Episode 54: Business Synchronization and Profitability with Antoine Gerschel

Off we go.

This is the only show, Chris, where you actually have to disclaim the listener in the beginning by saying, strap on your seatbelt and put on a helmet.

Yes. You know what we'll do? We'll start sending the listeners in the mail before the show a seat belt, and they'll be like, what? Why are you sending me a seatbelt?

What is this bizarreness? All right, well, you're about to find out. Right now. In this episode, I'll tell you that.

You are listening to the Profit first podcast, episode 54.

Welcome aboard.

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

And you have awkward pauses when you present. And I'm Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First. And you're listening to, you guessed. The Profit first podcast, where you learn all angles of profit. We call it the alpha and omega. From the beginning to the end. Everything you can think about when it comes to profitability, you will find on this show.

That's right. Revenue is fine, but profit is mine.

Ooh, revenue is fine. Profit is mine.

No, but revenue is great. But businesses tend to focus too much on revenue and not enough on the bottom line. And that's what your book is all about. Your book, Profit First.

I don't know. We're trying to slap the world back into realizing that it's about profitability. I don't care how big your business. Go brag about the size of your business. If you're going bankrupt, I don't. I'm not interested. It's how much you take home at the end of the day.

That's right. Our show is on itunes and Stitcher and Tunein radio and the website profitfirstpodcast.com and I have to say, we have had some great guests on our show that have shared wisdom beyond your wildest dreams, I think.

Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you, you know, they're good guests. When they pull you back and say, well, let me. You know, we go adrift down some kind of tangential path, and they're like, well, hold on, Mike. Shouldn't we stop and talk about proper profitability? I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. I mean, great guess. Everyone we have is focused on that bottom line and showing different perspectives on how to get there.

Right? And people who have built these businesses, profitable businesses, hundreds of millions of dollars, businesses giving us advice. It's crazy. I love it, dude.

I hope you listen to the last episode. At least one more time with Brian scudamore. Dude. A $200 million company he's running.

Brilliant.

With an iPhone. He doesn't even have a laptop. He's like, why spend the money?

A simple life.

Yeah.

Way to go, right?

Tremendous life.

Happy.

And we're happy with our corporate partners. These are the companies that support us, and you know them and use them. Mike Michalowicz.

Yeah. Every company we mentioned here, we're using. So Fund Box is a funding source. So you need to. If you have invoices that come through and you want to get the cash now and your clients not paying, you gotta check out Fundbox. TSheets, time tracking software. I can go on over and over about how great they are and how efficient they've made our company. Nextiva. It's the. Listen, we had to call our guests on the phone. Bam. We hop on our nextiva phone. We got them right on the phone. I get it. That's what the phone's supposed to do. They do it better than anyone else. And then Fundera is a loan provider. You need to get a loan. You just go to Fundera One Stop Shop. They'll find the loan for you. We use or work in conjunction with all of those companies. They're more than just sponsors. They really are our partners.

That's right. And we have a great guest today. I'm so psyched to talk to Antoine. Was I allowed to mention his name yet?

No. Don't mention Antoine Gershel from Teams of Distinction.

Not yet.

Not yet. Because we don't want anyone to know about it. That's called a cliffhanger. But, dude, before we do that, I always like to catch up with you first. My liege. What have you been up to?

Yes. Well, my business. So I've been really focusing on my website. You know, websites are important part of the business, and I'm trying to get my website to funnel me more prospects. And I have, like, an email list I'm doing. It's. It's kind of interesting working on the website. It's. You know, I don't consider myself a web person, but certainly a lot of people are on the Internet and a lot of people want to know about podcasts, and a lot of people figured that out.

Yeah. I said, good thing you figured that out. People are on the Internet. Seriously. So, dude, here's my issue.

Please.

Didn't shower today. Really? Christine. And I blame Christina for my lack of. My lack of hygiene. I.

Is it because we were up at the crack of ass with a podcast.

Our first podcast was 6:00am I mean, your time. Unbelievable. I. I was, I had to come here from. I was dropping my son off at school. I actually jogged back. You know, I work out in the mornings. I dropped myself at high school. I'm Carlos. I jog back here. I walk in 10 minutes before we're broadcasting. I. I'm out of my gym outfit, but I haven't showered and I can barely handle my own odoriferous.

Starting to get overwhelming.

Yeah, it's a little.

Oh, yeah.

All right, so that's what I've been up to. But here's what you, listener, are really concerned about.

And by the way, that. That quirky, funny, warm hearted female voice that I hear, who is.

Oh, yeah, that's Christina.

Hey, everybody.

Adding color to the show. She's the one who. She's the glue for this company. She keeps it all together.

Thank you.

And if Christine's out of whack, then we're all out of whack. When she, when she's on her game, we're all on her game. As she goes, we go. So keep her happy. Keep feeding her closet.

Hold you to that.

Yeah.

Oh, there we go.

All right. So, Anton Gersha, let me tell you about this gentleman we met. Oh, no, this maybe goes back eight or nine years ago. Wow. He started a company with his partner, Lawrence Polsky. They subsequently have renamed the company to Teams of Distinction because that's what they're masterful at. They work with corporations of all sizes. They worked with the biggest companies in the world, down to the itty bitty players out there. But they bring this specific value. They are able to make a company, regardless of your size, regardless of the position you're in, distinct to be a market disruptor. And if you're a market disruptor, you have a massive advantage over the competition, which inevitably results in massive profitability. So it is my pleasure to bring on one of my favorite guests of all time, I'm assuming, Anton Garchel. Welcome to the show, Anton. Yay. A lot of love here.

All right, all right, all right, everybody, I did shower. Can I stay anyway?

Oh, good, good. Where are you nowadays? Are you back in the States? You're always traveling internationally?

Yeah, I am, actually. I'm based in Prince, New Jersey. And as always, I. You, Many of you may recognize my accent, but this is my trademark. I'm originally from Switzerland, but have lived in Princeton for 18 years. Enjoy it very much here. And yeah.

Do you feel when you go to town, into town In Princeton, like. Like intelligence kind of just pours into your mind.

Absolutely. That's why I'm here.

Osmosis, you see?

Exactly. I hope I benefit of all those intelligent Nobel Prize laureates around.

He sleeps on the steps of Princeton University.

No, I don't sleep. This is it.

So. So tell us about the services that team of Distinctions or Distinction is providing for your clients.

Okay, good. So let me just, you know, profit first. Actually, I think it's interesting, while I was preparing, thinking about your show and also your book, I was reminded of actually a conversation I had with an entrepreneur very early in our consulting business. And he was a real. I mean, he was a serial entrepreneur. Very, very, very successful. And so I. And he was relatively late already in his career. He wasn't working anymore because he needed to work, did a lot of philanthropic work. And so in one of my conversations with him, as I asked him, so, you know, what. What's actually, you know, based on your experience, what is the key, number one success factor of entrepreneur? You know what he told me? You have to be a bean counter.

Interesting.

You have to be a bean counter. At the end of the day, you need to know how much money you have in your bank. And I thought that was fascinating. He said, you know, there's so many entrepreneurs, so many people who are getting so excited about their business, their idea, their growth, their future, and at the end, they run out of money and get stuck. And actually, he made the business out of this because that's when he would walk in and save them.

You know, they say most businesses fail because of cash flow problems. Is it really. Is it really a cash flow problem or is it the inability to manage cash flow?

Is there a difference?

Right, that's.

Doesn't one lead to the other?

Well, I think it's a difference in finger pointing. If I say I have a cash flow problem, like, well, clearly I didn't have enough funding to get this business off the ground. It's someone else's problem. But if I say the problem is my inability to manage cash flow, then I got to point the finger at myself. So I think there is a difference. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I can only talk from ourselves and, you know, our experience, it's just very easy to run out of cash. And actually, I think it's particularly easy to run out of cash when you're successful.

Why would you say that?

Because then you make upfront investment, you're hiring people, you're paying bills ahead of, invoicing your customers by the Time, you know, your customers, even if you have very good customers. We actually never, ever had a bill which was not paid. But sometimes some customers just take a long time. So while we're paying our people, while we are paying our suppliers, our customers kind of lag behind and suddenly you're out of money.

Yeah, I've seen that. And unfortunately, I've experienced that personally, can.

Be very unpleasant, as probably you have seen it, and actually some of your interview partners have alluded to that also.

Oh, yeah, well. But you have the solution, at least for the clients you work with. You help them become a market disruptor by either being faster, by being cheaper, being better than the competition, perhaps all three.

How do you.

Okay, so Ty work. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get back to original question. Yeah, you know, so our company name is Teams of Distinction, and we like to play with that word or those words because, you know, so you have teams of distinction. That may be one end of the continuum. You want to be a team of distinction. So what's the other end of the continuum? What could that be? Let me just ask those more people on the other line here, Mike and Chris and Christina, what's the other. What would be the other end of the continuum? If we play with word, the opposite of distinction.

Blandness, Commonality.

Commonality, yeah.

Not quite. Distinction camouflaged. Yeah. No, the opposite is extinction. All right.

Cute. You did the little rhyme just in time for a rhyme.

So the teams we're working with and the businesses we're working with are invariably, and I'm sure you're working with the same businesses, they're invariably either moving towards distinction or eventually, or possibly a few of them unfortunately, also moving towards extinction on this continuum. So what we are doing is we're helping companies to move towards distinction. And the way we do that and our focus, and this may actually sound interesting, because there is a paradox between faster, cheaper, better and market disruptors. And also the need, particularly in our geography, to really hire the best and the smartest and just top talent. And those are normally not the cheapest if you want to invest with them. So how do you do that? How do you do that? And that's the core of our business. We have developed a methodology and we talk about swing, introducing swing into leadership teams into business teams, into businesses.

What's swing?

What is swing? Actually, I'm missing a little jingle, a little music. It started. Oh, you want something like, Chris Lamb, bring a little swing?

We're not prepared.

Hold on, where is that?

Oh, there you go.

Here it comes.

There you go, there's swinging.

Now talk to us here. We're swinging.

Theme song Growth Igniters Radio, by the way.

Cool. Thank you so much, Chris. So, swing. There's a wonderful book, the Boys in the Boat. It's still and has been for a couple of months, a best seller on the New York bestsellers list. And it's a. It's a story. Does any of you know the boat by any chance?

No.

Boys in the Boat. It's a story of. It's of a crew team and it's the Olympic gold medal winner of the 1936 Summer Olympics, which actually happened to be in Berlin at the time, in Hitler's Berlin. And this is a story about a group of boys, as the name says in at the time, a very, very depressed Seattle, Washington, who eventually made it to, you know, create a performing crew team, eventually beat those, you know, traditional crew teams in the east, the Ivy League crew teams, and then, you know, made it to the Olympics and won the Olympics. And I mean, you know, the end of the book, of course, is predictable. Of course, it's the Olympic winning team. But the whole content of the book is a description of how those boys, many of them like farmers again, in an area in a time which was, you know, the Depression, and in an area which was very depressed by itself, there was no Microsoft or Starbucks or whatever we have up there by now, and how this group of boys made it and the whole way to get there. And in the book they talk about swing as this magical moment when you are in a crew, in a boat, and you have eight people rowing. And there are a few magic moments where those roars, those, you know, are in near perfect synchronicity. And it's really magic. And you reach those moments, you reach them, but you won't ever stay there. So it's on and off and on and off. It's very difficult to get there. And even if you're there, you're not quite there. You may be falling off again and you try to get back. And this is what high performing crew teams do, and this is how they win their races. And we are actually taking this master four into business teams, really, if you want to be profitable, if you want to be successful, you have to get swing into your leadership teams, period. Right. Sorry.

When these racing boats get into swing, does that amplify their speed? Tremendously, because they're in that near perfect synchronicity.

Absolutely. And it's very interesting also how they get there. This is really described in a lot of Details. And it's. It's fascinating to read it, you know, even how. Actually how they describe. You have to start slow. Many of these crew teams start too quickly, and you gradually have to get into the swing and then you can accelerate. And, you know, it applies so nicely into business. It's a wonderful metaphor, and we have been applying it now, really. I mean, probably close. Yeah, I would say ever since we used that swing concept, probably now close to 100 times. And it works beautifully.

Well, how do you pull it off in a business? I want to get into swing here.

Yeah. All right, good, good. So how we do it, we have five elements of swing, and now we're talking business. So the five elements of swing are. And if you don't mind, I'll just walk you through those.

Please do.

And stop me if it's getting too detailed. But number one is mission critical thinking. If you're part of a business, if you're part of a business team, you want to know what the business mission is. Or rather, let me take a step back, actually, you want to know what the team mission is. In many cases, based on our experiences, businesses are very good in describing their vision mission. They have a mission, vision statement. But let's assume you're working with a finance team in an insurance company. So as the finance team, what is your team mission? There is none. Most of the time. They are very good in reciting their business mission, but not their team mission. So number one is each team needs a mission. This is what we, as a team want to achieve. That's how we want to contribute to the company, possibly to the world, possibly to our families and friends. But identity a team mission, number one, that may be also, you know, the big. Why. Why do you come to work?

But the team level, not the entire company. When I hear a team mission, I'm hearing parts of the company. We have a sales team here. We have a marketing team. Is that. Who are we?

Very specifically. Very specifically. It could also be, you know. Yeah, the sales team. Not the complete sales team. You may be in a very specific product team, or we work with, you know, pharmaceutical companies. It could be the launch team of a very specific drug. But for that very specific team, as the team exists, what is the mission of that team?

I got you. Okay.

You know, and why am I excited to be part of this team? Why am I excited to come to work in the morning as it relates to that very team?

Love it.

That's number one. And, you know, this is if you want the big picture, right? Kind of the overarching goal ambition of the team. Now, if you look at this, this is nice to have, but now comes number two. Besides kind of dreaming of the big and all the passion and emotions you have around that, you also need to be very tactical. You need to have very practical short term objectives. And we call those. And again now on the team level, we talk about in number two of aspirational ambitions. And those aspirational ambitions are very, very practical. We're actually asking the teams what, if anything, if we did anything within like three months, four months, five months, in a relatively short time period, is there one single thing the whole team could rally behind? If we did this within the next four months, we would all really be proud of what we did collectively. Not one, not one team member, you know, who may be closing one big deal. But collectively as a team, is there one thing we want to achieve with the next three to six months, which really everybody would be very excited about, and we could kind of clap ourselves on our shoulders and celebrate and be very clear about that short term objective. That's an aspirational ambition. Okay, Number two, number three has to do. We call it internal combustion. This is where you want to make sure every individual runs on all cylinders. You know, invariably a team is as strong as the combination of its team members, but you want to make sure that each team member, team member, operates at its best. And the big thing, if you think about fight for talent, you may want to hire the best or your best you can afford, maybe, you know, whatever situation you are. So maybe the big chance of companies who are also cash trapped. Sometimes it's not only, you know, to get, you know, quote unquote, what look like the best on the resume, but it's really about how do you get those people who you have produce the best in conjunction. So, and. But it all starts with individuals being at the top of their game, being happy with what they have to do and being also able to manage the stress level they're involved with and really having the impression that they can contribute to their maximum. That's combustion. Yeah.

Do you have a strategy for that? Like a how to. How do I get the right people doing the right things?

Yes, a lot has to do.

I stumped you, right? I told you.

No, actually, actually not. I'm laughing.

You want to send me an invoice before you reveal this?

Yeah, I should do that. Right? So we're talking about profit first here, right?

Yeah. You got to get rich.

I won't tell you the secrets, Mike.

Nicely done.

No, so what it is, is primarily talk to each other. Primarily talk to each other. Because what's happening is oftentimes people just don't know, Right. They don't know how good they are. They don't get the feedback about what they're doing. Well, they don't say if they need help.

And I think you're afraid too, right?

Yeah, they're afraid. Yeah. Yeah.

Because if I say, you know, my talent's not here, it's really there, I might get fired. Should I show up and do what. What I'm told? Right. So here internally, I mean, Christina and I've had conversations a few times. She's like, you know, I don't like doing this. I'm doing it. I don't like doing it, but I can do that. I'm more talented at it. And I think there's a comfort that you can say that. But most companies, like, if you say that, oh, my God, you're fired. But the. The goal as the employer is get the right people in the right seats on the bus where they'll excel, put them into their natural talent areas. But I could see that communication, as you're saying, Antonio, helps this. You have to have an environment where it facilitates conversation, I assume.

Absolutely. And, you know, it's actually interesting with the executives we're working with and the teams we're working with, everything. And probably also for many of the listeners now, everything we're saying here is actually not rocket science. It's the very basis, you know, and that you need trust to be able to also be willing to be vulnerable to. To be also, you know, willing to take some risks. But you will only take risk. You will only ask questions. You will only point out issues if you. If. If you're in an environment which allows you to do that, which allows you, you know, what we like to say, as you. And as you mentioned, to be vulnerable. And many of those environments, people, you know, either the environment is. Doesn't allow mistakes and then people are rightfully afraid, or people are not assertive enough.

Right.

So they just don't dare. They have kind of. Oftentimes they're also trapped within themselves. They think they need to be better than actually the environment is expecting from them. You know, people, a lot of people are their own worst enemy.

Yeah. Well, I will tell you in step two with those clearly having aspirational ambition for the team and make sure it's a single goal, meaning everyone's benefiting from it. When everyone feels they're being pulled Forward, forward. When everyone's excited about the outcome and sees a personal benefit to it, the entire team is benefiting from it. It sounds like that helps facilitate this important but sometimes difficult communication. We actually had a conversation.

We did.

Anton, what do you think? Tell me if we're hitting it here. This morning, we got concerns from our members because we had opened a Facebook group that we locked only to certain members. And then we tried to say, whoops, we didn't mean to make this Facebook group. We meant to open a different group on our platform so we can have a little more control. Well, the members retaliated, said, no, no, no, we love this Facebook group. Want to keep it going. So Christina came and said, I got to apologize. I just simply made this Facebook group because I thought it was in the best interest of our company, and I'm sorry that it caused this consternation. And the response from Ron and me is, no, no, no, no. If you think you're doing something that's in the best interest of the company, do it. We could be wrong in saying we want to control it. So I think that almost speaks to this point of, we have an aspirational ambition. We're trying to create a family here of members that communicate with each other. Christina made a great decision that Ron and I couldn't even see. And while it caused a little rifts and bumps, because of how we tried to adjust it, the ultimate outcome was perfect. It's what our customers want. Is that an example?

Actually, it's a very good example, but actually, it's not an example for aspiration, ambition, aspirational ambition, or really a clear goal and what you're trying to achieve collectively with a very short time frame. But your example is a wonderful example for number five.

Oh, we're skipping ahead.

Jumping the gas.

Yeah. It doesn't matter. Right. It's getting boring anyway if we go sequentially. So number five.

That's funny.

You know, number five is being a mind of its own. A mind of its own. What does that mean? You know, Christina didn't need to wait for you or anybody else to make a decision and to be sure and could align 100%. She just went ahead. Exactly. Because she knew that would be the best for the company. And when you. And you're learning together. And she came and she apologized. She said, no, no, no, this is great. You know, you're moving and everybody collectively, you know, the mind of its own collectively. But what does that mean? There are so many hierarchical organizations where people are just looking up and they will never, ever do anything without asking the boss. And even worse, they see things going wrong. And by the way, you know, where you're losing a lot of profit, a lot of money, they see things going wrong, they see Chris or Christina or Mike doing something, but they. No, no, no, no, I won't tell Mike, I won't tell Christine, I won't tell Chris. Actually, you know, we have a boss. Let's talk. You know, it's actually his job or her job. You know, I may get burned, they may not like me. I'm not going to mention anything, right?

It's the old.

Exactly. Not my job. Exactly. Not my job. Not my responsibility. And it all, you know, goes up to a boss who has very limited resources. And this is where you have a tremendous waste of, of precious, precious, actually profit, resources, whatever you want to call it by all those things which are actually known and still nothing happens. Actually, we have a very publicized example. I mean, that whole Volkswagen diesel thing.

Oh my God, that's a juicy one.

Isn't that a juicy one?

That is a juicy one.

I mean, everybody knew about it.

And I believe Volkswagen was invented by a Swiss person brought to Germany. So it is your home country.

I hope, I hope we got a nice profit out of it. I don't know.

So what happened to Volkswagen? I mean, how many people knew this nonsense was going on and ignored it? Anton, what do you think?

I think it's obvious, you know, I mean, you know, what you were describing before. I mean, their teams, they didn't, you know, there were so many people who knew about it, but they didn't dare to step up and saying, we can't do that.

I mean, it might up any risk.

You know, and highlight how much, how risky this is. And you probably know an over, you know, I was not there. I mean, we can speculate, but I can tell you that in many other companies we're not working for Volkswagen, but we observe a lot with customers, which we're doing. I mean, you know, a lot of people are very comfortable to work in their little silo and do what they know best, particularly when you work with technical professionals. And Volkswagen, of course, is a very technical engineering company. But then when the team meets and the team needs to talk with each other and they need to overcome conflicts, then it becomes much more, much less obvious. Much less obvious. But nowadays in the game, I mean, we firmly, we see that, that technical knowledge nowadays is nearly a table stake, is part of table stakes. But really where you differentiate yourself is, you know, how you Communicate with each other whether you have a common language and whether you have a common understanding of how, you know, you want to go with your team and your business and how you deal with problems.

Now, before I forget, what was number four? Because we skipped.

I was just gonna ask that.

What is number four?

It's the best one. You saved it for last.

I forgot myself. Only kidding. So number four is more than the sum of its parts. Okay, okay. What's behind that is we. We already alluded to that. You know, you have now you have. You know, you have a wonderful mission, you have wonderful aspirational ambition. You have every single individual humming at their best, you know, fullest internal combustion. But now we want to make sure that one plus one equals three or even more. And how do you do that? And there are some very basic things. I mean, the trust we talked about before is part of it. If there is no trust, even if everybody gets the best and works the best, they can't openly exchange ideas. They can't take risks. They can't come up with those crazy new ideas and thoughts they have. They cannot make mistakes. That's one example. The second is they have a very plain and actually mundane ones, meetings. You know, how to deal with meetings, and how many meetings are out there and happening every day, which is just a perfect waste of time.

Oh, my gosh.

Or even if there are no perfect waste of time, you know, they may not. Many of them are not virtual. You know, everybody's multiprocessing. You're completely under. Leveraging the power and the value of the time. Those people are together again with a huge cost, actually, on profit. And a third topic is, you know, just having a common language, common values. I mean, they create a situation where you function automatically, which is part of, you know, the swing. Just being able to, you know, without talking to each other, being able to have this common understanding and maybe possibly just looking at each other and, you know, what needs to happen without actually sometimes without any words. No words. And this is where you. This is how you create this near perfect synchronicity. And this is what we understand by more than the sum of its parts. And there's some very practical tools you can use for that.

I love the swing method. And what's interesting is it applies to large companies. But a little company is ours with five employees here. I can see how each element touches us. Anton, the clock is not working in our favor. We got a split. You've written with your partner, Lawrence Polsky, some amazing books, Rapid retooling Perfect phrases for communicating. Tell us about all the books that you've written that speak to the subject. And I think there's three or four out there now and where they can, where folks listening in can pick it up.

Okay, first of all, Amazon is a wonderful platform, but also your bricks and mortar bookstore and whatever other source you have to get your books. Those books have been published, you know, with one of the leading publishing houses, McGraw Hill and ATD. So the three books I would like to mention and you'll find them also on our website. Teamsofdistinction.com is perfect phrases for communicating change. Second one is perfect phrases for conflict resolution. That's actually our best seller to our big surprise. I mean that just sells like crazy.

Wow.

And then the third one is a.

Rapid Retooling, which is an amazing title. And I don't know where you got that title, but I love it.

Thank you. Thank you. Actually, we got it through our publisher.

I love it. And the concept of Rapid retooling is how you very quickly rejigger your organization because the businesses are moving so fast. How do you retool your organization to be prepared for the change? One of my favorite books that are out there. So that's why I was kind of pushing on that one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anton. A pleasure having you on the show. One last question.

You know, one more thing. May I just say, you know, a little self promotion, but it's not only self promotion. I really think there is a real value to it for listeners. If you also do not want to buy any of our books. I have one resource which is 100% free. And since we talked so much about swing, we also have a swing assessment. Swing assessment. So actually you should take it also guys, because you just go to our website teamsofdistinctiondocs.com swing and you'll get to our swing assessment. And I'm sure and, and, and, and we'll be happy and I will be happy actually to give you feedback if you want to take it and I'll personally get back to you.

Nice.

Yeah, that's awesome. So team teamsofdistinction.com swing. I understand because I did take this test earlier. I got a low rating which is was called swinger was my title. The swingiest. The swing. Anton, thank. Thanks for joining us. Take care.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you all. I greatly enjoyed it. Bye bye.

We'll see.

Thanks. Great job.

Bye bye. Bye.

Bye.

Bye bye.

I love joking with our guests because I we just have listen every guest we have on here. I know personally to some degree, and I just love, love getting people's true personality out of them. Anton. Wonderful man. Extremely intelligent, too. Oops. Now we do the grumble mumble part. All right, dude, we got some stuff to recover to. To recover to. To recap, but first, I want to thank our corporate partners. And I'm taking this one. I know you guys are. Christina's wearing the shirt today. I am of Fundera. They have it like in the Friends. Kind of the TV show friends.

Limited edition.

Limited edition Fundera T shirt. No, Fundera is not a T shirt company. They should be. They're so good at it that they probably lent the money to the T shirt company that printed that T shirt.

Oh, yeah.

They are a lender. One stop shop. Go to fundera.com, f u n d e r a dot com, tell them the loan you need, why you need it, they get it for you. And there's like this godfather voice. I got you the money. That's why, like, when you push the button like submit says, don't worry about it. I've got you taken care of. I got you the money. No, that's not true. All right, next company is tsheets. Time tracking software. Sounds kind of like, isn't that boring? Every business needs to track time, Even if you're a solo practitioner. If you have clients that you're rendering services for, they may ask for the record of your time. So you should be tracking even for yourself. What do you want to say?

Oh, no, I was going to say, you will not realize that you needed it until you have it.

Right? Right. Until they. Until the irs. Until your client says, I need accounting for all your time. You're like, yeah, T sheets takes care of that. Next company, Fun box fund. But I got to emphasize that D fund box fund box is a kind of modern day factoring. Basically, if you have an invoice that you need to get those funds for but your client's not paying you, you do a quick call to Fundbox. They release the funds to you the same day. It literally is turned around that fast. $5,000, $10,000, $20,000. The money is released to you immediately so you can cover whatever cash flow issues or challenges you're facing, pay the bills you need to pay, then you get to continue to collect from your client. When the money comes in, when they finally send you that check, you just release it to Fundbox plus their fee, and bam, it's taken care of. So a real cool way to get money, especially if you're in a business like the government. Not that the government is that bad, but if you do business with the government, sometimes it takes like 90 days to pay you, 180 days to pay you. Maybe some other clients you have are like that. This is a way to get the money much faster. It addresses cash flow issues. Something we talked about in the beginning of the show and then the last one, but definitely not the least, is nextiva Voice over IP phone system. The absolute best company that I know of. I love the people out there. I'm actually going to take a trip out to Arizona to hang out with the owners over there and learn more about them. We just got two new phones in. Everything's working great. Voice over ip. And it provides the function of a complicated, expensive system at the price of a very inexpensive system. All right, Chris, real quick, because I know we're over time here. What did you learn?

Wow, I learned a lot. Swing is a great concept. I mean, the. The book he mentioned, Boys in the Boat, that sounds really interesting. I might have to pick that up. And I also thought that, you know, this concept of swing, like, everyone in the team being in perfect harmony and like, synergizing, that's another word. But it reminds me, since I'm a drummer, of being in a band. And, yeah, there was these times with my band, and it happened a lot, but we would get in this zone, and it was like, I'm not kidding, like, something would happen in the room or in the club. It like. I don't know, it was like the Twilight Zone, but it was. Everything was just flowing so smoothly and perfectly, and it's just a wonderful feeling. And like Antoine said, it doesn't last. You kind of come onto it. You can. Then you get off it, and then you got to come back and whatever. But that's how it is in business. You know, your company, you have people helping you, even if they're not employees. They might be subcontractors or whatever. You know, somehow finding a way to get into this swing can make such a difference, I think. So. That was my takeaway.

Yeah. And it doesn't happen magically. It's not like you just. Swing just appears, and, like, one day it happens. You can deliberately get there. It's hard to stay there, is what I heard. But those guys out in the boat, they're practicing every single day. And because of that practice and focus on it, the swing will happen naturally. That's true in an office, too. You can't just randomly say, oh, It's a swing day. Everyone's in flow, you know? Yeah, that sounds a little bit.

Wow.

There's keys waiting. You get to the office. There's lots of keys there. No, but. No but. I'm just saying you can't get into it. You need to drive the company toward that and then let it happen naturally. That was my takeaway.

No, I think the five elements of swing tie into hiring people that fit into your culture. Because once. Once your brains start working together, it's natural. You have a common understanding of what's best overall for the company, and that's what's going to skyrocket your profitability.

Yeah, there you go. Become a swinger. All right, guys, we got to get out of here. But before we do, I want to tell you a bit about Profit First Professionals, please. We started this organization with one intention. To grow the profitability of your business. Now, here's the deal. I don't know how long you've been in business. Has it been a year? Has it been five years? Has it been 10? How has your profitability been over all that time? Look back at it. Think about it. How is this quarterly profit distributions gone for you? Have you ever taken one? Have you waited till the year end and say, oh, my God, there's nothing left? Well, today's the day that stops. Today is the day you become profitable. And we developed a formula, we call it Profit first. That allows you to become profitable literally by your very next deposit is a profoundly simple system, but here's where it falls apart if you don't stick with it. So we formed an organization called Profit First Professionals. It's a group of accountants, bookkeepers, and coaches that keep you accountable. They know how to manage your numbers. They know how to derive information from those numbers, and they know how to drive profitability in your business. Business. All you have to do right now is one simple step that will change your profitability forever. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com Click on Find a profit first professional. We'll take the work over from there. We'll speak with you, we'll learn more about your business, what the profitability objectives are, what the history is, and we'll find a profit first professional who will walk you through having the highest degree of profits your business has ever experienced.

There you go. And if you want to know more about me or podcasting, go to fractalrecording.com and if you want to check out our show and in different places, itunes, stitcher, tunein radio, and of course, the website profitfirstpodcast.com. check out all our previous episodes. A lot of you maniacs like to binge, listen, and like, you know, do like, 18 episodes on a Saturday or.

Something while getting jacked up in the gym, working out, yelling, profit, profit.

You know, whatever.

Swinging. Yeah, during one of your swing sessions, you perv. Gosh. Oh, and you gotta make sure you come back next episode. Episode 55 is gonna be with Steven. Christopher. This is gonna be the most interesting episode you've ever heard because I don't even know what we're gonna be talking about yet. I gotta read the notes.

There you go. So thanks for listening. Thank you. Mike and Christina, great job.

Thanks, Chris.

Thanks, Jerry.

See ya.

Pow. I love that beat.

Mike, should I try to play along with the beat on my own drum set?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it, do it. Hurry, Quick.

My headphones can't reach.

Run.

Wait, hold on. It ain't going to work. My headphones won't reach.

Next time.

Oh, here's that big moment.

Oh, I hate this part.

Break.

Oh, my God.

This goes on forever. Oh, it's too long.

Oh, it's killing me. Back up, back up, back up. And then it ends. That is the best bridge of all time. It goes for six hours.

See you guys.

That's why I love that.

Sam.