Episode 60: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with Stan Shields

We're ready here in studio.

We're ready to go.

I think we should do a game show today.

Welcome to the Profit first game show.

I'm your host, Chris Curran.

The answer is profit. What's the question?

You're listening to the Profit first podcast.

And they told us we would never make it. You can't handle the truth. We did make it. Episode 60s here.

Yes. 60.

Oh, man.

And chimed in.

What a rush this is, this show. Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the show.

I'm Chris Kern, the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Malowitz, the author of Profit First. And my colleague is sitting right to my right, Christine Bolduc. Welcome.

Hey, friends.

Hey, Christine.

You're listening to the Profit first podcast, folks, where you learn everything about profitability. And today's a real special episode. Something cool we haven't done before.

That's right. Profit is. You know what, what do they say? What you focus on expands. Have you heard that?

Sure.

I actually had not heard that.

Oh, yeah. Well, this show focuses on profit so it can expand in your business.

Like it now? Yeah, yeah. I get. I mean, I get what you're saying. I've never heard the words said that way, but I like it. I like it.

Yes. Revenue, Wonderful employees. Wonderful website. Wonderful.

Wonderful, wonderful.

I was just gonna let you guys shake. Sorry about that.

You focus on the negative, the negative will expand. I'm now all clicking. You focused on the wrong things, and you get more of the wrong things. You focus on the right thing, the most important thing, profit. And it will expand.

That's right. And that's why people, we hear from listeners all the time, they tune in every week to Profit first because why? Because we're dripping on you. You're gonna be. You're gonna have profit on the brain.

We are drooling like that slime was a little drool that came out of the show.

Is that what that is?

Sorry. That was profit. In your face. I'm sorry. But here's the deal, dude. Here's the deal. The more you focus on. This is true. I get it. It will expand. And thank you to our loyal listeners. We have folks that come in here again and again and again. I would. I wish we could do a survey of people that listen and don't listen and see the difference in profitability. I know that you can't do that, but that'd be kind of cool.

Huge.

Huge.

Well, now on. Now on Twitter, they have. You can send a tweet. That's a poll. You can ask a Question and give two choices. And people can pick. Pick a choice.

Okay.

As long as they haven't blocked you.

Oh, that's true.

I'm sorry.

Three weeks of insults around being blocked.

So we're. Our show is available on itunes and stitcher and tunein radio and our website, where we have all the episodes in one handy place is profit first podcast dot com.

Yeah. Please add your comments and stuff. We love the feedback that's coming in there. Dude, Chris, before we get started, man, what have you been up to this week, my brother?

You know, we've been in here, living here in Colorado Springs for a few months now, and it's just. It's just great. It's. You know, we're settled in now, so. You know those four episodes in a row where I said we're still settling in and you're like, still settling in.

I know it's been a month.

Yeah. But we're all settled here, and it's just great. You know what? And every place you live, it's great, too. I mean, we lived in. I lived in New Jersey my whole life, pretty much, and it was a great place. But this is a great place.

No, Colorado, I think you're inferring.

What have you been up to, man?

Dude, Home run of home runs. This is the first time Christina seen it. Do you see that up there?

Yes, I do.

We have. Watch this. Watch this. Click. Boom. Oh, my God. We have the profit first app completed.

It's awesome.

It is, yes.

Beautiful. So shiny.

All these different functions. You can walk through all. I'm just kind of rolling through for Christina, even though I know you listening and can't be seeing this, but it's very cool.

Well, can they download it?

I want it go right now. Right now. Go. Go to itunes. It's only available on the apple first. There's a reason when developing it to do it this way. So if you have an iPhone or an iPad, go to profit first on your. In the itunes store. You'll find it there and download it. But, Christina, you won't be able to download it right now. The reason is as I'm saying this as we're recording it, it's not actually there. It'll be there two days. So Christina's like, oh, I'm getting it now. When you're listening to. It's there. I have it. We have it in. In the office to test it. And it just got approved. And so now that means it's released to itunes. They're uploading it as we record this and then when you listen to it's gonna be up there. So go there right now.

What a way to focus even more on profit.

Yeah, well, and that's the beautiful thing is it puts it in front of you literally every day. You can run a assessment of your business, where it stands, and it will report on what you should be doing with your money. As every deposit comes in every day, it'll tell you how to allocate it for you automatically. All the work's done for you.

This is unbelievable. Between what we've shared already and our guest who's we're waiting to introduce, this is going to be the greatest episode ever.

Greatest episode ever.

Mind blown.

The only thing in between the what I just shared and our guest is the. The filling, if you will, like an Oreo cookie. Right. You had the delicious sandwich. You had that wonderful cream in the middle. You know what's in the middle? It's our sponsors.

Oh, our corporate partners.

They are delicious. They are delicious. They are awesome. Fundera. Thank you. T sheets. Thank you. Fund box. Yes, Fund box.

Fund box.

Fun box. And who did I miss? Thanks to tsheets. Thanks, diva. Did I get everybody?

Fundera.

Fundera. I got everyone there by now. Next, Diva.

We'll talk more about them later.

Yep. Thanks, guys. You guys are huge for supporting this program. And by the way, at the end, we are also going to share our insights that we learned from the show. And this show is going to be packed of insights. I can just feel it. I can feel it.

I'm about to start the drum roll.

Do you know who's on our show today, Chris? There's Stan Shields. Stan Shields is a profit firsterer. I don't even know if he knows that that's the term. He started a martial arts professional, a professional martial arts studio or school back in 2012, 2002. You know, that's about almost 14 years ago, believe it or not. Doesn't time fly? 2002, 14 years ago. Now it boasts over 200 students. But it has not necessarily been an easy ride. In fact, I got an email from Stan a few months ago saying I finally have drawn the line. I want to be more profitable and today I commit to it. And he committed to profit first. He's just starting his implementation. And being the martial arts guy, he has. He has the absolute wherewithal that's important to spread what he's learning. So he said, I want to hop on the show with you. I'm going to share what I've experienced in my business. The ups and downs and going to share you where I stand. Profit first. And we're going to have a little dialogue on how we can take it to the next level. First time we've ever done that. So, Stan, I don't want to put any further ado or cream between me and you. As they say with the Oreo cookies. Let's get down to business. Stan, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks, guys. How are you today?

Awesome. Good. How you doing?

Thank you, Stan, for coming on the show.

Yeah, man, very good. I love that crowd. That's pretty awesome.

They love you.

They're all for you.

They will obey you too.

They're all masters of gymkata. One of them. Stop.

Stop it.

Have you ever.

Have you. Stop. Have you ever heard the karate derivative called gymkata?

Invented by only just now.

Oh, okay. Supposedly, and I don't know if this is myth or reality, supposedly invented by Chuck Norris when he came out with the all in one machine that him and Christie Brinkley were promoting that he discovered you can combine karate and with gymnastics and he made gymkata.

You know, you say that and I think back and I go, oh my gosh, I think I do remember something. Remember that he did.

Yeah, Scary almost.

Yeah, that. The gliding machine. Like you pull a cable and all of a sudden you're ripped as you glide around your room.

That's right.

All right, so first tell us about your martial arts studio. How did you ever get started in. In running a martial arts business?

You know that I'll tell you, that is a weird story because honestly, as I was training in martial arts as a student, I would. I said very, very frankly that, you know what? I'll never run a martial arts school. Because I looked at my instructor, I saw the work and didn't really look like you could make any money at it. And I just said, you know, I'm not even sure I want to deal with the parents that are going to go crazy over their kids and all of that kind of stu. And I said, I'll never run a martial arts school. And then the crazy thing happened of. Of 9 11. It was just bizarre of the quick turnaround that happened. There was just all of this unsettledness. I don't know if that's even the right word. But you know, just going around of people and people and companies and everything else just not being very stable. And a friend of mine had been talking to me to try to convince me to open a martial arts school. And I just kept saying, no, you're crazy. You're crazy. You're crazy. And then finally I looked at some guys that were being very successful and I said, holy smokes, I guess you really can make some money at this. And so literally, you know, 911 is in September. By the end of October, I went from I'll never own a martial arts school to I'm buying a martial arts school.

Wow. Wow. How do you get the funds to buy a school?

Well, you know what? I didn't have the funds to buy a school and I did it on a shoestring, just like a lot of businesses do. So I think that I'm one a very lucky guy. But I also think that I know this, that I'm also a survivor. I figure out a way to survive. But the thing was crazy because I really pulled $10,000 out of, I think it was my IRA account. And my business partner pulled about the same amount out of someplace. I think it was her 401k. We plowed that in and then we made, we agreed to make payments to purchase the school from the previous owner. The previous owner had had several injuries. She owned horses and all that and she'd fallen off a horse, she'd gotten kicked. I mean, it was bad news.

She got her ass kicked by Chuck Norris using Chimpata.

That's right. And so, you know, we, we bought it and everything immediately went wrong, of course. I mean, it was just, you know, we thought we were going to be, you know, generating 15, $16,000 a month revenue. We generated four. I mean, it was just crazy. And but you know, we, we managed to stick with it and we got through those times.

So, so why did it, why wasn't it 15,000? Why was it 4,000? What happened that you didn't expect to happen?

Well, you know what, what's crazy about that is you really need to have a lawyer or somebody look at contracts for you and some of those kinds of things. Because we purchased 80 students, which, you know, we look at what 80 students would normally generate in a martial arts school and the revenue that you would get. But what we didn't know was that the previous owner had taken the full payments from many of those students and did not really disclose that to us. So we thought we were buying a stream of payments when in fact, you know, we bought bodies that were there but they weren't paying anything. Oh, so quite a shock.

So I would never do that to a fifth degree back black belt like you are because you would crush my head.

Well, I wasn't a fifth degree at the time.

Oh, there you go. So she knew she can sneak one by. What are the repercussions? Were you able to. Do you sue for that? How do you fix that? Or you just have to live with the burn?

Well, you know what it was. Is that it? Nowhere in there did it say that we had those stream. We just did not. We didn't do a good enough job of looking at what we were getting and what we were paying for. So it didn't say anywhere in it that, you know, anywhere in there that that's what we were going to be getting. But just a lot of misunderstandings with it. So, you know, we. We went out and we brought in more students and did what we had to do to make that work.

So, and so. And how do you make that work? How did you figure it out? What was any key tricks you can share with us to. To getting the business re reinvigorated quickly?

Well, you know, it was one. We didn't take a paycheck. You never heard that before?

Never, Never.

People listening, they're like, I still don't take a paycheck.

Yeah, ex good.

So we didn't take a paycheck. You know, and we had. Fortunately, something that happens in the martial arts industry that's a little different than most industries and most businesses is that we have, you know, we have a lot of students that are loyal to the school. Therefore, there's people that are willing to help you teach classes and, you know, help you do things around the school, help you clean the school at the end of the day, help you handle situations that come up. So it's not like a traditional business in a lot of ways of you got to pay everybody that's in that business to do some job. You get a lot of things that can be done by parents and by other students, by leadership team members as they're learning to become instructors. So we had a lot of help from a lot of people in those. In those early months. But there was one thing. Go ahead.

Well, so I'm hearing is the students that had paid full passes, if you will, with the prior owner, you didn't lose those students. They were just getting a quote unquote free ride from you. They didn't know they were, but they're getting free ride from you. But it sounds like you took a spin on that and said, well, since they're loyal to our school, let's extract more value from these customers by helping them support the school in other ways, volunteering and so forth.

And that's mostly true. We actually, you know, anytime a martial arts school is a very personal kind of a business, you develop a relationship with that instructor. And if that instructor leaves, then there's. There's a lot of people that will leave as well. Right. So we had some of the people that were a part of that whole contract agreement that left and actually went and started another school not too far away. I'm in Centennial, Colorado. They went to Highlands Ranch, Colorado, which was like five or six miles away. They started another school. So we still had some of those people that were there, but there was a significant number that left.

Did you ever contemplate getting, like, a band of your students together and going over to the other studio, like Karate Kid?

You should have.

We could have filmed this. It could be a movie. Your students go over their weapons. They show up, you're in the middle of the field, the mega fight breaks out. Everyone's laying on the ground groaning. And then the big battle, the last battle is Stan Shields, Stan Miyagi versus the prior. Stan Miyagi versus the prior owner. And you battle it out.

You know, it would be like the. The samurais and ninjas, right?

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

Explosions. Everything.

Exactly.

You know, but there was. There was one big key decision that I made after. After the first couple of months, and this is kind of interesting because we had. January was the. January 1st second. January 2nd was the first day of operation in 2002. From January 2nd up through May, through the end of May, we brought in a total of. I'm sorry, up through April, we brought in a total of up to five students. Right. So I'm about to panic because these. This is not hitting our projections at all.

Right.

And then in May, I decided. I convinced my previous company to allow me to work from home. And so I moved my home office into my martial arts studio, and I changed one of the phone lines to a block phone lines so that I could call out without people knowing exactly where I was calling from.

Smart.

That month of May, we then brought in five new students, and that was because somebody was there to answer the phones and to take walk in guests or visitors and so forth. Well, then the really interesting thing happened was in June, the very next month, I brought in 17 new members. And then the next month, I brought in 18 new members, and then I brought in 17 in the next month. So then it started to turn around. Then it started to make sense. But the big lesson I learned with that was you need to answer the phone, you need to have a live Voice, answer the phone. Because many people will not leave a voicemail if they don't get to a live person. So that was big one for me.

Such a subtle little thing, but what an impact it has. Now fast forward to when you and I connect. You discovered profit first. You said, I'm drawing a line of sand. Clearly your business is growing, but it doesn't necessarily mean the profit is growing too.

Right. What was going on? It was kind of crazy. If I give you a quick history, I mean, yeah, when I brought in those, those new students, then we started seeing revenue go up. And every year our revenue was improving. It was improving, it was improving. And I'm saying, wow, okay, this. Martial arts things, pretty easy. Although, you know, I'd look at the bottom line at the end of the year and I'd see X dollars in profit. But I'd look at my bank account and go, okay, it's not there. Where is it?

Right?

And I would ask each of my accountants, I'd say, okay, help me understand this. This says that there's $6,000 profit or $10,000 profit, but that's not what's in my bank account. Help me understand this. And I get generally accepted accounting principles, and I get that some things are amortized and so forth, but still, at the end of the year, I'm going, I don't see this profit here. Right. So our best year was 2008. And in 2008, we generated 403,000 for the year. And I said, okay, that's not bad for small business. And yeah, you know, we. We should be able to do even better than that still.

Right.

We just need to fix some things and all that. Although that was 2008, and things started going backwards in the direction and. But it was for a lot of reasons. It wasn't just because the economy. I always take the attitude that I'm just not participating in all that. However, I did participate, and I think a lot of it had to do with it was the economy. It was. My mother was diagnosed with cancer, and so we're going through, trying to help with all of that. I got a divorce or separated that year, started going through the divorce process. So there were a whole bunch of things that happened, and revenue started really going in the other direction. But nowhere along the way could anybody help me understand. In fact, I went to my chamber of commerce, some meetings there, and I talked to a variety of people and said, what's a good way to understand where the money is going and how to divide the money up? And how do I create really a cash flow kind of a statement in a system that really helps me know what's going on? Nobody, none of these people, these are accountants. These are CPAs. They couldn't tell me. They couldn't answer this question. And then I'm at a retreat three weeks ago, four weeks ago. And the person putting on this retreat, one of the modules she gave us in this class was this financial module. And she talks about profit first. And I sat there and my mouth is hanging open and I'm looking and I'm going, where's this been? Where's this been for 13 years?

Who was that person, by the way? Who's that coach?

Her name is. Her name is Tommy Wolf.

Tommy Wolf. Write that down quickly, Christine. Seriously, I want to call Tommy.

It's T O M M I. Tommy Wolf. W O L F E. But she runs an organization, the Startup Expert, I believe is what.

Oh, cool.

The Startup Expert Dot com. And that's what she does. She helps startup businesses become six figure businesses. So that's her major goal.

No, I gotta hook up with her. That's amazing.

So, yeah, that would be good.

Yeah, totally. So you, you're like, oh, my God, where's this been? What happened next? Did you just go and start implementing your business? How did you get started with profit first?

So that night I downloaded the book to my Kindle. A sample to my Kindle, or not Kindle, but my tablet or whatever. My Kindle app on my tablet.

And I love how you emphasize sample. Just.

Yeah, I want to read a little bit first. I liked you or trusted you yet.

Totally.

Good thing he hadn't heard this show yet. Jeez.

Oh, my God.

So I downloaded it and I read. I don't know how much. I read a lot of it, but I went, oh, my gosh, okay, I need to order this. I need to order this book. But she actually did more than talk about it. She took, you know, your printout that you have on your website that gives you a summary, the product. She handed that out to everybody.

Oh, great.

And so I'm reading that and looking at this going, okay, this just makes all the sense in the world. And so, you know, I finished the. The weekend retreat and then immediately came back, and on Monday morning, I started implementing things. I started looking for, what are the expenses that I can cut? What are the things that I really don't need? And then I had to make some really tough choices because then, you know, payroll and rent are the biggest expenses that most small businesses are. Going to have. And, and I'm going, all right, well, I'm in a five year lease that's over in a year and a half and there's not a lot that I'm going to do with that right now. And I had to seriously look at payroll and I was way out of balance with payroll. I was way out of balance.

But I presume all those people are busy, everyone's doing something. How do you address that?

Well, you know what though? It was really unbalanced in a, in a big way, in a, in one way. It was my, I had myself working full time and then I have a front desk employee and I don't, I don't want to use the word receptionist because she does way or did way more than what a typical receptionist would do because it was everything from billing to, you know, she'd write up contracts for new students. I mean, she did a lot of things that were there. But you know what I did is I printed off the profit and loss statement for the year. I printed it off after a few days of me just studying and trying to figure out what to do. And I handed it to her in one of our meetings and I said, okay, look at where we are. Explain to her the profit first system. And just kind of where, think what it, what it looked like, the percentages. I went through those and whatnot. And I said, okay, you're the CEO, what do you do? And you know, she looked at me and she goes, well, I think it's pretty obvious. And so, you know, we had this, this conversation about, okay, what, what else can we do? I mean, so let's look at really where we're spending everything because it, it needed to change, period. That's the bottom line, is it really had to change. So that was a tough, tough choice.

What was so obvious that she had.

To go, yeah, was that was what it was is that when you look at, when you look at the expenses, it's really the place that we were really way out of. Whack was just on the payroll side.

Got it.

And hers was the bulk of the payroll. Again, I have a lot of, I have some instructors that are, I have one guy that's been with me for 14 years and really with him, he's like, look, you know what, I just come in and help with class just because I want to do it. That's it. And so I have some great people like that.

But I can imagine Stan, folks listening in right now are like, okay, so he starts taking his profit first. He does these allocations, it becomes very clear his expenses are too high. But like, you have to get rid of your receptionist, plus some like, you know, she does all these different things for you. Now all this work has to go to someone else. You can't run a business that way. You can't live without her.

Can't do it long term. So what I have to do now is I have to really look at. I have some great systems, automated systems that are in place. And a lot of the things that were, you know, if you've got somebody sitting behind a desk, then many of the people that come in, they're going to stop and ask that person for things that they need. They're going to ask or you're going to ask questions, they're going to do whatever. When most of that information is already available to them in an automated system that we have, they just need to log in and just get it. And so I've pushed people to go do that. I have the billing. I actually have. My. My life partner is helping me with that. So she actually will do a lot of that work for me. And so we're. I'm parsing it out in other areas in other places. So, you know, we're making it work. I was making collection calls this morning myself, so. But, you know, it's, it's. It is one of those where, if you look at most martial arts schools, I was paying more for that position than I should have been in the first place. And I probably had her working more hours than I should have. So I needed to get all of that in alignment. That's what needed to happen.

That is so common with employees, but with any facet of our business. We were talking about this on last episode called Parkinson's Law. When you bring someone on board, there's always things for that person to do. The question is it moving the business forward? And unfortunately, too many companies keep bringing more and more people on board because they're all busy. But doesn't mean they're bringing profitability to the business. And the business starts to sink, it can destroy companies. Where. Where does your business stand now with profit first, like you've been for a month or so. Where do you stand now?

So I've taken a. I got to take $100 more in my paycheck than I was before.

Okay, well, how's that feel? I know maybe it's not much, but how does that feel?

Good. It feels good because, you know, it's one of those things that I say, okay, it's not as much as I want it to take, but it feels good that it's going in the right direction.

Yeah, it's 100 bucks closer to where you want to be.

That's right. And what I see is that there is money sitting over in that profit account that wasn't there before.

How much are you allocating to profit? Like what's the percentage of your deposits going to profit?

Well, the goal percentage is 10%, but the start off percentage is I'm just doing one year. What is it? You're 1% rule?

1% and so 1% rule.

That's what I'm trying to do. Yeah.

Excellent.

Just to get there. Just know that.

So, dude, I want to high five you. I'm just afraid because you're a fifth degree black belt, you'll think I'm karate chopping you and you'll kill me. So. But visually I'm high fiving you if you're doing 1%. Have is that money just accumulating or have you ever pulled back and pulled money out of that profit account?

So I haven't pulled anything out of that profit account. I basically, you know, even though I was like in September when I did this, I just said, you know what, I'm counting this as October and I just put it over there and I haven't touched it from October. And it's. I'm going to just at the end of this quarter. That's when I want to take that profit distribution. So will that be your first ever.

Profit distribution in your company?

Not the first ever, because in the early days we were doing a lot better and we had some profit distributions then.

Were you doing quarterly back then or when did you do.

No, I did not know it was at the end of the year.

Okay, so this will be your first quarterly profit distribution ever?

That's right. That's right.

Okay. And I want to get a sense for the emotion. So you made a hard decision. I'm sure it was very difficult to get one of your key employees. They have to leave because it's sinking your business. I'm sure that was difficult. But now you're making 100 bucks more yourself personally in only a few months and you're allocating money toward profit. Has it changed your confidence toward your future of your business financially?

Mike, you know what this has been. I want to tell you that I think that this book has really changed my life. It's change my perspective. When I read the book, immediately I got confidence. I went, oh my gosh, this, this is Incredible. You know, where's this been this whole time? But I immediately got confidence with it. And as I go through this process, then it's. The confidence is building. Absolutely.

Oh, I love hearing that. What are the challenges you're facing right now in implementing profit first? We got time together. I'd love to answer any specific questions that you have.

Well, you know, you talk about these accounts, and as I look at these buckets, I go, okay, there's those four main buckets that you had there. But. But, you know, it looks like these things can go to multiple. There can be, you know, more buckets. And then transferring money from my primary bank over to this other bank, you know, and just in terms of, okay, what's a good way to do all of that without physically moving money from this account to that account, writing a check and walk into the bank and I don't know, what are your thoughts on all?

Yeah, no, great question. And very common. So let me understand. First, the four accounts you have. I assume you have an operating expense account and you have a tax account.

Yes.

An owner's pay account and a profit account. And that's it, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Here's one thing, and shame on me for not making this more significant. In the book. That is what I call the initial setup for profit first. And it's good. There is a more effective way by setting up only one additional account, and it's an income account. The problem with the current setup for many businesses is the operating expenses still has inflow, outflow. All your checks from your students are going in there into the operating expense account, and then you're paying out of that. What I suggest is set up a fifth account called an income account. Its sole purpose is to receive the deposits from your students and is never to pay a single bill. It just piles up there. Then you allocate money from that income account to the other four accounts. So Operating expenses is used now to operate your business, but it's just a percentage of the income account like every other account. Now, the reason I suggest you do this is this becomes a very simplified way to measure cash flow. And what happens is as money piles up in that income account, it just sits there and accumulates until you allocate to the other accounts. I suggest doing this allocation maybe twice a month on the 10th and 25th is the golden rule. But in some businesses, it's better to do it weekly. In your business, with a lot of volume of transactions, you have many students, weekly may be better. But say you do this every Friday. You let the money accumulate until Friday, and then you allocate all the money in the income account. It goes back to zero to these other four accounts. Then from that Saturday until the next Friday, the income account just fills up with deposits and, and then allocates again. What happens is, every Friday, Stan, when you log in and look at that account, the income account, you will see what the regular balance is at that point, what the normal expectation is. When you see that over time that that normal number drops, you will absolutely notice and you'll know you have a cash flow issue immediately. Conversely, if that number is higher than it normally is, you'll say, oh, what happened? Did more annual students sign up? Or what's the reason? But either way, then when it goes outside that normal expectation, it raises a flag for you to investigate and learn more about it. So in your current setup with the operating expense account, you can't really quantify because money's coming in and out of that one account. If you set that fifth account income, you have the answer to better cash flow control. Does that make sense? Cool. Now, let me tell you about the other one. And I'm jazz. I'm jazz up for your business. I want to come out there and fight somebody, but it better be a white belt because I will get my ass kicked. But here, here's the, the second thing. The, the remote bank. Do you have you set up remote bank accounts, Stan?

No, I actually have set up. Or actually, what I'm thinking is I'm going to go to my credit union and set up a business account there. That was my thought anyway, but yeah. So you could tell me more.

Well, first of all, credit unions are awesome. We use a credit union for our own business here. Generally, credit unions do not charge fees for your bank accounts. And the personal rapport and relationship you can get with the people there much stronger than a large national bank. So I'm just a big fan of credit unions. Here's the dealio there. At your credit union stand, I suggest you set up two accounts, a tax account and a profit account. Now, here's the reason why. When you allocate that money at your primary account to profit and tax, it's still visible, it's still there. So when you log into your bank account to see how much is in your operating expenses, now, it's only human nature to look and see, hey, what's the balance of my profit? Oh, how much is in tax reserve. And it can cause temptation, particularly when you have a bad month and you need money to Take from those accounts. So the second step is to transfer the money from that profit account to that new credit union account you set up. Do the same thing with the tax, but never log in. Don't even track it. Just transfer and get out of sight, out of mind by doing that. Now, when you do on say, Fridays, the allocation of income to all those different four accounts, you immediately know the purpose of the money. The second step is you initiate a transfer to your credit union. Though sometimes can take a couple days, but once cleared out and the temptation is removed. So that's why you do that additional step. Does that make sense?

How would you transfer it? You say transfer. How would you transfer it?

So you can invoke a transfer from your primary bank. You can set up a link. So when you get up a credit union, tell them who your primary bank is and say, I'd like to link the accounts so I can transfer money from one bank to another. Almost all credit unions and national banks support this. I actually have never found one that doesn't. You have to ask for it. You can initiate it from one side, and here's the side. You initiated from, initiate from your primary bank. Because you can initiate a transfer from your primary bank to your credit union and it goes in. But don't set up the re, the reciprocal where the credit union can fund back to or transfer back to your main bank. Because now the temptation is there to move money around. This way, once the money's out, the link is done. It's over there. It piles up. The credit union. If you want to pull that money out, you have to write a credit union check. And you're less likely to do that because it's just a pain in the butt until comes the profit distribution of time. And that of course, that money goes into your pocket.

Nice.

Cool.

Love it.

Yeah, no, I hope that helps you. I gotta ask you one question before we wrap up for the day, Stan. You know, we promised on the last three episodes we said we're bringing in a martial arts expert. And one of the biggest challenges that's come up repeatedly is limiting beliefs in our mind. Do you. How do you overcome limiting beliefs?

You know what I mean? I'll tell you what, that is right at the core of martial arts. And, and, and a special, it's. It's a special passion of mine as well. In fact, I'm actually working on a book around that and whatnot. So that'll be fun to come back and talk to you about that sometimes. But you know, I think that you Know, we have these. These limiting beliefs that come from everywhere. They come from home, school, you know, experiences, past experiences, and all of that. One of the best ways to overcome some of those limiting beliefs is create a new experience, one that's positive, one that shows that you can do it and build on that limiting belief. Build on that. So, you know, we take a brand new white belt most of the time. They've not broken boards before, and it looks pretty intimidating to look at either this wood board or this piece of plastic. Well, what do you do? You start with an easy board. You start with one that, you know, they can get through. They get through it and they go, oh, my gosh, that was so easy. It builds confidence right off the bat. Go to a little bit harder board, and now they blast through that one. Next thing you know, they're breaking the hardest boards because they built their confidence up all along the way.

I love it.

And it's not necessarily that it all happens in one night. It happens over time. Right. But the more you create those positive experiences that take you in the direction that you want to go, the stronger your confidence is, and those beliefs then start to change.

Yeah, I love it. This goes full circle, right? You're doing your own profit. Start off slow. Stan, we gotta have Christine, if you can make a note, Stan, we gotta have you back in, like, three months. I want it. If you're up for it, I want to hear how these next steps have gone. If you do this, are you gonna do this extra account and set up the accounts of the credit union?

Absolutely. I'm gonna get those set up next week.

Okay, then would you be willing to come back on the show in about three months, and we want to hear how your progress is.

Absolutely.

Okay. And maybe your book will be further along there. We can talk about that, too.

And maybe I can drive to drive to Denver. We can broad. We can join together right from his.

Oh, yeah.

Would you.

Could you do that, Chris? I guess we could set that up. Right.

I thought there's a way. I gotta think about it.

There's a way. Well, there's a will. There's a way. Stan, for all of our Colorado listeners, where can they find out more about your martial arts studio?

Our web address is kicksforall.com. so that's K I C. K S the numeral for a L. L dot com. So kicks for all. So kicks for everybody but kicksforall dot com. And our phone number is 303-220-5956.

Awesome.

Guys, give Stan a call. And yeah, listen, more than. More than just defending yourself, you'll learn how to overcome limiting beliefs. Probably one of the biggest steps to profitability.

I want to come out and kick some butt now.

Yeah. Get your ass out there.

Come on out.

Stan, thanks so much for being on the show. Take care, man.

Thank you guys. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Stan. Great job.

Thank you.

So what do you, Christina and Chris, what'd you think about that episode? A little different flavor, right?

Yeah, definitely some different insight. But important, equally as important.

Yeah, yeah. Great stuff. I thought it was great stuff. I like the idea of sharing ideas and experiences we have because we've now coached about 2,000 companies plus, either directly or indirectly through our accounting profit first professionals on this. And I thought it'd be a nice idea to share a story of someone that's very early on in this process. So I want to share some takeaways. But before that, thank our corporate partners. I just saw Christina yawn. She's like, oh, really? Yeah. She's like, oh, Mike is just gonna laugh.

20 push ups.

So no, yeah, 20 push ups. Actually, we'll add to the board and you have to now share the corporate sponsors for yawning.

Fine. Nextiva voiceover ip the best phone company in our opinion. Especially even if you're traveling. They forward to your cell phone. They're amazing. Check them out. Fundera One stop shop for funding. You need a loan. They will do the research for you. Reach out to them. They'll get you the loan. I think within 48 hours.

Yeah, that's a promise. Oh, my gosh.

Awesome. Also T sheets time tracking. Amazing. I text in my time every day. Super simple. And it's important for your company.

Yeah, until Mike muddles with the system.

Until Mike messes with it. And then finally, but definitely not least, Fundbox. Do you have a client that's not paying you? You reach out to them, they front you the money. As soon as your client gets paid, you send it back to Fundbox and you pay them as a thank you.

There's a lot as a thank you. Thank you. Funbox. Yeah, it's a great way to finance your invoices. Christina, that was pretty good.

Nice, Christina.

She'll never yawn again. Okay, Chris, what'd you learn in today's episode?

Brother, I learned a lot. I liked the. Well, first, I liked the fact that he had a lot of his loyal students helping around the studio.

Yeah, this gu so smart.

Crazy. It's tremendous. And he also said you need to answer the phone, which is a great I mean, that's kind of, again, simple, but really important, especially these days. You know, these days, you know, a lot of companies are doing customer service through Twitter and stuff. Like, if you tweet at, like, American Airlines and you say, you know, my flight just got canceled and the woman was rude to me, like, they have people monitoring that stuff. They'll like, tweet back to you within like a minute. So the point is that the response from companies now has to be quicker. And if you can actually answer your phone, I mean, then that's. You're avoiding, you're capturing everything that's coming in, which is so important. Right, Right.

That's right. Christine, what'd you learn?

He brought up a good point. And I guess it's still kind of a problem out there for business owners, but many people do not need help understanding where their money is going, which. And it amazes me how many professionals can't explain that to you.

Where's my money?

Exactly. Why can't you answer or tell me where it is?

Unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

It's crazy. Mind boggling.

Like, that is the profession those people are in.

Right.

I don't know where you're at.

He went to his accountant, he's like, it says, I made ten grand. Where's the ten grand?

Where is it?

Could you imagine going to your doctor and saying, like, I'm sick. Like, how do you fix this? Like, I don't know, you're on your own now. I mean, like, why? Well, I'll tell you, there's people that do do it right first. Professionals. Here's what I learned. The answer to phone thing was a big deal to me because it pointed to sometimes, and actually it's almost always this way. It's a very small thing that will have a massive impact in your business. So many people are trying to fix big things. I bet you most people say, I'm only getting a few students. I got to be on Facebook more. I got to do more advertising. No, inevitably, it's one little dial click that you need to change to fix it. And often it's in the history of the business itself. If you look back what's been working, you can do more of it. But here's my favorite takeaway. Stan said on multiple occasions, I did this that night. I did this the next day. At the very end. I said, what are you going to do? He said, next week, I have it scheduled. It's the commitment to getting it done and taking the immediate action that brings results. He heard about profit First. And that night, after Tammy who? Or Tommy?

Tommy.

Tommy Wolf, all of them. Tammy, Tommy and Tony. We're gonna reach out to Tommy and. And we gotta find her and learn about this. But he heard from Tommy about profit first that night. He gets it set up. He reads the book, he gets going. Action always trumps consideration and pondering. Powerful stuff, man.

Right. And one of the. But one of the actions he took was to look at his profit and loss statement, and that's when he realized that his payroll was whacked.

Yup. Dude, I have in circulation now. I think it's hard to get the exact numbers from Amazon stuff, but around 25 or 30,000 books are out there, assuming everyone reads the book. And that's unfortunately not the case. But assuming everyone reads the book, I get maybe one email a day or every couple days of someone that says, I'm drawing the line and driving profit for my business. Now, here's the thing. I write that in the first chapter. First couple chapters say, if you're really committed to this, reach out to me, the author, and I will hold you accountable personally. He's one of the guys who did it. That's why he's successful, took immediate action. Do the same listeners commit to this, Damn it.

That's right. And you don't have to do it all yourself, because God or the universe or the higher power or whatever the fairies and elves they created on this planet, something called Profit First Professionals.

For you.

For you. For you.

Yeah. So what's Profit First Professionals? That's the organization that we formed to help folks just like Stan navigate the nuances. Right. Getting Profit first started is easy. You don't need a professional. You just go to your bank today and you should do it right now and you set up an account. But then when you can't pay your taxes or you have questions about how to address employee payroll, or you want to set up that fifth account but don't know how to do it. Yeah, you can call into our radio show. I'll gladly walk you through it. Or your accounting or bookkeeper from Profit First Professionals will take care of that for you. But here's the greatest part. Most accountants and bookkeepers, sadly, are just like Stan said, just like Christina pointed. Here's what you should do today. Call your accountant and say, hey, I don't understand where my money's going in my business. Can you explain where everything's going and why? My profit says 10 or $20,000 on my taxes, but I have nothing in my pocket. If they can't explain it.

What the f are you doing with that person?

Profit first. Professionals are skilled in answering that question and actually guiding you to maximizing profit and ensuring it gets into your pocket. That's what we do. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on the find button. We will hook you up with someone that will take care of you today.

Un believable. Really?

I gotta say, Stan was my favorite guest of all time. Candor, honest and just fun and joked. I love that he was great. And I love that that we're talking. We're sharing some advice back at our folks, not just hearing their stories. I thought that was pretty cool.

It's been great. This has been an awesome episode. You can find us, if you didn't know again, at itunes, stitcher, tunein radio, and our website, profitfirstpodcast.com where all of our previous episodes are there. So if you want to, you know, double up, double up on your intake of this drug called the profit first podcast. Right, Mike?

Yeah. As we learned, what you share, what you focus on expands. I totally get it now. I'm living it, man. Focus on your profit. Steep yourself in these episodes. Focus on profit and it will grow.

That's it. And call Mike Michalowicz. He can be your personal profit partner.

Yeah.

Get on the show. Tell us your story. We want to hear your story.

That's it. If you want to learn more about me and podcasting, go to fractalrecording.com or else check out all our previous episodes and go to the website profitfirstpodcast.com. thanks, everybody. Thanks, Mike. And thanks, Christina.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for thanking us. Thanks, Dan. Later.

Thanks, everybody.

See ya. See ya.

Ready?

That's a big one. I'm fired up, man. Best episode ever. Episode 60. Who knew it'd be this one, man? Gig dep. Take your profit now. Do it. Take that profit. Come on. Listen. You're still listening to the episode right now. It's fading out. And you still haven't called your bank yet and sip that account. What's your problem? Do it now. Then step two, email me.