In this Thanksgiving‑themed monologue, the speaker, a gym owner, reflects on the financial chaos he faced before adopting the Profit First methodology—stress over payroll, annual large expenses, tax bills, and personal cash flow shortages. He explains how implementing Profit First, with dedicated accounts for team payroll, employee appreciation, and operating expenses, eliminated that stress, ensured his own take‑home grew proportionally, and enabled spontaneous rewards like laptops and gift cards for staff. He contrasts this with traditional budgeting, which he finds cumbersome, and credits Mike Michalowicz’s books (The Pumpkin Plan and Profit First) for introducing the system. The speaker promotes an at‑home video course (profitfirstformicrogyms.com/cash) for micro‑gym owners who prefer self‑implementation, noting that every client who had Profit First before COVID‑19 survived the pandemic, and that the system even facilitated the sale of his gym to a buyer who also used Profit First. He closes with Thanksgiving wishes and a call to choose profit with courage and wisdom.
Chapters
Hey, everyone. Today I wanted to talk about Profit First and how— what I'm grateful for with the system. I think it's always good. I like to around this time of year, for those of us in the US where we— those who still do celebrate Thanksgiving, I like to think of the things that I'm grateful for. And if I go back and think about what my life was as a business owner Before the Profit First system, I stressed out about how hopefully there's enough cash to pay my team when payroll's due. For us, we have a few really large expenses that happen annually, and those months were always stressful. Our tax software has been, and every year it gets more expensive. But we pay it once a year. And every time it's like, oh man, how am I going to come up with cash for that? Maybe I need to borrow money. And then I'm now spending the rest of the year paying down that debt. Certainly like, oh, business is growing. And there were times where I couldn't bring home money, where almost every single person in my company was making more money than I was. as the owner who took on all the risk of owning the business. Um, I think about those things and, uh, just add so much stress, unnecessary stress. And I can say that now because I've used the Profit First system for so many years. Um, for— so those of you who are gym owners, you know that one of the accounts that we recommend is the team member account. I have something similar for my team and it's been great. When I sit down and I take money from my income account and allocate it before I actually owe my team members money, it's nice that when payroll comes, I can just transfer the money from my team member account into my operating expense account where I pay my bills out of. So I don't stress out about that anymore. It also has allowed me to identify how much money I should be making, and that gets taken care of. So now, as the business continues to grow, my take-home increases with it because Profit First is a percentage system. If you're not aware of that yet, there's just— there's so many benefits, things that I've added in through the years into the way we run things. There's always this desire that I have. I want to help my team feel appreciated, and I've created an account for that. I just set aside a percentage of my revenue into that account so that anytime I want to do that, there's money available for me to give them gifts or employee benefits. Sometimes we do big company events with it. Other times, like, I literally yesterday gave one of our amazing assistants a laptop, which was on her list of things that she really wanted and she probably never would have bought for herself. We have on the same day the tax professional that she assists who has been killing it. If you guys don't know Christie, she's freaking amazing, like most of our team. Uh, she's been doing such a great job, and, um, on one of her lists of things that she really wanted was she wanted to get her daughter's ears pierced. So we, uh, we arranged to have her husband bring in her daughter, and so that it didn't mess with their whole family schedule, but we surprised her and, uh, said, look, you have the whole afternoon off, and here's a gift card to get your daughter's ear pierced, and, uh, and gift card to your favorite restaurant. Um, little things like that that in the past without the Profit First system, I potentially would have spent that money on other things because it's sitting in my operating expense account or my one bank account, right? Um, and in this case, I was able to do it. I just take the money out of the— this account that I've designated to celebrate my team members. Um, Profit First has been a game changer for me. I I just, I love it. Um, I've always hated the traditional budgeting concept where you look at all your expenses the past 12 months and figure out what the average is, and somehow that's budgeting by putting, coming up with numbers that tell me this is what you spent on average each month. Um, that doesn't do anything for me, and I've never liked it. So the Profit First system is, I found this to be a really simple way to make sure I'm basically budgeting. As long as my business operating expenses are covered by my operating expense account, I've effectively budgeted. Now, that doesn't mean to say I can't go back and say, this wasn't a really great expense, I should stop doing that. Always do that. But I don't spend unnecessary time getting information like they typically suggest on old budgets that doesn't even help me, uh, because the Profit First system really allows me to do that. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share my thanks for that. Um, you know, Mike Michalowicz, he's the— he wrote the original concept book. He's become a really good friend of mine. Um, and so I'm grateful for the way he thinks about things. Uh, I was first introduced to his books, um, someone recommended The Pumpkin Plan Which I have to be grateful for. I am grateful for because the Pumpkin Plan is what led me to finding a passion that I have of serving gym owners and helping them stay in business. But of course, the Pumpkin Plan alluded to the Profit First, Profit First book, which I read. I was like, oh my gosh, my clients totally need this. I was too dumb to realize that I needed it. I just thought my clients needed it, so I should look into this. It wasn't until after finishing the book and talking to Profit First professionals that I'm like, yeah, I should look at this too. And lo and behold, it worked out really well. It's been great. Anyways, what I wanted to share with you now is we have some online courses. We know that not everybody wants to hire our firm. to help them implement Profit First. But I think anyone who hears this needs to have Profit First running in their business. So if you go to profitfirstformicrogyms.com/cash, profitfirstformicrogyms.com/cash, you can buy our at-home study course. And it— you watch the videos and it will walk you through how to set up the system yourself so that you can take advantage of the beauty of how this system works for people. It, it really is incredible, and I have never met someone who actually implemented it the right way who's ever complained about it after the fact. Um, now if you exist out there, I'd love to have a conversation with you, but, uh, it works great. And the last thing I'll say about it is, to my knowledge, every single one of our clients, um, who had the Profit First system implemented prior to the COVID pandemic, they're still in business, which is not something that all gyms can say due to being forced to shut down by their different governments. I think that speaks for itself. And I think I'll add, when I sold my gym, the new owner of the gym, Tyler, who's freaking awesome— I still go to the gym and it's a great experience, better experience than what our gym was. So he's better at it than I was. He was able to effectively purchase our gym because he put the Profit First for Microgyms systems into place in his other locations. And to me, that, that's full circle. Like, I was able to sell to someone who was able to buy it because the system works. So anyways, I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving. I hope you're able to share your gratitude with people that you care about. And at least reflect on things that you're grateful for during this time period. Again, thanks again, and profit is a choice. Have the courage and wisdom to choose it.
