Episode 89: with Chris Curran

All right, so we're rolling here. And before we get started, I do have a very special message. I promised this last episode for everybody. Here it is. Let's see. It's Robert Plant, by the way, saying this. Does anybody remember laughter? That's right, Robert. We remember laughter. We remember laughter.

We're ready to Profit first podcast. That's what this is.

Episode 89. It's coming. Here it is, guys.

Did you say goal?

I started. I started too. Yeah. Welcome, everybody, to this special episode. You're gonna wanna bookmark this or something. Cause this is gonna be nutty. I'm Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording, actually.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Private first, actually. And the brand new book in stores right now. Go and get it. Life changing, life moving, business exploding.

Surge. Surge.

Thank you, Barry. Yeah, check out Surge. It's at Amazon now, your store. And I am joined in studio by my colleague Christina.

Hello, hello, Hello.

And she's right. She's been practicing. Her voice is ready. Singing is coming today. And you're listening to Private first podcast where you learned all the elements of profitability. And we had an unexpected consequence. We had one of our guests cancel on us.

And it happens.

It happens. And also, as we were talking offline, Chris is like, you know, I've been listening to 88 episodes now, and I've been implementing Profit first in my own podcast business. And I said, okay, well, hold the radio, hold the phone, hold on. Hold whatever's in your hand.

Easy now.

Put that, put that down.

Put that down.

For God's sake.

Both hands, both hands.

So, no, you don't need both hands. But Chris, you said that your business has changed radically since we started doing this. And I want to take full credit, even though it's not deserved. No, it's not deserved. I want to take full credit. So we're gonna explore in this episode what you've been doing in your business. But also we want to share kind of, kind of some of the behind the scenes stuff that we do here, the singing and insanity that ensues here at the studio. So we'll share some of that.

Yeah.

Cool.

I appreciate that. And yeah, so this show, as you know, even this episode, all the. The stuff that's. The craziness that's going to ensue in a moment, you still going to get some profit tips? Because revenue is wonderful. Employees, great ad in the yellow Pages, I love it.

But all that is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to profit. Please. Goodbye, sir.

Thank you. Should we yell the whole episode.

We should. We should. We should. I mean, you know, think about that. You were thinking about your most romantic partner, the dream guy or gal, depending on who you're attracted to, person you're thinking about. Think about that. The most intimate moment, the most romantic moment. That is nothing compared to the beauty of profit. I mean, that is romance. When there is wads of money rolling into your pocket, you have the freedom, the freedom to do what you want with the money, to express yourself, to be financially free. You only get there through profit. Revenue is gaga.

And you know what's funny?

That's from Young Frankenstein.

When people take their profit, what do you call it? Their profit. When they take it out, what do you call that?

Their quarterly distribution.

Yeah. When they take that, some people don't exactly know what to do with it.

Isn't that funny?

Yeah.

So at the end of Q1, we reach out to the entrepreneurial community at large on Facebook and so forth, like, what are you doing with your profit? And some people, like, I don't know. What am I supposed to do? Right. Which, you know, it sounds absurd, but when you realize most entrepreneurs never taken a profit, it's not so absurd.

And most of them want to put it back in their business. And we're like, no, no.

Yes.

Right?

That's yours.

They're like, oh, should I take my profit and buy stuff for the business? Should I make it an expense? It's like, no, no. That's the antithesis. That's what's been screwing you the entire time. No, no, no, no, no. Put that money down and instead, go celebrate with it.

Go celebrate.

Yeah.

And while you're celebrating, you can listen to episodes of the show on itunes and Stitcher and Tune in radio, and of course, our website, profit first podcast.com. have you gone there yet? Because it redirects to Mike Michalowicz's website.

And which redirects you to Profit First Professionals Backslash Podcast, which redirects you Back to Mike Michalowicz.com, which opens up another.

Window which puts you on. No.

And then it formats your hard drive, reboots your machine, and then all you can hear is our podcast and nothing else works.

And then you just hear Ka Ching. And that's it.

Yeah, Here it is.

Oh, thank you. You're welcome.

Love it. So. So, Mike, our corporate partners. And you know what? Now that we have five corporate partners, we've been spending. We've been highlighting one per episode. But just real quick, our corporate partners are awesome. Companies who you know personally and you work with intimately. So these aren't just people that we want to take their money. No way.

Right? I mean, I do want to take their money. Don't. Don't get me wrong. But I do use their product first and foremost. And they are Fundera, tsheets, nextiva, Fundbox, and Receipt Bank. And all these companies provide services that help businesses ultimately become more profitable. Right. I mean, you need a great phone system to serve your clients, to sell and so forth. And that's what nextiva does. You need funds when something's working and you want to expand on it. Maybe you want to expand your product line because you sell retail products. Fundera is a source for that. Maybe you want to track the productivity. Not the productivity, the time of your employees. Tsheets actually found that they save you about 10% on your payroll because there's accurate time reporting. All these companies. All these companies have a way of increasing your profitability. And we literally use every single product, every single one of those products.

Right. And if you go to the website, Profit First Podcast, you'll see links to all the. Our corporate partners. So go visit them and go, you know, whatever. Go. I was gonna say. No, I was gonna say go, you know, tell some jokes to them or something stupid, but just tell them that we sent you.

Yeah. Tell them you heard about them on the Profit first podcast and that you heard, like, every episode you're hearing them. You said, gosh, after the hundredth time hearing this, I decided to give you guys a call and, oh, my God, you're a miracle. You're amazing. That's what he's saying.

Want some coffee?

Here we are. We just walked into the coffee shop. We've never done an episode in a coffee shop before.

Sorry, hold on.

We walked back out of the coffee shop.

Just kidding.

Yeah, sorry.

That was the wrong coffee shop.

Let's go. That one right there, Chris.

Okay, here we go.

Okay, we're back in. And what we wanted to do today, I think, is kind of special. We always bring on guests. And if you notice, there's three types of guests we bring on. One's an expert at weane gains. Last week was an expert. Sometimes we bring in a. What we call a success story, an entrepreneur that has taken their business to a level of profitability that many people aspire to, and they tell us their lessons learned. And other times, we bring in guests. We bring in guests who are implementing profit first in our business and are still trying to deploy it or struggling. And we try To I try to coach them through it. Yeah. This is the first time ever that we're going to do kind of this internal exploratory session. We're going to learn what Chris has learned from doing this show itself.

Yeah.

We thought, what more appropriate place than being in a coffee shop? So that's why we got this cheesy background fake audio track for you.

And I'm glad I've had a huge success recently, because that kind of puts everything in perspective.

Yeah, it does.

So, Chris, what I want to do is I want to explore your business a little bit, and then we're going to wrap up with a little song we wrote for you.

Can we do the song in the middle?

Yeah, sure. You want to do the middle?

Because I want to. I want to play a drum beat, too. In the middle.

He wants.

Oh, you want to do your drum beat. Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna learn a little bit from you, Then we're gonna do a celebratory song in your honor, Chris.

Oh, thank you.

That we've been preparing for about, cumulatively, three or four minutes. We've never worked together before, so this is gonna be interesting.

And we're not warmed up, so it'll be fun.

And we're not crediting it either.

No, of course not.

Oh, God. That's total nonsense. That's for sissies. So let's talk about your business. Chris, tell me. We started doing profit first, you and I. We meet up and we start doing profit first. But you don't know anything about it at that time. Now we're 88 episodes later. Just tell us about the journey and your experience with profit first.

Well, as far as learning from being on this show every episode, it's an amazing education that I've gotten over the 88 episodes. Listening to these experts really explain how it really is. And also listening to you help people. Everything has helped me on the practical side. I actually. I implemented profit first probably about a year ago, maybe. I'm not sure. I set up my accounts, and I kind of started slow. And in a way, I'm still not doing it 100% into. Meaning that, like, I have no employees, I have no real subcontractors. I mean, as of now, I'm literally pretty much doing everything myself, and I'm doing that for a reason, at least for the next six months until this big contract is going to come to an end and probably renew purposefully. I'm staying lean and mean and really profitable right now. That's my plan. So anyway, that's. So I am implementing it. But like, if I don't, you know, every month on the 10th and 25th, I usually don't move any money. In fact, I think I went about six months before I actually moved any money. And I just did it recently, you.

Know, and that's more than okay. Like, that's the normal thing. Like, I think the fear people have with profit first. Christine, you talk to a lot of people over the Internet. I think the fear is that I got to do this exactly right. It's like a diet. Like I got to eat grapefruit Monday morning. Like, you have this. But the. The private first is not designed to be this disciplined, stick to it method. It's just to get small increments going forward.

Absolutely. Especially with bookkeepers and accountants. I'm finding too. Especially because it takes a certain type of person to do the type of work that we do, and we pay attention to just the minor little details and every little thing that goes into it. But you got to realize that this system, it's personal. Like, you can just personalize it to a different. Exactly what it is that you need it for. It can be manipulated in any way that you need it to be.

Yeah. And you move at your own pace.

Yes.

Like, we have people that have discovered profit first, and all they've done is set up one additional account. They. It's a profit account. They move money over occasionally, but they don't do it on any kind of rhythm. They move a small percentage, and then they cause six months later, a year later, and say, I can't believe how much money's piled up there. And they start to believe the change. So one thing I found is there is no wrong. Except if you don't even try it, like, that's the wrong.

And try it for yourself, too. You don't even need to implement it in your business. I know when I started working here, I started doing it, and I take a percentage. I think I take 10% of my paycheck. I put it in a separate account. And I recently opened another profit account that's like a sub account in my Chase. And I looked at it recently. I'm like, wow, I never would have saved this money if I hadn't heard about this or started working here. And it's. It makes you feel good.

It really does. Yeah. You know, another thing too is I think it's natural, Chris. I don't know if you've done this that there's a sense almost to bring Complexity to simplicity.

Yes.

Meaning just have an account, man, you got it right. And then some people say, well, I'm not doing it right. It has to be more complex than this. We have a gentleman here, Mike Scalise, full time, full time, sits here to unwind people from the complexity. He sits, he sits on the phone and says, no, no, no, no, no, you don't have to do this. No, no, don't worry about the tax implications and this and this. No, it's easier than that. Just allocate the money. And then people are like, well, I got an S corp, I have a C corp, I have a special payroll, I have this. And this obviously won't work. There must be more to it. No, just allocate the money to the right plate, the profit account or the tax account or whatever, the payroll can just let sit there and then we'll move things over. Well, the tax, the consequences to the accounting. My tax accountant. This is going to be so common. No, no, Just set up these basic accounts and all the stuff will come true. It's actually adding the complexity that makes it confusing. Our job is to remove it away right now. Chris, I want to know kind of the before and after I met you, you're in that studio in New Jersey. I'm sure you were paying a pretty dime for that. I don't know what your revenue was like. Now you're working out of a converted studio in your home. I assume your expenses have dropped, your revenues increased, and as a result your profitably is skyrocketed. But maybe that's just me saying that.

Yeah, no, you're right. When we met, I was renting a small office space and I had my studio there. I actually wasn't paying that much because it was this weird space that had like. Like half of my space was actually shared space. I only had like that one room was only my own and it wasn't really soundproof. And anyway, I wasn't paying that much, which.

Excuse me, you get a little choked up. I know, dude, I know this is emotional. It's okay. It's okay, bro.

So, yeah, back then, honestly, I didn't have many clients. I was just starting. I actually started with this vision of becoming like this local podcast studio and I started a business show and I started bringing all these business people in. And my plan was when the business people came in to be a guest on my show, and of course I'm going to ask them about their business, let them promote their business, all about them and their business, I. I said you know what? When they put on the headphones and they have such a great time for 30 minutes, they're going to say, oh, my God, I want to do my own show. And.

Right.

That's what happened, in fact, with you. That's how you and I hooked up. You were my guest, and we just had this wild chemistry, was awesome. And we're like, dude, we got to do a show. So that was my plan. I got a few clients that way, but honestly, I didn't really get that many. And I was. I wasn't charging as much back then either, so.

Right.

I mean, I don't even know if I. Maybe I was breaking even. Maybe not even probably for the first couple of years. I know I lost money for sure.

You know, I love that you did that. Actually, I didn't even remember that's how we met, that I do remember coming to your studio. I remember who was in touch. But you are doing what's called the sampling effect. And the sampling effect is where you get to experience something and you get a sample of it, and your likelihood of using is much higher. And I remember going to studios like, holy cow, this is pretty freaking cool.

Yeah.

But. Okay, so. But you weren't. It was cool, but you weren't making money. How's things changed? What's it like now?

Well, it changed, but I will tell you this, that before I started fractal recording, which is my business, producing podcasts, I had another business. I was speaking and doing, doing seminars and. And coaching, and I wrote a book in personal development. Was all about personal development, mindset, and attitude. I was a speaker, I was a coach, and it literally, like, I wanted to be Tony Robbins, and it just wasn't happening. I actually tried to hire a few people. It went horrible. Everything just went horrible. And I invested a lot of money to get it going, and it just never got going. So the reason that I started fractal recording was because I said to myself, you know what? I'm going to create the business I want to have, and I want to have a business where I'm tapping into my audio engineering skills, and I want to, you know, get into this new medium of podcasting, and I want to be the expert technical guy, because that's my strength. So when I set up fractive recording, I knew. I knew it was going to take some time to get going, and I knew I was going to have to make an investment. But at that point in my life, I was like, you know what? I'm tired of trying to do what everyone else says I should do, and all this, I'm just going to do what I want to do. Luckily, my wife had a job at the time, so we were able to get by, but that's what it was. I just went at it full bore with this courage that, hey, it's either gonna work or it's not, but I'm going for it. And so that in the end, so a couple years of not making any money, in a way, it didn't bother me, but it was definitely on my mind. But with all my effort, it did start to flower. So what happened when it started to flower was I got a call from one of the directors at Dun and Bradstreet and they said, oh, we want to do a podcast show. And so I'm working with Dun and Bradstreet now, producing one of their podcast shows. And it's, it's, it's going okay. It's been going for a while now. It's kind of changed gears and all that stuff. But anyway, they're my client and I had to go through all this, you know, to be approved as a vendor of Dun and Bradstreet. I went through all this stuff and that was really good. And then I could actually charge what I needed to charge. I think you and I may have talked around that time, and I was kind of like, mike, what should I charge?

We did. Well, let me tell you, let me stop you there, because there's something I thought that was fascinating that you do that so many people don't do. So here's what I observed. You and I started doing podcasts together, and you offered to produce podcasts very inexpensively for us. So not only did you give us a sample, you said, I'll do this inexpensively, but the trade off was, hey, Mike, I want you to coach me. Now, you never said those words right, but after every session you say, hey, I got questions for you. And I feel so appreciative of what you're doing for us and that you're cutting us a break to get our show building. I'm like, hell yeah, I'm gonna help this guy out. I can't tell you, Chris, how many people I've met with, I mean, thousands, who tell me their story fascinating and then say, see you later. And I'm not saying I am the all knowing expert by any, any stretch of the imagination, but when you have someone in front of you. I did dinner with Michael Gerber, author of E Myth. I sat down there, I gave him like two Bits about me when he asked. But I just wanted to ask him every question I could. That was the golden opportunity for me. And the takeaway for me. I'm just doing an aside here. The takeaway for me, that dinner. I was in Mexico. I meet Michael Gerber. I'm having one on one dinner with him. The ultimate privilege. I don't say shit about me. I go, hey, Michael, I read your book E Myth. I don't understand how you go from working on a business to. I'm sorry, from going working in the business to on the business. It sounds like a switch. And he says, it's not a switch, it's a dial. You slowly make the transition. And that was the moment. And Chris, you were doing the same with me. I realized in retrospect you were saying, hey, how do you do niche specialization, Mike? How do you get customers to call you, interested in your service? How do you increase your pricing? And I don't know, I just observed that in your behavior and I think that those questions, and I assume you're doing with other people too, that you started deciding what was best for you.

Totally. Yeah. You were a big help and you still are. And actually my brother Mike is also a big help. I think you two, the two Mikes, which by the way, you both live in Jersey and he owns a nice restaurant and inn. You should go to his inn and have dinner.

Which restaurant?

It's in Hampton. It's called the. It's the Glen Gardner Inn.

Okay, so the Glen Gardner Inn.

And he lives out near Hampton. It's near Clinton, actually. New Jersey. Anyway.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

I've been there.

Really?

Because my dad lives in Clinton and I'm pretty sure we've been to almost like a restaurant over there.

Oh. So I want to, I want to check this out. Maybe have a company party down.

Check it out. The Glen Gardner Inn. He's just took it over. He's doing a great job. Anyway, you and him were. Are my mentors and I really appreciate that. And yeah, we talked about niching down to business authors. That's one change I made. And I think it was the niching down to business authors and getting Dun and Bradstreet as a client. That led me to my big client, which was Forbes podcast, which they hired me to, you know, produce 12 shows on a kind of a podcast network. Full production of 12 shows. And I actually got to charge full price and everything.

Right, so you're dictating a premium. And you know, one thing I also noticed is that when you Went for the niche of authors that you a did not decline other work, which is smart. When you pick a niche, a category you're gonna go after, that means market to them and test. So basically my rule is when it comes to niche specialization, first you guess, then you test, then you build, and then you commit. And you know, by guessing you said, well, it sounds like, Mike, you're an author. Maybe other authors wouldn't want to do this. That's the guess phase. Then you start testing, you start allocating your marketing efforts there. You start building toward it, but you see if it works. And I think the author market wasn't working so well, but you started moving down a definitive path and another opportunity presented itself and you were able to jump on it. I almost suspect that if you didn't go after a niche that you'd still be too broad of a guy catering to everybody, that maybe the Ford's opportunity was skirted right by you.

It's possible. It's possible. And by the way, you should be on LinkedIn if you're listening to this, because that's how Forbes found me on LinkedIn and they called me up.

There's a good lesson. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, I'm sure they found you on LinkedIn. I'm sure they tested the quality of what you do. And by committing, you know, listen, you like audio engineering and you had a decision. You could try to be the Anthony Robbins second guy or you can move to something you loved. And now you're producing such a high quality ingredient product that it was clearly obvious choice once they found you.

That's why it's so important to have a website. Because people, anything that you do, people want to check on your work before they hire you for anything.

Yeah, totally. So, Chris? Yeah. You want to say something, Brad?

Oh, yeah. Well, one other thing. One of the reasons why. Remember I originally said that I'm not fully doing profit first and then you had a nice explanation that there's really no fully or not, it's just right. You grow through it. You do it and you grow through it. One of the things is that like I mentioned before, my wife was working. So even now, like my income from fractal recording, we, we weren't even using any of that to pay our bills and our mortgage and everything. So that's why I went like six months without moving anything into accounts, into my profit account and my other accounts. So what I did about a month ago was because, you know, because of Forbes and because of my other clients, you know, my bank Account was going up and up and it was really awesome. And then we're like, well, you know, we've been in the house seven months here in Colorado Springs, and we thought if we have some extra money, we can pay down the principal on our mortgage. So then I went through all my accounts and I took all the money that had come in, let's say in the last. Actually, I did it for this year from January to April of this year. So the first quarter this year, I took all the money that came in, I did my calculations, and I figured out that my owner's pay was like, I don't know, what, 18, 19,000 or something? So I took that money and we literally put that just right toward the. The principal of our mortgage.

Gosh. And that's just owner's pay. Right. So you still have money left? Profit left.

Oh, profit still there. Everything's still there.

Tax reserve is still there.

Yeah.

Wow.

Awesome.

Yeah. That is awesome. That is awesome. Yeah. And no one gets beyond this, by the way. I don't think anyone gets beyond it. Like, you know, I've been living and teaching Private first forever. We just had to buy. So I, you know, I self publish my books. I think I announced it a few episodes ago. Penguin came to me. They published one of my books. But they came to me. And because of the wild success of Profit first, they acquired the rights to it. But my newest book, Surge, that's coming out, I'm self publishing it.

Yeah.

And so we gotta buy, you know, it's. What does it cost, 11,000 bucks or 12,000 bucks?

It's a lot to print books.

It's a big chunk of change.

And then you had to buy the bulk of the actual printed books to then distribute.

Yeah.

So we got.

I gotta write a check for 12,000 bucks or whatever it was. Right. Well, that money's hidden away. Like if I went to my just general operating expense account and look into it. There's not 12,000 bucks sitting there at any given time just to freely pick from it. But there's anticipated spends I have. So I've been allocating that money, allocating that money over time. And then when the bill came, it's like, oh, no, free, no problem.

Right.

Paid it.

Yeah.

I got a freaking killer tax bill coming up. Like, I was like, oh my God, I'm a blindside here. And I was like, oh, yeah, I have the tax reserve set aside. It still sucks to write the check to some degree, but it is much more comforting to have some money set aside for that yeah. So what I'm saying is, no one goes beyond this. Like, I don't care how sophisticated you are, how disciplined you are, you gotta reserve and tuck the money away from yourself because you know, it's human behavior to want to borrow or take it.

If you see it, you want it.

Yeah. Chris, we prepared a song for you. Oh, boy.

Oh.

We want to celebrate your success, man. Because no, honestly, what you've done, dude, we've been working together a little over a year now, and I've seen your business go from a hobby to someone that's having serious impact and growing a successful business. So we prepared a little song for you.

That's awesome.

I don't know if you want to start. What was that?

She apologizes.

That's crazy. I'm going to sit. I'm playing guitar.

Do you want me to apologize?

Right.

Want me to tell everyone else in the coffee shop to shut up?

Yeah, yeah, shut up, shut up, shut up. Thank you.

Oh, wow. Good time.

I, I, Christine and I have rehearsed for about four to five minutes cumulative for this. Can you heard something? Do you want to do the drums for this?

Yeah, do it. Dude.

I, I won't be able to hear you and sync up over the Internet.

Okay, so we're just going to do a. A little bit of a guitar. I was gonna say a duet, but there's no way I'm singing and you can hum. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna move the microphone to my guitar. Oh, here we go.

No, if I put Barry into that one spot, you're gonna crack up.

Christina, that's okay. Really, it's totally fine.

Sounds nice.

Yeah.

We could just go home right now. Maybe we could stick around for just one more drink. Oh yeah, get another bottle out. Let's shoot the shit and sit back down for the Just one more drink oh yeah yeah oh yeah here's to us here's to love all the times that we messed up here's to you fill the glass Cause the last few nights have kicked my ass. If they give you hell, tell em go fuck themselves. Here's to us here's to us, yeah, oh yeah here's to all that we kissed and to all that we missed and the biggest mistakes that we just wouldn't trade to us breaking up without us breaking down to whatever's coming our way here's to us here's to love all the times that we fucked up here's to you fill the glass Cause the last few days have gone so fast so let's Give em hell. Wish everybody well. Here's to us. Here's to us. Here's to us.

Oh my.

Oh, my God.

That was terrible.

That was terrible. I was so out of time and.

That'S totally not my key. It's like right where my voice breaks, right?

So I was. That was fun. That was fun. It was fun. So we will do karaoke night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll own it next time.

We'll put like, pop it up a couple.

Me and Scalise will be going crazy up there. Where? Yeah, nice, bruh. Bruh, bruh. Is that you, Chris?

Yeah, that's him.

Wow.

Wow, dude.

That was you, bro? Yeah, it was him. Yeah. He's running back.

Okay. Terrific.

Dude. That's pretty amazing.

That was awesome.

Oh, yeah.

We just started a profit first band.

The profit first band. We should do it. We should do it. We gotta find a true guitarist, though. We got the drummer, singer.

No, stop it.

So literally that was with four minutes of rehearsal.

Terrible.

And I think we got a shot. I think we got a shot or something. No, Chris, seriously, that was having a little fun there. But we want to celebrate what you done.

Cheers to you.

And yeah, everyone listening in, like, do it, please. It isn't about getting it right. It's just like our song. It's having the courage just to get up and belt it out. And it ain't perfect, but it's way better than the person that never tried in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah. And moving forward, it's like my next. My next thing to figure out is how to offload some of the work because obviously, you know, if I get more clients, I can't do all the work myself personally. And how do I remain profitable once I start having to pay other people? That's going to be a big question.

And also, I've noticed that, or we've experienced in the past that entrepreneurs say that some of their accountants, who they're. Or bookkeepers that they're already using will tell them, this doesn't make any sense. I can't. They can't comprehend the. The whole idea of profit first. So then just like in the song, you tell them to go F themselves.

I never heard the word fuck so beautifully sang, by the way. It's just funny hearing the F bomb like, oh, that's very pretty. That's very pretty. So, yeah, Chris, that next stage is normal. And this is a. This is a common entrepreneurial trap when it comes to profit first or actually any kind of growth of a business. Now, as you grow your Business in the old kind of methodology, like push, put every penny into it. This transition phase is terrible, terrifying because if you make a single mistake, there's no money left. You've been plowing everything into the business. It will set you back and could crush a business. So by taking your profit first, you want to start building a cash buffer and keep reserving money for this next growth stage because your role is going to change when you're the person doing the work, Kris. It's just time for money. So if you work a little bit harder, you can make a little more money at a certain point, of course, you can't keep working harder because there's only so much time in a day as you in this phase right now. In preparation of this transition, start talking money aside to cover the transition phase. And the transition phase for many businesses, three months to six months, some even take a year. So just start reserving money. I'm not saying reserve a year's worth of revenue. That's never going to happen. Reserve maybe a month's worth of revenue and that will carry you a long distance. Then what happens is you make that first hire. And that first hire, I like to hire part time. You came on initially as part time, your time. Right. I love hiring part timers because what you find is what they're capable at, where their gift is. Yours is an event planning.

Right.

You weren't hired for that, but now you're moving to it. And secondly, you, they get a test you and see if there's a cultural fit. Like you really like to work here. Right. So it's a great way to test things out. But the other thing, Chris, is don't hire someone with experience. And that's the mistake many people will make. If you bring in someone who has experience doing audio engineering, they're going to want to use their past way of doing things to do things. And it's not how you do it. There's going to be a conflict.

Right?

So ironically, bring in someone who's intelligent, has the drive and the interest, but no experience. You're going to have to invest time in training them, but they're going to learn your way of doing it, which means the right way to do it in the repeatable way to do it. You need the money to cover that little transition period to bring them up to speed. But then once they're set free and they're doing their thing, they're doing it your way and you're growing and going.

But it's not only about working harder. It's also about working smart, which I know, Chris, you've implemented certain processes to anything that you can do or any tools that you find that you can use to implement into your business that will help free up your time to start working more on your business rather than in it. It's gold.

Yeah. One of those things was using this appointment booking program.

Yeah, the scheduler.

So you know what I did with Forbes? I mean, they have 11, 12 shows with that many hosts that all need to book appointments with me. I mean, imagine the emails back and forth. Are you available Tuesday at 4? No. How about 4? How about 5? I mean, so I literally, what I did is it's called Schedule Once. There's a lot of different scheduling programs. The one I use is called Schedule Once. I actually opened up almost my entire calendar for appointments. So what each host does, each of my clients, they just click on the link, they can see my calendar, they can see what's available. They book themselves, and then I get an email that says, hey, they booked it. And it's like, okay, done.

And that's a win. That is a system. That is a system. And, and keep doing things like that. So as you start growing and continue to grow, explore things that you're doing repeatedly like scheduling or whatever, and then you look for a system to replace it. And sometimes there's off the shelf stuff. We just, we just updated our we lot. We are ditching yesware because they're charging a fee. So we're like, well, let's see if there's something out there that costs nothing. We found this thing called Gradius, I think it is, or something like Gracious, something like that. Free plugin. And the application's better. Yeah. And it's, it allows you to respond to emails by typing in just a couple keys and it fills in full paragraphs with what you want to say and ultimate shortcuts. And it's a productivity boost for everyone. You know, efficiency is gained by improving in seconds. And I think a lot of businesses like yours, Chris, will say, well, I got to really, I got to remove 8 hours a week for my schedule in order for me to grow. Well, you can remove, you know, two minutes of work in different areas. That will add up to be eight hours. So you always have to look for the big win. You just want to look for small elements to systematize as you, as you scale.

That's awesome.

I'm proud of you, bro.

Thank you, man. I appreciate it. And really, I want to express my gratitude to everybody who has Helped me. I mean, none of us do anything alone in this world. And I've had a lot of help from a lot of people. You know, of course, my wife being the number one, but so I'm really.

She's a one and a half. I'm really the number one. I don't feel awkward saying that, but.

She'S gonna hear this, bro. You know it.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry.

Well, this has been great. Are we done? Mike, you want to end it here?

Yeah, yeah, I'm done. I'm done with you. You're done here.

Get out of here, kid.

Get out of here, kiddo. Now this was. This was interesting. I hope that everyone listening in had a. Enjoyed a little kind of off the cuff. Just no scripted, just kind of follow through and just kind of rambling conversation about something that's very important.

Yeah. You know, the utmost.

The utmost important. You know, who makes this show possible? Even this episode, Even this rambling episode, it's our corporate partners. So I want to thank Fundera, Tsheets, Fundbox, Receipt, bank and Nextiva for making this possible. You know, I didn't thank Fundbox in a while. And Fundbox specifically is invoicing financing. If you have clients and Chris, maybe this will happen to you. Forbes is awesome, but they are a big business. The day could happen that you send them an invoice for X thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and they say, oh, yeah, we're sending that in 160 days. And you're like, oh, my God. Big corporations do that. Small businesses do that. The money's gonna come to you. The question is just when? And sometimes you can't be very profitable if you gotta wait money for that long. But Fundbox will release the funds in their entirety to you. They don't do collections, they don't call your client. It doesn't change the relationship. They just give you the money while you wait. When the money arrives from your client, you then simply return it to Fundbox. Of course they charge a service fee, but it's very nominal. But the biggest thing is that they don't change relationships. It's not a collection agency, it's not a loan funder or whatever. They simply release the funds to in its entirety so your cash flow does not get affected.

They deal with you, not your client.

Yep. And we have members. We don't use Fundbox because our structure just doesn't require that. I think it's a good structure to have, but some of our Members require that they have big corporations that aren't paying them timely. And they've used Fundbox with wonderful success. And it's immediate. You've never used Fundbox before. You can get funds. I think it's within 24 hours of just signing up. So it's quick, it's easy, and it doesn't change relationship with your clients. So thank you, Fundbox, for being a corporate partner.

Yes. And thanks to all our other corporate partners. And I want to. I'd like to end this episode with you, Mike, explaining to me, because I have an accountant. I've had him for several years and he's actually back in New Jersey and he did my taxes this year. But in a way, I'm kind of thinking like, as my business grows, I might need a different accountant. I might need a profit for First Professional. What if, if I want to look into getting a Profit First Professional, how do I do that?

Well, first you go to your existing account and you say, surprise. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's tough, Lang. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough to use language like that. But sometimes you got to give them the wake up slap and tell them you've been my accountant for like 10 years and you haven't once come to me and increased my profit. Oh, you got my taxes taken care of and you may help me spend money with the government, but you haven't come to me with one iota of idea of how to increase my profitability. You haven't coached me through it. You don't have a methodology. That's what Profit First Professionals have. So we have a membership organization of accountants and bookkeepers throughout the globe who've been trained by our team here. And our team is six of us. It's myself. I'm on the phone with every one of our members. Mike Scalise is. Aaron Moger is. Christina is. Jackie is. Ron is. We are guiding our members to increase profitability following the Profit first method. Profit First Method has been proved out. We have over 4,000 companies running it successfully. We know it works and we know it doesn't work right now. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com Click on the find button. We will find you an accountant or bookkeeper. Someone you need anyway to immediately, immediately help your business achieve the levels of profit you are sitting on and not realizing because they will guide you to profitability. If your accountant or bookkeeper does not know how to increase profitability for you, get rid of them. It's time to make a change. You must be profitable. And they can show you how. Profitfirstprofessionals.com, go there right now. Click on find. We'll hook you up.

That's right. Profit first, professionals dot com. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Christina. I really appreciate being featured on this episode and and I hope it helped you listening. We want to hear from you. So you know what? Go to this post on profitfirstpodcast.com, find this episode 89. Comment on it. Ask questions. Ask Mike a question. Ask me a question on this post. You can always comment on these posts and get a dialogue going. It's called free consultation. People take advantage.

And you can even tell us a song you want to hear.

Oh, God. Practice that.

All right, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening.

Thanks, guys.

Here's to us.

See ya.