#96 Business Expert: The BEST Way To Make Millions In Profit | Mike Michalowicz

25:28Most entrepreneurs simply say, I'm doing this because this is my historical vocation. I have some experience. I'm going to do it. Or I heard you can make a lot of money doing it. And I don't know if either of those are actually necessarily good. The first thing that we ask, and I ask myself, is do I have something that's truly distinct in the industry? Can you redefine the industry? I'll give you a personal example. Who's heard of the Savannah Bananas here? Okay. They're exploding, right? So Jesse Cole is a friend from before, right when the Svan Bananas were starting, and they used profit first.

25:55I went down and coached the organization. What he did was say, what is the industry doing currently and sucks about it? He said, I don't know if any of you know this, but baseball is boring. It's boring. So he's like, that sucks. And he went through all these different things. So the first thing he said is, what are the things that people don't like? I'm going to unsuck it. That sounded very, I don't know why it sounded so gross, but it did. So he and his wife, Emily, started to redefine baseball to make it not boring and to make it entertaining. The second thing is they put intentional constraints in place.

26:28So they used profit first, which inherently means there's less money to spend. And one of my favorite things is he said, we don't have enough money for like a cheer squad or anything to entertain people. So he's like, what do you do when you have no money? He's like, you ask your fans. So he said, if you're 80 years or older and you're a woman, you're on our cheer squad and teeth are optional. And it's true for half the squad. I met the squad. And they're the Nana Bananas. And people lose their effing minds. Like, we lose our minds watching this. So what makes you truly unique? Better in the competition is not noticeable.

27:02You answer the phone in two rings. I answer in one. I'm technically better. The customer won't notice. You run a standard baseball game. I have a grandma banana dancing around. I win. You got to be different. Secondly is you have to have client demand for it. So I could do something very different. I could be your first guest that comes dressed like Bozo the Clown. You know, waka waka. I come in with my big floppy shoes. Everyone will notice it's different. But is there demand for a weirdo that does that? Maybe not. And now I've compromised myself. So who's the customer that wants that? And it's not your standard baseball fan.

27:34They're not there for the winning game. They're there for the winning experience. So he's redefined the customer. And the last part is, to your earlier point, is systemization. And most people don't understand what systemization is. Systemization is where you can attract prospects, convert them to the customers, collect revenue, have them raving about the experience, all while you're sleeping, without any of your active input, with the entrepreneur not doing any of that, now you have a systemized business. And so what I learned from the pumpkin plans is that's the seed. And just like growing a colossal pumpkin, you need a seed that matches the environment, the soil content, the climate.

28:06You need a seed that matches up with those three elements. Some of the greatest businesses start as nothing more than a notebook full of scribbles. But ideas aren't enough. They need execution. With GoDaddy Arrow, execution is fast. A few prompts and you get a website, logo, email, and even social content. Minutes, not months. You go from scribbles on a paper to a polished online business you can actually grow. So stop waiting, stop overthinking, launch your business today with GoDaddy Arrow. Head to godaddy.com backslash Cody Sanchez and see what's possible there. By the way, this live episode, if you guys liked it, But if you want more, well, I have a live event.

28:43I only do one a year. It's huge. How big? Really big in Austin, Texas, just for people who want to make more money, buy businesses, build businesses. It's called Main Street over Wall Street. So if you liked this episode, you're probably going to want to be there. There's only a couple hundred spots left. So click below. I want to shake your hand in person in Austin, Texas, or go to msows.com. M-Sows. We'll see you there. So let's say that somebody doesn't have their, I believe you call it their prize pumpkin. Let's say that they don't have this differentiator, this unique component. What do you tell them to do?

29:17How do people start thinking about that? Dude, I got, I don't know why I called you dude. Is that cool? I love dude. Yes. Dude, I called my friends dude. So you just, I didn't even know. That's great, me too. Subconsciously, you just qualified. So dude, this is what you gotta do. I got a magical Jedi mind trick question. I guess I got two that will blow your mind away. And it's not what you think. That's how Jedi's roll. First question, ask your best customers, those ones we identified, what am I doing right? Now, here's why this is a Jedi mind trick. They will not tell you what you're doing right.

29:47So I used to work with hedge funds. One of my first company, we did technical services for hedge funds. They had Bloomberg's and ILX and all these different systems. I went to my best customer, Appaloosa Management. I said, what am I doing right? And they said, you respond very quickly. Now, this is in the 90s. They said the typical computer guy was taking like a full day to get on site when our system went down. They got backup systems, but you get on site within four hours. Now, here's the Jedi part. When your customer tells you you're doing right, they don't tell you what you're doing right.

30:17They tell you how they're judging you, what they're observing. You and I do, you do thousands of things for your customer. Your customer does not see the thousand things. They see one or two things. So when you ask them what I'm doing right, they tell you the thing they see. So when my client said, you respond quickly, I said, holy crap, I'm not responding fast enough. Because that's what he's measuring. So I figured out a way, it was real simple, dispatch one of my technicians or myself to be within a half hour radius of Appaloosa management. And anytime he had a problem, I would leave my other clients, I have an emergency with my number one client, Dollar General, get there.

30:49And I was getting on site within a half hour. Within a month, he's like, I don't know what you're doing, dude. But it is blowing my mind. Like the service level has skyrocketed. He's like, we're telling everyone about it. So trick one is what I'm doing right, is actually what you need to do better. Trick two is what am I doing wrong? But here's a Jedi mind trick. Don't ask what you're doing wrong because people lie to each other, social consequence. Ask what is wrong with my industry. It's the person outside the room. So when I leave here, you can have a candid conversation like, oh, Mike was not that good.

31:20He spoke a little quickly and he did a lispy thing that didn't work. Like whatever, you can say what you want. But to my face, you're like, oh, you know, you were great. Good tips, Mike. You can't tell me the truth to my face only when I leave. So have the conversation about the person outside the room, the general industry. So I said, what's wrong with the computer industry? This is when the, you remember the, you don't remember the Palm Pilot. You're way too young. Do you, anyone remember the Palm Pilot? Okay, you're over 50. Over 50. No, you're not over 50. If you don't know what the Palm Pilot was, it was the first smartphone that was neither smart nor a phone.

31:53That's basically it, right? It was the weirdest thing. And he said, my computer company, my last guy, tried to repair the Palm Pilot, and he charged me more than just replacing it. I wish there was fixed billing. We moved to fixed billing in the early 2000s when MSPs only moved to it in the 2015s or so. So what's the industry doing wrong is your opportunity to differentiate from the industry. That's so good. I got fired up there. It's good. I mean, it is amazing how the right questions serve you so much better than the immediate answers. Because you can just rinse and repeat. One of my pet peeves at our companies is we send a lot of surveys.

32:33I hate surveys. So I have like a, like how many of you guys get a survey? You're like, thank God that came out. I'm so, I needed more things to respond to in my email inbox. It's my huge pet peeve. I'm always like, instead, we should actually, I'm curious on that. I'm like, we should actually try to sell people more things. And the reason why is because then you actually know what they want. And if you sell something and nobody wants it, you're like, oh, that's the survey. That is gold. The money's the survey. That is gold. Right? So I remember - Do entrepreneurs sell enough to their customers?

33:06Are most entrepreneurs scared of selling? They absolutely do not sell enough and they don't sell the right way. I actually believe MVPs are not the right way to sell. So an MVP is a minimum viable product. I think that's too far advanced. We do a technique called sell the tell. What we do is say, so I was a co-owner in a manufacturing business for a while. We made leather products, sheaths specifically for knives. And instead of making a prototype and seeing what was out there, we simply announced our audience, we're thinking about making a sheath, and it's going to have this feature and that feature.

33:35Are you interested in buying it? But we ask the most important question. If you are, put down a deposit now. People speak the truth through their wallet. I was actually thinking about doing a conference at my old high school, but to pull it off we needed 250 people there reached out to our audience we had 75 people put a deposit down and we said no this isn't going to go and refunded their deposits ironically prior to that uh our marketing team said why don't we just ask we had over a thousand people said oh i'm in that's amazing and if we acted on that we would have blown money and embarrassed myself at my old high school i'm always scared people are going to show up for my parties literally every time still It never stops.

34:14Okay, so you sell to tell, which I love. Do you have any good frameworks for how to know if you are selling enough as an entrepreneur? It's one of my beliefs that most entrepreneurs are too scared to sell, and so they don't do it frequently enough. How do you know if you're selling enough? Oh, the act of selling as opposed to the dollar number. 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we asking our customers for enough things? Are we asking for enough upsells? What is our relation between content and actual conversion? Yeah, I think the two indicators is if you have customers come back to you and say, please stop that, that's a good indicator.

34:52And listen up, particularly your quality clients. Often we listen to the one naysayer who doesn't matter, like, you sell so much, you totally suck. And they've never bought from you. And they're like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll never sell again. So listen to your best customers. Secondly is if you see every time you sell a decline in purchases, And I've seen that before, that someone sells so much, people are like, you know what, I'm just turned off to you. All you do is sell. I think we have to care for our customers at an amplitude of a 5 to 1, maybe a 10 to 1. Just acts of service, caring for them, educating them, entertaining them, because that builds reciprocity.

35:28And then the sell becomes obvious. But I think particularly small businesses serve at like 100 to 0. All they're doing is like, I love my community. I'll do anything for them. And they don't monetize it. I would say, Cody, your customers, people in this room, my customers, not in this room, maybe, want us to be profitable. And your clients want you to be profitable. In fact, it's the number one customer, the number one person in your life that wants to be profitable is not you. It's actually your customer. And we don't believe that. Could you imagine, you go to your doctor, you have a heart situation, you rush in, Dr.

36:03One comes out and she says, oh, here's the situation. I'm not profitable. I'm actually nearly broke. I'm really paying for money. I'm just selling anything to anyone. And I've decided to generalize. I'm going to do neurosurgery, pediatrics, geriatrics, anything with an actics I'm in. You know, Dr. Two comes out and she says, I am wickedly profitable. I make a boatload of money because I am wildly successful at what I do. In fact, all I do is serve this one situation. Which doctor are you going to pick? Dr. Two. You want your doctor to be profitable. and you're, listen, maybe you're not providing life-saving services.

36:37You're providing life-altering services. Your customers want to know that you're profitable because then you treat them as the number one customer. They won't say, you know, hey, can you charge me more? Can you rip me off a little? But they will say, I want your undivided attention. I want the best of you. And all those things are indicators of I want you to be profitable. I see you. Well, it's such a good point. I mean, I don't know if anybody else feels like Mark Zuckerberg knows their purchasing pattern better than their husband does. But like Mark's got me on Instagram. Those ads come up. I want to buy.

37:08But if I go to double click on a shirt or an outfit and the cost of that shirt or outfit is like$7.99, I don't buy. Why? Because I think the quality is going to be bad because I think it's not actually going to be a good service. So not only do I think we don't sell enough, I think we price ourselves out of deals all the time because we're the cheapest, you know, because we're like, oh, no, no, no, I want to over-serve the customer. No, you lost my business because I don't trust that it could be quality at that price. And so I want to talk a little bit. You have multiple - Can I ask that real quick?

37:40Yeah, that's what I want you to do. So I would buy a$7 shirt. And I think what's important about that is you have to bifurcate your customers. The large majority of customers are the cheapo customers. And that's me in that situation. But you care about the quality of your clothing, and therefore you're going to pay a premium. Now, I play guitar. I bet you if I saw a thousand dollar guitar, I would buy it. I don't know if you play guitar. Do you? Okay. So you'll buy the$7 guitar, I suspect. And what price dictates is the quality of customer. You will find customers at the lower price point. And for anyone here that sells at a low price point, if you ever found that your customers are really bitchy and moany and they really suck, it's because you're attracting the shit customer.

38:19The one who says, I don't really care about this. I just need a shirt. So I'll pay the seven bucks. And that's why I think we need to have a higher price. We get a higher value customer that's more vested in the outcome and they're actually a higher quality customer. What do you think about, I tend to think that when you solve rich people's problems, they pay more and they appreciate it more by and large. And when you're a junior entrepreneur, or not even junior, when you're not the best entrepreneur in the world, I almost like solving more luxury problems because there's more margin in them typically and you don't have to get as many.

38:50So it doesn't have to be such a volume game until you're good. Do you think that's true? Or do you think when you go and serve luxury customers, you better be luxury, you better be top tier, you better be great? That's a good question. I think the quantity game is really difficult to compete in because you only become profitable when you can handle that volume, which means exacting systems. That's why Walmart's so good. But they have to demand from their providers that it has to arrive at 1030 and there has to be a skew at a certain point. Small businesses, we don't have the resources typically to pull that off.

39:22so that's very difficult. When it comes to quality, quality, I think, is misunderstood. Quality, I think we hear that, and we say, well, it's a special fabric, or it's something that's really of long-lasting value, but quality simply means distinct. I'll give you an example. My youngest son, this is like a bad father moment, when he was six years old, I wanted to show him what devotion and commitment was, and it was the Olympics. It was like the Beijing Olympics. Michael Phelps wins like gold number one billion and in this particular race I don't know if you all remember he was actually in third place and he's swimming like super hard and there's like three meters to go he's in second place there's a meter to go and the the person that lead I think from the the Ukraine is reaching out to the wall and Phelps jumps out of the water like a shark and slaps the wall and there's like this long pause and it pops up and Michael Phelps won by point zero zero one seconds and I jump up I'm watching my son.

40:17I'm like, Jake, that's the world's best. That's how you do it. Total commitment, total devotion. That's the highest level performer. And he looks at me and goes, but daddy, Michael Phelps isn't the world's best. Jimmy Mickledorf is. Now here's the bad dad moment. I said, who the fuck's Jimmy Mickledorf? He's like, daddy, he's in kindergarten. Never say it to your kids. He goes, daddy, Jimmy's in my kindergarten class. He can swim across mountain lake. It's the lake near us. And he's like, he's the only kid in the world that can do it. I was like, oh my gosh. So the context of the best and quality is the context of the consumer's world.

40:54For me, it's the Olympic stage. For him, it's his kindergarten class. And Susie can make the biggest cannonball. She's a rock star for him. And it's like, oh my gosh, I am such an idiot. So when it comes to quality, I just ask, we have to know who our customer is. And what can we do that's unique and distinct in them they never experienced before. And now you've introduced quality. That's so good. Let's talk about distraction a little bit. You have a lot in multiple of your books. I think I'm referencing the pumpkin plan more here. But how do you personally decide when to double down on an idea versus when to call it a distraction and cut it?

41:31Yeah. So we generally look at a revenue threshold because that's just a shocking metric to many small businesses. We generally say if you're not generating$10 million doing your one thing, you haven't arrived yet. You're not good enough yet. For most businesses, that's about 0.001 % of the market cap. So it's nothing. Yet most businesses said, oh, we're doing$300 ,000 in revenue. I should diversify and do more things. And it starts diluting you. It's all about the efficiency game. That's where we focus. The second thing is we just do diagnostics with AI. It's so easy now. Just look at the customer base, what they're consuming, what's the profitability per product, and we just focus in on those few things.

42:11I think businesses pursue diversification too quickly because we hear, if you're diversified, you're safe, you're protected, but it also stalls growth. Do you think entrepreneurs should ever have multiple businesses before they do$10 in revenue? If I say no, I'm a hypocrite. So I've many businesses that aren't doing$10 million, but I don't run them. So I think people misunderstand a business owner is. In fact, when people ask me what you do, in addition to author, I don't say I'm an entrepreneur, even though that's my favorite word. Because entrepreneurs become so bastardized. There's pundits that say, oh, entrepreneurship's hustle and grind.

42:47It's work your ass off. That is not what entrepreneurship is. You were sharing something that I hope people took notes down. Six percent, you said, of the world population runs a business. I'll give you the data behind this because I'm really into the numbers. 17 % of the population ever attempts to start a business. So if you think about kindergarten and the 20 kids in your class, 17, three kids, maybe four kids ever attempt to start a business. 20 % ever start a business and after five years are doing it on a profitable, sustainable basis. That's 3%. So the 6 % who are running a business, three half of them are actually pulling it off after five years.

43:21And that's how the math works. Which means if you ever thought about who is the weirdo in your kindergarten class, it was you. You're a weirdo. Some messed up part of your minds like, oh, I can start a business and make money. The number one job of an entrepreneur is not to do the job. The number one job of an entrepreneur is to create jobs for the other kids in your class. 19 kids in your kindergarten class want good jobs with good companies to live a good life with just good experiences. If you are doing the work in your business, you're failing the responsibility of an entrepreneur. Your job, my job, our job is to create jobs for the other 97 % of the global population, yet most entrepreneurs are doing the work.

44:02So, let me get off my soapbox for a second. I don't call myself an entrepreneur anymore because unfortunately we're told that means to work in our business. I call myself a shareholder because I also own public stock and I'm a shareholder in my business. And when someone says, what are you? I say I'm a shareholder of small business. What does that mean? I'm like, oh, I'm in the stock. I share in the profit and I give strategic direction. I vote. I don't do any of the work in the business. So for every one of the companies, we have a president, we have a C-suite, if you will. And these are some of the small businesses.

44:30A C-suite could be like six people in the entire company. But I am not in the business doing the work. So cool. Let's talk about beacons. So you referenced a study about football fields and blindfolds. But how do you stay on course in a business and not get distracted? So the study, this is my book actually called Fix This Next. What I found is most entrepreneurs are reactionary. And there was a study of a woman named Amanda Eller from the state of Hawaii back maybe 10 years ago. And it's a common story. She was just a unique global phenomena. She went for a hike on a path she always does. Halfway through a hike, it was like a five-mile hike, she sees a fallen tree, and she decides to sit down and meditate.

45:13She comes out of her meditation. She picks a path, the key variable being a path, starts walking. She's like, oh, God, I'm disoriented. I'm not in the right spot. 17 days later, she's found clinging to life by a rescue crew. What's interesting about the story is she was a half mile from her car. She started walking in circles. Without a beacon, this happens over and over, people get lost. In this German study, they took people on a football field and they put like a sleep mask on them and said, find your way across. No one could do it. And it wasn't the long way. It was the distance like halfway across the field, which is only 50 yards, and they couldn't do it.

45:47Most entrepreneurs operate their business this way. It's very reactionary. It's like, oh, my instinct says go here. My instinct says go there. And we're totally blinded. So we have to pick a beacon of what the business needs. The typical beacon is this. The most common missed part in businesses is, are you profitable on a daily basis? At the end of today, Saturday, are you going to walk out of here and your business made more money than it spent? And tomorrow does it make more money than it spent? Most entrepreneurs don't focus on that at all. They simply say, you need to sell more. And they actually dig a hole further.

46:18So the number one beacon is sustainable daily profitability. The second beacon after that, once you nail your profitability, you can use profit first to do that. Number two is efficiency. And I'll give you the hack to efficiency that most people don't do. Most people say, oh, I got to learn how to delegate. Question. Who here has a personal assistant? Raise your hand. Okay. Hands down. Who does not have a personal assistant? Okay. Keep your hands up. You are the personal assistant if your hand is up right now. It is the biggest flaw in small business. Everyone that just raised your hand, hire a personal assistant stat.

46:53And they don't have to be full-time. They can work one hour a month. And it's not to have someone doing work for you. It's so you can learn how to delegate to other people. It is the biggest weakness most entrepreneurs have is the ability to delegate. Second tip, most people delegate the wrong thing. What don't I like to do? I don't like doing this. I'm going to delegate it. Wrong. What do you love to do so much you'll never give it up? Delegate that. Because when you can delegate your passion, you'll learn to delegate the entirety of your business. Love that.

47:43Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon. I'm in the office with what's new, and the Breezley collection has definitely caught my eye. If you're like me and want to add some lighter, airy pieces to your wardrobe, this is a great place to start. There's a Breezley tank, shorts, and pants, all in our Swift fabric, which is super lightweight and stretchy. They're flowy staples you can mix and match for a really easy, elevated vibe, whether it's to and from the studio or just for every day. The Breezley collection is in store now, or you can shop online at lululemon.com. Yeah, I mean, Zach, you know what one of the first things we do in the boardroom is, which is yell at you guys to get VAs, right?

48:18He's nodding his head, yes. And that is because you're right. Otherwise, that means you do not value your time more than minimum wage offshore labor. Like, you got to look at yourself in the face and think about that for a second. You are saying your time is not worth more than a couple of dollars per hour. And if that is true, then are you really a business owner? And I think the answer to that is no, you're an employee. You're still in employee status. And one of the first things we do in our groups is say, let's offload some of these. Let's kill the zombies, let's cut the weight, and let's offload the things that you should never be doing in the first place.

48:55And now there are incredible systems to do that. And we'll talk about that later today as well, as Zach knows. Okay, I want to talk about, let's talk about profit first. Many people think revenue minus expenses equal profit, and profit is the last part of the equation in business. You famously argue the opposite. Let's talk about what the profit first framework is. So after struggling with my own finances, I looked at my businesses historically and while they grew and I did sell two businesses, they were never profitable. And so they were strategic acquisitions. I was lucky to get out. Most people will never sell their business.

49:29So I ran the data. There was a study from the SBA in conjunction with a major bank. They identified 83 % of small businesses in the US. There's 36 million of us now. under 25 million in revenue, you're considered a small business. So it's probably the majority of this room. 83 % of us are surviving check by check. And probably everyone in this room, in part, started your business for financial freedom. So I'm like, oh, we started our business for financial freedom, but no one pulls it off. What's wrong with us? And then I was looking at the formula one day. I said, holy crap, that formula is wrong.

49:59It makes logical sense. Sales or revenue, you subtract expenses with leftovers profit. Totally makes sense. It does not make behavioral sense. It is human nature. What comes first gets done. What comes last gets ignored. The Mannyana syndrome. We are told profit comes last. It's the bottom line, last. It's the year end, last. It's all last. And so most business owners, and how I run my business, I'd wait till the end of the year. I'm like, ah, shucks. I wouldn't use the word shucks, but your mom's here. I'm like, ah, shucks. I could never swear in front of my own mom, but I'm F-bombing here. I would go, shucks, I don't have any profitability.

50:36Maybe next year. And that was the fundamental flaw. Once I took my profit first, I started becoming profitable every day. It's the pay yourself first principle applied to business. And this goes back to biblical times. It's like nothing new. In the Bible, they talk about tithing and the necessity putting money aside. It's been modernized in tons of personal finances. We're told to have a 401k, pay yourself first. And yet in a business, we don't do it. So it's literally that simple. And it ain't a shell game. It leverages into behavioral principles a thing called Parkinson's law. Parkinson states that our demand for a resource expands as the resource expands.

51:11The more time you have to do something, the longer it'll take. The more cookies that are served as a dessert, the more you're going to eat. Guilty. And the more money you make in your business, the more you will spend. As your revenue goes like this over time, I bet your expenses increase the uncanny same rate. It's because how we're behaviorally wired. So what we're going to do is starting today, every time sales comes in, like today, take a percentage. You want to have 10 % bottom line? Take 10%. 20? Great. Take 20%. Take that profit. Hide it from your business. And now your business tells you what's available to run your business.

51:42What I say is profit first doesn't fix your business. It tells you what needs to be fixed within your business. Because if you want that profit number, it'll tell you you don't have enough. Your prices are wrong. You got to fix your margins, inefficient, over costs, all that stuff. I love that. We'll do an activity, I think, later today that talks about, like, we like to have people actually think about where in your business can you cut costs immediately? Because it's hard to make new sales, right? You're like, yeah, I'd love to go right now, close a bunch of new business, go out there, execute on it.

52:10Can be hard. You don't always have control over that immediately. But somewhere in your business is sitting some cash. And so we have a process, Carter's really good at this, where we go through and analyze again and again, where in your business do you have hidden money? and it's not the sexiest of things because nobody's like, I saved a thousand bucks today. You're like, I closed a bunch of new clients. That's way sexier. Who gets paid the most? Salespeople. Who gets paid the least? Accountants. And yet, accountants are more consistent and so I really like this. That's brilliant. There's a little hack you can do.

52:41Let's do it. Get a credit card, a new credit card, this sounds crazy, for your business. You can do it in your personal finances too. Move all your subscriptions to that one card and get paper statements. I did my personal finances. I'm like, oh, I probably spend, you know, a couple hundred bucks maybe in a subscription. Holy crap, I spent 500. I got like the Hydro system. I got the Peloton. I've got Netflix. And I was like, what am I doing? I'm not using half this stuff. You got to make it visceral and you got to make it conscious as opposed to subconscious. In your business, set up a dedicated card just for your subscriptions and you'll see how much you're spending.

53:10It's the first way to get control of that stuff. I love that. Yeah, I mean, and I want to open it up from questions here at the end. So think about it for a second. Have your questions kind of ready. The other thing I think we don't think about enough as business owners is investing in ourselves. And I know it sounds a little cheesy because it's so much easier to say, I invested in the business here. I hired a new person, but I found that if we don't become better, our business never gets better. And so I'm curious, you've been in the sort of educational business for a long time. Do you still have coaches and mentors?

53:48How do you think about investing in yourself as the entrepreneur and getting better? Is that important to you? Yeah. So wickedly important. Surprise. What I do is identify what is the role that I enjoy the most, meaning gives me the most joy. But first I had to eradicate myself from doing it. So let me explain. I get the most joy from being a spokesperson for my brand. Okay? I realize that requires a lot of public speaking. And I realize if I'm the only person doing it, I become the linchpin for my business. So first I educated about 50 people on speaking on Profit First. In fact, there's like three Profit First keynotes going on today, and I'm not doing any of them.

54:25So that's the first thing, so I'm not necessary. Then I said, okay, well, I own the business, and I want to do what gives me joy. I'm not going to sit on the beach and stuff, so I'm going to reinsert myself, and I want to be the best spokesperson I can. So I go to improv classes. I study comedy. I look at, what do my contemporaries do? And most people sit behind a dais, and they're like, brr, brr, brr, brr. I'm like, that's the one thing I can't do. I have to be different. So I study theatrics, performance, all those things constantly. I have a speaking coach who comes to my events and critiques me, sometimes live.

54:58Like he'll be doing signals. He'll sit in the front row. He's like, we have these hand signals. I'm like, oh, gosh, hands out of your pocket. Named John Bates. Yeah, so I very much invest in that. I think for any of us, it's just human nature. We can be super elite at very few things. But pick that thing, and then you become the Michael Phelps or the Jimmy Mickledorf of your category. Isn't how you all know Jimmy Mickledorf? No, poor Jimmy. I wonder where he is today. I know. He's like 20 years old now. He's never had a girlfriend as a result because of me. I love that. Thank you. I think a lot of times we need to give ourselves permission to spend time getting better.

55:38Because it feels like there's too many things to do every single day. And it might even feel like a little bit of a luxury. And I'm a big believer that if we don't spend money becoming the best CEO we can be, then how can we hire the best talent who can then be talking on other stages, who can then be growing the business? You cannot attract what you are not. And so I think you have to keep becoming better if you want to attract better people. Okay, I have one last question that I'm going to open up for you guys. You often talk about building a business that runs without you. What's the first system every owner should put in place?

56:12Oh, we do this with every business we invest in. We immediately schedule a four-week vacation for the business owner within one year of today. And I challenge you right now in your calendar, put a four-week vacation that's one month away from the office. Tell your loved one you're going on vacation with them, perhaps. Tell your kids. There's the ultimate accountability mechanism. And if the thought of that gives you a heart attack, and with most business owners it does, that's the first indicator we do not have a systemized business. If you can extract yourself from a business for four consecutive weeks, we actually turn off your email.

56:42full shutdown. It changed the mindset from how am I going to be the superhero again today to how am I going to get the business operating without me? And that's what we do. That's the first thing. At what level of revenue or existence of a business do you put this into place? We've done like a hundred thousand dollar business. And it's like, how can you do with that? It's a one person business. Even if you're a one person business, you have vendors, maybe they're not employees, you have clients, you can make your clients work for you. I grew up in the day where you had catalogs, and you want to order that nice expensive shirt of yours, you call up, and the operator will be like, oh, what's your address?

57:19And you say, it's 12 Main Street. And you're like, what was that? Vain Street? No! Now they have customers doing the work. We actually go on the web, and we're like, click, click, click, click, 12 Main Street. Ha, ha, ha. Like, we think it's cool entering the data for them. So you can actually train your customers to do the work for you. Your doctor, your GP, has you fill out this ridiculously long form for you. You're doing the work. I'm like, this is amazing. So even if you're$100 ,000, you can do it.