Episode 99: Freedom and Profitability with Jonathan Pototschnik

Hey, guys, it's Mike Michalowicz here, and you're about to listen to probably your favorite episode of the Profit first podcast. But first, before we even start the episode, I want to thank the bad boys of accounting. It's Xero, and they have their own event coming up called Zero Con. Now, if you don't know Xero, it's spelled X E R O. So go to Xerocon. Google that one. They are having their big conference in San Francisco. It's August 15th to August 17th. And listen, if you haven't used your software, that'll rock your world, if you haven't been to a conference that will absolutely rock your world. I'll see you out there.

You are entering the.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry. The Land of the. By the way, why are people saying land?

Yeah. What?

You know differently these days? What is up?

You know who got that started?

Game of Thrones?

No, no. Whitney Houston.

Really?

Go back in the video archive. She visits Africa. It's the most funny thing. She lands. She gets off the plane, she goes, yes, this is my land. My land. And it was like, okay, Whitney, I get you. I get it. Maybe somewhere in your family history, someone came from Africa. Great. But I think that's true for all of us, by the way.

Right.

For every human being on this planet. I think our lineage all goes back to Africa. Yes, but the way she said land was so salacious and awkward all simultaneously. That's where land came from. Where it went from land to land.

Yes. So welcome to the pronunciation show. No, this is the Profit first podcast.

Daffiso. 99.

Yes.

99. 9.

That's right. This is 99.

The next one is 100.

Christina got grunt out of there. First time ever. Really?

Yeah, I tried to mimic you.

She's got a boyfriend now. A lot more grunt.

Welcome, everyone, to the Profit First Podcast. Yeah, you made it here and now you're probably regretting it, but my name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording, and.

My name is Mike McCallot. I'm the author of Profit First. And this new book that's becoming a little bit popular. I mean, would you download it? Oh, hell no. Oh, okay. But maybe you would. It's called Surge. Surge. You're on the verge of a surge. And you're listening to the Profit First Podcast. This is the show where we explore all elements of profitability. I'm joined in studio by my colleague, Christina Bolton.

Hello.

Who just helped us host an amazing Mastery meetup event that ended with a bowling party.

That was really fun.

That was fun until one of our folks there fell down because the bowling ball. Did you see Mandy fall down? No, she rolled it. The. The ball got stuck to her thumb a little bit, so it did one of those arcing throws and it twisted her and then she hit down.

I got tons of blackmail pictures, though.

Oh, did you get.

I'll be posting them next week.

Really?

Yep. Profit first podcast dot com.

On the website, we had two of our members who had never bowled before. And bold granny style. That was the best. So much fun. So much fun.

That's it. That's right. You can find this show anywhere. You hear a podcast, itunes, Google Play. Have you tried Google Play yet? If you're a Google person?

I actually tried it myself just yesterday.

Yeah, I followed the show and now when an episode comes out, you get a little thing on your phone that says, hey, the Profit first podcast has a new episode. Pretty cool.

Yeah.

We're also on Stitcher and Tunein Radio and our website, profitfirstpodcast.com. seriously serious website.

Oh, yeah. All the latest episodes, plus some bonus materials up there. Hey, dude, what have you been up to, man?

Well, I'm planning for Pause youe Life, which is an organization my wife and I started. We're going to plan a week long retreat next June called Bliss Week.

Bliss Week.

So when the week's upon you, you'll say, this week is Bliss Week.

Yes, baby.

That's.

That was. Anyway, Christine gave me another blank stare. I got four more bad jokes before a good one comes out. There's no activity, no giggle, no nothing.

What have you been up to, dude?

J.J. ramberg, the host of MSNBC's Your Business. I go out there, they're just a wonderful organization and TV show. And we have a report at the point where I said, hey, I need to hop back on the show real quick. Do you mind if I come out? Yeah, yeah, whenever you want to. So I went out today with the launch of Surge. I did a special segment exclusive to MSNBC around Surge. But what's so funny is. So I have a crush on jj. She's the nicest person ever. She's cute. She's everything. Right at the end of this episode, they cut the cameras and you have to finish by looking at the other person in the eye. And I'm like, I think she. She looked a little bit long. And I'm like, lingered. I think she lingered on me. And then I was like. And I'm like, she lingered. And for a second my heart went aflutter I said, I think she's lingering on. And I looked behind me. The camera guy said, no, no. He didn't say, no, no. But he was doing this signal where he's rolling his finger like this. He's like, oh, no. We had to draw out the linger. It wasn't the linger. And the second he stopped, he turned away, spit at me, and walked off the stage.

She said, yeah, yeah, McCallow, it's. That's cool, man. MSNBC surge is just great. Serge is doing so well, isn't it?

Yeah, no, it really is. Maybe I will share some of the secrets of how I launched this book. Very atypical for a book introduction, but I will share details on another episode. You know, what's the shout out we got for today? Today? Do you want to look it up?

I would like to look it up.

While she looks up the shout out, I want to tell you about our corporate partners. They are Fundera, they are Receipt bank, they are Nextiva, and they are Fundbox. Now, when I say they, it's not. They're all cun. Cumulative. They are four separate companies. I'll give you more details on them at the end of the show. But just for now, I want to say thank you for making the show possible.

Yes, thank you to our corporate partners. And by the way, you know, the show, we have a featured guest every episode and we. And then after the featured guest, you get all of our feedback on what we learned and. Which is always great fun.

And just so you know, you didn't say partners, you said partners, which. Well, he said partners. I mean, it said pot, which. He's from Colorado. All right, what do you got there for a shout out?

This is from Joseph. He said, if you own a small business and listen, then do. Really, this is the most important podcast for you to listen to. If you are an owner, without profit, you can have. Without profit, you can't have or do anything else. This will change your life if you implement it.

Cool. Who said that again?

Thank you, Joseph.

Joseph, that's right. And Barry. Barry's here with me, the maintenance guy in the building. Barry, what do you think of people who own a business who do not listen to this podcast?

That's frightening.

Yeah. So.

Yes.

Really?

That's a good point. Yeah, I hear you. There's no giggle, there's no activity, there's no life. His name is Jonathan Pitochnik. Jonathan is the co. Founder and CEO of Service Autopilot and founder. Founding partner should say at Citibank. Now, in 2000, he co founded his first technology company. Been there, done that myself. Since then, he's been providing technical and business consulting to numerous companies across many industries. Outside of technology, Jonathan has held interest in multiple service companies, from lawn care to janitorial. Do you connect with that one, Barry? Janitorial to carpet cleaning, 190%. Yes, that's right, Barry. He currently lives north of Dallas, Texas with his wife and two sons. I don't know why I say Dallas, Texas that way. And he's not working. Jonathan most enjoys auto racing, snowboarding, which is very popular in Dallas, and traveling. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

Hey, guys. Thank you for having me.

How you doing?

We're doing awesome.

Hey, where do you snowboard in your next.

Not in Dallas.

What?

Not in Dallas ever? No, it usually it's anywhere that we can get to, but Colorado's the easiest place to get, so end up there more often than others.

Awesome. Hey, so when did you transition from the old work in the business to actually being working on the business?

I'd probably say around 2006, 2007.

And is that a moment that strikes you? How do you get to that point where you're like, okay, now I'm gonna work on the business?

Yeah, actually it is. So a quick backstory. Prior to that, I was in technical consulting, so I'm helping companies, creating systems and programming, things like that. I'm also a partner in a commercial cleaning company that was pretty large. And everything I had ever done up to that point point had been based on face to face selling or maybe walking in a door and talking to somebody and selling them. So now I end up with this business city turf, and we're focused. We start out on commercial, which I knew how to do, but we thought the real money, the real profit was in residential. So we started to make the transition towards a residential business. And I really quickly realized I had no idea how I was going to grow that company through marketing. How is it I was. How was I going to attract everybody I needed to all the clients that I needed, all the leads that I needed to build a big company? And what happened is that got me studying marketing. And through the process of studying marketing, it leads you to other books and other people. You start meeting people, and then my eyes were kind of open to, oh, wow, maybe there's a better way to build a business. I've got these other things going on, but even though they're bigger, I'm still fairly central to everything else that is going on in my world. And so really the catalyst was Gaining a deep understanding of marketing, which led me to other things. And those other things exposed me to this concept that, hey, maybe you should build a company that can run itself. That's more of an investment than it is just a business. And I'd say marketing was the transition that got me there. So there's definitely a moment in time.

Okay. And so working on a business, that really translates to you not doing the work, you're just managing the work. It's done on automatic. Is that how you define working on the business?

Yeah, well, I think there's phases. So working on the business initially in my mind might be that you're no longer the guy doing all the work. So if you're mowing lawns or if you're in the computer world, you're writing code. The first transition in my mind is you're no longer the person doing that stuff. Now you're in a management type role. And so now you're building, you're working on strategy, you're building marketing campaigns, you're building a team. Those are working on the business type activities. But I think it goes even further than, than that in the long term, where you eventually get yourself to a place where you've now even built a team that does all of that stuff for you and you're sort of working yourself out of even having to do that type of work. That's the long term, big goal in my mind.

And where are you in your businesses today?

In City Turf. I'm there. I've been there for five years. I have a president and management team that runs that company. So I really. The only thing I get involved in is strategy. And at the year end we do some discussion around, of course, strategy, but money type things. But other than that, that company runs completely without me or my business partner.

So let's go through these kind of three stages. You're currently working in your business, then you want to move to management. So you're not doing the work. Other people are doing it, but you're overseeing it. And then for management, you want to build a team that actually manages and you're removing yourself and maybe shifting yourself to strategy alone. Most of the folks listening in to our show are working in the business. Actually, myself too. There are six employees here. I work in the business. How do you make that first transition from working in to managing and not actually doing.

So what I think I tend. So I've worked with tons and tons of companies on this. And then through service autopilot, we have thousands of members that I've got to know over time. So I feel like I have a pretty good feel for what that process looks like. And what I tend to find over and over again is in many cases, and I'm going to let me go with an example of like a lawn care company or a cleaning company or someone like that. And it really applies to everyone. But a lot of times what you'll find is you've got that individual. And it would have been true in programming as well. If you're a consultant and you're contract programming, it's you by yourself, writing code, maybe you have a business partner. Phone is ringing, there's other little activities that have to happen. These are like these $10 to 16 to $20 an hour activities that have to happen. And so what you find is you're spending 35, 40 hours a week coding, or you're spending 40 hours a week out mowing the lawn or trimming the bushes or cleaning the house or whatever it is you do. And then you're spending another 20 hours a week answering the phone and doing all the accounting, all the miscellaneous stuff. And so the first step, generally what I find is bringing somebody onto your team from an office standpoint. So this would be an individual that could answer the phone. This could be an individual that could do your scheduling, could get your invoices out the door. They can take a lot of the lower end activities. And lower end, what I mean by that is just the easier things to do, that there's not a super high level of expertise. You're an expert at programming, you're an expert at trimming bushes, mowing lawns, cleaning buildings. The other activities, you can generally find somebody, well, you can find somebody to do all of that, but specifically in the office you can find somebody to do, take all of that off your plate. And once you do that, that's generally the first step. The other thing I think it also does is it generally gives business owners some confidence that, hey, I can actually turn some things over to another person in my company and the world doesn't blow up. Everything goes okay, you know, things are still going good, we're still growing, you know, things are going good as a company. And oh, by the way, I've now experienced for the very first time some sense of relief in that. Some things are now off my shoulders. And so I think that's generally step one in most companies, if you're, if it's literally just you and a partner or just you, is get some office help. And then there's Several steps after that.

All right, let's focus on the office help for a few seconds. Do you find that there's a certain type of office help meaning part time labor, virtual labor? Is there easier tasks to get them? Starting with, started with? Is it the scheduling versus the billing? Any tips around that stuff?

Yeah. So my story was at City Turf that we found someone that could work with us remote. And so we were City Turf as a lawn care company, landscape management, things of that sort. And so we needed somebody to help us answer the phone. And we were able to find an individual and have since found several others that could work from home. And in our case we found an awesome person that is still with us today. And she was a stay at home mom, homeschooling her boys and they were starting to get older and so she had a lot more free time. So initially she was remote 20 hours a week. And there's a whole world of individuals out there that don't really want to go back into the workforce that would love to work at home. And there are some really incredibly intelligent, smart and just friendly people sitting out there that, like I said, don't want to come back in the workforce. And so we found somebody like that and it was very easy for us. We didn't have to pay a lot of money at first because it was a great opportunity for her. And also it was easy for us to step into it, you know, only committing to about 20 hours a week. Other companies that I've known have absolutely hired part time and they've brought that individual into the office. But in our case we didn't even have an office yet. We had like a 10 by, I think it was a 10 by 20 square foot little office that I would go to and work just to get away from my house. And so we didn't really want to bring her there. So I think another thing about that is there's a lot of companies or individuals that say, well, I can't bring my first person on yet because I don't have an office, I've got to go get an office. And I'm simply saying there's a world of other opportunities, a lot of other possibilities. You don't have to have an office to get somebody. You could get someone remote and it makes it a lot easier. Going back to your question, what could they do? Well, we have tons of technology these days through systems like nextiva and other voiceover IP type phone systems. They don't have to come to your office to have a phone system. There's tremendous software out there throughout the market that you can do all your scheduling, tracking your calls, do all types of, of things through that software. Well, it's cloud based, so they don't have to come to your office. There's really no reason they must be in your office. And so that shouldn't be a bottleneck or an excuse to not bring that person on.

Yeah, and we can share that. You can bring six people to your house every single morning if you really want to, because that's what we're doing here. Okay, so I understand that. But now I think a challenge that comes up, you remove the administrative responsibilities. Jonathan, off yourself, but now you are the expert doing the coding or whatever work you're doing. Don't you simply work in your business now in a new capacity? Aren't you now doing more and more coding?

Yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right. So all you've, you've done is taken your first baby step and a good one. Because let's say, let's say you're in sprinkler repair, you're probably billing yourself out at $85 an hour. Let's say you're in software development, you're probably billing yourself out from 75 to $200 an hour. If you're mowing lawns, you might be billing yourself out at about $50 an hour. So if you do the math, and you did bring someone in to take answering the phone off your plate, scheduling, simply providing better customer service because somebody's now actually answering the phone, which is also critical to sales, those activities, you might be able to find somebody to do all that for 14, 15, $16 an hour. So if you think about the $16 an hour you were spending before, because whenever you're doing the work, you're only earning $16 an hour. If that's all the activity really pays. In other words, if you could hire somebody else to do it so that 20 hours a week you were doing all that stuff, you were only making $16 an hour. Now you've resold that time, you have somebody else doing it. So what I mean by resold it is you've brought in enough business to spend the 20 hours you used to spend on those activities on your own billable activities at the $85 an hour rate or $150 an hour rate, or $50 an hour mowing rate, whatever that is. Now you're billing 20 extra hours a week at that rate. Two things have just happened. One, you've had the realization that, hey, I can actually get somebody else to help me. And two, you're now making more money, which is good because now you can take some of that money and you can find your first helper, your first assistant. So a lot of guys are afraid of, oh man, if I go hire somebody to mow the lawn or fix the sprinkler system or write programming code, they're not going to be as good as me. And so if that's something that you're just scared of, you can bring in again a part time person into that role to shadow you, to work with you, to ride in the truck with you, to mow the lawn with you, to fix the sprinkler system. You can train them while they shadow you and then once they have your confidence, you can turn them loose and free them to go out and now perform their own work in the truck by themselves. And I feel that for most individuals, and I was totally in this boat, much of this game of building the company to a place where it can run without you or where you're just working on the biggest elements of the business, it's all about confidence. You need to have some wins. I need to have a win that, hey, the, the world didn't burn down when I brought somebody onto my team in the office. Oh wow. The world didn't burn down when I let Jim go service the irrigation system and I wasn't there to talk to Ms. Smith. And these little wins give you more and more confidence. And then the other thing is you suddenly realize, hey, I can go to my kids baseball game. Hey, all these things I've been feeling guilty about and my wife's been, you know, frustrated about and she's tired of the business for all these reasons. You start to see that, hey, I can actually do some of the things she's been asking me to do. I can go spend some time with my kid. You get some wins. And that further, all of that together further encourages you to go get another person, another person. And so it's a cycle or it builds up on itself and the more you do it, the more little baby steps you take, the more confident you get and the more you start to really get aggressive about turning that business you have into something that can run without you.

Alright, so I like it, but I want to throw a monkey wrench in here. You said that when I hired that first administrative person, I can move to more technical work, therefore I can make more money. Now I'm hearing, now I hire technical people, maybe they're assistant levels, but now they're doing the work, I presume they dictate a bigger premium, which means before I was doing the work, I got all the money. Now they're doing the work. They have a higher salary than an administrative person and I need to compensate them for that work. It sounds like my salary personally is going to go back down during this period. Is that true?

Entirely possible. And so one of the things that I think that a lot of business owners make, and I don't want to lose anybody with that or scare them off and say, well then it's too hard. But think about it this way, whatever you're building has real value to you in terms of ultimately if you think about your thing as an investment, you say, I'm going to do some time, I'm going to work my butt off, I'm going to build this thing. You're not going to get rich day one. But in time, if you're plowing your money back into the business, if you're working on being debt free and if you're building a really solid company, you're right, you're not going to make a fortune in the beginning. And Mike, I'm going to answer your question specifically, but you're not going to make a fortune right in the beginning. But in the long term you're going to really reap the financial rewards if you do this right. And if you build a bigger organization with people doing the work, not only will you build, reap the rewards in that you're extracting profit from your company every year, you're also building the value of your company, the wealth of your company. So you're winning in two ways. One, in the longer term, you're making a much bigger take home check through distributions which are profits and your salary. And also you're building personal wealth in that you'll be able to sell this thing. So you have to look at it that way. And what I see a lot of guys do, and I say guys, guys and gals. What I see a lot of people do is you're running around in a social circle and maybe a lot of your friends don't, they don't own companies, maybe they have high paying jobs and they're buying the cool homes and they're buying the great cars and they're taking the great family vacations and you're feeling like, hey, I'm a business owner, I should be doing really good. Or other people are saying, hey, you must be doing great. You own a company and you start to live that lifestyle and you start to get caught up in that. And so you start to spend personal money that you really shouldn't be spending yet. You should keep your salary as, in my opinion, as low as you and your family can afford. Reinvest that money. Because you're exactly right. What I have seen across the board is as a business grows, especially from that 1 to 5 million range, it happens when you're smaller, too. But there are ups and downs. And that's why you don't want to start extracting all your money out of your company. Because again, I keep using the word investment. You're building an investment that will pay massive dividends to you in the long term if you build it correctly. In the short term, you're also making investments into the company. And what I mean by that is every time you bring on a couple more technicians, you might see a little bit of a drop in terms of the profit that's left over in the company or in terms of what you might be able to take home from the company. Because you're investing in the company. What you're doing when you're investing is you're gaining this awesome leverage. You're basically renting out people. So you're hiring somebody and you're renting them out to your customer. So you might. You might hire somebody at $20 an hour, and you might turn around and rent him out at $80 an hour. It's a beautiful thing. That's leverage. And you're right, it does. When you're. When you pay that $20 an hour and you have to buy him a truck and you've got to insure that individual, you're right, that costs you some money. But as soon as you sell enough hours to cover what it's costing you to have him 40 hours a week, and then you sell more time, in other words, you've completely booked him up. Think about the math behind that. You're renting a guy as an employee at 20 and you're selling him at 80. It's a beautiful thing. And so that's what you're getting to. And so, again, to your point, you're right in the very beginning, if you acquire a new individual and you're paying him 40 hours a week at 20 an hour, and you only have 20 hours of work for him, it's a bit of an investment. Until you have 40 hours of consistent work a week for him, yeah, you might see a little bit of dip. But if you're out there selling and marketing, very quickly, that individual will become profitable. And what I generally find is as soon as you get yourself free and your brain isn't overloaded and isn't worn out and you can start thinking creatively, you can get back to selling and marketing. You'll be amazed at how fast the business comes in to fill up the. And keep the technicians that you've hired completely busy.

I've seen so many entrepreneurs, though, get stuck during that dip phase, Meaning they start out, they don't like doing the work themselves, all of it, meaning running the entire business. So they hired that administrator, they start becoming more technical, they start making more money, like, hey, this is starting to work now. And then they hit that ceiling of time they don't have. There's no more time in the day. And they say, okay, I gotta make that higher. And then they see their, their personal income drop and they say, well, I'm making less money. This isn't working. And so I've seen it happen. And it's a shame because people don't see it, see through it. Maybe the only way through is to will power through it or to know it's better on the other side and to fight through it. But are there any other tips of how to navigate that temporary dip you're going to have in income, personal income, as you grow your business and start working on it more than you are working in it?

I don't know if there's a magical one, the one that comes to mind first, and I might think of more as we go here is. And I know, boy, what you're talking about. So true. And let me give you an example. Let me just use something that I'm super familiar with. Lawn care. Only about 9% of lawn care companies in the US and there's over 100,000 of them. Only about 9% of these companies will ever exceed a million dollars a year in revenue. And what most, what will happen to Most is around 400,000. They'll hit a wall. It's exactly as what you've described. And so I think a couple things happen. One is they wait too long to make the transition, so they hit and they're just kind of burned out. So when they hit that wall, they don't really have the energy left to push through. I think one of the keys to that is listening to podcasts. It's hanging around with other business owners. It's going to conferences. It's basically finding a way to get yourself excited again and to surround yourself with the people that are doing it. So you get reinvigorated, you get excited if you live in your little world and it's just kind of you fighting that daily battle and you have no excitement, you have nobody you're hanging out with that's 10 times bigger than you that, that you say to yourself, oh, my gosh, I can get there. I want to get there. And I can see the path. That's. That's a negative. And so you want to find that way to get new energy. And then the other one that comes to mind is what happens with a lot of individuals that were technicians per se. You know, they worked, built the company up through sheer wheel to 100, 400 grand. In my example, when they get there, they were so busy in the years past focusing on being very good at their craft. They never cultivated the ability to market. They might be great salesmen. It was kind of like my example. I could go out and sell stuff, but when it came to getting thousands of leads to contact me so I could sell them, I didn't know what to do. And so that's why I said, In 2006, I started studying. It's very, you know, it's along the lines of your pumpkin plan book. You know, think about that kind of stuff, implement that type of stuff. So my point here is that a lot of individuals will get to 400 because of sheer will and being good at their trade. And they never, along the way, started learning marketing. And marketing is the key to getting past the 400, because you've got to get this engine cranking and moving. You got to start bringing in leads, you got to sell. When that happens, you gain more confidence. I really love the concept of confidence. You gain more excitement. And so my recommendation to get past that hurdle would be to really start transitioning your mind into thinking, I am going to generate revenue for this business. I'm going to learn how to market. I'm going to surround myself with people that I can learn marketing from, I can learn sales from. And we're going to learn how to attract a lot of customers. And I'm not going to be the guy mowing the lawn. I'm not going to be the guy writing code. I am transitioning my mind to be the guy that drives leads and revenue to the company. And that's why I think most people get stuck. They hit 400,000 and they have to reinvent themselves and become a new person. And it's usually through education, and they're not investing in themselves, so they're not becoming the next version of themselves that they need to be to transition their company.

Hey, Chris, there's also a $15 solution to get through that hump. Just play with me here, Chris. Say I can't get past 400,000. I'm going to keep it the way it is. I can't push on anymore.

Say that I can't get past 400,000. I'm just going to keep it the way it is.

Move forward.

Move forward and shut up.

That's another way. All right. That got long build ups to horrible jokes. That's, that's my. So, Jonathan, here's another situation. And this happened, really happened to me. I want to know how I should have navigated this. I started growing my own technology business, computer networks, and hired a really high end technician to do the stuff that I couldn't do to keep our business moving forward so I could manage the business. And I found that very quickly I was beholden to this other expert. He actually was running the business. I own the company, but he owned me because of his skills. He held me hostage. How do I navigate that situation?

Yeah, so that's, I think that happens to a lot of us. I don't think that's too terribly unusual. In fact, I think you can actually be running a $5 million company and still have a few situations like that in your company. That's just the reality of it. Because everything about growing and reinvesting in your business is sort of a negotiation of if you don't have venture capital, it's a negotiation of do I spend my money here or do I spend it there? There's strategy involved and there's strategic thinking. Where do we have the most risk? You know, what is the hole in the boat right now that should be patched before the next hole in the boat? There is no magic moment where, if there is one, I haven't yet experienced it. But there's generally not that magic moment where everything's just perfect and there's no more problems in the world and all you do is extract money. The game of business is constantly about solving problems. That's why you get paid the big bucks to solve problems. So in that specific example, I think that it's not too terribly uncommon. And I generally say the only solution is growing your way out of it. So, for example, if you need the really experienced technology, so you can be technologist, so you can be a great company, so that you can sell really high quality services back to your company or back to your clients, you need the guy. So how do you cover your butt? How do you diversify? You have two guys how do you get to two guys? You got to sell more business. It goes back to marketing. It goes back to sales. A lot of times, growth. This is another thing that I see all the time. I'll get messages and questions from guys, and they're like, they're feeling so guilty and they're feeling so beat down. They're like, why am I not making enough money to take care of my family? And they just feel like they're doing something wrong or they're being frivolous with their money. And you look at their P and L and you look at what they're doing, you're like, man, you guys are doing awesome. You're not doing anything wrong. Your problem is you need to grow. You literally just don't have enough business and gross revenue to cover the people that you need on the team. And so if you grow, you'll be able to hire more people that will generate you more revenue and in your example, will take away that risk that you have in the business. When you get to two and three and four of those guys, suddenly that one guy doesn't have you around the neck. And so I think growth is really the solution there.

Gotcha. The clock just flew by, which is a good sign, I hate to say. We got to go.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Jonathan, where can people learn more about you and your organization?

The best place to find me is serviceautopilot.com. so that's service autopilot, like autopilot on an airplane dot com. And then serviceautopilotacademy.com and you can find all kinds of stuff about me there and all kinds of stuff about what we do.

Awesome. And then, Christine, can you make a note? We gotta get Jonathan. If, Jonathan, you're up for it, we gotta have you back on.

I'd love to. I'm thrilled that I was. I beat it. I got on before 100, so.

Yeah, you're number 99.

I'll take it.

Yeah, 100's already a train wreck. We've been planning for it for months. So you are lucky. You're lucky.

Yeah, I'd love to come back on Mike. Thank you. What you're doing is fantastic, and your books are awesome, and I've recommended them to so many people. You got to keep. You got to keep it up.

Oh, well, I will. And you got to keep up what you're doing, so stop.

Go on.

Yeah, go, Please, please. A little bit more, a little bit more. Okay, Chris, we got to get down to business now.

Yes, we do.

But before we do. Yeah. But before we do it, I want to first thank our corporate partners.

Please.

Is that cool?

Please, I want to talk about this. Let's do it.

Oh, let's do it. And, you know, I should have staged this. You know, after this, I'm going to share. Actually, all three of us are going to share what we learned.

Yes.

Right. And some other juicy stuff. See Lumberjack? He's leaving right now. Nuggets waving.

Golden nuggets coming your way.

Let me tell you about our corporate partners. So I'm at the Scaling New Heights Conference for accountants in the Bahamas, and Meredith Wood is sitting there trying to close a sale. She is the lead executive at Fundera. There's a company there that needs a loan for half a million dollars. It was being facilitated by an accountant, and Meredith says we can make it happen. There was only one little bump, one little issue. Me throwing pens at her from the other booth.

Michael, am I. I know.

Incorrigible. She got the deal. She got the deal. I think. I think I actually helped facilitate it by throwing pens. By throwing pens at her. Because the guy was so distracted by who that jack wad was. He said, I just want to do business with you just to get the hell out of here.

So, Meredith, where do I sign?

Yeah, where do I sign? Just let me sign up. If you need a loan, go to Fundera. It's F U N D E R A dot Com. But how are you gonna call Fundera when they say, we got a loan for you? You're gonna call them on their nextiva phone. I can't tell you how many of our listeners are using nextiva now, because I really don't know how many are using. That's why I can't tell you. I just assume a lot because we get emails in saying from listeners saying how much they love Nextiva. Many PFPs are using Nextiva. We love Nextiva. Angela. Angela Draffen. I was talking with her at our Mastery Meetup, and she's like, oh, my God. Nextiva's freaking awesome. I got five of their phones. She kind of talks like that as a side of her mouth.

And, Barry, you use nextiva phones, too, right?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Good.

Best voiceover IP phone system in the world is Nextiva. So go to Nextiva.com. that's N E X T I V A dot com. You will not regret the choice to go with them. And if you do, well, I don't know. That's your problem then. No, you won't. If you do Come meet me for drinks and we'll. We'll talk. But I love my next event Receipt Bank. Dude, I used it yesterday. Ryan and I went out to lunch. Have we got the lunch? No, it was two days ago. We went out to lunch. My turn to buy. Well, I want to track my receipts. So I paid cash and said, may have a receipt for this, please? And they said, sure. And then I scanned it in. Next step, it can track any receipt you have. And now I have a permanent record of it. Next day, Deborah Courtright, our bookkeeper, says, oh, Mike, I need your receipts. Said, no problem.

Okay.

It's on Receipt bank, zip, zap, done. That's what Receipt bank does. It's amazing software. Great people, too. And then Fundbox last, but certainly last is Fundbox. Last of my list. Fundbox is a invoice financing company. If you've invoices out to clients that you need to collect the money for, but the client isn't turning over the cash so quickly, Fundbox release the funds to you immediately.

That's right.

And then when the money does come in, you just return it to Fundbox, plus their service fee, which is very reasonable. And that's what Fundbox does. Fundbox, Fund box. Fundbox, Fund box.

By the way, when you said Ron and the phrase out to lunch, they go well together, actually.

Oh, that hurt, that one. Bruh, bruh, bruh. All right, Christina, you're Obi.

Ron Kenobi.

Obi.

What'd you learn from Jonathan?

Honestly, something that I know you guys did here. You know, when you're looking, he mentioned the three stages of business that you're in. When you're working in the business, when you transition to management, and then when you transition to focusing on strategy. And that first step is hiring someone part time. And a lot of people are hesitant to hire on anybody at all. But it's good to dip your toes in and start with a part timer, have them shadow you, and then when you're confident that they're the right person, then give them a little extra wiggle room.

Exactly. And what. What did we do here? Profirst professionals, Christine.

Yeah, I started part time.

Started part time. Within. Well, it was maybe about a year.

Like a year and a half.

Year and a half. Started ramping you. Now you're full time. Effectively, we're moving you over to a salary at some point.

I know.

And.

And all the benefits that come along with it, like, work harder.

Do it now.

But, you know, one of the things he didn't. He didn't Share with that I want to trigger is that it allows you to find the right seats on the bus for everybody. So when you came on board, we had an immediate need, which was just what Jonathan explained. Get the administrative stuff off my plate and off Ron's plate. But there was also this awareness that you're gonna show where your talents are, which was operatic singing. We couldn't find a fit for that. And your other talents, which is event coordination, scheduling. Actually, you're one of the. A podcaster with us. You're one of the most popular people. You'll hear about that next episode. And we found your talents and we were able to make some shifts to move you where you like and you're excelling in the organization as a result.

Well, thank you.

You're very welcome. But that's, I think, another power of starting off, if you can, with part time folks. Chris, what's your ow?

Yes, thank you. Thank you, sir. May I have another?

Yes, sir, you may, if I can find it.

Yeah. Oh, piggybacking on that. I like when he said get some small wins. And that's, that's what it is. Hire part time. Just start small and like, okay, the world didn't end. Since I offloaded these two small things. The other thing I think is huge because the power of the mind is so. I mean, I. It's just fascinating to me how powerful our minds are. I mean, I wrote a book called Leap beyond you'd limits. It's all about mindset and beliefs. And I'm actually listening to this audiobook right now called Thinking fast and Slow.

Oh, I've read that book.

Yeah, right. Yeah, it was great. So he said, Jonathan, our guest said transitioning your mind is the big deal. You know, you have to become the next version of yourself. And that's an inside job. That's. That's a mindset thing. That's not like, you know, in profit. First you set up your profit accounts. It's great, it works, it's great. But that's outside yourself, inside, in your mind. You have to become ready to be the owner of the business and. Or the manager first. You know what I mean?

Oh, my God. Do I know you mean? It's an absolute decision and commitment internally and. Sounds so easy and so hard. It's so hard.

Well, we also. And piggybacking off of the little wins, we actually have a little huddle every day. And I think that helps us all more than we think it does because it keeps us all in attracts and every day, like after we get out of that. I'm like, okay, this is why I'm here. This is what we're doing. And it is. You talk about little wins that you achieved the day before and we give in a personal update and it all ties together of where you're pushing your too.

It's true. It's true. Yeah. That is the probably the most important thing we do in our business is that daily huddle. And what I get excited about is every day saying, holy cow, look at all the wins Christina had and Ron and Aaron and as he's. And lumberjack and as these is these winds come in, it also motivates me, like, I gotta turn up the heat because if I don't, I'm failing you guys.

And then we have to do push ups, right?

There's physical punishments, there's physical punishment. But if, if I'm not delivering, I know I'm failing everybody here and I just feel bad about it. So it's a, it's a good or great motivator, but they're small. Like, we're not saying like, oh my God, we gotta land 700 clients today. No, we're. We're having very specific things. Like mine was to get a ticket listing up on the website. Yours I can see on the board for.

To finalize an itinerary for the Michelle Villo was men.

And those things are impactful because every time we have a win every day, it's moving us forward. But also you feel that momentum. So. Good one.

That's right. Transition, growth. That's what happens when you listen to this podcast a couple times a week. Let this stuff drip into your brain. Profit, profit, profit. Repeat after me.

Profit, profit.

Profit.

Profit. Profit again.

Profit again.

Profit again again.

Jeez.

Anyway, you can find us on Profit first podcast dot com. That's the website. All our previous episodes. You can comment on every episode. So you know what, tell us your story. You, what do you think about everything that Jonathan was sharing? Comment on the post. And of course, you know, poke fun at Mike too.

Why not?

You're there.

I mean, yeah, you might as well.

You can hear us on itunes. Stitcher, Tunein radio, Google Play, everywhere. And you know, besides our four corporate partners, which are very special companies, they are not just, you know, random companies that wrote a check and we gotta, like read off a card. No, Mike knows them all. Well, but one organization that makes this all possible is Profit first Professionals. And this is groundbreaking. Mike, please tell them.

Talk about layups. Like, I am running to the hoop. There's no one else on the court, and you hand me the golden basketball. My job right now is to slam it in. Let's see if I do it. Profit First Professionals is an organization founded by Ron Saharian. That's how he says his name. And myself, Mike Michalis. I wrote a book called profit first. I got a phone call from someone saying, hey, now I know how to do this. Who can help me with the nuances? Who can hold me accountable? Who do I need to hire? Who's the accountant and bookkeeper and business expert you suggest? Mike. And that was the aha moment Ron and I got together. We formed this organization today. As of this morning, we've 129 different members throughout the world who are accountants, bookkeepers, and business experts who specialize in bringing profitability to your industry. We will guide you. We will help you. You need an accountant or a bookkeeper or a business coach. You need them anyway. Why not have someone that's first and foremost a profit advisor and also is excellent at accounting, bookkeeping, and business coaching. That's who we'll bring to you. Go to profit first professionals.com right now. Click on the find button, give some details about your business, and we'll hook you up with the best Profit first Professional to bring you the most profit to your business.

That's right. Profit first professionals dot com. Click on find. Next episode is our hundredth. I'm telling you, you are not going to want to miss this.

There was only one woman that had the courage to come on the show. Her name was Tasha Scott. She thinks she knows what she's in for, but she really doesn't.

No way.

Yeah. It's gonna be an amazing episode and we are gonna be coaching her. I shall be coaching her through profit first Small businessman, big business doesn't matter. They all need profit coaching. So why don't you listen? Why don't you listen in and as I coach her through and maybe you'll find some insights for yourself.

That's right. So thank you for listening. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Christina. Thanks, Obi Ron and the lumberjack in the background. Thank you to Jonathan, our great guest. And thank you for whipping me.

And thank you for J.J. ramberg. Ramberg with the lingering stare that really wasn't there.

Thanks, everybody. See ya.

Thank you.

Oh, that darn bridge. Hey, listener, if you're still listening in, get your head real close to the speaker. Closer, closer. Listen to me. Start working on your business. Okay, you can go now. Listen, you're sitting here hiding behind your podcast phone system.

Earbuds.

Earbuds. You're sitting in your car, driving down the road, protected by that hard steel shell. No one can talk with you. Maybe you're going for a run right now.

Who you running from?

Are you afraid? I want you to turn up the heat. This is the time you get face to face and you duke it out with innovation itself. I want you to take the slap of innovation right to your face. How do you do it? You go to zero con. That's zero spelt an X. I know you already know that the most innovative software and accounting in the world is zero. Well, they're putting on the most innovative event August 15th to August 17th in San Francisco is zero con. Get your ticket now and be out there. Slap innovation right back in the face. And to do it, just go to Google, type in 0con with an X, X, E, R, O, C, O, N. Get your tickets and I'll see you out there in San Francisco. August 15th to August 17th. It's time we take innovation by the slap. Makes no sense, but it should be there.