Episode 80: Pivoting to Profitability with Jenny Blake

Hold on, bro. Here's your tune. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That'S right. It's the Profit First Podcast.

And you are in. Oh, my God, you're in for the ride of a lifetime on episode 80. Yes. Boom. 80. Wow. It's all gravy when you get to 80. Boom. My father said that. That's what my father. When he passed his 80th birthday, it's like it's all gravy until you get. Or after 80, something like that.

There you go.

And he doesn't even speak. He doesn't even have an accent. An old Jewish man. It's all gravy after 80. He gets so verklempt all the time. It's just horrible. It's not his voice at all.

Welcome, everyone. The Profit First Podcast. I'm Chris Kern. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Prophet first, the child of a destitute Jewish man. And I'm joined in studio by. With Christina. Bye, Christina. No, with Christina. Hello there. How are you? We're still all a muckety muck from last week's episode. And you are listening to the Profit first podcast. This is the only show, we think, on the planet that has Jewish voices like this talking about profitability. And it's the only show that dives into the alpha and omega of profit. That's right. So you're gonna learn how to make some money here and enjoy Gefelta fish. The two things will happen.

That's right. Revenue is fun, but profit is like.

A bun in the oven.

There's two here, not me.

You be the third. Yeah, we have two pregos. And by the time this one, this episode goes live, for sure, at least one baby will be here. One baby will be here. And, oh, you know, we got a new colleague in the office. We gotta give Mike Scalise a shout out. He's sitting here, he's taking over. He's looking over right now.

Can you get him on the mic for a second?

Yeah, come on over here for a second. Michael, hurry up.

Run on over, tell him we're live here.

Run.

Do you mind giving me your headset, Christina, for a second? So I want to introduce the world. And Michael, get your face real close to that microphone. And this is Mike Scalise. Hello, how are you? Splendid. No, this is not npr. First, get a little closer to that thing. So what have you been up to, man? I just got off a phone call. With who? Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog.

With a bullfrog. Yeah. Who's Jeremiah? New profit first member.

Really?

Yeah. Did you hit him with that level of enthusiasm? I was. I was maybe a little less nervous. Okay. You're doing well. So you're a listener to the Private first podcast, right? Of course. And you were. You were the guy. You come into the office, you said, where's the zaniness? I want it. Absolutely.

Yeah, bruh.

You want the brat, you want the breath? Here's the bra for you.

Bra?

Yeah. You want the pratt. This episode. This episode's full of bras dedicated to you. Fantastic. All right, man. Thanks for coming on the air with us. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

So, Mike Scalise, brand new to the office, tearing it up already. Honestly, a wonderful, wonderful man and a real contributor to the company here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sounds like a good.

Yeah, no, he's. He's an amazing guy. He was a little nervous. Oh, God. It's intimidating to come on the air.

You're live in New York City.

I know you're live, dude. There's 16, by the way. We've had 1600 downloads. 1600 people a day are listening to this garbage. I mean, Michael, you have 1600 people that just heard you and every single day, so.

And they love it.

Love it. Yeah. But, hey, let's get back to the show content here. I want to. You know, we're going to be talking about today before I thank our partners. What is that Jenny Blake, who I fell in love with at a wedding, actually. We met through a mutual friend. We went to this author's dinner and just. There's some people you just hit it off with. I don't know how she felt about me. I'm like, she is awesome. I'm ordering margaritas. And it got to the point where I'm like, oh, more margaritas. I'm like, hold on. I think I'm, like, hitting on her. Not, like, trying to hit on her, but, like, I'm like, oh, wait, a more margarita. Seem like it. Yeah. And so I'm like, I. I think I'm creeping her out now. And then how do you then, like, then it's like this sudden shutdown. It's like, okay, I just creeped out an amazing author that thinks I'm hitting on her, and now I got to kind of exit out. But now it's like, I'm not interested in anything she's saying.

Hard to get, to find the delicate balance.

So I totally ruined that first stab at getting to know her. And then we met again at a Mutual friend's wedding, and we were hanging out. My wife was there. She came with her friend, and it was just. I just listened to her. I'm like, holy shit, this. She's got knowledge the world's got to know, and she has an angle on pivoting. You know, they ever hear that concept, pivot, pivot, pivot. I think pivot's bullshit until I heard what she said, and I'm like, oh, now I get what a true pivot is. I think pivot most people define as constantly changing and always trying the new thing, ignoring the old. She has a different spin that you're going to discover today that will make your business wildly profitable. Oh, but first, you sound a little bit like George Takei. What?

But first.

But first. But first, our corporate partners. Name one. I'll name one. We'll go back and forth.

Nextiva.

T. Shoes, Fun Box, Fundera Receipt, Bank. He loves me.

He loves me not.

I know. Well, here's who she is. Her name is Jenny Blake. Jenny is an author, career and business strategist, and international speaker who helps people like you organize their brain, move beyond burnout, and build sustainable, dynamic careers that they love. She is the author of the forthcoming book Pivot Turn what's working for you into what's next. Jenny, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. You guys win for best podcast intro ever, right?

Really?

I've never heard anything like it. My face hurts from laughing so much. I mean, you started with gango style.

We did start with gangster style.

I got a bra already.

You got a bra? You got a bra? I was a little nervous you wouldn't come on because first of all, the. The total off the rails banter, and then second, I'm sharing this creepy hit on you story.

But the thing is, Mike, I was not creeped out. We were partners in guacamole because we put that guac away with our sangria and margarita. We were.

We were slamming guac. It became kind of awkward because, like, you went dip. And then I'm like, you know, I'm gonna go for a dip, but I want a double dip. But we. We don't even know each other. And if I double dip, there's a spit dip. And then you can't go for it. I'm like, I'm taking her guac. And then I'm like, and then after.

One of you gets the guac on the chip, you know, are you gonna put it in your own mouth or try to put it in the other.

Person'S mouth right like hook elbows. And then suddenly.

Well, the most awkward part was.

Yeah.

I told the. The walking musician to come over and he came over and this music starts playing in. It was just a train wreck.

It was just a train wreck, you know? And then I took your book home that night and I slept with it in my. Under my pillow. Like, profit first, everybody. I can do it.

Oh, my God.

I did implement your systems after that dinner. So it was a business dinner.

Okay, well, how. How is it working for you?

Amazing. It's so turned everything around. I love it.

Do you see your business differently? Are you more profitable?

Yes. What I love about that book, and it sounds so simple to say it out loud, but create a profit account. Why was there no profit account? You were exactly right, that until I did that and had a separate account in my bank for it, that I was constantly break even. And just by creating that one change and siphoning off, even if it was 5 or 10% at first, to know that profit was getting some love and not.

It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely amazing. It's the pay yourself first principle. And by the way, we tell people that's where you get started. Just don't worry about. In the book, I talk about five or six different major accounts to set up, but to get started, just have one account, profit account, and then win yourself over first convince yourself that this is working and things will get rolling. But we're not here to talk about my book too much more. We are here to talk about your book pivot. Now, here's the deal, Jenny. I hear pivot and I'm like, oh my God. That means keep changing what you're doing. Everyone and their mother says they're pivoting. No one is doing anything. And then you come out and say, no, no, pivot means something else. What's your definition of pivot?

Totally.

Oh, well.

And now we have pivot porn in the startup world, that's like, we pivoted and now we're making millions. And the thing is that pivot is often, at least in startup land, referred to as plan B. The original business strategy failed. You're almost going to have to fold, and now you need to pivot. What I realized when I was studying business and career, that essentially because our economy is evolving so quickly, we are being asked to be more agile and change more frequently. But all this talk about, well, then pivot. Nobody was saying how and when. I really looked at what worked for myself and others, what saved me from having to throw in the towel on my business was doubling down on what's working. And when you really think of the definition of a pivot, it's not a 180. It's a logical methodical shift from what's already working.

Okay, so how do you. How do you know what's working? How do you. Well, yeah, that's it. How do you know it's working? The thing to double down on?

Well, there's a couple ways to look at this. One is, what's currently bringing in clients and business. What are the best revenue sources? If you 8020 your profit or your revenue, where is the lion's share of it coming from? But another way to double down on what's working is what are you most enjoying? What types of clients are you most interested in working with? What's bringing you the most energy? I like to optimize for revenue and joy simultaneously and try and really hold both in my focus at the same time. And so I think sometimes entrepreneurs and business owners get burned out with their business because what's working in a financial sense is maybe draining them completely on the energetic side of things.

So is it the intersection of the two? You have to find what's making money and what you're enjoying doing, or can you just pick the what I enjoy doing, because that'll keep you at least going?

I would say it's a combination of both. And the whole key of a pivot is not trying to turn the ship, like to make a 180 overnight, but by thinking about how can I shift and experiment incrementally from what's already working. So from that base, whether it's what's bringing in revenue or what's bringing what, the business owner's biggest strengths are, then looking at what are some experiments, I can try to expand in this area. And so one of the keys of pivoting is piloting, running small experiments to actually test what's working.

I want to talk about that piloting in a second. But I get. I get people that say, you know, I'm really passionate. I get a lot of joy out of making money. And I'm like, I just want to hit him in the face. Yeah, I get it. But isn't. Isn't joy the element of not the action itself, but kind of serving a purpose?

For me it is. But it may depend, you know, for someone, if just making money is totally fulfilling to them, you know, that's fine. But it's really about what are your values? And I think a big part of pivoting too is saying, here's where I am right now, here's where I want to be a year from now. And now the whole pivot method is close that gap, bridge that gap. But it's very methodical. It's not just kind of like willy nilly, yeah, we should pivot all the time. Or this idea of just not job hopping or closing our business or shuttering the business before anything has a chance to gain traction. Pivot is a more incremental approach.

So let me give you a hypothetical that's not so hypothetical. We had someone on our show perhaps a week or two ago who came on and we'll say hypothetically, it's a woman, hypothetically in Bermuda who hypothetically has a bridal business. And hypothetically she had a bridal business and also a flower store. Flower store is a financial near a financial train wreck. It's a near calamity. I think that was her words. It was tragic. And the bridal business is making money and she loves doing it. But she has this kind of obsession not to give away the flower store even though it's not working. How do you, how would you coach hypothetically that hypothetical person through that hypothetical situation?

So, so does she want to keep both businesses running? It sounds like yes, she has an.

Emotional connection to the flower shop.

Okay, well, I would start by talking to her about what is working in the flower shop, even if it's only 5 or 10% and looking at what is that, 5 or 10%. For example, if what she's getting is nostalgia and this kind of emotional attachment piece, well, does it need to be run as a full time business or, or can it be something that's more scaled down but that still serves her kind of emotional enjoyment side of things? Or if she really does want to keep it running as a full fledged business and similar to what you would recommend too, Mike, but I would be looking at where is the business coming from, what is she enjoying most on a day to day basis? And then of course, looking at the other side of it is what's creating all this calamity? What's getting in the way? And usually that's the. I mean, clearly it sounds like the business is off track. So it's trying to understand what is on track and on purpose for her mean, and what is so important about keeping the flower shop running? And if, you know, even if it would be very challenging, she were able to turn it around. What does success look like a year from now? What's her average day how much money are they making? You know, I think defining success is every bit as important for a pivot. Otherwise, just focusing on what you don't want and what's not working doesn't put fuel in the gas tank.

Gosh. And now, you know, you're not. You didn't listen to the episode yet because we haven't broadcast it yet, but it's funny. So we were coaching her. I was coaching her through only half the things. I gave her the profit first diagnosis and said, you know, what's working and where's the money coming from? And of her, 4,000 clients is coming from seven clients. They're all corporate. Everyone else was retail. And so it's funny you said, you know, look at the 5 or 10% that's working. That was it. But the one part I didn't touch on was what's driving her. And so my suggestion was much more focus on that seven, or let's call it a day. And what I'm hearing from you is, you can still do this. You can still. If you're getting emotional juice out of it, maybe it could become a small, almost hobby that makes a little bit of money. Is that. Am I interpreting that right as a possibility?

Absolutely. Do you need a physical location? Or if you have these seven corporate clients and you just need to deliver the flower bundle every week, maybe you don't need to run this big store. That's a total drain on your resources. Or I would look at, hey, you have seven corporate clients. How do you get 14? And what does that look like? And now what does the business. So if you already know how to get seven and they're providing the lion's share of the income, well, let's get seven more.

So here I'm going to propose this. This is being recorded and broadcast to 16,000 people a day. 1600 people a day. Here's what I propose, because you and I are so in alignment here. I think we should be coaching customers together. I punch them in the gut. And then you come running over and you pick them up and you go, no, no, it's okay. And as they say, thank you, then you slap them in the face.

Like that should be our thing. Guacamole for you.

And then Christina walks by and kicks him in the gut.

And then we all eat guacamole. Tell me what piloting means.

Piloting. This is a concept that I worked at Google for five years, and the constant thing was launch and iterate, launch and iterate. Nothing's ever going to be perfect. And if you wait until it is, you're screwed. The customer has moved on, the product has moved on, and you're already behind by the time you launch. So the key of a pilot is to be scrappy to come up with a small experiment that can test what I call the three E's enjoyment, expertise and expansion. One, do I enjoy this new area, this experiment that I'm trying? Two, can I become an expert at it, or do I want to become an expert in this area? If I were to double down on it, and then three, is there room to expand in the market in this area? So if I'm great at underwater basket weaving, but I. But nobody wants to take those classes from me, forget about it.

I gotcha. And can an established business pilot, or is this just for the brand new.

Businesses it should be piloting? I mean, this is where when you say, of course it's annoying when people are talking about pivoting constantly. But a pivot mindset is one that while you're not shifting the whole business strategy all the time, you are looking at constantly reviewing what's working. What can we double down on? What experiments can we run, what can we learn? What's out there? So for the flower shop example, can she upsell a service to one of those seven corporate clients that's a pilot? She's not going all in on this new business direction, firing all her old clients, launching a whole new thing. No, she's just upselling a product. Does it catch? Do they like it? Is there going to be business opportunity there? We don't know. But if you can run one or even several pilots concurrently in any size business, then you test the market before betting all your chips on this new direction.

Okay, but what about the flip side? If you double up on what's working, there's only so much room to keep everything else going. You do have to lop off what's not working, right?

Absolutely, yes.

How do you do that?

Well, I think it becomes more natural. Like, you know, people are usually totally stuck in what's not working. Maybe there's an emotional attachment to lopping it off, but usually it's fear that someone's hanging on for dear life to the stuff that's not working because they're afraid that, well, if I let this go, will there be more in the areas that I do want? And you know, that's. I'm sure we've all had the experience of having to fire a client or turn down a really big contract that just wasn't aligned. And So I do think it's a skill to continue lopping off what's working and be disciplined. And I think that the more compelling someone's vision is. You asked about purpose at the beginning of this call for someone's business, that that's truly magnetic. That makes some of these tough decisions easier when you're guided by a really compelling, clear direction for the future. So I think that's a key piece of being able to discern what to.

Even lop off when you're in the weeds. You're running these businesses, I think it's so hard to find what your purposes. I mean, you're in the survival trap. What have you found as you've worked with your clients, as you did research for your book, to get people in the mindset to maybe step away from the business for a moment and find what's working and what's not working? And then to build the second part, that question is. And to find their own purpose in what they're doing.

Yeah. The question of purpose is so wiggly. Some people are born with this amazing purpose and they live their whole life by it. And it's wonderful. For others, that question creates a ton of stress and anxiety and for some feels totally frou frou. Like, what purpose? I need to pay the bills. So I'm big on what I call project based purpose. That things are changing so much. We really don't know what the economic or technological landscape will look like in five years. I think where do you see yourself in five years? Question is pretty much irrelevant unless it's like broad sweeping life goals. And so instead, project based purpose is about, look, here's what I'm doing for the next two years. Here's the business strategy or here's a personal goal, and here's my purpose for doing that. I'm forgetting his name. But one author who says, the way we answer the question, how are you? Depends if we have a compelling personal project that we're working on. So project based purpose is just know the reason that you're doing this iteration of your business for the next year or two. And that's fine. If you don't have your whole lifetime mapped out, it's totally okay.

Is it important to communicate that purpose to your clients?

It's going to vary for each individual, but certainly holding a vision for them. I mean, I think that anytime someone is spending money with a business, it's because they want to solve a problem that they have. And so beyond focusing on the problem itself, what's the vision? What's the ideal state that you're helping them reach. And I think that's holding a vision and a purpose almost for your clients and believing what's possible for them. And then, sure, as the business owner, I think it's very helpful to know what motivates people. And, you know, Tom's shoes, it's like, so compelling to want to buy a pair of Toms shoes because we know their purpose, the one for one, and doing good in the world. And that was very compelling for people.

When you were writing your book and I know you're doing research and so forth, what's one of the stories that you found most compelling for a business that's pivoting?

Well, the funny thing was I had business owners say to me, these damn millennials, I can't keep them. How do I keep them in place? Because they keep leaving. And the millennials would say to me, or younger employees, I just want a business that can guarantee me a job for at least a year. And I had to say to both of them, like, no, nobody can promise you that. Those days are gone. What surprised me the most when I was working on the book was of everyone I interviewed a year and a half ago, when I went back to fact check, starting earlier this year, almost no one had stayed the same. People had been hired, fired. Their companies were acquired, then they got fired. They started their own businesses, they folded their own businesses, they pivoted the direction of a business. Nobody stayed the same. I mean, maybe one or two. That was shocking to me.

Yeah, that is shocking. Has it ever happened that people pivot? They think they're doubling up on what's working, what's not, and they screw themselves? Can you ever kind of pivot back? I mean, can people actually pivot out of success and maybe never claw their way back to where they were? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. I believe decisions are data. At some point, you gotta decide and just do something. So spinning around in place and speculating at a certain point is just counterproductive and leads to analysis, paralysis, compare, and despair, whatever you want to call it. So I actually give kudos for people who make a choice and then learn what they do and don't want. There's a company, two of my good friends I feature in the book. These are two commodities traders on Wall Street. They were burnt out from five years. They wanted purpose beyond just moving money around. So they quit trading, took a year off, then started a hydroponic urban farming business in Brooklyn. And I consulted. I was their director of operations for a year. This was really fun to help them build this business. And we got some of the biggest retail clients in the New York City region. But still, when they ran the numbers, they were like, oh, you know, this isn't what we want. This doesn't have the kind of upside we're looking for. And so they folded the business after a year, and they had sunk quite a lot of cost into it. But they needed to learn that by experience. And because these guys were former traders, they doubled down on their tolerance for risk, and they knew how to puke their position, as they would call it. So they actually had skills that came in handy, which was not staying attached to sunk costs. So they actually were able to pivot back out. And then they both have since found new jobs because of the skills they leaned on that they learned in their trading days. So there was an example of kind of like a personal and a business pivot, even though it didn't work out as they originally planned.

No, I love that story. I think that's the biggest challenge for most people is when you have something that's not working to have the courage, if that's the right word, to abandon it. And our hypothetical story about the hypothetical business and hypothetically, Bermuda, that's the challenge she's hypothetically facing. All right, I got two more things for you. First, I want people to pick up your book, which is called Pivot. Turn what's working for you into what's working or what's next. Let me see what's next.

Yeah, well, and we've sent.

You didn't even know you wrote this book. And the title's amazing.

We even changed it. Sorry to give you a little pivot on the subtitle, but it's now Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one. Because we realize that's the real message, is that we can't plan so far out anymore. So the only move that matters is your next one.

That's awesome.

I'm writing this down. I'm scrambling to write this down. All right, that's tremendous. So where can people pick up pivot? The only move that matters is the next one.

Well, thank you so much. It launches.

Is your next one. Jeez.

It launches in September, so people can. There's actually. I'll give your listeners only the super secret link to the books toolkit so they can start to use some of the resources.

Is the password guapo because we're early?

No, it's sangria.

I was sangria.

So if they go to pivotmethod.com toolkit. You're hearing it here first, so I'm giving you all the scoop on that. And you can also learn more about me at jennyblake. Me and I have a podcast as well, the Pivot Podcast, where I interview peak performers and reverse engineer career change and also study things like intuition and happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking. That's from all over.

Oh, man, I love to wiggle my way on there on your show.

I know I gotta have you on.

Okay, well, now that we said that it's reported, that will happen.

But I want all these sound effects. You guys have all the good sound effects. We'll share that with you.

So here's what we're going to do. This was actually my ending question or game for you. We like to do something special every time. We do have a sound effect board, and you can get it, too. Right now, it's@myinstance.com. so it's a free board. 90% of these are extremely filthy, and so we try to avoid using those, but we're going to let you randomize. Now, don't go to that website, Jenny. Right now, pick a number between 1 and 17. There's 17 columns, so we're gonna pick a column, and then I want you to pick a number between 1 and 6. So 1 and 17, and then number 2, 1 and 6. And we're gonna play that audio no matter what it is. So what's number one and 17 that you want?

11.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11. Okay, and then one through six, five. 1, 2, 3, four, four, five. I'm closing my eyes. It's over 9,000. That's your sound effect. Oh, my God.

What is that from?

Wow.

I have no idea. We'll try it again. It's over 9,000. Did I count? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Like a stock market.

Yeah, that was it. That was it. So I have no idea. That is. There's some. Yeah, there's. It was pretty lame.

That's when Jenny and Mike get the guacamole bill. The end of the night.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you've ever played that game Minecraft, you know where you click a button, all of a sudden the whole screen explodes? Like, you did the perfect pick there. You picked a blank space and all the mines revealed themselves, but you didn't die. So congratulations.

Congratulations.

All right, Jenny. Well, thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate all these insights.

Thank you so much. And I feel compelled to say One last thing, which is no one I talked to regretted their choice. So I think for anyone listening, although it is scary to pivot in a new direction and let go of what's not working, almost nobody looks back with regret. So power on. Build first, courage second. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. And big thank you to everyone for listening.

Yep.

Thanks, Jenny. See you around.

And just stay on the webpage for like, another minute at least. Jenny. Or you can. You can also hang around.

Yeah, I'll be listening. Too much fun to hang out.

All right. You know who makes this possible, Chris? It is our corporate partners. And before we go over to the round robin here and share what we learned from Jenny, I want to thank our corporate partners for sponsoring this program.

Can I punch you?

Can you what?

Can I punch you?

Oh, punch me right in the face. Punch me. Do it.

Ouch.

Oh, partner number one. Next. I like that. I'll do that. I'll. I'll say the door number, you open it. So partner or door number one? Nextiva. Nextiva. Okay, so nextiva is a voiceover IP phone system. It's the voice if you can hear people in the background. Our office is so small, you can see we called Mike Scalise over. I mean, you can just literally walk over and be on the podcast. And we have no doors here. All the people you hear talking in the background are on our nextiva phones. They're that remarkable. We run an office of, I don't know, six active people over one little Internet line. I think that's a dial up Internet line. And we run everyone over it. No, but it feels like it. All right, so next Diva can't speak more highly of them. Door number six. Just kidding. Door number five. Fundbox Fund box. Fundbox is invoice financing. So if you have an invoice that's due, Fundbox releases the funds to you. Awesome. Door number two. Fundera. Oh, Fundera. I didn't expect them behind that door because they're not the number two in the business, they're the number one. Yeah. Yeah. That makes no sense. Let me hear the laughter out there. Oh, that's what I thought. Yeah, lots of laughter. Fundera is a loan source. So if you need a loan because you're, for whatever reason, you need to hire Jenny Blake and you can't afford her $50,000 consulting fee, Fundera will release those funds to you and say 50,000 for consulting, that's a steal. Jenny Blake only charges 200,000 and they'll release the funds to you so you can use them for any funding service, including hiring contractors, financing payroll. I hope you're never in a situation that means you're not profitable. But even those situations, they pay. Door number four.

T sheets.

T Sheets. I knew you were there. I've been waiting for you. T sheets. I've been waiting. T sheets is time tracking software. Yeah. And we use it here. Mike Scalise just joined our company a week ago, and the guy is tracking his time like a mother. I got. I got a. PA Just gave me the. What's that sign called? The. The.

The high sign. Middle finger.

No, no. When. When you have the. In Hawaii. The Hawaiian is a shock. No. What's that? The shaka. I have no idea. Whatever. He just did that to me because he knows I got. He's got a big fat payroll check coming his way.

He put flowers around your neck.

Yeah, exactly. Yes. All right, I got one door left. I think it's door number three, or whatever door is left. Four. And that would be Receipt, bank receipt. Bank. Last, but certainly. Certainly not the least. Not in the least are they. They are so important, you know, you got to track your receipts. My desk. I got stuff piled up here. I can throw this out now. Look at that. I just threw it out. That receipt. Hear this receipt right here? That's me crumpling it out. Why. Why am I throwing that out? I don't need it anymore because my receipt. Bank scanner has scanned it in. I used to have these stuff everywhere. So receipt bank scans, categorizes, and stores your receipts for all purposes, like your taxes and so forth, and does it automatically. Boom. Yeah. What'd you learn today, Christina?

Oh, I learned that I need to look.

Or not just me in general, but everyone, especially business owners, look at where you are and where you want to be, and then look at the gap in the middle. And Jenny explains to close it, you have to make some type of change, even if it's. If it's small, it's a big one. You have to make a change to get from point A to point B. Yeah. I love it. Chris, what'd you learn?

Right? Yeah. Me and Barry's here with me, by the way, and I learned a lot.

Barry?

Barry, did you. Did you get a lot from what Jenny said on the show today?

Oh, forget it.

Yeah, so he. I like her definition of pivot, which is double down on what's working. I thought she mentioned incremental changes, which I thought was really cool. Like, you don't want to go Make a huge change, make little incremental changes. Piloting was a cool concept. I mean, you just got to try stuff, see if it works. I mean, pretty much we're all familiar with that. And then of course, project based purpose, I mean, that was new to me. It's like, you know, we don't have to talk about, you know, what happens when we die and go to heaven or what, what's the meaning of life or whatever, or what happens when you die and move to Colorado Springs. You know, it can just be like, okay, for the next year, what's our purpose? And when you get in touch with that, it really helps. So this is Jenny is. She just makes so much sense. It's crazy when she talks.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's this resurgence in this interest in Star wars, so we have Chewbacca here to give his insights. What did you learn from Jenny? Chewbacca? Yes, that was interesting. And I think. You know what, I couldn't agree more. What Chewbacca said, if you don't speak Chewbaccian, is no regrets on decisions made. You know what a final kind of punch Jenny gave us at the end there, saying she's never had someone pivot and then regret. And that's the irony. It's indecision that leads to regret, not decision in action. And as I'm thinking of my own life, the things I decided not to do because it was too scary, too risky, too frightening, I look back and say, God, I wish I did it. The things I did. I look back and even when they failed, I said, at least I tried it. And now I know it's not working for me. There is no regrets in when you take action and do a pivot.

Be brave.

Be brave, young soldier. Right, Chewbacca? Oh, he said the exact same thing. He said, no regrets again. I love it. He just keeps repeating himself.

I love it. So this has been great. What a tremendous episode. But don't forget, you can listen to our show in so many places, whatever Podcatcher you use, itunes, the podcasts app, or.

Sorry, threw you off with that.

No, Jenny just wrote me a little note on the screen here. I caught my eye for a second. But Stitcher, Tunein Radio, whatever podcast you have, the website Profit first, podcast dot com, there's all kinds of cool pictures of Mike and of course the guests, the previous guests as well. Some people like to binge listen, some people like to comment on the. On the, the post there on the website. Don't forget that you can always comment and Ask a question in a post and guess who's gonna respond? Either Mike or maybe even Obi. Ron Kenobi, I don't know.

Or maybe Chewbacca. You never know. No regrets. He says, again, I love it.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Please do leave your comments. We appreciate it much. And make sure you swing by profit first professionals.com profit first professionals.com. there are so many ways we can profitable, but there's only one way to start. By taking a profit. Isn't that ironic? You got to reverse engineer your profitability. Yeah. Maybe you have more sales, maybe you got to pivot, maybe you got to stop that location flower store you got in Bermuda. There's a million things that you have to do, but you're not going to know until you take your profit first and it starts identifying where the problems are. But we have a gaggle of professionals at prop first. Professionals who can help identify what actions you need to take. So go to propfirstprofessionals.com, click on the find button. We'll find you a professional who specializes in your industry or is in your area. And we'll guide you step by step to taking your profit first and becoming very profitable consistently and forevermore.

Talk about amen. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Christina. Thanks to Mike.

Oh, yeah, Mike. Mike Scalay is in the house. Dang.

He was hot on the show.

Damn, he was hot. He was hot. We may have him back next week.

Mike, who do we got?

Oh, next week we have Katherine Kirby joining us. You know, put on your five point seat belt. Yeah, this is. Yeah, that one strap is just so dangerous. Put on your five point seatbelt for Katherine Kirby. Why? Because she's gonna be sharing some insights on her profit first experience. You know, it's interesting. The best. I shouldn't say the best feedback, but the mix we've come to, the. We've brought to the show now where we have experts like, like Jeff. Oh, no, sorry.

I'm talking about Stairway to Hell.

I'm fading. No, Stairway to Hell.

That's a good Stairway to hell. But we have experts like Catherine. I'm sorry. Like Jenny and Bob Berg. We have people like Nikki who just came on sharing their experiences and we have people that are in the industry coming on, accountants, bookkeepers. We found that this mix is great. And next week's going to be no different. Different. Katherine Kirby is going to come on and share her experience with profit first and she lives in Amish country. Oh, Amish. The Amish. Oh, my God. The umash. It used to be pronounced Omash. No, not at all.

I just. I liked you.

I know. I do like sounding very historical like that. I have no idea.

All right, well, let's let. Let's let Barry have the last word on this episode. Barry, what are you going to need to pivot properly?

You're going to need a couple of horses, a couple of mules. Barry, I have one last question for you before we go. You saw Chewbacca? He joined us in studio today. I know. How would you describe his face? I mean, it's not easy to describe, but I think you have the words for it. Something from out of ancient times. Big mouth, lot of teeth.

That's it, guys. We'll catch you next week. Thanks for listening.

Thank you.