Episode 53: Branding and Profitability with Brian Scudamore

Rolling with the homies. You are listening to the Profit first podcast.

This is the big one you've been waiting for. Episode 53.

Oh, 53.

Bam.

Like Harry Carson from the New York Giants.

Dude, he was an animal on the field. Absolute animal. Wow.

This is awesome. So good to be back with the Profit first podcast. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first. And you are listening to the first podcast where you get the alpha and omega on profitability. And today's guest is going to blow you away. I'll tell you in a minute about that.

Right? Yeah. A lot of businesses are open, and they're all focused on revenue and how much are we bringing in? And that's not the name of the game, is it, Mike Mallowitz?

It's not. It's not about how big are you? How big is it? Syndrome, but it's about.

Hey, now, it's about the.

Yeah, exactly. No, it's about the size of the bottom line. But there's some mega companies out there, and that's who we have today. The founder of. I won't tell you just yet. Of a large company, a name you'll definitely recognize, who has a remarkable story and is wildly profitable.

Right. Yeah. So quick, shout out to our corporate partners. Real quick, Mike.

Yeah.

Christine. Oh, wait, Christine is here too.

She's back. I'm back. Yeah. So Christine is here. Christine, why don't you tell us who are our four corporate partners?

Our four corporate partners. Nextiva, TSheets, Fundera and Fundbox.

Yeah, Fundbox and Fundera are two separate companies. They all have interesting stories, and we'll share that at the end of the episode. Definitely something you don't want to miss. Definitely companies you want to get involved with. We actually work with all of them now, so bam. More than just sponsors. I mean, we actually work with them.

Fantastic.

And by the way, I forgot to mention, our podcast is available on itunes and Stitcher and Tunein, and of course, the website profitfirstpodcast.com where you can hear all the of the 52 episodes of craziness that have gone gone by. See, we like to have fun, but we also like to bring. Bring value.

Right.

I mean, I don't succeed at that, but.

No, we totally do. Hey, before we bring our guest in, Chris, what you been up to, bro?

Oh, man. You know, my business is I'm getting back on the horse since I moved across the country, like, everything, I just kind of kept the status quo. But now I'm looking to start really marketing and get on the phone and really start to explore my niche, which I picked, which is business authors, right? I produce podcast shows for business authors to grow their platform and sell more books and to basically rule the world. Because that's what you want to do, right, Mike?

Oh, my God. Ruling the world is a good thing. And actually serving the world, right? I mean, it's the term that we should use. But that is how you rule the world is by serving the world.

Nice.

So, dude, profit first. Global Con 2015 just went down, right? Craziness, craziness. Get your butt on Facebook. Just type in Global Con 2015. Profit first. Mike McCallow. It's Ron Saharian. Christina Bull. We're typing all those words. You'll maybe find us in the correct order.

Twitter. And on Twitter as well. Profit first pros.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or in the hashtag, profit first. There's so many pictures up there. We just got a sizzle reel in that we're refining down. It was an awesome event. 70 people. When our goal literally was 35.

Yeah.

We said, we hope we can get 35 folks. 70 people showed. How often does that happen? Event was amazing.

And it was all about profit first professionals. These accountants and bookkeepers who actually learn how to consult their clients on how to be more profitable.

How to be more profitable, right? So it was all accountants and bookkeepers. It was so successful that next year, I think it's pretty much without question, we're going to open it to entrepreneurs too. We're going to do simply the first couple days, accountants and bookkeepers. And then the final extravaganza will be with all entrepreneurs. And we're just going to focus on all these different techniques to drive profitability. But, dude, we can talk about that later. Today we got a very, very, very special guest. But let me tell you a little backstory. Fifteen, sixteen years ago, I go up to this event in Boston. It's part facilitated by mit. They have this facility where they have entrepreneurs come together. Inc magazine was involved. EO entrepreneurs organization. 80 to 90 entrepreneurs go up there with all massive potential. That's the idea you had to qualify to fill an application. I sit down, sitting to my left, there's this guy, really friendly, approachable, humble. Clearly not me. And I look at him and I go, so what do you do? And he goes, well, we haul junk. I'm like. And in my head, I'm like, oh, my God. Like, talk about horrible business to be.

In Got stuck next to this guy.

Yeah. And he goes, what do you do? I was like, well, I'm a computer integrator. I set up computer networks. I'm on the cutting edge of technology. I don't know why I felt I had to do a Captain Kurt there, but William Shatner, above the cutting edge of technology, sir. And fast forward, this guy sitting next to me grows a $200 million plus global presence with his company called 1-800-GOT Junk, his name. And our guest for today with no further ado is Mr. Brian Scudamore. Brian, welcome to the show, man.

Hey Mike, thanks for having me and love being in the same birthing the Giants class with you at mit. Because if I ever fall asleep in class and had a late night the night before, your energy wakes me up. So thanks.

I think he just called me a loudmouth.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, Brian usually sits toward the back, always dressed with a cool ass T shirt, just taking copious notes. And then Brian, that one year you stood up and said, you know, I, I made this thing called the painted picture. And the class begged you to go in front of all 100 or so of us and tell us what this was. What is the painted picture?

Painted picture is my vision for myself as to what the compelling future of 1, 800, got junk or any of our companies would look like. Feel like how we act at a point in the future. So it came from 1997 or 1998. I was on my parents dock at their summer cottage and I was in a bit of a doom loop wondering whether or not I could actually build this business. It was a million in revenue. It wasn't big enough. I was surrounded by other entrepreneurs who were having faster growth businesses. And I sat on the dock, took out a sheet of paper and said, okay, imagine pure possibility. Let's figure out how, not how. Let's figure out what the picture could look like in five years, 2003. And it detailed everything from being on the Oprah Winfrey show to being in 30 cities because there were 30 cities bigger than Vancouver where we started and we would be the FedEx of junk removal. And that painted picture became a document that I shared with everybody in the company. It got some people out because they didn't see what I saw. And it got others jazzed about where we were going. And we hit it. We hit top 30 metros. And it paved the road for us to continue to grow to be that over $200 million business with 1-800-got junk.

Well, going back to 1997, you have a million dollar company, does that mean you're personally hauling junk? What's a million dollar company feel like at that time?

Took me eight years to get to a million in revenue. Started in 1989. A million in revenue meant that I was only going out on the trucks when it was a real tough day that we had a bunch of people call in sick and there was nobody else. It meant that I was still answering the phones from time to time, taking some customer calls. But really I was in this mode of what I call E. My thing, my business. The book the E Myth by Michael Gerber, where you work on your business, not in it. I tried not to be in my business whenever possible. I tried to focus on creating the systems. And that was the year that I chose franchising as my future model of growth. 1997. And two years later, by 1999, I was ready to franchise. I had my processes systematized, documented. I was ready to grow and create what had been a profitable business for myself. As 1-800-got- junk, I had a model that I was now going to put out to the world, so to speak, and find other entrepreneurs, I call them people who are finding their passion at entry point, joining our business to help us build something in their market.

Before you had a company named 1-800-GOT-JUNK, weren't you the Rubbish Boys or something like that? Seriously?

We were, we were the Rubbish Boys. It was just me. It was really Rubbish Boy, but I wanted to be something bigger. So I called it the Rubbish Boys. And I had a lot of people think we were a grunge band. And I thought, you know, I got to rebrand this. If this is going to grow throughout the United States and now into Canada, the United States and Australia, sold out in every major market. It was to be a brand that sounded bigger. That was a 1, 800 number. I was inspired by 1, 800, flowers and what they had built. Having a toll free number where our name and our phone number were the same has proven to be successful for us. You see a truck driving 1-800- got junk. Yeah.

Well, tell me, is it a measurable impact? I mean, when you made the name change, can you measure or do you have a sense that name change alone, the effect it had on your business.

It actually had a negative impact in Vancouver, our primary market. When we went from the rubbish boys to 1-800-got junk, I changed just the name, but I had the colors, the look and feel, the logo. Everything was the same. I had people approach me, family and Friends that said, oh, there's this competitor out there, he's ripping you off. He looks just like you. It was confusing for about a year, year and a half, and then things started rise quite quickly. But I think it was when we went out to the media, the press, when we started expanding into other cities and we really focused on one name, one phone number rather than the rubbish boy. 738Junk1,800, got junk became very powerful and started to build some great momentum. No matter what city someone was in, if we had a truck there, it started building that one unique brand.

So would you have a suggestion for our listeners? They're looking to grow their businesses. If they are considering a name change, when's the right time to do it? How do you pick a name change and time it?

Yeah, building a brand. People buy who you are more than what you do. What does your brand stand for? What are you about? And coming up with the right brand, the look, the feel, the color is incredibly important. Our second business, wow One Day Painting. When we came up with we'd acquired this business, the look was very collegiate. It looked like a student painting company. We wanted to be more professional. And we changed the wow One Day brand in terms of look and feel to something that had a style to it and that homeowners would really resonate with. I think the sooner you change your brand, the better if you're going to make a change. If you don't, they don't have the right brand. And having the right brand is everything you look at Airbnb. Airbnb didn't mean much to people in the very beginning, but they've really built a culture, a look, a feel of who they are. And it seems like who doesn't know Airbnb now they're the largest hotel chain in the world by number of rooms that they are renting out. And that's all because they think they've chosen the right brand, the right people and built out a great culture and along with their model, you know, and.

I think one fascinating thing that you just said is how they position themselves. That's what they're saying. They go, we are the biggest hotel chain in the world. Well, they're not a hotel chain. They're a sharing economy. They're using other people's venues. But the way they positioned it, and I'm not saying it's not legitimate how they positioned it, but how they positioned it immediately puts them at direct as a direct alternative to a hotel. I would argue if they said they're the largest B and B chain in the world. They wouldn't get as many customers, but by saying we're larger than any other hotel chain, that they can effectively compete for hotels. Did you experience the same thing in positioning your business as you developed 1-800-got junk? There are so many junk removals, regional places. Did you find you had to position yourself in a certain way to stand out from them besides the cool name?

Absolutely. And I want to comment on the Airbnb real quick if I can too, in that we have franchise partners, partners here right now for training for our wow One Day Painting brand. Every franchise partner that's here for training for wow One Day Painting right now. I'd asked them the other night where they were staying, and everyone said, we've rented a place on Airbnb. Three years ago, that would not have been the case. They would have all been staying at the Hyatt or the whatever hotel chain. Things have changed. And so it is a real opportunity, I think, for entrepreneurs to look at how do you position your brand and. And who are you competing against? So to your question, answering Your question of 1-800-GOT junk was a business in the early days where there was a mom and pop junk removal truck in every neighborhood or many trucks. How do you choose between Fred's Hauling, John's Hauling, and 1-800-got- junk? It's because of how we positioned ourselves. We told everybody that we would be the FedEx of junk removal. Clean, shiny trucks, friendly, uniform drivers, on time service, upfront rates. And those promises that we made, that our brand made, promised to position us in a place that customers would appreciate using us. We were a smarter choice than just the local junk guy who you didn't know we were getting with someone pulling up with a couple of cigarettes in their mouth and, you know, you just looked like you didn't want to invite them into your home and trust them with your family. It's an important thing. A brand builds trust. And our brand is one that we've built through promises we've kept. Building the trust.

Do clients, your clients, all clients, put a disproportionate significance on that first impression? I mean, at the end of the day, just to qualify this, end of the day, it's junk removal. Fred's Junk Removal does the same thing. No question. You got the shiniest trucks. Your guys come in uniforms. That's only a small piece of the business, though. That's 1% of what you do compared to the other guy. Is it that significant to clients and prospects?

You Never get a second chance to redo a first impression. First impressions are important. By having clean shiny trucks, the customer might say if you asked if that was important to them, they'd say, well, I don't care. I mean, you're hauling away my junk. Well, they do care because they care about hiring professional, sharp, clean cut people that they know they can trust and what that brand communicates by having clean shiny trucks that says, you know what we do, what we say we will do. If we promise clean shiny trucks, we better have clean shiny trucks. If we have friendly uniform drivers and they're in uniforms, that shows that we have a level of care that not everybody might take.

Like Fred, you know, Christina, it's funny with 1-800-got- junk, they're right here in our own town. Oh yeah, yeah. So you see their trucks along the road and stuff. If we rewind 10 years ago and we had to get junk removed, my wife would say, mike, call the junk guy. Mike, take care of it. Now she calls 1-800-got-JUNK. She just picks up the phone and says, oh, I'll take care of it. So Brian, are you finding that by having this professional image, by focusing on not just what you do but how you do it, that you are able to speak to a new community? And I'm thinking specifically in my case, the female consumer.

Yeah. Females make up a much bigger audience in terms of our target than males. It's often a female who's calling, who I've been asked to deal with this junk removal. We got to get this stuff out of here. I don't know what to do. We make it easy. We make it easy in booking an appointment, showing up on time and giving an upfront price as to what it's going to cost before we haul it away. So the fact that we've got a memorable brand that people see the trucks and it implants firmly in someone's mind so that when they do have junk, that's been a big success factor for us in building a profitable business, in growing the top line as well as just the bottom line. It's a marketing machine for us. Having great looking trucks, friendly uniform drivers and being consistent with our brand. When we bring on entrepreneurs, people who come into our business and pull partner up with us as a business partner to build the brand in their city, their market, we want to know that these entrepreneurs care as much as we do about the consistency of the service, the consistency of the look and feel of the brand.

Now 1,800grand junk is a huge company. Actually I know. I saw you on Undercover Boss. You're a big player in the market. The folks listening to the show, they don't have the budget that 1-800-get-Junk does. How did you establish such a strong marketing presence? What did you do? Maybe some of the tactical stuff you did when you were smart to get to the size you are today.

Well, it's interesting. We have 1, 800 got junk, but we have four brands. We've got, wow, one day painting. We've got you move me a moving company. And our newest baby, so to speak, is Shack shine. House detailing, windows, gutters, and so on. So if I use shackshine as an example of a new business, while we have cash available, while we have systems and infrastructure available to grow it more quickly than some, we're still doing what we did early days of 1, 800 got junk. Shackshine's putting lawn signs on customers. After we've done a job and they're happy, we ask if we can leave it for three or four days. They were thrilled with the service. No problem. We use our vans as big mobile billboards. You see a shat shine van drive by, clean, shiny, professional, smiley guy on the side. We're using those things that, again, don't require a big budget. It just requires an attention to detail on the things that matter. We're big into grassroots guerrilla marketing, if you will, and we're big into building things with a low budget. It's hard to build a profitable business with spending all your money on marketing and trying to grow it more quickly. People follow that model, and there's a lot of tech companies that will raise money to do it. But we believe in a slowly but surely model. We want our entrepreneurs. Someone goes and buys Atlanta for shack Shine. We want them to be profitable from the beginning. We want them to really get out there and build a business where they're not cash strapped and they can grow it in a way that makes sense.

You know, one I consider a mind blowing strategy, so simple but so profoundly effective. That one, 800 got junk did. That you did, Brian, is I would drive down my road past any of these other junk removal places, and when they were idle, and the most of the time those trucks are idle, they were parked at their lots back behind the buildings. Not 1, 800 got junk. Every gas station I would drive by, it felt like every gas station would have one of the trucks sitting there. So an idle truck was no longer idle. It was a marketing piece until it was mobile. A powerful strategy. I think what it does too. Brian is it empowers any entrepreneur of any size. Business can do this.

It's something anybody can do. One of my favorite books, an old, old book was guerrilla Marketing. I remember picking that up and everything was about low cost, no cost marketing tactics. You need to own a shack shine van to go out and carry your equipment and shine someone's home. So if you're going to have that van like you said, you might as well park it in a high profile, visible location where when it is parked, you're getting, you're earning impressions, you're earning the eyeballs of people in the neighborhood seeing that van. So when their windows are dirty, they know who to call.

And, and what about just rewinding back to that painted picture? You said, you know, I came with this painted picture of what I wanted the business to look like in five years. And you said, and people left me. I mean, not all people. Some of your team was very inspired by it. Why would people leave a grand vision?

They don't believe, they don't see what I see. My painted picture said, we will be, not hope to be or want to be. We will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003. That's a big statement when you're only in one market. Now, Mike Ryan, a guy I remember who worked in the business, who was great, he left. He was one guy that left as a result. But I ran into him maybe 15 years later, a dozen years later at a gas station. We were both pumping gas and he's filling up his car and he walks over and goes, hey, Brian Scudamore. And he said, you did it. I said, did what? He said, you built the top 30 metros in the timeframe. You said you'd do it. He said, I always remembered that I left because I didn't believe you guys could do it. I didn't believe I could contribute. And great kudos to him for leaving because he didn't see what I saw. And you need people that believe that have faith in where you're going and that they can help you get there.

Have you inspired me? We don't have a painted picture here right now. We have visions for the next year and discussion, but nothing that's that vivid. I love that, how it can polarize.

By the way, for your listeners. I believe in sharing the painted picture if it inspires others to go create their own painted picture. So if anyone ever wants to see ours, they can just tweet me. Brian Scudamore and Happy to share it with him. And I'll certainly make sure you guys send you guys a copy as well, because I believe in the painted picture.

Yeah, Christina, why don't we get that in our show notes?

We'll put it up on the site.

I'd love to link to that. Yeah. Brian, my last question for you is really about your openness. Actually, I have two questions for you. First, about your openness. You know, I came up to Visit your facility 12 years back. You took me for a tour. You included me in your corporate huddle. I see it online. You share so much about your business, yet the general belief of entrepreneurs is if you share your what's going on, you're sharing your secrets, Competition is going to copy it. Why are you so open about what you're doing and how is that successful for you?

You and I both know Vern Harnish, who started the Birth into Giants program that we were lucky enough to be a part of. I remember him years ago saying, you get what you give. If you give more, you get more. And I believe that entrepreneurs. One of the best things about the profession that you and I have chosen is that we get to help others and we get to be helped by people. When we've got answers. Sorry. When we've got questions that we need answers for, we pick up the phone and call each other. We call entrepreneurs. We reach out and say, hey, I know you've solved this problem. Can you help? Of course I can. And so entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs, I think, is the secret. And I believe that my competition. Come on into the junction. And true story, I've literally thrown it out to dozens or hundreds of fellow junk removal companies or painting companies. And I said, come on in. Come on in and see our huddle. Come on in and have a tour. Let's talk some numbers. Whatever you need. And it's interesting how few people will take you up on that. I've had two junk removal companies over the years come in to see our huddle, but they're all invited. I think that the secret is in the execution and how you do things. It's not about what are all the things you've got going on that you're trying to keep a secret and not share with others. I think it's about how you execute, and most entrepreneurs can't execute. So why not share ideas? And you never know what kind of learning you're going to get back from people who are open to discussing the ideas. Why not build trust with your competitors and have a friendly approach rather than Competing negatively against each other.

That's unbelievable that you would offer that. And it's unbelievable people wouldn't take you up on that. I almost wonder if they say it's too good to be true, that it's divisive that you're. You got some secret going on, maybe you're gonna try to undermine their business while they're away from the shop. Hey, last question.

Hey, Mike, can I throw in a question?

Of course.

Because you, Brian, you just said that execution is the secret and most entrepreneurs cannot execute. And I personally, I'm an idea guy. So, you know, so I'm really good at the creative ideas and I do lack in execution. So what. What's. Is there a trick to the execution or is it literally just elbow grease and hustling and working hard as hell?

There's a trick, and it took me 23 years to figure out the trick. The trick is find an executor. Find an exceptional executor. So I found Eric Church, who's our president and coo. I'm the visionary, the culture guy. He's the implementer, the executor, the rigorous, disciplined leader that I needed to be this two in the box leadership model, where there's some overlap, but we work really well together in our areas of specialty. And you mentioned, Chris, that you're an ideas guy. So am I. I want to work on ideas and I want to be able to give them to someone, share them to someone that they can put them in place. So when I stopped executing with definitely, I was missing on the excellence level in many areas because it's not my biggest strength. When I found someone who could execute with excellence for me, that became my secret. That became the one thing in the last four years that's made my business really grow, that's made. Made the rest of the brands grow. And it was pretty exciting to figure that out.

Well, that's great.

So my last question that I'm just totally curious about, Right before we went on air on this show, I called you so we could connect, and you said, oh, sorry, I understand. We have to connect over the Internet. I don't have a laptop. I'm like, oh, hop on your computer. Like, no, no, no, I don't have anything. All I have is an iPhone. How does a guy run a $200 million company? And I know this. You work in a cubicle with your dog and you got just an iPhone. How do you do that?

So we have about 300 people in our head office that we call the junction In Vancouver and in Junction. No private offices for anyone. I'm in a meeting room right now so I can have some quiet during this podcast. But I don't have a private office. Nobody does. And the reason being is we're a company of transparency. There's no secrets. We like to feed off of each other's energy. I want to get to know people, so I'll go sit down beside someone I don't know and start chatting. Or I'll work beside them and just kind of through osmosis, get a little sense of who they are and what makes them tick. I use an iPhone. I don't have an iPad, a laptop, anything else. Because I believe in simplicity. I believe in focus. And if I've got one place to look, for all my information, I'm paperless. It works for me. It gets rid of all the other noise. I'm very add. We literally have in our office these vinyl decals of squirrels posted everywhere, so that every once in a while, when I do get distracted, I'll point and go, oh, squirrel. We're very add. And for me, what works is simplicity. It's getting rid of the clutter. So that's why I'm a one device guy. It's easy to travel with. I've got access to the cloud and all my info I need. And then again, I've got executors. I've got a great team of people who are really taking the plans and strategies and making them happen.

Have you upgraded from your iPhone3 yet?

I have, I have, yes. Thank you. I'm on an iPhone 6. Nice. My wife got the iPhone 6s and I tried to tell her that she doesn't love technology as much as I do and she could have. My old phone when she upgraded.

Didn'T work so well.

I think it's interesting. Your business is getting rid of junk from people's homes and you got rid of all the clutter from your. From your own life.

Oh, nice parallel.

You are what you can't let go of.

Ooh, all right, hold on, hold on. I got to think about that, Brian.

With the one liners here.

Yeah.

You are what you can't let go of.

Absolutely. That was actually on the side of a Starbucks cup. We, years ago, they used to have this campaign called the Way I See it, and they'd hear from famous authors and actors and actresses and just famous people on the side of these cups. And we approached Starbucks and said, we want to be on the side of the cup. We wanted 1-800-GET junk on the side. And we were on cup number 70. It was a quote that said, you are what you can't let go of.

Brian Scudamore.

1-800-Got junk. And it was cool. We earned 10 million cups worldwide. So again, guerrilla marketing, free advertising, it didn't cost us a penny. And it's one of those things that we're proud of having made happen because. And Starbucks helped me write the quote. I'm a high school dropout. I'm not as literate as most would be. So they helped write a quote that I got to throw it on the show. And he thought, I've got these one lines. And it was really with the help of Starbucks.

That's awesome.

His original quote was, hire me. Hey, Brian. An absolute joy. Where can folks go to all your different businesses? 1, 800, got junk. Wow. One day. How do they hire your services?

So the simplest place, if someone was looking to enter the world of entrepreneurship to find their passionate entry point into business would go to O2E Brands. That's the. The letter O, number two letter E brands.com and all our brands are proudly displayed there. If someone wanted to hire one of our services, it's 1-800-Junk. Com. Wow. One day.com youmoveme.com shackshine.com I better stop starting new companies.

Otherwise, right?

Interviews.

Brian, thanks for joining us today. And take care, man.

Thanks, Brian.

Awesome being here and have a great day at all.

Thanks, Brian. Job. Wow.

Yeah, we're bringing the studs. Dude.

I'm. I'm. Wow.

My page of notes looks like a treasure map.

I've just got like, well, then you're gonna start us out. You're gonna start us out after. After we thank our sponsors.

Okay.

And now. Now I'm like, oh, we. I think our new sponsor is gonna one be 1-800-got junk. I have to give Brian a call real quick. Right? Yeah. So first I want to thank Funbox. They are back for the long haul. Literally seconds before this episode, I get an email from them. No, I'm sorry. I get a call from David Tolkien over there. And I see the phone. Make sure I answer. I pick it up. I didn't know it was them. It just says Sacramento or whatever. I pick it up and he goes, we're in, bro. And then I hear click. I hear click, right? And I'm like, what just happened? And then an email comes through with their order, and they. They said they want to sponsor our show. So it bro's back.

The three words that changed Everything now.

Funny, because we're recording out a sequence that makes no sense to you right now, but episode 56, you'll be. Oh, God, I get it. So you gotta listen for. I think it's episode 56.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know.

Yeah, it's 56, so you don't know what's coming your way. But big time, bro time.

Oh, it's funny.

So, fun box. What do they do? Listen, if your business needs funding, you've invoiced your clients, but you need to collect the money because they're not paying. Fundbox releases those funds to you and it's full amount. You invoice someone $10,000, they give you the $10,000. Then you continue to collect the money from that client. When it comes in, you repay Fundbox plus service fee. Dude, this is amazing. The old school was factoring. If you need money, you tell a factoring company to take over the debt. They start hounding your clients and where's our money? Where's our money? And you only get a fraction of it. A very innovative, innovative way to fund your invoices. Next company is nextiva. Christina.

Nextiva.

What do they do?

They are a voice. I can never remember what voip stands for.

Voice over ip.

Ip. Yeah. What is the ip?

Internet protocol.

Thank you. And they host your phone over the Internet.

Yeah, it's a very. Exactly. And it's a very sophisticated phone system. You have one at your house?

I do, actually.

And one here. So I call Christina sometimes, you know, 8 o' clock at night, I'm like, oh, I was gonna leave her a message. And it's ringing at your house. And you're like, what? I'm like, oh, sorry, I forgot. Oh, oh, oh. But it's really cool. The thing is, our business is in part virtual. I mean, what we're doing is this podcast. The virtual podcast over. We have Chris in Colorado is here. Our business, we can work out different locations. I travel a lot. I'm always on our phone system, though, because it all connects through that. That's the power of VoIP. And Nextiva is the best at VoIP.

And forwards to your cell phone. Just like during our event, anybody need to reach us, they still could.

Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you can call back from your cell phone and it comes through the SONE system. So they still see our 800 number pop up. Very powerful stuff. Next one is T sheets, time tracking. Yeah. Pretty cool, right?

Pretty sweet.

Did you. Are you're actually on the clock right now?

I am. I texted in this morning.

Yeah. You could. You could text in your time.

It's so convenient.

Yeah. And you can adjust time, too. So if you make a mistake, you forget checkout. You can text in saying, oops, and it says, no problem, we'll fix that. And then me, as the person watching the time and have to pay the freaking bills, it reports to me, says Christina. She seems to be a little bit lackadaisical on her checking out time. So you can track what's going on. Very efficient. It's a win for both employee and employer. Employer knows they're getting accurate time. That's very important for costs. It. Employee knows that they're being treated fairly and accurately. There's a permanent record of it and all this stuff. So it's a good win. Win all around. Who is the last company?

Fundera.

Yep. Last but not least, Fundera.

Fundera.

Chris, what do they do?

Brah, Fundera is your quote, unquote, one stop shop for funding. So if you need any cash, like a loan base, a business loan. Right. And you don't know which bank to go to, you go to Fundera and you tell them all the details that you want, and they go out and shop it all around and come back to you with all these different options and prices and everything, and then you just choose, right?

Yep. They're God's gift to funding. That's what they are. That's the summary. I love Fundera. I love Meredith Wood over there, too.

Sometimes I just go to fundera.com. i just mess around on the website.

I know, I know. They told us about you. All right, dude, what do we get as a summary? Christina, you got the most notes on the table. What do you got there?

Where do I start?

Give us your top two.

Top two. Okay. I think there's something to be said for working in a pit and not having private offices for everyone. I don't mean that kind of, but. No, I mean, it's so easy to communicate with each other. You feed off of each other's energy, and it's just. It creates definitely a different vibe, for sure. And then also Brian mentioned that, you know, people buy who you are more than what you do.

Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. It was fantastic. We kind of have a pit going on here in the first sense of the word. It's. There's. This is disgusting, but not in a good way. In a good way. There's this dog hair stuff. There's like wrappers on the ground.

Okay. Not really.

Not really. What was the Other. Oh, you gave us two. Here's my two.

I did.

First of all, he said marketing needs to be memorable, easy and repeatable. Love that. That kind of blew me away. And steal yours now. Not what but more. It's not as much about what you do, as much as how you do it or who you do it or who you. Here's what I'm going to say then, because you kind of said that one. Christina, Airbnb, how they position themselves we a little dialogue around that and you could. They could say they're a bed and breakfast. I know this is what I was saying, but this was my interpretation of him. They could just be another bed and breakfast and say they're the biggest, but they position themselves against hotels. And he says all of his clients, his entrepreneurs are now using Airbnb's because of that positioning. Powerful stuff. Oh, and just a little thing to you to remember next time I book travel like I was in San Francisco, I don't want to stay hotels anymore if we're paying for it. Airbnb, let's just remember that. Yeah, Chris, what'd you get?

Yeah, he said that you need people that believe and you know, again, sounds so simple. But you know, you're a team. If you're an entrepreneur with a small business or medium sized business, it's a team effort.

Right.

And we all know about teamwork. And you know how, let's say in basketball you can have the one star player on the team, but if everyone else sucks and you don't play as a team, the other, the other guys who are all mediocre players, but if they play as a team, they will kill the team with the superstar player, it's not even close. So when you have people who believe, then the energy changes and it's great. And then of course the question I asked them about execution, that helped me a lot to find an exceptional executor.

Yeah.

And I guess in a bigger scope that means also whatever you're not good at, find someone who is good at it and let them do it.

Yeah, yeah. And they exist. Right. I think we all think that people are just like us. So if we're good at something everyone in the world is good at, it's not true. Everyone has their own special talents.

You need that yin yang relationship.

Yin yang sling slang. All right, dude, we gotta rock and roll out of this place.

We are out. If you want to find out more about me crap. Chris Curran fractalrecording.com you can learn all about podcasting. And I help business authors grow their platform like mad.

And these insights you just learned today, we're just scratching the surface here. If you really want to grow a profitable business. And here's the funniest thing. Brian asked that we didn't talk about profits. That's something he keeps confidential. He did say they are very profitable, and I know they are. But here's the deal, yo. Profitable businesses are also the fastest growing business businesses. Profit First Professionals is my organization. You go to profit first professionals.com right now, click on find. We will find you a bookkeeper or an accountant or a coach. We call them the ABCs. Accountant, bookkeepers, coach. That can help drive more profitability and hence more growth in your business.

Do it now.

Yo, you want to hit this one, Mike?

No, I don't.

And where are your sound clips, man?

I know, I. The laptop is on down the hallway.

Okay.

Yeah, bruh.

You can do a manual. Bruh, bruh. So thanks for listening everybody. Again, our website, Profit first podcast dot com. And yes, I paused on purpose. We have.

Nicely done.

All our past episodes are there. Feel free to browse and, and, and all that. And thanks.

Get your boot. And thanks for listening. Get your booty here to episode 52. That's. Is that next 52? 54. 54 is next guy. All the numbers because we've Anton Gerschel coming up. He is a guy who does international business. He helps teams work together internationally, helps grow very successful companies that are mid cap and large cap companies. Great insights for the entrepreneur. So just make sure you're ready to listen to that.

See you next time. Bye.

Later, Sam.