Episode 5: Profit and Social Media Strategies with Cyndi Thomason and Brent Robinson

From the studios of Fractal Recording, this is the Profit First Podcast, episode five. Wow, man, you're rocking out.

You like that solo?

You're like mouth guitaring or something.

Yeah, it's like a gazoo without the gazoo.

Like Kirk Hammett playing with his teeth. Hey, welcome, everyone. The Profit first podcast. This is episode five, and we're having so much fun here. I'm Chris Kern. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz. I'm the author of Profit First. And you know what we do on this show, Chris? We talk about profit. The alpha and omega of a business. It's all about the numbers, brother.

That's right. Profit. It's not about the revenue. It's about the profit. It's not about the expenses either. It's about the profit.

It's the bottom line. Right. I'll tell you, I'd rather have a company that does 200,000 and. And I'm taking home 199 than a company that does 10 million and I'm taking home 50,000.

Right.

Because as the business gets bigger, the stress gets bigger, you know, the goal is the bottom line. And, you know, what we do on this show, which you do know, is we talk about profit. We have a lot of fun.

We have a lot of fun. And we're available as a podcast on itunes and stitcher and of course, the website profitfirstpodcast.com. we've had four previous guests.

Michael Port, Dori Clark, Barry Moltz, John Bates. Today we have Cindy Thomason, Brent Robinson. They're gonna rock your world. Because we're gonna be talking from an industrial, Industrial and an industry perspective.

Right.

But before we do that, I want to share our sponsors.

Yes, please do.

Nextiva has stepped up again. Nextiva, they heard our first four episodes. They said, we're out.

You're done.

And we're done. And I said, you know, the contract says you're in for eight. Now here's the thing. The contract said they're in for four.

He said, please give us another.

So they did. So nextiva stepped up again. They're our primary sponsor. And what that means is they paid a little bit more money to share a little bit more about them. You know what they do?

Yes. What they do? Voice. It's a voiceover IP phone system.

Yes. A very sophisticated one. And that's the big deal.

Like a real phone system.

Yeah. Perfect for a business if you have 10 employees or less. Nextiva is the company to use. I've personally been using them for four years now. Love their phone system. It does all the VoIP stuff, but at a very professional, professional level. And it's way more affordable than the traditional phone systems. Of course, it's the best. But there's two new sponsors that stepped on.

Wow. We need, like, applause or something.

Yeah. So there it is, two people. TSheets has come on board just recently. TSheets has a time tracking software. So if you have employees that you need to track their time, you. You can go online with tsheets, track their time. It's awesome because it doesn't just track people's times, it can track job costing. All these different things you need to be profitable. And the third sponsor, Fundera.

Whoa.

Yeah, it's fun. F U N D E R A It's like, I dare you to have Fundera. But what Fundera does in the real world is funding. And if you need money for your business, say you need to get a loan or something to grow your business. Go to fundera.com they outsource your request to all the funding sources that are out there. So you don't have to call, like 20 banks in a row, like. Or, I'm sorry, 300 banks, like Disney did. If Disney really wanted to have a successful start, he could have just gone to fundera.com back in the 1920s.

Duh.

Or whatever. Or 1950s.

Yeah. 20s, I think. Was it a long time back?

He did before World War I and 2. Or think, wow.

I don't know.

Some of the rides do seem like they're from 1920. Have you been on Space Mountain? It's like, come on.

Yeah.

This roller coaster is so 1920s.

So you've been good, man. What have you been up to?

I've been good. Personal situation. I got this red blotch. I don't know if you can see that.

Actually. I didn't notice.

Oh, thank God. Yeah.

I don't notice these things.

And I started filming a TV pilot, which I'll tell you, on a different episode because we don't have time to dig in.

Right.

This blotch starts coming to my face. Like the day I'm about to start filming, I'm on set for five consecutive days. Blotched up.

Oh, I don't mean to laugh at you, bro, but did they use the makeup and cover it up there?

There's a little bit of makeup covering, which made it, like, more blotchy. Oh, now. But whatever. So what's up? What you've been up to.

Yeah. Well, we went visit some friends for a meditation, a little bit of a meditation gathering near Corning, New York. And we went to the Corning Museum of Glass. Unbelievable.

Yeah, they have some. That's a nice glass they have.

Oh, it's crazy. They make everything. They make all different kinds of glass. We got to see them make some of the glass, and they use it for telescopes and satellites, and it's.

It's all done by hand. That's the amazing. It's all glass blowers from the 1920s at Corning's factory. That's how they keep the cost so low.

Amazing fiber optics. Amazing stuff.

Yeah.

We take for granted so much in our lives, it's stupid.

Yeah, yeah. No, cool.

Yeah, it was good.

All right, can we get to our guests? Because I'm fired up.

Let's do. Oh, wait, do we need to put our guests on hold for a couple seconds?

Yes, put them on mute for only 10 seconds.

Hold on.

Okay, hold on. They can't hear us now. La la, la.

All right. Yeah, we're good.

Okay, so here's the deal, dude.

Yeah.

The word today is supercalifragious expialidocious. You have to use it.

I have. Okay.

This was submitted by one of our listeners, Heidi. I'm sorry, I don't remember her name. She said, that's the word I want Chris to use.

She said, wow.

And you got to throw it in there. Now, here's the key. You can't say the word. You got to sneak it in at some inappropriate time. That's the key word. But they can't detect it, our guests.

So just for the listeners, we come up with a word and we try to use it in the interview, but our guests don't know it.

Yeah, it's so crazy.

It's pretty funny.

Okay.

All right, so should I bring him back in?

Yes, please. Okay. So do you know who's with us today?

I do.

Okay, Here. I have two guests today. First of all, Cindy Thomason. Cindy Thomason is a professional bookkeeper. She outsources her services to folks throughout Arkansas. Actually, throughout the country. But Arkansas is where she is. She's in the northwest. She's a profit first professional. That means she's certified in the profit first method. And. And she's awesome. And I called Cindy. I said, hey, we'd love to have you on the show because we want to learn some insights that she could share about growing profit in the business because she works with so many. She's like, I'll bring on My favorite client. So I was like, oh, you're having me as a guest. Like, which kind of. She goes, no, no, no, not you. No. She wanted to bring on Brent Robinson. And Brent's been kind enough to join us. He is the founder of modthink. It is a social media strategy firm. So today's episode, we're going to talk about driving profit in social media. If you have a social media firm, this guy knows how to do it. Cindy is the one doing the numbers for him. And if you don't have one of those firms, you're going to clean Insights anyway.

Yeah, of course.

Let's say hello.

So welcome, Cindy and Brent.

Hello.

Yes. I knew they were going to say hello at the same time.

Yeah, we should have done that.

That's okay. Cindy, great to have you.

Great, thanks. I'm thrilled to be here.

Where are you calling in from today, Cindy? A parking lot. By instance, a parking garage.

It's great.

Ye. Yeah. That's so funny. You're stuck in a parking garage when you called us. That's bizarre. But great. Were you shopping? Was it shopping or was it.

No, I was at a meeting and they give me this little validation ticket to get out, but their machines won't read it. And the parking attendant is at lunch.

Okay. So I think if this is a prospective client for you. Run, run.

Exactly.

And Brent, where are you going? How you doing today, Brent?

I am doing well.

Good. Oh, the connection's great.

Yes.

I am not in the car with her. I am not. I'm in my office.

So why don't we get started here, Brent, we want to learn a little about your business. Tell us exactly what you do, who you do it for, and how long you've been in business. That's your history and background. So folks can cue in on that.

Okay, so I've been doing social media strategies for small businesses for two and a half years now. The little secret about Northwest Arkansas, besides being the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, is we have this other big company here called Walmart. And Walmart has this entire infrastructure around it, which is all of the vendors who are trying to sell products there. All the companies are trying to service Walmart. There are all kinds of people like myself that help those companies do what they do for Walmart.

Are you basically the second one down the waterfall? Walmart to your clients and your clients, the business goes to you.

Well, that's one segment of our business that we're working on, but it's definitely where I cut my teeth working with a number of agencies up there. The challenge that I experienced was the big brands, you know, they'll hire an agency and outsource their social media to the agency to do it. As soon as the budget's done, as soon as the project's over, this two way medium that has just been created is suddenly turned off. And unless there's somebody there at the brand, at the organization that knows how to use, can actually be a negative for any brand or any company. So we developed modthink to make sure that companies know how to, to do their social media themselves.

So are you saying, so Walmart says we're going to stop buying whatever service from whoever, the budget's cut and now the social media aspect of that that was associated with that budget just stops.

Well, it may be that it was cut or it may just be the end of the campaign, but if you've outsourced it to an agency, you know, it's different than placing an ad in a magazine, right? The magazine just sits there. But social media channel, like a Facebook page, people are coming in and coming out and talking and if you're not there to respond to them, you potentially have a liability on your hands as opposed to an asset. So it may be that the budget ended for whatever reason, but there's got to be some folks there that know how to manage the brand and not, you know, the biggest companies will have a social media team and, or person involved, but anybody who's in that, you know, second or third tier of vendors to Walmart or small businesses, small and medium sized businesses anywhere, don't necessarily have the resources to hire somebody to do that full time. That's where we come in.

So are you just, so I'm absolutely clear here, Brent, are you focusing on the transition from an ending of a social media campaign, the completion of a social media campaign, but giving it continuity by educating people in house? Or are you also just the social media guy, like you'll do the entire campaign for them?

You know, what if we can be brought in on the front end, that's the best possible scenario. And we look at the long term relationship of the client that they're trying to have with their customers. And so we're trying to make sure that they've got all of the social media pieces connected to the website, connected to the CRM system on the back end. So there's a technology component to it. But more importantly it's how are you telling your story, how are you humanizing your brand and connecting with people? Well, after a campaign that raises High awareness is over. How do you drag that tail out as long as you can and get as much from it as you can? So that's what we're doing is we come in and we say, okay, the agency's going to get all kinds of eyeballs that are going to come and look at your product, at your website, at your Facebook page. But when they're gone, how do we keep those people around? What stories do we tell to make sure that they know they want to buy your product again and want to be a part of it? How do we engage that relationship so that they become emotionally attached to what you're doing and it's not just on product attributes.

Got it, got it.

And there's usually lead gen involved in this too, right? That's what a lot of the social is used for, lead generation. Is that true?

Absolutely. It can be anything from a business to consumer. I'm trying to get somebody to walk into my store and buy something or walk in or click into my E commerce and buy something. Or it may be I'm trying to make sure when I go to that B2B situation and I'm at a conference and I meet some people, you know, I come back to LinkedIn and I continue my relationship well beyond the, you know, face to face relationship that we just.

So let's get to the nitty gritty. The money side for your business, Brent, how do you just tell us how you generate revenue from this? Is it a project basis? Is it per success? How do you do it?

So we have found there's all of the above.

I like the way you roll, sir.

We're a small business, so we try to accommodate our clients based on what they've got. And I usually say, okay, there's a spectrum of you're going to do this yourself and you're going to outsource it to an agency. And we've got to find where on that sliding scale between your skill set, your resources and your budget that we can help you. Do you need us there full time or do you need us just to come in once in a while and check how you're doing now for the.

Type of work you do. Where's the money made? Is there certain types of projects that are more profitable for you than others?

Well, definitely, you know, there's campaigns that we do that can be profitable. Anytime we're doing something in the political field usually has a good upswing for us. But if I do a good project with somebody and the way that we approach our customer service We've developed a relationship there that they say, listen, you're a part of our team, we want you to be around. So they retain us after that. So we're going into our third year now. And the neat thing about it is, you know, where profit first is really starting to make sense is, you know, when Cindy's looking at our projections for 2015, you know, it's neat that we have a combination of projects, you know, campaign projects that are short term and long term retainer type projects. And.

And what about pricing? So I believe I could be totally misguided here. There's a lot of social media folks out there. It seems like everyone and their mother, including my mother, does social media. And how do you compete? How do you break out of the price competition game? Like, you know, why aren't you cheaper than the other guy? How do you stay. Stay competitive yet not compete on price?

So that's a great question. And the thing is.

Thank you. Chris wrote that question down. I just asked it, but it was Chris's question. All right, I'm sorry.

The way that we're able to distinguish ourselves, I think, is we look at this as social media. When you take media out of it, it's social, it's about relationships, it's about people connecting with people. And when it's all said and done, that's what the world's all about. And we approach our clients the same way and that's how we set ourselves apart. I have got certain clients that I imagine my competition would look at and would say they're difficult to work with. And I'm thinking, no, they're not. They're just regular people and they have, you know, their schedule moves around because they do this or they do that and we try to accommodate that. And that's what keeps us. They keep asking us back.

Almost like you're a specialist in people that are needy. I didn't mean that to be funny, but actually it sounds funny, but it sounds like you've built expertise around kind of high demand type people.

Sort of. I guess I think the way I look at it is everybody needs a little bit of business therapy. And, you know, I've done enough startups and stuff now that, you know, I started out as an architect and went into technology and did the dot com thing out on the west coast and then came back here and have, you know, had an ice cream shop. So, you know, I've done a bunch of fun, different things that I can draw from. And, you know, and my team has similar types of broad experiences. But when it's, you know, we can channel that on one of our small to medium sized businesses. And I'm talking about, you know, it could be a mom and pop shop to 100 people. Not huge, but we can sit down and work with those teams. We can simply just sit down and spend a little extra time with them and they feel like they are being treated phenomenally. And I think other folks try to rush through that whole relationship building part of stuff, but because it's such an ingrained part of what we do, it's really easy to just make it a part of our everyday business.

So, Cindy, I have a question for you. Do you. Something to say, Chris?

Well, I. Well, I just wanted to ask you, Brent, in your own business, getting, you know, getting more clients to be more profitable in your own business, is it. Do you use social, your own social media marketing to do that? And how, you know, how is it? It's the same thing you do for yourself as you do for your clients. Is that how you're profitable?

Absolutely. We eat our own dog food. Yes, we do.

I thought you were gonna say I eat my own ice cream. Well, you're an ice cream guy.

Yes.

By the way, and this is a total aside, what is the most popular ice cream? Because everyone says it's vanilla. Is that really true?

Actually, it depends on which part of the country you're in.

Well, Arkansas. What's the most popular ice cream in Arkansas?

It's going to be pistachio.

Pistachio. Pistachio. I'm rooting for pistachio or butter pecan, but. Oh, butter pecan, really? Yeah. Butter pecan's freaking awesome, dude.

You ever have it and it's like the least profitable because the pecans are so expensive.

Oh.

Oh. Well then now let's go right in the profit. How? If your most popular product is your least profitable. I'm sorry, your most popular is least profitable. How does that work? How do you make money?

Then quit offering it?

Really?

But wouldn't people stop coming to your store if you didn't have your buttered pecan?

Oh, man, this is such a crazy question. Yeah. You will lose customers as a result of it. And then you try to say, hey, listen, chunky monkey is even better. So.

Okay, so you try to redirect them. Yeah, it's kind of a crazy question.

Yeah, it's. It's tough.

Cindy, talking about crazy questions, what am I thinking right now? Now, Cindy, and you're right. You. You go in, you went into Brent's Business to help him increases profits or managing the books. What do you do when you walk into a business like Brent to establish great business and make it an extraordinary profitable business?

Well, for Brent, he was just starting, so I had the opportunity to work with him and create the books as they were just getting set up. A lot of it was just setting things up so that we could get the information that we needed out of the system and of course track things for the tax accountants, et cetera. But as I work with them over time, I'm always looking at where we can be more efficient and optimize our resources on the expense side of things and what are they doing to bring revenue in the door and looking at that combination of things to ensure that profits what we're going to end up with.

I mean, do you find that certain things that Brent's doing is resulting in better bottom line results than other things?

I think they are in that formative stage where we're starting to set up some processes and systems and that those are going to drive better information coming out of the accounting system to be able to make, to be able to answer that question. I don't think we're completely there yet, but I think the systems that they're creating and the, the accounting system that we're using to track is when we get a little bit more time under our belt, we'll have some, some good answers.

Which accounting system do you recommend or use?

I use QuickBooks online with all my clients.

Could you beep over that, Chris? I think, I think they're not sponsored yet, so we will make them a sponsor so we don't have to beep over it. But so. So Brent, ever since Cindy has been in working with your books, how has that served you? Are you finding it to be helpful? Is it too much numbers? Do you even care about the books? And you're just looking at the bank accounts. How's it helped or not?

A quick background on me is I started out, my training was as an architect and actually worked in the architectural field for a while and then realized I didn't have some of the business things that I needed when I was out doing technology in San Francisco. So I went back to school and got an mba. So that's the combination of things that I've kind of included there even though I got an mba. Hey, I got into architecture in the first place because I didn't like math and needed engineers to do that for me. And so the same kind of thing here. I understand the accounting and I understand the finances. But it is not my favorite thing. When I introduce Cindy to people, when we're in meetings, I introduce her as our virtual cfo because that's the service that she's actually providing. It's gone so far beyond just looking at our books and getting us set up. So the technology works, right? Actually getting very proactive about. Okay, hey, listen, you can't just keep dispersing everything to everybody all at once. We need to be planning for the highs and lows and the seasonality and some other things. And so it's been. It's been. She's brought wisdom to what we've been doing.

Well, now that you have some time under your belt with the business, you've seen the highs and lows, the seasonality, you've brought in an expert. If you were starting over from scratch, Brent, in this exact same business, what steps would you take right away to make it more profitable?

Oh, gosh, what a question that was.

That was also Chris's, by the way. All the good ones. All the good ones are used is a little super expeditious. Califragis, whatever, however that word goes.

Supercalifragilexpialidocide.

I was looking for. It is a little bit like that. So you're starting over again. What would you say to your younger self two and a half years ago?

Let's see, what would I say to myself? Put off getting an office as long as you possibly can.

So that's a great tip. Ready? Do you not even need that? Do customers even care about that? Your customers or clients?

You know, we did manage to do that for a long time, and we tried, and then we backed out, and now we are in our office. It's a requirement now because the team's, you know, four people and two interns. And so we have to have places to meet and places to meet our clients. But the first time we did it, we weren't ready. And suddenly our mindset changed when we were having to meet our expenses as opposed to meeting the goals of our clients. And it just changes your brain when you're sitting down with a client and instead of trying to get the best for them, you're thinking about making sure you get that paycheck and that mentality, and it's not good.

So ditch the office. What else would have you done?

What else would I do?

You wouldn't do this podcast?

Try and do this podcast sooner, maybe.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah. Very nicely done. Make sure you expedite this one. Do this one quick, Chris. So, okay.

You know, I think in our early stages, we didn't pay attention to customer service as much as we should have.

Interesting.

And I think learned a few difficult lessons there with a few of our early clients. And they're still friends, but they're not still clients. And so there's a reason for that, and I think we've been able to learn from that quite a bit.

Well, now I want to hear the secret to this, because this sounds like a critical thought. What didn't you do and what are you doing now with that customer service aspect?

You know, I think part of what was happening in the early stages, because we were under. Maybe this answers the question better, is, you know, we were still trying to define what our products and our services were, and we. And we knew a lot about what we were, what we were trying to accomplish, but we had to work out a lot of things. And with small businesses, you get in there and suddenly we were trying to solve every problem. And we've gotten really good now about going, you know what? We just bumped up against one of the guardrails we set for ourselves. You're going to need to solve that problem yourself. That's not granted. We've had those experiences, and we could probably help you with it, or we can introduce you to somebody. Before, we couldn't say no. So I think we've learned to say no properly.

Gotcha. Hey, any favorite quotes you have, Brent, or any kind of things you've heard in the past that you rely on?

Think big, start small, scale fast.

Wow, that's a good one.

Wow. I'm gonna write that down.

Yeah, I like that one a lot. Cindy, what about you? Any final thoughts you can share or insights that you've learned as you've been helping Brent and his business that you can share with our listeners about profitability?

Well, I really enjoyed getting to hear Dr. Edward Stimming speak.

Speak.

The guru of quality. And he always said, by what method? You know, it's one thing to set goals and create budgets, but the methodology for how you're going to get there is what's going to drive your ability to meet those goals. So I really always hear in my head when somebody says, we're going to raise our profit 10%, I'm like, by what method?

Oh, I like it.

It's got to be a method.

Someone's a process person, you know? Isn't Edward Stemming. Isn't he the founder of Lean Manufacturing?

No, that was after him. He was the guy that went into Japan after World War.

Didn'T he work for Toyota? Didn't he go to Japan with Toyota? I thought he brought lean manufacturing to Toyota, maybe not Toyota.

I think I know. I don't think so.

I felt so smart for a second. I feel like a fool.

Hey, I had. I had one question.

Yeah, one.

Are we ready for one more? I just have one more. And it's. It's really for you, Cindy. You know, we're talking about being clear on. On revenue and profit and all this stuff. As a bookkeeper, slash virtual CFO, do you literally have 100% clarity on all the numbers and all the flow of money, or are you, like, 90% sure of where everything's going and coming from? I mean, can you. Are you ever really 100% clear?

No, because I'm dealing with people that, you know, are out in the field making decisions, and they're going. They're giving me their best information. But it may not. That client, you know, may not pay at the end of the month like they were expecting to. So it's a fluid thing. And we, you know, we. Look, I work with my clients every week to look at cash flow plans for the week. And that's, you know, that's part of the fun of business is that goes up and down and changes. So I would never want it to just be 100% sure.

Right, right.

Yeah. And that sounds good. I mean, it's diminishing returns. You can get so accurate that you get within the penny, but who cares? You know, you're wasting time. Okay, the last question. We always wrap on. And Brent, we're going to wrap up with you. How important is profit to your business?

Well, profit's significant. I mean, it's absolutely important. You know, one of the things that, as I've been learning about profit first from Cindy and what she's been doing for us, you know, we've made it very much a part of being transparent with our team about that so that they understand, you know, raises don't happen unless we take care of these things. And so, you know, my team now starts to question those things. Do we. Do we really need to have a team lunch right now? Do we need to spend this extra money on this particular thing here? So I think those things are connected, and it's been critically important, I think, to how we motivate and how we communicate what we're doing.

I love hearing.

That's awesome.

I love hearing that you're talking to your employees and your colleagues and saying. And they're saying, let's skip the lunch. Today, boss, because we want to save money. Hey, Brent, people listening in right now definitely want to find out more about you. Where can they get information about your business and yourself?

I'd love for you to come to our website. It's Modthink. Find us on Facebook.

Find us on LinkedIn or any social media outlet.

Yeah, I hope. Do a search for modthink and I think you'll find us.

Great. Thanks, Brent. Thank you, Brent and Cindy. Cindy, Cindy. Cindy. Someone needs a lot of people listening in right now. Need an awesome bookkeeper to get their finances in place. Where do they find out more about you?

I'm on the web also@bookskeep.com and with Brent's help, you can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook as well if you search. Search for bookskeep.com.

Oh, sounds like a little exchange. Sounds a little. Bartering's gone.

Bran helped her. I get it.

We help each other.

Yeah. Good. That's how the. How things roll. Well, enjoy the fine weather in Arkansas this winter and in that parking garage. In the parking garage right here. And we'll continue to freeze up here in New Jersey. It's great talking with you both.

Thank you, guys.

Great. Thank you so much.

We'll see you.

That's awesome. Thank you.

Chris, talk to me, bro. What did you learn from. I mean, I got. I got a page full of notes here. Can you see that?

Yes.

What did you learn?

I. You know, it's. I thought the best question you asked, which I think you attributed it to me, which wasn't true, but was if you had. If you had to start, what would you tell yourself? You start over when you were starting, what would you do? And he said, put off getting an office. He said, pay more attention to customer service. And he also mentioned the beginning. They were still kind of defining their products and services, and that was. So they were a little bit fluid that way.

Yeah. And so there's a big lesson there. When people start a business, there's fixed expenses. What I mean by fixed. There's no such thing as a permanently fixed expense. But an office is a recurring liability responsibility. We step into that way too early. None of your clients, none of his clients give it two hoots where his office is. They care about their social media. You can run out of a library at first, but paying 500, 5,000, whatever the number is for office space, can sink a business. Money, especially in the beginning stage, when there's no money coming in, is absolutely critical. So I loved hearing that Cindy said a couple things I Liked, first of all, she said, just start doing the books. He outsourced it to her, but just by getting in the routine of looking at numbers, there's stuff to be found. And she said, we're optimizing resources. We're going through numbers and we're optimizing resources. My biggest takeaway, butter pecan is the number one hit in Arkansas.

In Arkansas. Who knew? I was, I was going to totally guess mint chocolate chip, but that would have been. That's totally wrong. Not even close.

Not even close. I thought it's pistachio because that's my personal favorite. But no, it's butter pecan. But isn't that funny? He goes, but they don't like butterbrook. I mean, he doesn't like selling because it's so expensive.

Right. So I just, I know some. A guy who just, he kind of bought. Well, I think he bought a pecan farm in Texas.

Did he?

So that, that's an option. Buy your own farm of pecans, make your own ice cream.

Yeah. But he said he doesn't make money at it. So I said, what's your tip? And he says, just drop it. I don't know if I agree with that one. If your customers are coming for that, maybe you can say, buy butter pecan and you'll get two mint chocolates at half price or something to start persuading people to change. But if you just remove it, they're going to go looking for that pecan farm.

I know. Or another ice cream shop. But that's a tough one because what if, I mean, obviously in an ice cream shop, they're buying all kinds of different ice cream. But what if people. That's all they were buying and your profit margin wasn't enough and you can't pay your rent.

I know, I know, it's hard. Fascinating interview. I think we learned a lot here. Where can people find out more about you, Chris?

Fractal recording.com which will be in the. There's probably a link in the show notes as well.

Fractal recording.com because I control the show notes. Yes, there will be. And if you want to find out more about me, yes. Profit first professionals. That's where Cindy came from. We are looking for bookkeepers and accountants to become certified in profit first. But we're only looking for the best of the best. So Cindy had to go through a vetting process. We found her, we interviewed her customers and we said, you know what, Cindy, we want you on board. So profit first professionals dot com.

That's it. This was great. Right? And by the way, I didn't have to say the super.

Because you weren't. Dude, I knew you forgot it.

No, no, I remember. Oh, now I feel like a total. I was waiting. I was trying to keep the audience in limbo.

In limbo, Right? Just to stay on.

No, but then. But hey, our guest said it.

Dude.

Dude, That's a victory.

That's a first.

We. We should give a prize for that.

Yeah, he gets a prize.

Holy cow.

You know, his prize is nothing. Nothing. And he likes it. No, we'll send him a scoop of butter pecan.

Oh, my God.

Brent, thank you. If you're still listening in. And Cindy, we love you guys.

Right? This has been awesome. Thanks for listening, everyone.

Dude, send us your thoughts, what you want for a name. A word for us to drop. Yes, we want it.

We need that.

Keep sending them Super Califragists.

And also keep commenting on the blog we've received. Received a couple awesome comments.

Next episode, we're gonna drop that comment.

Listen. Oh, my God. So thanks, everybody, for listening again. Profit first, podcast dot com. And we'll see you next time.

Later.