Episode 73: From Loss to Profit with Dr. Sabrina Starling and Chuck Parmely

Obi Ron Kenobi.

You do not mess with the force.

Do not mess with the force. And do not mess with this show because it is called the Profit First Podcast.

And you're listening to episode 73.

3.

3. Sorry, wait, what did Christina say?

I don't know where she's from.

What was that?

She's so excited for a date tonight that she's losing her mind.

I thought her date was last week. Oh, just kidding.

Again.

Again. One.

Welcome, everyone, to the show. I am Chris Curran, the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. And I'm with the old date over here, Christina Bulduk. And here's a little song I dedicated for her.

Oh, thanks.

This is for Christina.

Oh, stop it.

I'm sorry.

No.

She's got a boyfriend.

She's glowing.

She is glowing. Look at. She's excited. She knows she's broiling. You're broiling steak or something.

Yeah, I'm making steak ton in my broiler. Yeah, that's the way to prepare.

Yeah. Well, listen, listener, before we get into all the jazz that's going on here and we got an exciting guest, I got to tell you why you're here in the first place. You're listening to the Profit first podcast. This is the show where we explore all types of profitability. If you listen to the last four episodes, we showed how a painter can make millions. We. We showed you how a business can sell on Amazon and can use a simple trick by shipping multiple small boxes of their product to Amazon to avoid a major problem they were having. Lots of great insights. You gotta become a binge listener, though, to get them all.

That's right. Listening to this show will help you. It'll help your psyche and your business, and it's really easy to do. We're in itunes and Stitcher and Tunein Radio and whatever podcatcher you use to listen to your podcast, we are there. And of course, our home, the Profit. Oh, sorry, not the Profit first podcast dot com. That's the website. Profit first podcast dot com. All our previous episodes, all the shenanigans, all the hilarity and. And ridonkulous business tips for profitability. Seriously.

Oh, tons and tons of learning. Well, we know what Christine is up to tonight. What are you up to, Chris?

You know, I. I'm a new homeowner. As you know. I bought a house. It's. We've been in the new house for four months, and sometimes, like, I don't know, if you felt this, Mike, or if you out there listening have felt this. But, like, I don't know. It's my first time owning a home. Like, nothing's going wrong, and I'm not really doing too much to maintain the house, but I kind of feel like, should I be doing something right?

I like, is the other shoe gonna drop?

Yeah, well, let me tell you, the other shoe will drop. And for God forbid you say that. I remember sitting at my house. My new house went new for me. I buy the house, and my gosh, it's so great owning a house. Like, how can people complain about it? And as I say that, here's doom.

Boom, boom.

The furnace cracked. It was forced air, black smoke coming out. Oh, and that cost me like $10,000 that I did not. I didn't have a dollar to my name. Wow.

All right, dude.

So here's what I'm doing. I'm sitting here in front of the computer. As I'm sitting here, pops up the email. You can see it. Christina, My profit first story, Victor, this is. I'm shouting out to you, Victor, and your last name. I'm trying to pronounce it properly. Ventimigilia. It's spelled V E N T I M I G L I A. He owns Ventimigilia Italian foods. Here's what Victor said. Victor said, I just heard you say on your podcast that you only get one email a day. So I'm going to put a stop to and send you an email. And then it says, I've been implementing profit first I now. I hope it's okay I share this. I have saved over $35,000 in bills. It's amazing. I didn't really change anything. In my business, if you don't keep track of the money, it just disappears. So, Victor, big shout out to you and everyone listening in. Be sure to get your Italian foods from Ventimigilia. I'm so sorry.

That's a tongue twister right there.

That's right, Barry, but get your foods there. Victor, thanks for listening in. And we hope this podcast as the other ones, this episode blows your mind. Talking about blowing your mind. I got a guest that's gonna just rock your world. I actually got two guests.

Two today.

If you don't know the name Dr. Starling, well, I don't know what's wrong with you because she's been on, I don't know, like 10 episodes already. Dr. Sabrina is what she goes by more commonly. She's the business psychologist. She's also a profit first Professional. She helps rural based businesses grow to achieve all their dreams, all their visions they've had for themselves and including profitability. Well, she's along with her partner. Partner, her client, Chuck and Chuck Parmalee. Chuck has a business called overhead door company. He's had for 37 years now and is growing a very successful business and is a recent implementer of Profit First. So we're gonna learn Chuck's story and what he's doing with Profit first right now. Chuck, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

And Sabrina, are you there with us too?

I am here. Thank you.

Good, we got you both. Well, we're. It's a pleasure to have you. Hey, Chuck, starting off with you, how did you get into the overhead door industry?

Well, you might say I was born into it. My dad started the business back in 68 and that's when I started. Was helping him when he started his business. I was 10 years old.

I think overhead doors, I think I got a garage. That system got installed once. So maybe I'd be a client of yours one time. And all my neighbors have overhead doors. I've never seen an overhead door guy. Where's the business opportunity?

Well, it's, it's everywhere. I mean, yeah, you have one garage door and everybody, not everybody has a garage door, but everybody has a door or window of some sort. And that's what we do. It's the door and window industry. We're called overhead door, but we do a whole lot more than just garage doors. So when we first started, that's all we did was garage doors. And that just was not enough to carry us through for the year. So we had to diverse ourselves and become more busy with other products. And that's where we're at today.

And is it. Are you working in the residential space or the commercial space? Like, where's your business focus?

It's residential, commercial, and industrial. So we're over the whole gamut of it.

Okay, so let me ask you. You're in business 37 years. You're now working with Dr. Starling. And I know you've been working with her for a while. My default thinking is such an established business. You probably figured out you've been through everything. You figured everything out. Why would you bring on a business coach?

Well, I have been through the school of hard knocks, that's for sure. But some things you, you just don't learn along the way and you have to ask for help. And that's, that's where Sabrina came in. I can't. I needed Help. And she has helped me turn this whole business around. I've been in business for 37 years. But when, when you talk profit and you're only talking 1 to 3% per year or less, it's a really good feeling once you get started on this, to see that turn around.

So tell me about that and let me couch my question here is a business that does 1 to 3% profit really is not a profitable business because there's not enough money left in the coffers for a bad month.

You feel good that you got your bills paid, but that's all you've got to show for it.

Okay, so were you in your business at least for a period of time or maybe for a long period of time, surviving on a kind of a check to check type basis?

Absolutely. A long time.

Yeah.

We had to start a credit line just to survive. And you know that credit line, you could be paying interest on that anywhere from three months to a year and a half before you get it paid off.

And give me. So our listeners can understand too, what size is your business? Can you share numbers, maybe number of employees or the revenue or anything that you can share with us?

Well, we do about 3.2 a year. That's what we've done for probably the last three years. You know, I've got 16 employees. And when you talked about Sabrina helping the rural people. We are rural. The area that we live in between, there's two towns that are within 20 miles of each other and we got a population of about 30,000 people. So that what, you know, our challenges are is, you know, we can't do that type of business with just that type of population. So we got to travel about 150 mile radius just to stay busy.

And that more distance, I presume means more cost.

Absolutely. You know, fuel costs and you know, when you break down the cost to get that truck home is that much more, you know, so.

Right.

Yeah.

And you gotta pay for your guy who's driving that truck. He doesn't do, he doesn't drive out to a client for free.

You gotta pay for his time for all that time.

So what about the perception a $3.2 million company. Christina starts nodding her head right. Wow, that's a big business. That doesn't mean you are taking home 3.2 million. But I presume that's what your employees may perceive that you're. And your friends, that you're wildly successful, you're extremely rich because your business is so big.

Well, the employees are well informed of how this company operates. They know what it costs to run this company. We have once a month, we call them wings and things meetings that we let them know exactly what this company is doing and where we're at, whether there's a profit, where there's not, what kind of costs we're having. And so they're well informed as to what it takes to run this business. They don't see it as, wow, that's a lot of money. They look at it as, is that all we get to operate on?

Interesting. So tell me about what you did. So you were making historically 1 to 3% in profit, which from my experience means really not profitable. Just squeaking by. I understand you've started to implement profit. First tell me what the results have been and then let's go over kind of what you've done and we'll bring Dr. Starling in to give us some insights too.

Well, a good example of the results. I didn't start this problem. You know, Sabrina gave me the book as an ebook and I started reading it on my cell phone. And I did not put my cell phone down until I was done with that, with that book.

Wow.

And I probably. And I've probably read it three times since then.

Wow.

But the amazing part about this is I haven't implemented the whole thing. I started probably mid year last. This last year in 2015. And the first thing I did was I set up that, that profit account and you know, I took a certain percentage and I put that percentage into that account every time I made a deposit. And we went from a $20,000 loss last year to over $220,000 profit this year.

Cow. Holy cow. And Kris, you put this one in your notebook. $20,000 loss on an accounting basis may still be posted as a profit. Right. That's when your account says, hey, congratulations, you had a profit. And then you look at your wallet and you have to write a $20,000 checkout to the government. So, Chuck, you must have sloughed off employees. You must have gone a firing rampage. What did you do to achieve that kind of profitability?

I did several things. You know, the year before we took out, well, it was probably two years ago. We took on a job that was the biggest job that we'd ever done. And that's about the only bragging point that I can say about it because all it did was eat up all my resources, all my cash, and I lost business with my retail customers because I was so concentrated on this one big job. And at the end of That I said, we can't do that again. So I made a decision that we're only going to do jobs that I know that we can do and do well. So we pumpkin planned a lot of projects and we only took on projects that we knew we would make money at. That's where I started. And then I, then I took on and did a budget and I had never done a budget before. And a lot of people aren't fans of budgets, but if you sit down and you do a budget, you will be amazed at how much money you're wasting because there's. So if you start looking at all those accounts and you look at the items that are put into those accounts and what is actually being spent on what you realize that there's so many things you could do without that you don't need, that you could use that money elsewhere. So that helped. And, and then reading the book Profit first and just starting to implement that. And then I cleaned house with employees. If they weren't productive, I got rid of them. I have a kind heart. You can ask Sabrina that. And I kept people on and just because so they could have a job. And I finally changed my mind about that. You know, if you're going to work here, you're going to help us make money. You're going to make money, I'm going to make money, and everybody's going to be happy.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, someone once told me, Chuck, that I had the same thing is I wanted to keep employees on because I feel I have a kind heart too. And then someone told me, mike, if you keep on someone that's hurting your business, at certain point your business will fail. And now you have to have the kind enough heart to tell everyone they're out of a job. You're saving one person and compromising an entire company. Sabrina, how did you. You know, Sabrina, you've coached so many clients through transitions to profit first. I suspect there's an initial resistance, like this is not going to work or it's too good to be true. It's too simple. How did you get Chuck started on profit first?

I tell you, Mike, it wasn't easy.

He read the book. Chuck, she's calling you out on air.

He read the book multiple times. He clearly, I mean, you can hear him. He clearly gets it. But just actually getting business owners to implement is challenging sometimes. So we started small. And Chuck, I don't remember exactly, but I think we started with just putting 1% in a profit account.

Yeah, yeah, that's where we started with just 1%, we're up to 5% now. Well, this year we're going to 10%.

Wow.

Whoa. So, Chuck, by starting at 1%, did that. What did that do for you? Did that. Was it worth taking the, quote, unquote risk of trying this system out?

I tell you what, I got the biggest kick out of every day when the deposit went through. And my bookkeeper says, this is what we put in the bank today. And I was able to go transfer that money into that account and watch that account grow. You know, you put a. You do a $10,000 deposit, that money adds up quick.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And, Dr. Starling, how did you see Chuck's behavior, his emotional association to the money? How did that change from your perspective?

You know, it's not just his associations, the money. It is his overall demeanor. He's happy.

Go figure.

I wish they had my employee, some employees here to tell you how my demeanor has changed. I mean, I. Yeah, I am so relaxed now that it's, you know, I go to work and I don't have anything to worry about because I know that I have people that are going to take care of it. And. And I know what's happening. So it's. It's a whole, whole different world.

So, yeah, go, Dr. Scott.

I was just going to say here, Chuck's done. If you think about all the puzzle pieces of a business, you have employees and you have the need to be profitable, and you think about taking care of your customers, and each one of those is a puzzle piece. Chuck has been moving all of those puzzle pieces into place. And the icing on the cake is the profit first and adding that in. And he's having these incredible results because he has these other pieces of the puzzle in place. He's done the work on his employees, and he's got great employees. He's got real A players working for him. And he also has pumpkin planned. So you heard him say he's very aware of only taking on work that they know they can do exceptionally well. So you've got all that, and then you add a system that guarantees your profitability. Plus, you couple that with a business owner like Chuck, who's good at following a budget and who, you know, we went through his expenses line by line, and we found ways he could cut expenses even beyond what he'd already done with his budget. It just all comes together.

And is there ever a relapse, Chuck, have you ever said, yeah, it's working, but maybe that tough month comes by, in the business. And, and you've allocated money to profit in advance. Now there's not enough money to pay the bills. Have you ever had the temptation to rewind and just go back to the old familiar way even though it kind of sucked?

I have not.

Oh good.

No. And I hope I don't get to that. I don't see how I could, could go back because it's just night and day difference.

Your relationship with Dr. Starling does, does that. Is there an accountability component? I mean, I'm wondering for folks listening in right now. You know, I'm praying to God we convince people, just try profit first. You don't even have to read the book. Just put 1% in an account and you get started. But what about the accountability component? How, how is that helped or distracted in, in your profit first implementation?

Well, you know, like I say, I've been through the school of hard knocks and you know, without somebody there to guide you or hold you accountable, I mean, it's too easy for you to say, ah, I only have to answer to myself. But when you have that other person there that, that you need to answer to and be accountable to, it makes a difference.

Gotcha. Sabrina, how do you do it though? You're, you're not invested in the business, you don't own 5% of overhead door. How can you really enforce accountability?

I hound Chuck constantly. I ask.

You sound way too nice to hound anybody.

I hound him. And I do this with all of my clients and I do it in a very loving, gentle way. But it's hounding. And every call I'm asking, you said you were going to start profit first. You said you were going to get that 1% going. Do you have it going? And it's a matter of just knowing that someone's going to ask you about it makes you accountable. But there's also times where I really have to pull Chuck and my other clients into seeing what's possible for themselves because I think a lot of times we tend to play small. And Chuck especially, I could see the potential in him. And that's why my business is named Half the Potential. I could see the potential. And so there were times where he was kind of, I saw him staying in his safety zone and I said, no, you, you can do better. You can be exceptional. And he's doing it for me. That is the most rewarding is to see someone become and be their full potential.

Chuck, since we're all on the phone together right now, I'd love to know what the next challenge or obstacle you're facing, and maybe we can give you a couple more insights right here, right now. What is that?

Well, the next challenge that Sabrina and I are working on is getting those different accounts set up and then making it. Making it work even better. You know, I can understand it, but to turn around and give it to my bookkeeper and have her understand it, There's a challenge there.

Yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing is, you know, you've started the inaugural implementation of profit first. And for our listeners, this is what you got to do too today. And I'm saying it literally today. At the end of the show, call your bank and set up one additional checking account. It takes 15 minutes on the phone. Allocate 1%. That will get you started. And I think you start feeling the emotional success just like Chuck's been feeling. And this is true. You don't have to be a three and a half million dollar business. You can do it on a $35,000 a year business. You'll start seeing the wins. Then you have to go to the next stage of implementation. And Chuck, what I think you're gonna experience from Christine, tell me if I'm right here is you get resistance from an accountant or bookkeeper that hasn't gone through this before.

Absolutely.

You know, we get those calls here, right?

They're like, I don't understand how this works. I don't understand. Why do you need all these accounts, Right?

Just read your income statement, your balance sheet. And so, Chuck, I want you to be prepared for a resistance, but I also want you to be aware of a little historical story. It was Copernicus who said that the Earth was the center of the universe. And he was then subsequently jailed and. And humiliated because he said, he said.

The sun was the. He. He said.

Now listen to me. Oh, please, edit that one out. No, I'm sorry. He said the sun was the center of the universe, Right? He was jailed and humiliated. But here's the funny thing. Galileo, his predecessor, comes out with, invents the telescope and says, I have actual proof that the sun is the center of the universe. And he was. He passed away impoverished and jailed.

Why?

Because the Bible said the earth is the center of the universe. There becomes these established beliefs and they get documented over time. And just because it's in writing, just because everyone's saying it doesn't mean it's right. And what we found is most accountants and bookkeepers, Chuck, believe the old system, that profit's the bottom line. It has to come at the End of the year. And when they hear this new thing, that the sun is truly the center of the universe, you will be ashamed. They will shame you or not. They won't hopefully put you in jail, but they will kind of laugh at you behind your back. It's. It's a fortitude, and sometimes it takes another party. Maybe, Dr. Starling, you can help in this, in convincing that person. And in the worst case, unfortunately, they have to go and you got to find an early adopter. So if there's one thing tip I can give you, the execution, setting up these additional accounts, that's the easy part. Convincing your team that's there to support you, to actually support you, that's going to be the challenge.

Yeah, I can see that coming. You know, Sabrina has given me resources to reach out to Profit First Book.

Yeah.

Professionals. Yep.

Yep.

And I haven't. I haven't made that step yet. I'm sure she's going to be hounding me about that.

We would love to do that for you, but quite frankly, if you can work with your existing accountant or bookkeeper and then bring them over to Profit first, that's better because they're a trusted ally for you. The question is, are they willing to support it? It's just unfortunate. Sometimes you'll. You'll get that resistance. So you got to just be mentally prepared for that. They may fight back and say, it's not necessary. Not necessary. This is the one roadblock we've seen. Many people have started on Profit first fall off the bandwagon, and they go back to the old way and say, well, my accountant doesn't believe in it. You have to have the fortitude and courage to say, my accountant may be wrong.

Yeah.

Well, my accountant come, he called me and he says, I need to talk to you. And he come over and he sat down in front of me and he says, what in the world did you do this year?

That's great.

And, you know, I just told him what I told you guys, you know, I made those decisions of what I was going to do, and that's obviously what made the difference.

That's fantastic.

When Chuck told me about this conversation with his accountant, I asked if I could take a Profit first book to his accountant and have a conversation with his accountant, and he said yes. And so the next day, I went down the street with my copy of Profit first and sat and chatted with his accountant, who was very intrigued about the whole system.

You are the best.

Sometimes they need the visual proof. They don't believe it's. Gonna work. But then they see that their clients are excelling, and they're like, wait a minute. What did you do? And you're like, well, I tried to tell you.

Yeah, it's true.

You know, Chuck really stands out because in the area where he is right now, it's heavily affected by oil and gas. And that's down right now. The economy is. The overall revenues are down about 20% across the town. And so Chuck being profitable really stands out when the economy is like that. And that's what got his accountant's attention.

I love it.

Not only were we profitable, but, you know, at the beginning of the year, I was not expecting to do what I did last year, but we beat that goal by 10% in overall sales.

That's the funny side effect of taking your profit first is many businesses, Chuck, actually grow faster. And I'll tell you, the logic behind it is it forces you, by taking your profit first, to focus on your strongest assets. Your best employees now have to be prioritized because you can't afford all the employees. The things that are working for you, the products you're selling. Maybe those automatic closing doors at the corporate center sell way better than that little overhead for a single residential garage. It forces you to focus on that. When you focus on what's working best and put your energy toward it, it amplifies. So I see it over and over again that businesses that take their profit first start growing faster than they ever expected. And it's kind of a mind bender, because we've all been told you have to take money to make money. You can't be profitable. You got to reinvest, plow back. We use all these terms, but that's saying this earth is the center of the universe. Just because everyone says it doesn't mean it's right.

Yeah. And you know, Mike, you saying that just reminded me of a key mindset shift that Chuck did that I think made a big impact for him is that he went. Instead of focusing on growing revenue, he decided at the beginning of the last year he was going to focus on being profitable.

I love it. I love it. I got to defend the accountant, by the way. You know, the accountant who says, how did you do this? Like, it doesn't make sense. And the accountants, we that call us and say, that's not going to work. And they're very skeptical. You know, 20% of the population is logical. 20% of the population of the spocks of the world, logically, they get it. But the flaw in them, if I can say that because I'm not one of them. The logical folks don't comprehend how us more emotionally driven folks run our business. And of course, us emotional folks can't understand the logical. So the fault is to assume the rest of the world is like us. So most accountants go into that profession because they are numbers crunchers. They're very logical and then can't comprehend that there's a different way to run a business than just the pure logic. And that's why I think a lot of accountants and bookkeepers get stuck on this. That's not going to work and need the real world example, and it blows them away. Chuck, any final thoughts you can share with our audience are listening in. If they want to achieve the profit turnaround you've achieved in your business, any single steps or multiple steps that you'd suggest they follow?

Well, you know, like I said, I read that book three or four times and you know, the very first time it was very exciting and I picked up on one or two items. But so, you know, read the book more than once because you'll, every time you read it, you'll get more out of it.

And then I think hire Dr. Starling to slap you around a little bit. I've been looking for my whip sounds. Yeah, here's her whip. Yeah, he is a big O. Yeah, No, I know. Chuck, it was an absolute pleasure having you on the show. If people want to learn more about your business, where's the website that they can go to?

Ww.overheaddoor riverton.com Good.

So over and you know, he covers a big radius, so basically most of Wyoming. That sounds like you're covering anyway. Oh, okay. So there you go, folks. Go to overheaddoor riverton.com and Dr. Sabrina, if folks can hire you and get themselves more profitable, where should they be going?

They should go to www.tapthepotential and I actually have a giveaway for your podcast listeners. So employees are the biggest source of profit leak in a business. If you're not getting good performance out of your employees, if you have a lot of mediocre, partially engaged, disengaged folks, you're losing a lot of profit. So I'm giving your podcast listeners my five secrets to exceptional employee performance and what they can do to get that is just text the word potential to the number I'm going to give you 1 614-610-1122-161461-01122. And that's the word potential.

And by the way, that's my private cell phone. Just so everyone knows. All right, Dr. Starling, thank you. Chuck, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Great job.

I love that whip. Yeah.

All right, so Christina, Dr. Sabrina is probably texting Chuck right now. Get back to work, for God's sake.

I will beat you down. So, Christina and Chris, I want to learn what you discovered from this session. First, I want to thank our corporate partners. First one is Fundera. And Fundera. Fundera is one stop funding. So if you need to buy capital equipment, sometimes even if you need to fund payroll in a extreme circumstance, they can get the money for you as quick as 24 hours. Next one is Fundbox.

You can't touch this.

Yeah, that's right.

Fund box.

Fun box is invoice funding. So if you have invoices that you've made out to your clients and they haven't paid you yet, they get the money to you immediately. They release the funds to you in the full amount. If I invoice you for $10,000 and I need the money, they will release the $10,000 to me. Then when the payment comes in from the client, you send the money back. So that's Fundera. Next one. Nextiva.

No, that's Fun Box.

Yes. What'd I say? Fundera. I meant to say fund a box. I'm sorry. Nextiva. Bruh. Bruh. Bruh. That's right. Those are my brads over at Nextiva. It's VoiceOver IP phone system. It's. It's absolutely an amazing system. We've used it now. Five, actually now it's 2016. Six consecutive years of using their system. Any technology can have problems. Nextiva, honestly, no exception. There's occasional problems. Their support is so good.

Best customer service, so good.

We have problems with Internet connection. We have problems with our software. We use a CRM that won't mention their name.

Yeah.

Have a problem. No one there to support us. Beautiful hold music. Beautiful hold music, but no support. You want a company that provides great technology backed by great support, it's nextiva. And last but certainly not least is T sheets. That's right. Our boys and girls over at T Sheets, they are absolutely amazing. It's time tracking software. If you got five employees or 5,000 employees, if you're the only person working there, you got to track your time for project management. And if you have a payroll, I mean, that's how you do payroll. We use T sheets in house. This is our second or maybe second full year using. Listen, we Used to do the. It was 2014. We're still doing the paper system. I'm sitting here at midnight, calculating. Now it's seconds. Now it's literally seconds. We're the size of. It's only five of us. We're looking around the sixth person. Ron is starting to take over more managerial roles. I'm taking and responsible for the financial management. He can now approve time while I can approve the financial release of it. There's cross all these controls and. And checks and balances that are in place, and you do in seconds. That's what T sheets does. All right, I want to know what you learned, Christina.

Well, first, shout out to Chuck for reading Profit first on your phone. Like the entire book. That's impressive.

I exploded.

Takes like dedication to read it on your small screen. So shout out for that. But what I found most interesting, other than obviously his success, is that his employees know everything about what it takes to run their company. There's no secrets. And I think that that's an important part that a lot of businesses overlook. That when you include your employees and you make them feel like they're actually a part of a team rather than working for you, you'll get more out of it, I think.

Yeah, that's a great insight, Chris. What did you get out of it?

Couple things. One, he mentioned that big job that he got. Right. That, you know, I think there's always that big job when. When any business gets a big job, you think, oh, this is great, A lot of money coming in. But it ended up being not very profitable and ended up being a big headache. So now he's much more selective with his projects. And the other thing is that sort of before fully implementing Profit first, well, he hasn't actually fully implemented it so far, but he's. He started before, but he had built a solid foundation, so he had gotten his ducks in a row pretty well and used business sense and common sense to get things in a good place. So that once he implemented Profit first, it had maximum benefit. And now he's able to, with the help of Dr. Sabrina, become, as she said, exceptional.

Yeah. And, you know, just going back to your point about not a full implementation of Profit first, you know, I want Chuck and everyone to be aware of the second you open that first account called Profit, and you allocate 1% of your money, you are doing profit first. It's like exercise. You don't have to be running a marathon to say you're exercising. If you take a walk around the block, you're Exercising. So use that label. Get started. You are doing profit first. And over time, you'll build a bigger, bigger fiscal muscle and do bigger and bigger things. You know, my takeaway was the wings and things. Like, I want to go to that meeting already. Like, they're serving wings there. Like, this is. This is a cool company. So I love the flavor, no pun intended, that you can give to your business to make it just fun. And what's happening there, I presume, is the wings. You're getting some good food, and the things is you're learning about the business. I point back to your point, Christina. The colleagues, his employees aren't just doing the work. They're involved in the progress of the company, and they're informed what's going on. Powerful environment. I loved it.

And there it is.

And there it is. Chris. That was a handoff too. And I loved it. One more time, Chris. And I loved it.

Oh, geez.

Thanks, man.

I. I was waiting for Christina to drop some more wisdom on us anyway, so. Oh, Ron. Oh, sorry.

She hasn't eaten in a while. She gets. Chris, you ever see those commercials where I get, like, the Snickers bar?

You don't seem like yourself.

I love the one with the Brady Bunch recently.

Oh, my gosh.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. And it's that, like, who's that ogre guy? He's hysterical. Janet, have you seen that commercial?

I did, Chris? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, the whole setup is Mr. And Mrs. Brady. You're sitting on the couch, they're talking to Janet and. Or Marcia. And Marcia is so angry, and she's like this bulldog monster guy. It's hysterical. It's so realistic. Like, I don't know how they did it. I'm pretty impressed.

That's awesome. Well, this has been great. By the way. You can find our podcast anywhere. You listen to podcasts. You'll find us the Profit first podcast. Whether it's itunes or Stitcher or Tunein Radio. And of course, if you go to the website profitfirstpodcast.com, you can see all our previous episodes and everything, by the way, in itunes and Stitcher. You can leave us a rating and a review and. And all that kind of stuff. So we only accept five star reviews, right, Mike?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please. Anything else? Yeah. Hey, and here's the deal, listener, get your. Get your face real close to the speaker. I'll wait for you.

Uh.

Oh, Take your time. No, closer, closer, closer. That's it. There you go. Right in your face. Come on. You gotta be doing profit first. Listen Chuck's doing it 37 years and now he's like, this has been the biggest turnaround for his business. You have no excuse. What are you freaking waiting for? God, Start it. But here's, here's the shortcut. If you are afraid to do it on your own, go toProfit First Professionals.com. we have extraordinary experts there. We call them profit First Professionals. Dr. Starling is one of a hundred plus folks that we have that can help you. I don't care what business you're in. If you're a rural business, if you're an Amazon seller, if I don't know what you're doing, you're a lawyer. I don't care. We have someone that specializes in the work that you do. It will guide you to the highest degrees of profit ever. Do it now. Proffersprofessionals.com Click on the find button. You're seconds away from being profitable.

That's right. I mean, you need an accountant and a bookkeeper anyway. You might as well have one that's going to focus on your profit. There's an idea, right?

No brainer.

So thanks to everyone again. Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, Dr. Sabrina Starling. And of course, thanks, Mike. And thank you, Christina. And of course Obi Ron Kenobi. Because. Just because.

Just because he's here and the force is here. It's always here.

So thanks. Check us out next week. We'll be with you again soon. Until then, Mike Michalowicz, leave us with a piece of wisdom, please.

You got it. Oh. Oh, yeah. There it is. That's the wisdom.

Back to work. All right, see you guys.

Sam.