs and to the owners but which is a bit of a bonus. And then from there we started to get clients come to us because we're you know, out in the industry so much. And they would say, can you promote our business with a video, you know, promotional commercial? Because there's nobody. Like, there's lots of big. In the cities, there's lots of opportunity for people to get commercials made. But out in the country with, you know, Joe Blow with his little stallion, he who didn't know where to go to get a video done, and everything going online. So we've picked up that market. The trouble was we started to pick up bad clients and we. We were trying to get bigger and. And yeah, actually listening to Rich, I was so that person doing everything and not. I'm so not a good business manager. I think I need to go to him.

Oh, yeah, well, yeah, be careful. Rich is expensive. No, but he's great. He's great. So tell me about the numbers, because it sounds like you have a great niche focus. You're very popular and recognized for the category you serve. But when you sent me that email, it sounded like you and Andrew were struggling financially.

Ah, absolutely. Well, we got into a situation where we took on a lot of work very quickly. And. And so then obviously we needed to employ someone. So we. We brought on a girl full time. And then it got to the position where we were investing all of our money in new technology because we started to live webcast those shows. So the major events we would live webcast, which of course means new equipment. So trying to be a television company with just two of us and it became. Yeah. So obviously the first thing that went by the wayside was our taxes. We didn't. We stopped paying our taxes and we started just focusing on every cent. Went back into buying more and more and more equipment. And then we started to rack up a debt with her. She would say, oh, no, don't worry about paying me this month. And so then her debt started to rack up, and all of a sudden we got to the position of not only owing the tax department, but owing her. And that stress is just. You just feel awful all the time. And still I wasn't able to keep up with the workload. We were getting to the point, a stress point, where both of us were pretty, you know, blaming each other, and it wasn't a very good situation at all. So then we thought, oh, well, we've got the best way to fix that is to take on more work. And things really went bad. Yeah, classic. And your book was just so many aha moments. Just we stopped it and went, oh, my God, that's what we did. And yeah, so we took on another Business wasn't in. I call it in our lane. We do search events, Western events mainly, and there was another girl doing more equestrian events, like what they do in the Olympics. So we took on her business essentially thinking that would bring us more profits. And of course, it just brought us more problems. So luckily, within six months, we just got rid of her.

Wow.

And that's. Read the book. So it's. It was great timing.

What was the. What was the lowest point in your business? I mean, what was it like financially at the lowest point in your business?

I mean, for us, we were around turning over around the $200,000 a year. And the lowest point for me was when I owed. There was nothing in the bank accounts and I owed the girl that was being working for us, had been doing such a great job. I owed her $10,000. And, and the banks, you know, were the. No, caller ID was coming up on my phone. I wouldn't answer it for weeks, knowing it was the bank wanting our other personal loans that we, when we started the business, we, you know, took personal loans to. To buy the original equipment. So they've never been paid. And I just looked at the bank accounts and went, I don't even know what we're going to eat today. So that was only six months ago.

That was six months ago.

Wow.

Yeah. Oh, well, more than that now. Yeah, it was December. Andrew. Yeah, I'm just. I'm done. I'm so done. I love this business. I love what we're doing, but I can't keep doing this. And so we defined our roles. That was probably the first thing. You know, he's the go getter and I'm the finisher. Since then, we've now worked out we're both not very good business managers, so we need someone to probably manage our business. But we have a really good start to the year. Our January to June part of the year, we have a lot of events, big events booked, so we knew that the cash was going to be coming in. Then we thought, once we read profit first, we can turn this around. And within the first two weeks, I put that first check into the tax account. And then the accountant rang me and said, you need to pay 1,000. I think it was $1,500. And I looked in the account and there was three grand in there. I went, oh, my God, I can pay it.

Oh, my God. How did you. When you had the money to pay that bill?

Not as good as I felt when I drew the first wage check down to us.

Ooh, I Want to know about that one? When did you take your first profit?

Within the two weeks. Yeah, I started to build that owner pay account up and then we just brought down. It was only $200, but it just felt. Because I knew what it was. I knew what it was for and I look at all these accounts. So we worked out our percentages and we moved them a couple of times in that first six months. And yeah, we're going into our. This, this next six months is going to be a little tougher. We're waiting on a couple of bills at the moment and it's a little tough. But yeah, like I say, we've come away for our first weekend and we still haven't touched the profit account. It's locked away for the end of the year. And yeah, so we're. We're really being able to communicate with each other by looking at the book. And I think the biggest thing was stopping the blame. That was what I took away from your book.

Interesting.

So much away, but.

Well, tell me about the blame. Were you blaming Andrew and was he blaming you for the. Okay. And now where. Where do you point the finger when it comes to financials? What's. What's the problem? Or is there no problem anymore? Has it been resolved?

The problem at the moment is we. We still have a bit of a. Bit of a. With time, but. But probably the blame was coming from me. I was doing the books, so he wasn't aware of where things were at. And then I was getting cranky with him for not. For not getting in the work. So.

So has your, has your relationship improved because.

Oh yeah, we got engaged the other day.

Nice.

The first prophet, first marriage.

Oh, yes.

Yes. A victory. Good. We knew we'd get people together writing that book. Yeah. No, that's awesome. So it sounds like you have more owners pay. You mean you're paying yourselves now. You're reserving money for taxes. You have profit piling up on the side. But has the business itself changed or is everything kind of operating like it always have?

Yeah, no, we've definitely changed. We still take on the major events, but what we've done is we've started to get rid of those. What. I forget what you call them, but the bad clients. And we've got a couple of good clients that we're trying to repeat and we just were offered the other day, like a retainer for the year from this company and we both looked at each other and it was exactly the same offer. We just got rid of a bad client. Oh, no, we might work out a different. It's really good. When we were trying to repeat our good clients and build that service. So we have completely changed our. I suppose the way we bill people out, we were very. We're pretty cruisy and laid back in Australia, and we were probably the worst for it. We were very much, you know, wanting to give our clients more than what they paid for all the time, which is. Yeah. And they abused that a little bit. So. Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds like the same problem globally, everywhere. So now let me understand. So you got rid of a bad client and the new client that came on that wants to offer you a retainer, is this a great client means. Does it sound like a very profitable opportunity for you?

It does. We just need to work out our products. Exactly. And because they've all been developed ourselves, like, we're. We're. I'd like to say we're leaders in what we do because we make it up as we go along. But we seem to. We seem to like, we bring out new products of what we're going to do and then. And we're terrible at charging for them. And so what we've done is I've made Andrew sit down and work out, okay, how long does that take us? What is our price point on these products? What are our products? And then we email the clients and say, even for me, managing Facebook pages for people that are in the outback, I would do it a lot of the time for free. And I'm like, this is taking me forever. Why am I not charging for my time? So just developed that site. That's a product now that's Emma looking after their Facebook at an event or at. Or just during the year or all year. They've got three prices that they can. Yeah. So once we. Because when we had the photos, it was easy. It was a product. You hand over a photo and they pay you for it. But the video and the promotional and the time has been hard to value, I suppose.

Yeah. I'll give you a little tip you can use for your business. One thing is when you do these package deals is you come up with your initial price based upon time. Right. Say I expect to spend 20 hours cumulative, and then you multiply it by your normal hourly rate and you start that number. But here's the little tip I want to share with you, Emma, is then I want you to double that price. So say you came up and it's $1,000. I now want you to double it to 2,000. And then the Question I have for you is, when you double the price, how do you feel about it? Do you feel that's ridiculous, you could never charge that, or do you feel, I guess I could find a way to justify it. Once you do that, double the price again. So now it goes from two to 4,000. At a certain point, you're going to start feeling sick and say, oh, my God, I could never charge us this. I'd be taking such advantage of my customers. Once you get to that price point of being so ridiculous in your own opinion, your job now is to start finding all the ways you can justify a price of that ridiculous price or amount. The reason is, is if you focus on just increasing your price a little bit and trying to get a little bit more out of it, you're only going to consider your current offering. But you're not going to start thinking outside the box. When you get to a price point that's so ridiculous now you got to start thinking about stuff that's not standard to your offering or standard among your competition. You've got to come up with something that's radically new and different. Then once you figure out all these great benefits you have that justify that price, then move the price back down one tier, cut it back in half. It's still much higher than you ever had it before. But now you have all the reasons that justify it. Now it becomes a win for you. You're making more money, a win for your customer because they see all the great benefit. And the last thing I want to share, too, is inevitably the biggest argument you'll get from anyone over your price. The person that's going to be vicious about your price increase is you. Inevitably, we are the biggest critics of ourselves. So I'm happy you're facing that challenge, and I hope that's a good tool you can use to get to the higher price points and get more profitable.

Absolutely. And that's exactly where we're at at the moment, is working out that. And I'm probably Andrew's. Yeah, he's probably more on your tact and I'm probably more conservative. So it's. It'll probably, yeah, be a really good tool for me to release that. And. And, yeah, go for it, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, it really is. Because our mind becomes the enemy. I. I suspect what goes through your head when you look at the prices. You say, no, I can't do that. Well, no one's saying that. That's your head saying it. And then you're like, well, I should. And then Your mind says, no, you can't. You'll lose customers if you increase price. But there's no question you are very elite at what you do. There's very little competition. And you've. You've spent so many years developing a very special niche. No question you can dictate a higher price. You just need to convince yourself that you're allowed to do that. So. Hey, Emma. You're very welcome. I want to thank you for being on the show. I want you to thank you for your courage to come on the show because it's tough to share the battle scars you went through. I think it's pretty amazing what you've accomplished. I want you to know, Christina, myself, Chris, everyone here is wishing you and Andrew tremendous, profitable success in the future.

Thank you so much and thanks for having me.

Oh, you're very welcome. Great job. By the way, we may have folks. We definitely have folks listening in that may want to use your services. Where should they go to learn more about what you do?

Probably to wildcultproductions.com.

Okay, so that's wildcultproductions.com au check it out. And if you're in Australia, they're the ones to hire for your. Your equine photography.

I want to see some of the pictures now. I haven't seen.

Yeah, send some. We'll put them up on the. On the show page.

I'd love to.

Great. Great. Now tell Andrew to wake up and cook some breakfast for you.

He's around somewhere.

Okay, we'll see, Emma. Bye. Bye.

Did you hear the birds page of notes? Yes, the birds.

The birds in the background. That was so.

I know, I know. I was like, oh, my God. And I wish you could see this picture over the podcast that Christine showed. It just sounds like it's gorgeous.

That'll go in the post too, right?

Yes.

Oh, yeah. Christine's got a page of notes.

Page of notes, first of all, from Rich Manders when he was talking about your business becomes successful, and then you get kind of stuck in growing your business, and then you hire on new people, and the people you have go to teach new people. But just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you know how to teach. So then you gotta be coached, which is where business coaches come in handy. And I've noticed that even in singing, like, there are great performers out there who have no clue how to teach their talent. They're excellent at it, but they have no clue. So it's important to have a business coach to Help you, guide you through that. Yeah, I guess we're starting with Rich.

No, I love that. Well, no, let's continue with Rich. I got a lump in my throat. Not in a good way. When he said the most common bottleneck in any business is the owner themselves, I'm like, oh God, I'm the problem. It's hard for me to accept and admit, but when he said that, it resonated with me and I'm sure with many business owners, we are blocking our own success. What did you learn, Chris?

I like his whole attitude about that his business is based around his lifestyle and that he kind of in a way decides how he wants to live and then he kind of builds the business around that. And he said in order to do that, you have to have extreme clarity of direction and people and means. So I really like that because most people, I think, don't think you can plan your life like that. You think everyone thinks they're a slave to the business, but it's just like the profit first ideology. When you plan it that way, it works. So same with him. When you plan to have a lifestyle you want and the business, it works.

I've had actually people email me saying, can you write a new book about my time first? So. So if you allocate your time for yourself first, everything else comes in alignment. If you take your profit first, everything else comes in line.

That's so cool.

Yeah. What about Emma, Chris?

You know Emma, it's just a great story. I mean, and she's so, so authentic and, you know, very candid about the journey she's been through and, you know, it's just nice to see someone like her succeed and to get over that hump, you know, everything she's facing, I think is pretty standard but persevering and again, looking for help and getting over it. She's just, I don't know, I want to root for her. I want to, I want to cheer for her. You know what I mean?

I'm all in for her company. Love her. Fascinating story that when the financials start to decline, so do the relationships.

Yeah.

And that's what resonated with me, is her and Andrew were struggling. Finger pointing. The problem is you. The problem is you. The problem is not either of them. It was the system they're using. Profit came last, it was ignored. It never happened. Taxes came last, Ignored, never happened. And then the weight got on their shoulders and they start fighting. What blew my mind, blew my mind is she said, oh, that was six months ago.

Six months Ago.

Oh, my gosh.

And she's like, now we're paying our taxes, we have money in reserve. She had more money in her tax reserve than was even due. She's. They're back on top of a turnaround in six months.

Right.

That's what raises my question. How many businesses out there have closed shop because they just gave up when it got rough? Every business goes through these struggles, but you, if this is what you're passionate about, you gotta just, you gotta push through. Because look at how many of our guests have gone through the same thing and now they're booming.

You're goosebumping me, sister. You are goose bumping me.

And if you're out there and you feel like that, just call Mike Michalowicz and he'll Bobby Knight you on the phone.

You get your face next to the speaker.

Well, that's the whole point. That's why we're here. Call us. We can help you, Kris.

More businesses than will ever realize that are on the verge of massive success. Massive success. They have the revenue, they have the sales, they have their niche. They are serving a community. They just are missing this one final piece. It's all you need to do. Talking about one final piece. I want to thank our sponsors. Yes, corporate partners, tsheets, that's time tracking software. There's great cost savings if you manage people's time and you understand where time is going and you build accordingly, you make money. Well, tsheets is the software that facilitates that Fundera, if you need money to grow, listen, once you find your niche and you're really growing and something's working, that's what you want to invest in. Fundera is a source that will go out and seek funding for you. It's a one stop shop. They do the shopping, you do the stopping.

Right? Yeah. Sometimes you just need money to cover different things. And Fundera, it does all the work for you, Right?

And listen, you can't get on the phone with Fundera without having the phone to use. Nextiva, you gotta call them. You call with the Nextiva phone. It's a voiceover IP phone system. Very sophisticated, very professional. It puts you at the top. Elite corporate kind of phone systems. Presentation is everything. But the cost is not that high at all. It's very, very reasonable.

Right. And it's professional. We tried to call Ron, remember, a few episodes ago?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, what did we do? Oh, yeah, that's right. We got his voicemail there.

But we heard the nice people talking.

Yeah. All right, bro. We got A rock and roll here.

Yes. Thanks again for another awesome episode. By the way, if you want to find out more about me, Fractal recording dot com. I'm totally loving producing podcasts for business authors and. And some others.

Yeah. So listen, if you want to have a podcast, it's moving beyond the point of want now. This is a new form of media. This is here to stay. And the people that join the podcasting community now are the ones that are going to take off. Give Chris a call. There's no question. And if you want to learn more about profit first professionals. Yes, I go to our website. Yeah, go to our website. You can check out Christina's on the website if you want to see what she looks like and what we're doing here. You want to see me go there? Go to the company page. You'll see us all list up there. You'll learn about our bios, our personal interest. And you can find an accountant or bookkeeper that will help you become more profitable. Just like Emma's business. You wanted to do it, brother. Just like Zema's business. Accountants and bookkeepers not only help you manage your numbers, but help you drive profitability in your business. Nothing better.

That's just the best idea since sliced bread, Mike. Seriously.

Oh, great.

Odin's raven.

That's right. All right, let's get out of here, man. Time to crack the beers and margaritas.

There you go. Thanks for listening. Again, our website, profit first, podcast dot com. We got all other episodes. Comment on the posts, itunes and Stitcher. And email Mike Michalowicz or call him on the phone. He's a lovely human being.

Lovely lad. Get your pets spayed and neutered.

Peace.

Peace out.

It.

Good night.