Episode 55: Digital Marketing and Profitability with Stephen Christopher

You are currently considered or what should be considered. Oh, my God.

That was a great introduction. I love your preparation. Amazing. You are now you are considered or should be considered. I don't know.

You are now officially a listener of the Profit first podcast.

And you're listening episode 55. Yes. Bomb Bang. Ouch. Christina, you gotta get into that.

I would rather not.

Is Christina banging her head right now?

She just rolls her eyes.

Oh, my God.

I wish you could hear eye rolling because she'd be the loudest person in the room.

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

I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first. And you're listening to the Profit first podcast, where you learn about all angles of profitability and folks who have implemented Profit First. That's what we're going to do today.

That's right.

That's a handoff.

There's Today. There's something to be said for implementing principles in your business that lead to a lot more profit.

Exactly.

Perk your ears up. So anyway, you can find our podcast on itunes and Stitcher and Tune in radio and of course, the website profit first podcast.com. you can see all our previous episodes and you can see Mike's funny face. And Christina, are there any pictures of you on the website?

I don't think so. All right, not that one. And Christina First Professionals. There is.

Oh, yeah.

Oh. Oh, yes. Thank you.

Yeah, there is. There is. You know, the reason the show is possible is because of our wonderful listeners and our wonderful corporate partners. So a big shout out to Fundbox, to tsheets, nextiva and Fundera. There's another company I'm talking with now who may be joining us. But thanks to those four folks for sticking by us and making the show possible. Now we got a juicy guest today, dude. Steven Christopher Cequis Marketing Technologies, his company. He implemented Profit first in his business and has some interesting success stories that you're gonna learn from. Plus, I said, hey, can you share some of the secrets you have around digital marketing? Cause every business nowadays needs to be leveraging digital marketing to some degree. And Steven agreed. And I was so ill prepared, when I read through the notes, I actually said in reverse order, I'm like, hey, let's just talk all digital marketing. He's like, that's not why you couldn't have me on the show. I'm like, oh, yeah.

Oops.

Profit.

Oops. Oh, yeah. Profit. So I have a big apology publicly to Stephen for me Reading my notes backwards. But before we introduce Stephen, I want to know from you, Chris, what have you been up to?

You know, still getting settled in Colorado Springs. It's just great out here.

How many years? This is like two years of settling in for you.

I'm confused on the dates, actually. So what have you been up to, Mike Michalowicz?

Here's what's happening tonight. I'm going out with my wife to see our neighbors in a play. They're both thespians, as Christina and I discussed. They are thespians. They're performing at the local community theater. It's actually, it's not the barn theater. It's another one that in Chatham. I don't know what it is that.

You'Re gonna introduce me to.

Right, right. Maybe, yeah, I will like the garage theater. But they're doing their opening plays and we've seen them before. They're both great performers. They don't like us to come to their opening. They feel uncomfortable. So we, we had to keep it secret. We just bought tickets. They weren't cheap. They were like $60 a ticket. Well worth it though. They're wonderful performance. We're not gonna tell them we're in the audience.

Don't let them see.

My fear is if they see us is going to ruin the play. So. Okay, that's what I've been up to. Chris.

Nice.

Now here with no further. Well, a lot more further ado because I'm an ado type of guy. Stephen. Christopher, he, this guy knows it's funny. He knows failure, he knows debt because he's been there. And he also knows how to grow award winning companies. He grew Sequest Marketing Technologies which is located out in Denver. Chris, right down here, down the street from you. And he's implemented profit first. So I want to bring Kris on the show to learn about his history, learn about what he's done with profit first. So you listener can maybe leverage some of the stuff for your own business. And then we're going to try to squeeze some marketing tips out of him too. So welcome to the show, Stephen.

Mike, how's it going, man? Thank you.

It's going well. How are you doing?

Doing fantastic.

Those are all the. That's the crowd in Denver, by the way, cheering.

Yeah, I dig it, man. Mile High stadium.

Ooh, are you a big football fan?

Well, how can you not be? I mean, we got Denver.

Yeah. Everyone from what I've seen, the whole city are Broncos fans. So it's nice.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's Pretty amazing city, and it's a. It's a real challenge for the competitors who come in there. Because you're so high up in the sky, air is a little bit thinner. Strategic advantage. I think that's why the Broncos do so.

Yeah, we'll go with that.

Yeah.

Right. So tell us about your history. You started a business when you're 14 years old. That's pretty atypical.

Yeah, man. Kind of just entrepreneur at heart. The complete opposite of my parents, which were go get a job, work for 40 years, however long people work for, retire and then travel around and do the things you want. I guess I just thought there was something different. So, at 14, I wanted to buy my first car. My parents told me they wouldn't buy a car, so I went out and started a mobile car wash detailing business. Hmm.

Was it just you?

Yeah, it was just me.

And did you grow that to a larger company?

You know, it grew to large enough to let me stockpile quite a bit of cash before I went off to college, and then it just kind of actually fizzled. I didn't really understand business enough to know that I had something I could sell after that.

Well, you were 14, after all. I mean, that's legit. After college or during college, when did you start your next business?

So I started my next business shortly after college. When I graduated from college, I worked as a stockbroker for a year, realized that that was definitely not for me, and shortly thereafter, got into the mortgage business. Was in that until 2008. We all know what happened in 2008 in the mortgage industry, so I did really, really well for a couple years. I learned a ton about business. I learned probably more about what not to do in business, and I kind of got lucky in a lot of things that I did right. And I just. I had a good market, but it was, like, the best education in business I ever had. And by the time I failed miserably, I was over $100,000 in debt from the business. I'd ruined my credit, couldn't pay my rent, rode my bike to work a couple times, even, because I couldn't put gas in my car. And, yeah, so I call it, like, the absolute best hundred thousand dollars that I ever spent. Was that business education.

It must have been brutal, though. Did the business have to fold because of those troubles?

Yeah, absolutely. It went. I mean, it pretty much went down in flames, and my credit and a lot of other things were tied to it. You know, I mean, that was my sole income. So we had a couple Business lines of credit to run the business. I didn't understand how to start a business, so I thought, oh, man, we're doing great. Let's get some credit and grow even faster. Not so much the case.

And when, I mean, I assume it's pretty obvious, but when the business goes away, that debt doesn't go away. It's now your responsibility, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So how'd you claw out of that.

Hard work? I went and got a job making about 20 grand a year at first, and then within a couple months, realized I needed to start another business because there's no way I'm going to be okay working for somebody else. So started another business there just to make a little bit of extra money on the side. And that company was actually in digital marketing. I thought, hey, if I can make a couple thousand bucks on the side, I can pay off this debt a little bit faster and. And maybe afford to go to Mexico with my girlfriend.

That mortgage company, when that went under, what year was that?

So it went under.

It was.

It was right around 2008. 2009 is kind of when it finally.

Yeah, yeah, no, I gotcha. And then, so 2008, 2009, you have $100,000 of debt. You start a new business on the side. Parts recover. Is that. Is that seques is what you started then, or was it a different name at that time?

No, so I actually started another business with a partner at that time. It was called Segon. And, you know, we grew that over the course of the next. I think it was six or seven years. And then I actually sold that.

Yeah. Oh, yes. For profit.

Yeah, it was what profit was left in it. And you know, the funny part about the. My previous business, the CGON company, was that I learned a lot of additional great lessons about how to run a business and how to deal with partnerships. And I learned a ton about what not to do. I basically learned how to do everything. The opposite of profit first.

All right, so why don't we hear your story pre profit first, and I'd like to hear post profit first. So with cgon, now you see it, now it's gone. With cgon, you never heard that one before. What was it like prior to profit first? What were the financials like? What were you experiencing?

So the financials were decent. I mean, the company was strong. We made really good revenue, but we were operating out of one account. And it was, hey, this month we got 50 grand extra in the account. We should buy something. We should go on a vacation. We should take an extra owner's draw. We should buy new computers. I mean, stuff that we didn't really need because all that extra cash was there. But we really didn't. We didn't have any other accounts that we were saving in. You know, we weren't doing anything with profit. We were kind of just rolling with whatever was in that operating account.

But. But didn't you have, I'm sure, income statements and cash flow projections, budgets. Did you use those or what was was that all about?

Not really. I mean, there's some issues there with the partnership that come into play a little bit with that. So I learned a lot about how to much better run a partnership, but we really didn't use a lot of that stuff. I mean, it was almost like the mortgage company we started to do really well, and it was kind of like, wow, well, digital marketing and online marketing is never going to go away. Let's just kind of keep rolling with it like we're doing it and we'll be fine.

And we say you're doing really well. How are you measuring how that you were doing really well?

Good question. So most of it was. Most of it was, can we pay our staff really well and can they be happy and can we grow when we need to, and then are we making more money than we were last year personally?

Hmm. So interesting. So it's what I hear is you're measuring that you're doing well by the folks you have. So maybe that's the size, the number of people you have and the quality of people, how well you're paying them. And also comparative. Just looking at your. Were you looking at your top line, comparing this year to last year, saying, oh, we're making more money, we're making more money? Was that kind of the analysis?

Yeah, exactly. It was, hey, our gross revenue was up by 200%. And we thought we were doing great and we were doing well. But what happened towards the end is that gross revenue continued to increase, but sneaking around in the shadows was a very large decreasing profit number.

But could you. Did you know that you said you weren't really looking at your income statements? And by the way, no one does. You're not alone. You. You're not looking your financials, but you're looking at your bank account. Could you tell that your profit was decreasing or not really there? Or is this in retrospect?

I could tell a little bit when it was happening, but it just didn't seem. It didn't seem to matter enough to make a difference. You know, we were doing well, and the profit wasn't decreasing enough to where it was setting off alarms and we were going to not be able to make payroll and that type of thing. And we were on this kind of cusp of getting ready to get really big or kind of take the next level jump in business, at least comparatively to our industry. We won two awards for Colorado fastest growing companies, and it just didn't seem to matter that much. I was like, well, we're going to be fine.

Can you give us a sense of the size the business was?

Yeah, I mean, we really weren't that big. I mean, we were under a million when I sold and we had about 12 employees, but we had grown over the course of three years. I mean, the, the award we won for fastest growing company in Colorado was I think we were like 380% over three years. But again, that was gross revenue.

Right. Why is it that everyone talks about that, Steve? I'm sure, Stephen, you're talking with your friends that own other businesses. Everyone's talking about, whoa, hey, man. Doubled, doubled our size. I doubled our revenue. There's a 3% growth. Isn't that the common dialogue that people have about business?

Yeah, everybody always seems to talk about this, this revenue number, but it really doesn't matter. And that's something that I just, really just learned about how important the whole profit thing is.

Maybe it's because, you know, if you talk about top line, it's a bigger number and it's more impressive. And also the other thing is that people don't want to disclose what their actual profits are like. You know what I mean? That's getting a little too personal maybe. Is that, could that be true?

Yeah, it's scary because when you actually start looking at profit, it's so small. And I think you almost feel guilty or ashamed a little bit because you're like, oh man, if I look at my profit, then they're really gonna know what my business is like. But if you look at my gross revenue, it's like, heck yeah, man, we did a million dollars or 2 million or 10 million. Who, who cares? It doesn't matter.

Yep. 12 employees.

Yeah. Isn't that funny? Yeah. This chest pounding around those things, it kind of a car like, you know, how many horsepower does your car have? I used to have a. Right. But it's really the torque that matters. Like, you know, a small little Chevrolet with a, with an engine that throws out a lot of torque will blow away this monster truck sized thing that has, you know, 7,000 horsepower. So interesting. So when was your kind of come to Jesus moment? It sounds like everything's good, but there must have been a moment that you said, this isn't working anymore.

Yeah. So the come to Jesus moment was at the end of the partnership where we went back and forth. I was trying to buy my partner out. It really didn't work out. Over a couple months, he ended up buying me out. But as I was watching all this happen, I was really watching things like profitability and what our true income was. And I was watching that all the graphs were going the opposite of the way that I wanted them to. So paying attention to all of that and really kind of getting out at the, I mean, I say the perfect time, it wasn't the perfect time, but getting out at the best time possible. Because if I had stayed longer, we would have been in, we would have been in a lot of trouble.

Does the business continue on today? Did your partner recover?

From my understanding, it does still continue on. I don't really know a whole lot about what's going on with it, but yeah, I know it's still doing something.

Okay, so then, then you went back out on your own to start your next business, it sounds like.

Yeah. So the, the day that I got the check in, the signed agreement from him, part of our agreement was that there was no non compete within the industry. So I started sequest the next day. So I was back on my own with a computer and saying, okay, I guess I should probably get some clients and then maybe I should get some staff after that.

And then what about Profit First? There's a certain point you implemented Profit First. I know you and I had some dialogue about it, but when did you say, okay, this is the new way to go?

So let's see. So CEQA started in April of last year, so it's 2014. And then I met you and got the book in September of 2014. So I would say I started Profit first about a month after that. You know, I read the book, I listened to the audio a couple times and it all just made sense. So I finally, within about a month I got all the accounts set up and started Profit First. And I mean, from that point on it's like it's just history. It's like this is just the normal way to do business now.

So all the folks listening in are entrepreneurs. Many of them have heard Profit first through me many times, but I don't think they're convinced yet. That's why I'm so excited to have you on the show. So you can share your experience and tell us how you implemented it, what's working, what's not working. Kind of walk us through the process of getting profit first started in your business, and the results ultimately has brought about.

Cool. So as far as actually getting started, you can't pick anything easier than implementing profit first. I mean, literally, you set up some bank accounts, you set up a couple percentages, and then you. Basically, everything happens automatically if you set up your accounts. Right. So implementation should never be an excuse for not setting up profit first.

But how often do we hear that as an excuse, Christina? So I have to set up two bank accounts.

That was such a hassle.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so no excuse. I love it. Then what?

So after I got it all set up, you know, the first month or two, you're kind of like, all right, I got to do something a little bit different, so you got to create a new habit. But within the first month or two, when I started to see money in those accounts, it was like, aha, I get it now. And that just was this huge, like, snowball effect to, you know, I mean, it's like any sort of saving or investing, everybody always says, just start putting $5 a month away, and as you see it grow, mentally, you'll want to put more into that. So when I started to see that happen, it was like, ah, I'm on to something. This Mike guy, he's a little crazy, but, you know, he's got it.

Yeah. So what with percentages. What kind of percentage did you start allocating to your profit when you set this up? You start with 10, 20%.

Yeah. I mean, I think based on the size of the business where I was when I started, I was a little more aggressive than the. Than I think even you recommended, but I did things a little bit differently. So I. I use contract labor for some because I don't need to bring these people in house, or at least not. I don't need to bring them in as W2'd so I actually did all of my percentages, just all off of my gross revenue, so I don't even take out contractors. Hopefully I'm not misteaching your system, but.

No, no, no, that's good. It's designed to be customized. No, I love this. Okay, so, okay, take it off your gross revenue.

And it just worked easier for me because it made it so much more simpler. Like, that was one less calculation that I had to figure out and make. So it was one less excuse for actually doing profit first every single month and making it Sustainable, right?

Right.

So I started with my tax account. I started with 15%. My owner's pay was 10, my profit was 10. And then I had my drip account. And then I actually set up two other little accounts. I set up a company wide personal development account because I love doing events for my staff. I love flying them out and doing crazy seminars and learning cool stuff and just personal growth. And then I started a small technology fund. So I did like 3% in personal growth and 1% in technology. Now like what actually happened two days ago, the only person in my office that has to use a Mac, her laptop died. So, you know, $3,000 later, she's got a nice new Mac laptop.

And you had the money reserved in advance?

Yeah, yep, just for that.

And it, yeah, it's funny. And if you didn't have that account, would, would you have had the money, do you think?

No, no way. I would have been scrambling for it. I would have put it on the credit card and then tried to figure out how to pay it off at the end of the month or something like that.

Now, I presume people are listening into you right now saying, okay, he sets up these accounts, he's doing stuff. But God, he must have sacrificed so much in his personal life. He must sacrifice so much. How much sacrifice have you had to make once you set these accounts and are reserving money for things like your taxes in advance and for funding these events for your employees?

None. I didn't sacrifice anything. I mean, the learning curve of the first month or two in creating the habit was really the only sacrifice. And when I saw how everything worked, I just, I realized what was coming in the future. So saving a couple bucks here, there, and putting them in these accounts really was, was, it was no sacrifice at all. And the really interesting part I think is in something for people to learn from, is that you realize that you only cut the things that you don't really need. I mean, I don't need three 27 inch monitors. I don't need a Mac computer. I don't need a nice new truck with my big company logos on it. I don't need any of that stuff. I'd so much rather have money in a profit account.

Yeah, it's funny, it's the old pareto principle that 20% of the things that we possess, we really benefit from the analogy. I think we've used it on other shows. Here is if you look at your own clothing closet, right, all the clothing we have, we only wear about 20% of it. Most of the Time. So chances are, right now, as you're listening to the show, you're wearing some of your favorite clothes. Most of it just sits idle, and it's a waste. And it sounds like when you implement this, Stephen, instead of buying it and having it sitting there, you're not buying it in the first place.

Yeah, absolutely.

What are your observations of your feelings around money management and cash flow about your business now?

It's fantastic. I mean, I know we're safe. So now when I tell my staff, hey, guys, look, you are safe when you work here. We've created a culture in an environment where I got your back. And I can say that and be and look myself in the mirror and know that it's 100% true. Because we could lose half of our clients, and the company's gonna be fine. Doesn't even matter. I have months to go out and replace all those clients, so the security alone is worth a ton.

And anything flawed in profit first, is there anything that's not working or things, hacks or workarounds you found that we should know about?

Not really. I mean, the biggest one for me was what I shared is just that the profit first, it's already so simple. But I like things really, really simple. Like, you'll lose me within a couple minutes on a lot of things if I'm, you know, I'm just like, okay, okay, butterfly, squirrel, whatever. So I just made it even simpler. I took out some of that stuff and said, all right, I don't really care about this whole contractor amount and calculating that percentage. I'm just going to take some percentages.

And.

And, you know, honestly, Mike, I didn't really even calculate them that well. I just kind of said, all right, 10% sounds about good, and if it doesn't work next month, I'll adjust it a little bit.

Yep.

And that was huge for me. I mean, probably that's why it worked. Not why it worked. That's why I stuck with it till today. Till forever.

Yeah. So what we find is that it's funny, you can pick arbitrary numbers, almost say, this is what I want my profit to be, and people get confused over that. I tell people, just pick a profit number. Like, Mike, I've never been profitable. Now you're saying, just pick a random number. That's bs that can't work. But I'm hearing from you, Steven, you picked a random number and you're hitting it.

Yeah, absolutely. I found ways to make it work. And if I ever came up at the end of the month and I Said, okay, I can't make payroll. Of course I would have taken it from my profit account or something for the first month and then I would have adjusted after that.

Mm hmm. How many accounts do you have now? You used to have one for your old business. How many accounts do you have?

So let's see, how many? One, two, three, four, five, six. I have six.

Okay. What does your banker think about that?

You know, it's funny, my CPA has multiple times asked me out for a beer because he goes, look, man, I don't know how you're growing these businesses so quickly, but, like, let's go hang out. And so when he saw these different accounts come in, I just said, hey, I'm trying something new. I read this book. He never even questioned it. He just goes, well, I guess it's probably going to work for you because most things seem to. So, yeah, tell us if we can do anything to help. But yeah, I mean, he thinks I'm a little crazy already.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Most CPAs think you're crazy. There's a small faction that really get it. They're called Profit First Professionals. But that's awesome. Stephen, I want to take the last couple of minutes we have together. You have a digital marketing firm. Any tips for the folks listening in and how they can leverage marketing in the best way for their business?

Yeah, first thing I'll tell you that ties kind of into Profit first is stop spending all your money on things that you don't need. Stop spending your money on these giant fancy websites when you're not ready for it. I mean, I own an SEO company and I tell most people, stop spending money on SEO because the traffic that you're. You're not doing anything with the traffic that you already get to your site. So stop wasting money on just trying to get more traffic to the site because it's not going to do you any good. Fix the problem first.

That's powerful.

Yeah. Figure out conversion. Figure out what's going on, you know, when it comes to digital marketing. And I'll just touch briefly because everybody wants to know, how do I rank higher in Google? You know, how do I get more people to find me the big secret wizard of Oz, Google guy? It's really basic. So Google's only point is, or only they're only in business to show the most relevant result possible on the web for a certain word or phrase. Now it's context, but that's really their only job and to block out all the spammers. So your goal is to make your website the most relevant website, the best resource possible for your product, service, whatever in your geographic area, if that matters to your business. And I mean the couple quick ways to do it is just make sure you're consistent online. Make sure that your Google Maps profile and your Yelp profile, make sure they all match up with the information that's on your website. And then make sure you have really good content about your topic. Blog, I mean add new content. I mean for crying out loud, we get people that have like a three page website and it has 10 sentences on each page. And the biggest question is, does Google think that you are more relevant than the guy down the street that has a hundred page website and a lot of great content that people are interacting with?

Yeah, I've got those sites where it says, oh, see what our recent news is. And you click on it, it says back in 1997. And like that's the most recent article.

Yeah, wow. 1998.

So one last question I have for you, going back to Profit first and thank you for those tips. But for folks listening who maybe were in the same position as you, it looks like they're doing well, but they're not, or they're experiencing debt or they're not, or maybe they're doing well and want to do better. What would be your tip in getting started with Profit first? What's the first step they should take today?

So the first step to take today, if you haven't already read the book is probably read the book. I'm even lazy and didn't want to read the book so I bought the audio and I listened to it on two times speed.

Oh really? I didn't know you could do that. That's cool.

Yeah. So Mike, you sound a whole lot different talking twice as fast. Yeah, but I mean I listened to the whole book in, you know, a couple days just in my drive to and from work and, and then I re listened to parts that were important. So I figured out the important parts and then I went back and listened to those afterwards. So first obviously read the book and then really I guess take 10 seconds and set up some bank accounts, randomly pick some numbers that seem like they might work and feel comfortable to you along with a little bit of the guidelines of Mike, what you came up with in the book and just start doing it and then if it doesn't work that month, change it a little bit, but just take the action steps to start doing it and stop procrastinating because the difference it makes is absolutely amazing.

Wow, Stephen, thank you for sharing that and sharing your story. That was very powerful stuff.

Awesome.

Hey, if folks want to learn more about your business and hopefully do business with you, where can they go?

Awesome. So they can go to our website. It's www.sequest.com. it's just s E, E, E, Q U, S. Kind of like C us with a giant Q in the middle of it. And if they want, I mean, there's even a free website evaluator on there. I mean, there's some cool tools that they can use just to see how their website's performing. And then I'm always available, too, if people just have questions. I mean, I love this. My staff makes fun of me. Basically, all I do is sit around all day and give free advice. But it seems to be working, so I'm just going to keep doing it.

No, I love it. And I love your sales pitch. When someone calls you, says, I want to do SEO, you're like, you know, you really shouldn't do SEO. Even though I'm an SEO company now. That was really cool. So thank you for the honest, awesome advice. It's nice meeting you and hanging with you. It's nice meeting you before. And we'll stay in touch and wish you continued success.

Thanks, Stephen.

Awesome, everybody. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Steven. Great job.

You know, Chris, what I love is that someone has the courage to come on and share their story. And I'll tell you, in Steven's story, there's a lot more dirty stuff that we could dig into and what it's like to have $100,000 of debt and how devastating that can be. Christina, you've experienced that. Aaron has. Actually, everyone here has experienced the dark side of money and not having it, and there's a lot to it. So we didn't have time to dig into it. And I'm not trying to make this into a grand testimonial, even though it's. It does kind of turn into that the system works. And I'm not like this. I invented this, and I'm trying to promote my system. This has been around since the birth of money management, and it's simply the pay yourself first principle. Only thing I'm saying is stop just considering that for your home finances, start applying it to your business finances, and it changes things radically. So it's the pay yourself first principle applied to business, and it does change things radically. And it's always a joy to have a guest on that, has seen both sides, and hopefully he'll continue to do that forever and hopefully inspired you listener. And if you don't know who listeners, that's you, you listener to do the same. Thank you to our sponsors. Fundera. Listen, when your business is cruising, when something's going right and you want to do more of it, that's the time you borrow money. And Fundera is a source for borrowing money. Fundbox. If you have invoices due to you, they will get that cash into your bank accounts fund faster. Funbox can explain all to you just go to their website. Nextiva is a voice over IP phone system. It's excellent. It's extraordinary. It's versatile and it competes with all other VoIP systems, but it gives you the performance of a traditional PBX based system. And of course, not least, not last. Last but not least, that's the word to look for. Tsheets. I'm thinking of Kelly, who I spoke to earlier this morning. TSheets is time tracking software. Very sophisticated. They raised $15 million to facilitate further growth and make their software even more sophisticated. I don't know what else they can do. It's already amazing. They're making it more amazing. So check out tsheets dot com. Christina, what'd you learn today?

Oh my gosh, it's. You just gotta face your fear. I know there are people out there who are still hesitant to implement this, but just do it. You, as soon as you start seeing the results, you'll be happy that you did.

Yeah.

That's really all I have to say about it.

Eight of our 10 listeners are not implementing Profit First. And it sounds like, and it sounds horrib to say that, but the majority of people listening right now don't do it because the majority of businesses are struggling check by check. Stephen did it and it literally is that simple. He called his bank, he set up accounts. Was that a half hour? And then he said, here's a percentage, I'm going to start signing what happens. And I was writing down his story. This is the classic, what I call the dip and rise. It starts off with setting it up. So you're like, hey, I'm finally going to do this. That's the commitment. Then there's some confidence, hey, I set this up. But then there's this waffling saying, oh, maybe the numbers aren't right. Oh, this is too hard for me. There's that dip period. If you can see yourself through that, then when that first profit distribution comes out, when you see the money accumulating like Steven's talking about, then the Belief comes and then you get some serious momentum and commitment. You got to get through that dip. No better way to do it than listening to stories like, Steven, call Stephen, he's offering it, and say, dude, did you really do this? How'd you do it? Help me. He'll help you start doing profit first in your business.

And it could be any percentage that you want it to be. It doesn't have to be 10%. If that scares you, start at 5, start at 2. Just start.

Just start. Chris, what'd you learn, bro?

I like. By the way, I also implemented profit first over the last few months.

Excellent.

And.

All right, we've been hounding you on that.

Well, no, I started a while back. I've talked about this on the show. And yeah, as soon as you do it and you see that money there, you're like, oh, man, this is cool. But I like how he not only set up the, you know, standard or traditional profit first accounts, you know, owners pay taxes, operating costs, whatever. He set up two other accounts. One, a company wide personal growth fund. I think he called it something different.

But yeah, personal growth.

Personal growth where he has these seminars for his employees and his people and his subcontractors. That's just tremendous. And he. And the other account he set up was a tech account. So when his one employee, when the laptop died, he had money to buy a new one. I mean, this just completely underscores this, the general fundamental principle behind profit first, which is you can use your mind power to set this stuff up and it'll work the way you set it up. It's just like it's using your will to set it up properly and it'll work. You know what I mean?

By creating a safety net. That's what you're doing.

Yeah, but if you're in a company, whatever company you're starting, you know, maybe you don't have a personal growth fund, maybe you don't have a tech account. Maybe you could probably have two or three of your own customized accounts, you know what I mean? That would help you in your business. So.

Oh, you can totally customize it. Erin from our office, she was doing a speech on profit first and she said a great thing. Someone's like, ah, I'm thinking about doing this. I'm thinking about this. Should I set more accounts? And she simply said, if in doubt, open an account that's become now a montage. Here, our slogan here, our prone slogan. Oh, yeah, is that you. You can set up accounts as many as you want, and you are Going to get that kind of half cockeyed look from your cpa. If they don't get it, you're going to get the look from your bank banker saying, why do you need all these accounts? These are simply the modern version of envelopes. You're pre allocating money for a purpose. It accumulates. And when you look at that envelope, whatever the amount is, that is the amount you have. My grandmother, she had, she had these multiple envelope accounts. She put money in every time she got paid for working at the local store. She would put money into the food account, money into the rent account, money into the contribution to community, church and so forth account. Now here was amazing. She always had enough money in the food account. Now some days, some weeks, she was sick and couldn't go to work. There wasn't much money in there. She always had enough because whatever was in there was what had to work. So it was gonna be rice and beans or sometimes she worked overtime. There's extra money. That was a nice, nice dinner. So whatever's in that account, you work with it. Profit first forces innovative thinking. It forces you to work within parameters and constraints, which is your best way to facilitate innovation. Thinking outside the box. And you'll always have enough money because you work with only the money that's allocated for that purpose. And always have profit because the profit's taken first.

I love it.

All right, man, we gotta, we gotta.

We gotta get out of here. But Profit First Professionals, you know, every business needs an accountant and a bookkeeper.

And I feel like calling Stephen back up saying, dude, I wanted to get you a new accountant. When your accountant looks at you and says, well, I don't really get it. They don't get it. We have a certified organization, organization of certified individuals, accountants and bookkeepers throughout the globe who have studied Profit First. We've walked them through the nuances. Profit first is a profoundly simple system, but the devil is in the details. When you start implementing it, you have questions around tax implications, the different nuances, sticking with the program. That's what Profit First Professionals do. They will guide you step by step through this. They will make your business more profitable. They'll help you increase your percentages. They'll guide you through all that. You just have to do one thing. Go to profit first professionals.com and click on find. We'll do the rest. We'll find you someone that can help you out. You know what I'm saying?

It's important. Yeah.

Doing at the build there.

I heard you. I love it. And if you want to know more about Chris Curran, me or podcasting, go to fractal recording.com I produce podcasts for business authors. And if you want to hear more of this show, if you want to binge listen like a like addict, massive cool addict, there's a on Android, there's an app called the Podcast Addict. Oh, I like it. So you can go to profit first podcast.com check out all our episodes and all our previous guests. And of course, itunes, Stitcher and Tunein Radio as well. Thanks for listening, everybody. This has been awesome. Thanks again to our guest, Steven Christopher as well. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you. See you guys.

Bye, guys.

See you, Christina. Bye, Sam.