95. Michelle Jacobik: Author of The Path to Profits

Michelle, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you feeling right now?

Feeling pretty good. Very excited about the book launch.

I am too. So, we're going to get into that in just a minute. But for the members of my audience that are not familiar with you or your books or the events that you put on, I would love to have you introduce yourself.

Yeah. So, my name is Michelle Jakovic and I am a business profitability strategist and success coach who loves to teach other people about the profitable steps to running their entrepreneurial journeys, right? We all come into this dream of entrepreneurship with a lot of passion, and many of us with a huge purpose, but we don't necessarily get to the point where we want to. We end up in this hustle mentality. We end up in a place of financial scarcity, I guess would be the word. And I know that we all want better and can do better than that. And my mission is to help people shorten their timeline to be able to activate those profits and actually be really excited about the businesses that they're building.

One of the reasons that I'm very excited for today's conversation and working with you throughout today is because I found myself in a position a couple of years ago where I was chained to the business. I was working way more than the traditional 9 to 5 hours. I was totally stressed out. I was taking business calls on vacation. And so those are all sorts of things that my audience, I know, is going to want a little bit of help with today.

Yeah, and you know, who hasn't been there, right? I've been there myself. I mean, I literally spent probably 25 years in that grind thinking that all of the metrics of my success were really around those profit metrics of did I, you know, hit the next number, did I grow over last quarter, did I grow over last year, did I have more retention, did I bring in new customers, and the truth was that I was almost addicted to that measurement of success. And much like you, you know, I write about this in the book, I found myself in many situations in my family life where there were no divides between my CEO life and my family life. And you know when that happens and your business runs over into everything that you're doing, that we literally create monsters that we wish we could just disconnect from. And I think for many of us, unless we go through that experience and then start to pull and have some self-awareness around what it is we really want to be doing and why we started this business, we don't even have the ability to measure, like, what we're doing. And so for me, I love that that was something that you have self-awareness. You're like, oh, I can see that this could be something that I could do all the time and I'll have no relationship in 8 years, or you'll have an unhealthy relationship with your business. Which doesn't have to be the case.

I'd like to talk about the downsides of hustle culture in just a minute, but I had a realization as you were talking. Earlier I asked you, who's the target reader for this book? And you said entrepreneurs, all entrepreneurs. But what's unique about my audience is it's about 80% ages 18 to 34, and a lot of people in my community are aspiring entrepreneurs. And what's cool about your book is you're going to help people in a preventative way. from going down the path where they get chained to their business if they go through this book as they're starting their business as well. It's a whole new sort of demographic for the book.

Yeah, I love that because I think for me, I've been an entrepreneur since I was 23 years old and I was the 19-year-old that had my first vision board and I was chasing all of those levels of success that really were material in nature, right? It went from in my 20s it being material and the next luxury car and the big vacation and I'm You know, I had a freaking jet on my vision board because why not, right? If you can dream it, you can achieve it. The truth was though that I also, in that chasing, was really in that hustle culture and I wasn't even enjoying the experiences.

Mm-hmm.

I got everything on the vision board, don't get me wrong, and I think many of us do, but I was wrapped up in the next thing and I wasn't enjoying life. And what happens is I was actually building a business that I was profitable at the expense of my life versus in support of it. And that's really what I wanna shift, right? This whole hustle culture thing that says, yeah, you can have everything you want, but you better work really hard for it. I believe that if we work smarter, we don't have to work harder. And I think that if we aren't taking care of the vessel, then what's it all worth, right? I mean, there's so many ways that we could get into this conversation. But for me, I could have really sidestepped a lot of the pain that I went through, I think, and not for nothing, but the self-discovery piece is super important. But this book is about helping you be in a place of self-awareness and self-discovery early in the game so that you don't show up with a business that's become a monster or one that's literally stolen everything from you while it's given you all of the freedom that you thought you were going to have.

I love that. Earlier you said it took you 20 years to learn some of these lessons, and so whenever I hear somebody say that, I go, wow, I can leapfrog, I can avoid 20 years' worth of obstacles by implementing what you're about to teach me. And that's what's so cool about books like this is, as a young entrepreneur, as an aspiring entrepreneur like some people in the audience today, they can implement what you're teaching them to avoid future discomfort. So that's really cool. Now I want to transition to something that you just said and unpack it a little bit, which is vision boards. I've got a lot of people in our community that are fans of books like The Secret, but maybe they're not making vision boards that are as actionable and as clear as the ones that you teach. So could you expand on that for a minute?

Yeah, so one of my favorite things to do is to bring people through the vision pillar of this book, and I do this at my Envision events, which is really what birthed the book, right? 5 years in a row bringing more than 500 people through this experience and having them come back year after year, because when we are setting our vision, like, we change. And so for me, I've been doing this process for 3 decades, and I thought everybody did this. But the truth is that when you're building your vision board, having clarity around the life that you want to create, like your life by design, has to do with not just the things that you want. It also has to do with the way you want to feel, right? Showing up in your core values, making sure that, you know, if adventure is one of your core values, that you don't just have the adventure pasted on your vision board, but that you actually know what adventure feels like for you as well. You know, I'm a firm believer— like, I have literally been studying the law of attraction since I was 19. I mean, I have the Secret to Money app on my phone. It's my favorite app, and if you don't have it, you should.

I don't have it. Could you tell us what that is real quick? Oh, it's amazing.

So the Secret to Money app is really this beautiful support that will every day— there's 25 daily affirmations, so it'll remind you to read your money affirmations so that you start to have a healthy relationship with money and you're not in this complete space. For me, the biggest shift that I had is that there's a place where you actually track manifested money. So today we went out to lunch, right? I pick up the tab. You would log that as something that you didn't need to earn. It was a gift, and money shows up in many forms. And it literally— this app will interrupt your thought that you have to go out and earn it, which keeps us in hustle mentality. When I can see evidence in my life that I track in the app of ways that money showed up in my, you know, unexpected checks in the mail— you know the secret, right? And you're manifesting. When you start to order up the things that you want and then you step back and get out of the way, you start to actually create alignment and you start to manifest things. And it could be simply something as simple as a discount at a store. I mean, I went to Staples and they gave me like $100 off of this order. I don't even know why, but the truth is you log it in that app so that it reminds you that you have evidence that when you find yourself in that hustle culture, when you find yourself telling yourself you've got to work 80 hours to get to the goal, financially in your business. And I'm not saying you don't have to work and take action, but that there are other places in your life where you actually can be bringing in money and financial freedom without having to actually go out and earn it.

That's amazing. I'm definitely downloading that. So to finish up the thoughts on vision board, so you were talking about the vision boards all the way from back when you were 19.

Yeah.

19, wow. I actually created my first vision board, I want to say 3 or 4 years ago, and I did the whole thing that you recommend, which is Go to CVS, get a poster board, print out all the images that you want on there, glue them onto the board, the whole 9 yards.

Yeah, good. It's so important that we have it visual, right? And today you can— I'm still old school, right? I go to the library and I'm like, hey, you have those old magazines? Like, call up your local library, you get the glue sticks, the scissors, right? And some people that doesn't resonate with. I've literally just had a news anchor say, Michelle, I'm not going to get on the ground and like literally start cutting out things. But here's the thing, we can create digital boards. You've got Pinterest, you've got Canva, you've got tools today to be able to curate your vision. And most importantly is have the ability to look at the life by design that you want to create and not only have pictures of the experiences and the things that are yours that you desire— your board looks very different from mine, I'm sure— but also how you want to feel, right? Because the truth is that You've got to be thinking, how would I feel? Yes, I want that luxury convertible, but close your eyes and think, what is it going to feel like for me that was closing my eyes and I was driving down this incredibly beautiful historic route to my favorite coffee shop with the top down and the kind of day that I was going to have? Or maybe to a vineyard. Like, picture yourself in that moment and be thinking about curating your vision board around the feelings that you want to invoke. How are you going to feel when you're there? Not just the things, but mostly a combination of those things.

So yeah, when I read vision is how you feel, I actually texted that to Luke, who's a new hire at Book Thinkers. And I sent it to him because I said, listen, I already feel like I want to be feeling, which is amazing. There are still pieces to the puzzle that are missing, but the reason that I already feel how I want to be feeling is because I've already integrated my core values into this business, into Book Thinkers, into these conversations that we're having right now. But what you highlight in the book is that not every business owner is like that. A lot of them have core values that are misaligned with what they're actually doing on a daily basis, right?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of emphasis— I know for me, and, you know, 3 decades of being an entrepreneur, there's a lot of emphasis on building your mission statement for your business, your business plan, you know, your, your vision statement for your business. And I think that's super important. But the business that you're creating as an entrepreneur is meant to have an impact both in the world with your products and services and skill set but also in your life. And I think that when we're not curating what it is we want, what are our core values, then we don't have definitive lines that actually blend together. And the truth is, as entrepreneurs, that our family life, our lifestyle, and our business are married together. And so it's okay to spend time curating exactly what your core values are personally. And so adventure may be super important to you, but if you don't go down that road personally, then your business may not have any element of adventure at all, right? Now, wouldn't it be super cool if adventure is one of your core values that you would actually have your team, if it's part of the mission of the business or a core value personally, that you bring that in and now you're actually curating experiences with your team that include adventure, right? And not having this like complete divide between the 2 lives, if that makes sense.

No, it totally does. And earlier I said, let's come back to the downsides of hustle culture. And so I think one of the downsides of hustle culture is working within a business that doesn't feed your core values. And so what you're saying is one way to avoid burnout is to integrate your core values. If one of them is adventure, Take your team on an excursion together. Now you're integrating your core values with your business and you're going to be less burned out, right?

Absolutely. And you know, I'll say this about, you know, the vision boards and the core value piece. One of the most powerful exercises and one of the things that I write about in The Path to Profits is this fact that many times we paste things on our vision board or we put them in our goals or in our view and we say this is what we want. For me, I remember always thinking that a core value of mine was joy. And then I remember going deeper and thinking, I don't even like the word joy. Joy to the world, I don't even like the Christmas carol. And I thought to myself, it's been on your vision board, happiness, joy, fun, right? We all like paste those fun words. And I really was looking and saying, I had to really go deeper on the core side of that and say, well, if joy doesn't really resonate, 'cause there is a point in your life where you have to be self-aware enough to look at your board and the things that you're dreaming about and say, do I truly believe that this is for me? And many times when we do that, we have that question where we say, do we truly believe it? Because if you don't believe it, you can't manifest it.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember thinking, no, I don't know that joy is the word. And I went a little further and I thought, well, what would more joy look like? And this comes back to those feelings. And immediately what resonated for me was more fun. Like if I just added fun and I was really seeking more fun, that was the depiction of what joy looked like for me. But I had a word, a feeling that wasn't even aligned with me. I had to figure out what that was. And so sometimes it's looking at and being well aware of going a little deeper, which is what this book is about, right? It's asking yourself, deeper questions so that you're not just surfacing, going through the exercises of creating a vision, of setting aside, you know, doing your pacing or your vision board, setting your business goals, but going deeper so you can really be in the discovery places of the life you want to curate.

No, I think that makes a ton of sense. Your book has a list of potential core values and some exercises that you can go through to narrow down maybe your top 10 or your top 5. And so One of the things that— and I'm speaking to the Book Thinkers family right now— one of the things that I really enjoy about books like this is they're actionable. And so if you're looking for an actionable book that you can actually— you're not just reading about the importance of core values, you're actually going to go through some exercises to define yours, then this is a good book for you.

Yeah, that's really important to me. Like, I'm that type of a learner. If I'm going to read a business development book or anything that's going to develop me personally, spiritually, physically, I've gotta have something to do, right? So I wanna read it conceptually, and you can read it, and I write about this in the book as well, like you can read it and you're gonna learn. There's no way that you won't learn, but we really learn in the doing. And so it was really important to me that at the end of each chapter that there is movement, that I'm inviting you to take this journey with me so that when you do get to the end, that you actually come away better, Smarter, financially savvier, and really excited about your entrepreneurial journey.

Speaking of financially savvier, one of the things that you said earlier that really resonated with me was that in order to be your best in terms of an impact, like giving perspective, you have to make money. You have to have profits because some, some impact does require money.

100%. Well, first of all, money is required for our deepest sense of security. Right? If you can't take care of yourself, how do you take care of something else in the world? So I think, you know, this whole idea of starving artists and, you know, that startup culture of, you know, I'm just gonna just live on a shoestring, many times it puts us in a place where we're not really looking at the money. We put our head in the sand and we say, well, this is where we are, when the truth is maybe you don't need to be there. And if you just start to look at money as a neutral function and start to look at the technical pieces of what it takes to run a business. And listen, the truth is that there's not a lot of education out there. I'm passionate about personal finance. We don't grow up in schools today learning about personal finance. Trigonometry, statistics, calculus— that's what you're learning. And so I have people that come to me that have master's degrees in engineering, and yet they have no idea How to balance a checkbook. Well, nobody has checkbooks anymore. But they don't know how to apply for a mortgage. They don't even know what— They're like, hey, Michelle. What's a mortgage? Can you tell me how that works? Because it's not being taught. And there's this intersection of entrepreneurship where people will lead with their passion and their purpose but they have no idea how to run the money. And I'm telling you that it's something that we can all learn. We can learn anything. The money is the one that people usually avoid. And what I want to do is demystify that and give you the encouragement that the more that you learn— you don't have to know it all, but you've got to have at least the roadmap to understand how long your runway needs to be so that you can be successful in business and not be on that failed side of the statistic where you never get to make an impact with your product or services because you ran out of money and had to go get another job. And then you quit your dream.

So let's go a little bit deeper on the money piece because I know when I was reading about the money reframes that you highlight in this book that years ago I really could have used this because I had a lot of insecurity about money. I had a lot of limiting beliefs that I was projecting on my ability to earn and contribute to other people. So why do we feel so much insecurity about money? Why is it like you said one of the— what did you call it? The deepest—

Oh, it's the deepest Money is the deepest-rooted thing that we walk around with.

Yeah, it is.

Right? We all have a money story. And whether that money story is, you know, for you, money doesn't grow on trees, or— we've all heard them before, right? Just money is dirty. I mean, my whole thing, I'm super passionate about helping people shift their financial DNA. And that starts right here and right here. How we think about money and how we feel about money. And quite honestly, the best piece of advice that I can give all of your audience is literally remove these 4 words from your vocabulary. I can't afford that, right? It's the first thing that I find, and I'm not saying go be willy-nilly with your budget and start, you know, blowing up credit cards like I did in my 20s, and then you're in this place of financial immaturity and guilt and shame and trying to figure it out. But what I am saying is that when we say those words, I can't afford it, when we take that money story, we're cementing ourselves where we are right now and in the future. So you simply shift, right? When you talk about these money shifts, it's like, I'm going to make a decision today to remove language and thoughts that are not serving my highest good. And what that looks like is instead of saying, I can't afford that, it's asking better questions. Like, how could I create that? I mean, not for nothing, but we all have the ability to create in today's economy with side hustles and Instacart and Uber. Like, today I could leave here today and turn my phone on Uber if I chose to create money that way, and I could literally drive home and make money on the way home, right? So it's shifting the things that we say to ourselves. What opportunities am I not seeing? How can I create that? And you start to change how you think and relate to money from that perspective, and that also opens up the creative juices for you as an entrepreneur because we're always needing to be thinking about innovation and change. And the pandemic showed us that, right? This was a complete unknown, and in the unknown, you had to innovate. And so many incredible place— things came from that place. And it was getting to a place of asking questions. And the money piece is huge.

Yeah, no, it is. And one of my biggest takeaways from this book is the importance of knowing your numbers. Because I think sometimes a lot of us, we sit back and we're like, I'm in this terrible position and it's very overwhelming to think about how to tackle it. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And you start by knowing your numbers. Once you know your numbers, then you can have an abundance mindset and know exactly how much money you need to earn in order to live that lifestyle that you want to design.

Yeah, this book is completely about shifting how people look at the money. And I think the one thing that I would say, right, is we've got to be paying ourselves first, right? Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 for somebody else. But the truth is that they're not even paying themselves what they would require if I interviewed them and asked them to come and work for me. And that's fine in the beginning if you have another means of supplementing and investing in your business, but the truth is that many people are like, well, I don't— I can't have a Plan B, so I'll go all in on Plan A, but they don't have the financial wherewithal to actually go all in on Plan A. So what I love about the Flow chapter in The Path to Profits is it simplifies how you clarify the marriage between your lifestyle and your business. The nice part is, is that when you actually are neutral around the numbers and you start to uncover, okay, what's my rent and mortgage? What's my car insurance? Do I have a car payment? And you look at those recurring things, you're in control. If you don't want a car payment, you can sell the car and buy a beater, right? You get to choose. But if we don't know what the number is, if we don't know what our lifestyle cost is, is, and then on the other side of that, the marriage is the business. If you don't know what the overhead of the business is, then you can't set revenue strategy or revenue goals and be profitable in support of your life. You're just trying to make a dollar to get the business to activate what you think it should be doing. I'm a firm believer that when you bring into vision what it is you want it to do, even if it isn't doing it yet, you're going to actually start taking revenue activities into play, and you're gonna spend a whole lot less time posting on social media and actually doing the things in the business that will bring in sales and make you a profit.

1,000%. Preach it.

Yeah.

Now, the purpose of this podcast is, is really 2 things. Number one, it's for my readers to learn about new books. And so I think during the first half of today's show, we accomplished that, right? If any of these things resonate with you, then this is gonna be a good fit.

for you.

But the other thing is to introduce them to new authors, right? You're the author behind the book, so I'd like to go a little bit deeper into your story and teach everybody a little bit about Michelle. So something you told me during lunch today that I thought was fascinating was how you got into reading personal development books. Could you tell that story for everybody?

Yeah, so, you know, when I started, I was 19 years old, and I was that big dreamer, big thinker. And, you know, I had parents— I came from a very humble upbringing, and And I was the kid that was, get your head out of the clouds, like you dream too big. And I just remember thinking, no, I don't think I do. I was different and I knew I was different. And I literally, the only thing that I could find, Tony Robbins, 2 AM, right? 11 o'clock at night infomercial. So there weren't even books back then. It was literally like me buying cassette tapes. I'm aging myself. And CDs, like the next CD series, and listening to Zig Ziglar. Ziglar and listening to Tony Robbins and all of those things that helped me understand that there was a different culture of human that wasn't what I was used to. You know, you're born into your family, but you may be very different in terms of mindset and your dreams. And so it's super important, and it was for me, to get myself around people that thought like me. And the book reading piece was huge because I had a mentor that I went to work for in financial services. I worked for a boutique firm and he required 20 minutes of positive motivational reading every day and it changed my life. It turned everything around for me. One, because I thought, oh, you are normal and the way you think is perfectly fine. I just knew that I had to— one, it was like a vitamin, right? You know, once you get your first taste, Mm-hmm. Personal development, professional development. It changes everything, and I couldn't get my hands on enough books and enough information. What's so interesting is that as we evolve, right, in our spiritual journey, our personal journey, our financial journey, our business journeys, we evolve, and then the right teachers appear, right? And I love watching— even we were talking about vision boards earlier— I love watching Tony Robbins' evolution. Because I've been a Tony Robbins fan for 4 decades. So for me to see him go through his whole money hustle, money hustle, money hustle, which is where I was when I was following him in my 20s, to in his 30s, all of a sudden he was going through that same evolution. I started shifting to Wayne Dyer into a spiritual solution to every problem because I thought, why am I not happy with the chasing and all the things and the material things? And I watched Tony Robbins do the same thing. I watched him go into the science, the neuroscience of feeling good and looking at life differently from a spiritual perspective. And then this last year, this last decade, it's been about the teach people about money, which is fantastic because it all goes together. But it's an evolution that we get to learn wherever we are on our journey about books, like through books and readership. And what I love is that if somebody can't come to the Envision event, If somebody isn't in my community, this one investment gets them started on the path to profitability and actually shifting their business in big ways.

One of my favorite things to do is ask successful people, like, what were some of the first books that helped change your mindset? Because I think sometimes we, you know, a lot of people in the community are going to read this book and then they're going to say, I also want to read what Michelle was reading or is reading. So, what are some of your favorite books? What books have had the biggest impact on your life?

Yeah, so one of the biggest books that had an impact on my life, I'd say halfway through that entrepreneurial grind, was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Like, fantastic book, right? Because it showed me, as I was in the grind of my business, right, and I grew from $600,000 over $12 million in sales at that point, I remember reading this book and thinking, 4 hours a week? But I saw the possibilities. And I knew how to create that. I knew how to travel with credit card points. I knew how to create experiences. I mean, I love to create experiences on a budget because I like to build wealth and also have experiences. So I learned how to do that, but I wasn't applying it in my business. The business that I had built was not aligned with The 4-Hour Workweek at all. It was times that by how many?

Yeah.

And so reading his book was impactful for me because it started to help me navigate the awareness of, okay, where you are right now is not where you want to be. This is the possibilities that you're seeing by reading this book, and do you want to create that? And honestly, I came to a point in my business 8 years ago where I could have very easily just shifted and navigated maybe some of the things that were happening in the day-to-day to create that, but the truth was that I also had a business partnership and I thought, hmm, that's like going home and saying I never want to cook dinner again. We're going to change everything because I want to change something? And what I realized was I was at a point where I just wanted to change some things and everything needed to be redesigned. So I made a decision to step away from that business, sell my share of the company, and start to design a life based on that book. Yeah, fantastic.

My audience knows I call Tim Ferriss my spirit animal. I mean, he's completely changed my life as a result of reading The 4-Hour Workweek. I've been to 20 countries. I worked remotely in Colombia for 3 months just working at coffee shops. Like, all of the things that Tim Ferriss said were possible in that book that most people just brush off to the side because they say it's unrealistic and you can't actually implement it, I think you're a living testimony of the fact that You can design your own life and so am I. So shout out to you.

You know what's so exciting to me, Nick, is that my children are just like you. They have been— they have traveled the world. They are able to do it in ways that I would have never dreamed because I read the book and then they started to implement, right? They're all in their 20s and 30s. I've watched them have experiences that they are willing to forego the material things to have the experience And there is no no. If they dream it, they go do it. It's fabulous. So, yeah.

One of my favorite authors, Bill Perkins, he wrote a book called Die with Zero. And he says, listen, we retire on our memories. And your memories pay dividends. If you experience something, then you can relive that experience and experience the fun or the joy of it over and over and over again for the rest of your life. So, we're in trouble.

So true. So true. Yeah. Yay, Tim Ferriss.

Shout out, Tim. So Michelle, I know another one of your favorite books is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Could you share some of your favorite takeaways from that book with everybody?

Yeah, I love that book. That book centered me in huge ways. And you know, it's so simple, right? Somebody who's getting to the part of their life where it's like, wait, if I can reflect back— and you know, we know we're all going to reflect back if you have an opportunity to reflect back. And I think for me, my favorite The favorite of the Four Agreements is don't take anything personally, because as entrepreneurs, we are going to have people that are not going to agree with us. We're gonna have family and friends that aren't supportive. We're gonna have people that just don't understand how we think and what we're doing and are gonna try to divert or repoint us in another direction. And quite honestly, like, haters are haters. There's gonna be haters. You're on social media, you're doing your thing. We have to have thick skin and we have to know that we can't take everything personally. And that was a huge thing for me. I think it's also, it gives rise to really leaning into your uniqueness and this sense of just be you. And if you are aligned with not taking things personally, you're not so concerned with how you show up in the world looking like other people want you to look, You're showing up authentically in your business and in your life, truly just being you and not worrying about the repercussions and knowing that people that aren't aligned, it's okay. There's more business and the right people to work with that actually make you feel like going to work isn't work and you're really enjoying the ride.

Yeah, you should be around people that celebrate your uniqueness, right?

Absolutely.

And support it. So, as we get ready to wrap up today's show and For people that are like, wow, I really want to get to know Michelle better, you have an event that's coming up that you do a couple of times a year, right?

Yes, I actually do it once a year.

Okay, once a year.

And it's called Envision, and this is my 5th year in a row, and it's really what gave rise to the book. And I curate people through a 3-day experience of setting— there's 3 pillars. The vision pillar is all about helping you get really clear about the vision that you have for your life, right? And the other thing is setting goals. I always say goals are dreams with deadlines. So you've got to be super intentional about what it is you want to invite in and then set the strategy for how you're going to achieve those goals. Are they 1-year goals, 3-year goals, 5-year goals, or 10-year goals? And the Envision process that I bring people through isn't just about this year's vision, this year's goals. It's really getting you in a way that you've never been held before through the process to go deeper because I'm curating you through the experience and you're showing up, getting out of your business to work on it, but you're leading— I ask the people to come in the room as the entire entrepreneur, not just like, I don't want to know just what you do, I want the whole person in the room. The second pillar is the flow pillar, because quite honestly, as we said earlier, the path to profits is profitability. And so we've got to figure out like what we want our revenue goals to be. So the flow pillar, I walk all of the attendees through setting revenue goals. Not one, not I want to hit 6 figures or hit a million. It's literally curating 5 to 6 revenue goals in your business so that you're intentionally knowing what you want the business to do for you and naming those dollars before they arrive. And then you're super intentional about how you actually design your business and the actions that you take. And then the last pillar is grow. And that is all about now that you know the life you want to create, the business revenues that you want, How do you create visibility and get more eyes on your business? It's all the marketing engine. People leave that event with their vision and goals intact. They're really clear about their money, and they leave with a visibility plan for the upcoming year that will align them with calling out to the audiences or their consumers that should be buying their products and services. It's magical, and the community aspect of it is incredible because you're around other like-minded entrepreneurs. who are open, who are stepping out of their time. And honestly, that's where the magic happens. It's those side conversations, those bathroom talks, the dinners in the evening. And it's so beautiful to see the collaborations that come out of that event every single year. I love it.

That last point's the home run point for me, the community piece of it. I know a lot of people in my community have reached out and said like, hey Nick, personal development is great, but it can be a very lonely place.

Yeah.

And so how do I connect with more people? It's at events like this. So I love it. Thank you so much for today's show, Michelle. For people that want to connect with you, where's the best place to go? What website? What social media?

Yeah, so you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook under Michelle Jakubic, and you can also connect with me at michellejakubic.com. And I actually— speaking of community, I have a community called the Envision and Thrive Academy for entrepreneurs. Where I have people come together from all over the world and I curate them through this mentorship, like helping them get to those new places in their business and shorten their timeline to growth by mentoring them. I host weekly Q&As, meet and greets, so that they're meeting other people in a speed networking format, helping hold them accountable and really helping them grow that muscle of starting and finishing things, right, and crushing that squirrel Squirrel syndrome that many entrepreneurs have. So I have a special invitation for any of your audience that might be looking for that community. It's the Envision and Thrive Academy for Entrepreneurs, and I'd love to have you.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me.