Find the Profit Sweet Spot
Mike Michalowicz
Lessons
What's Your Big Bang?
31:56 2Take Your Profit First, Always
24:48 3How Parkinson's Law Can Work For You
22:36 4The Axiom Addiction
10:59 5Behavior Driven Management
27:17 6Behaviors & Habits with Donna Leyens
25:35 7The Principles of Profit
32:23Changing the Sequence & Allocating Profit
30:11 9The Quarterly Adjustment
18:51 10Instant Assesments
25:10 11Our Focus On the Top Line
36:03 12How to get Started
20:38 13Destroying Debt
39:13 14Destroying Your Debt: Hot Seat
19:43 15Debt Freeze vs. Debt Snowball: Hot Seat
24:10 16Efficiency = Profit
28:49 17Find the Profit Sweet Spot
38:46 18GAAP Mastery
29:34 19Linking it all Together with Tim Sernett
25:39 20The Pareto Overlap
25:52 21Accountability & Myth Busting
33:05 22Habit Building: Sticking with It
25:20 23Get Everyone Involved
24:09Lesson Info
Find the Profit Sweet Spot
Travis, if I could have the privilege of having you up here yeah, that cool plant paying, clicking, going on. I wanted to the sweet spot in your business right now. Is that cool? Alright, cool. Come on, take a tea or anything. Yeah, I think it's okay, we'll be right on it. So just twelve it's severine knows. Tell us about your business. What you do. All right. So, um, basically, I travel teo the coolest landscapes I confined, I pick up the available stones there, create a super unique temporary sculpture out of the balance stones. And then take a photograph of that and the resulting folds photograph. I showed the people, and they don't believe that it's real. So, uh, what I do is I try to destroy the limiting beliefs just by showing people that it's possible and ultimately it's taking me down this road of, like, trying to change the world because everybody has such huge walls within themselves that they're like their greatest enemy. So the work that I do is really just a tool to, like,...
unblocked that yeah, fear in limiting beliefs stuff. So, you know, what's amazing is you have the uniqueness down beyond the what so I was no what we dio you know I make products I do accounting yeah I'm a deejay we know that what many people don't know the wise and you've gotten there yeah, you stack rocks and you take pictures that's what you do but you're changing beliefs you're changing the visibility of what's really truly possible and if there's one great lesson we all need take is not what we're doing but why we're doing what we're doing and when you can drive home that benefit you've changed the paradigm for customers uh and by the way, every time you do something because you know you're why I assume the pictures of the angles you take in the way you presented the way tell customers is a little bit different than just a guy stacking rocks now uh I want to get to demand and system ization cause this is where the problem ability happens you cool? You have something that's unique who are your best customers? Have you found, um well, the ones that by our white older women went but but the thing is that, like I've seen people look at my work of all ages in of all demographics and they're like there's like some subconscious human connection with it so the ones that buy alright yeah and this was matters because of the survivability your business to be successful and pack all people you have to speak to the consumer that's presenting themselves now this is charming truly the skin level so I could walk by and see someone but there's something way deeper than this what do you know about what's going on in their heads? Do they ever say why they're buying it? What resonates with them not really I mean we always just talk about the work but it's it's hard to get into them because like they have these huge walls up essentially so yeah okay could you have you try to ask them they've walls up have you tried to ask him why they like your art or what's going on in their lives or something like that or no because it's like you know, cushion where are you selling them at all? I mean, I haven't won will interact with so whenever I meet someone on the trail or like just like in something like this than uh sent him online and they can purchase there but also do I've been doing a couple shows recently so when people can just come in for like first friday, I can't see myself that's when I can really like see the different people that are engaging with the work okay, once we identify the very kind superficial level we need to dig in deeper and we're gonna do is called clients assessment basically clients assessments this sort your clients out by revenue actually pull the screen up right now if you don't mind we're gonna do this together here's a client's asked so way want to find more customers like our best customer what you do as you sort your clients by revenue they generate for you in the last twelve months for some businesses like yours you have one transaction with a client once every couple of years maybe or whatever it may be spread out so we can look at a longer time period and we want to evaluate them on these three things so the first thing is, uh you sort out your clients by revenue that they've generated and another thing called the cringe back to the explain the second what's heat's really solve one of your pictures for two hundred bucks? Yes moans of two hundred enlargements of three fifty three fifty okay, so we'll say three hundred for round number sake um can you name any of your best customers right now? Their first named can you think you know I can't okay okay have you had any customers buy more than one? No. So everybody's one er have you but you have the recurring these older women uh they're buying from you okay, um do you many customers that are, uh not that demographic that are buying from you? Well, you actually did note that on the record but, you know, I think it started with anything is our first impression is a look as important to notice this into documented, but then to dig in deeper so what we need to do and it's just tough run throughs exam because you can't think of the names, but I'm gonna say no person one, um, person too, uh, awesome person three that's may, um, you know, and in person for our customers of yours okay, what we do is we sort them by revenue now you haven't had any customers buy from you repeatedly, but you had some people by the more expensive and some by the less expensive okay, so set some some people bought three fifty uh, right? Some people but less than three think about the two fifty one yeah, no, I mean, did you actually bought my first print ever? So I did, yeah, cool. So there's there's three different price range is next. Here's how we do our evaluation, we need to do same thing sort of our clients by the revenue they generate remember, they're showing their appreciation for us by their actions, their wallets, if they buy france repeatedly, it's the perfect thing, you're in a unique stare you haven't had that yet, but we're going to make it happen so next we have to do is close the cringe factor these air people, they're demonstrating through their actions they like you the most or something is resonating with them. The cringe factor is your impression of them have you some customers? I'm sure you've had great experiences with have you any customers excluded that you maybe had a bad experience with like they wanted a refund or as much as I want to say I do, I really don't because, like, as soon as I give it to them, they just are, like, overcome with elation, okay, like there's never something like, oh, I don't like that or can you change that? Okay, okay, no that's, no that's. Fantastic. So they're all smiles, right? Uh, some of us will have ah, cringe doesn't have a costume like that when the phone rings and you're like, oh my has to be this person, right? We have that those air cringe customers right travis's businesses is too new to have experienced that yet, but I hate to say it's probably coming your way too. What happens here is it's the intersection of the people who pay us the most they like us the most and we like that we will deliver the best service to naturally it's the intersection of people that pay us well still it's pretty good cause there's a lot more customers balu is, but we don't like that. We can't deliver the best service too, because the second this person calls this is hey, I want another picture you're saying they're gonna complain again. Uh, what's going wrong this time or whatever, there's also customers down here in person twenty or something that bought from you who's fun to deal with, but they're spending ten bucks. They're not spending any money with you, um and that's gonna normal breakdown of our businesses. The goal is to clone our best customers because generally based on the prod, the revenue we're making usually represents the highest profitability. And if you like doing business with them, if you could have ten more of these people your set well, well, I want all of us to do is the duce clients assessment. Now these aren't enough boxes. I think for most businesses here we're gonna have atleast ten, twenty, fifty jobs or you have hundreds of clients as your business basement side, you have more clients, you sort out oil clients by the revenue and then this cringe factor knowing that we want to clone these people. Once you identify who these people are, you gotta get inside their mind because that level is older white woman there's six six billion of them on the plan or something crazy it's it's too much is way too broad demographic so the question is what's going on in the psycho graphic and that's where the biggest opportunity is once you understand the operation of your the way your customer's mind is operating urine and that's where you can really crush it so identify your best customers it's time you go and meet with these people and like, what questions should I be asking? Just what do they think about it? Like what? What problems in their life they have because that's what you're saying really is that exactly like that there's three king there has to be that kind of formality of like you know them engaging with the work I want to, like dive deep into their soul right when they're looking at it right? So uh thank god you read the cue cards because there's three questions you need to ask them and here's the key questions you know, the first thing you want to know is to remember is this that birds of a feather flock together and therefore your best customer is hanging out the other customers like her and you want to say, where do you, where else do you go where you congregate when you look at art, where do you view are to go to museums do you know other people's homes look art how do you show off art why is this important to you those type of questions but I found his three key questions too question one is ask your best customers what am I doing right why am I doing right and here I had a business wise doing computer services I had a client they were a hedge fund guy a brokerage house and I asked him why am I doing right they said when we have an emergency you get your people on site within an hour and that helps us care system back up and running here's the question here's the point about that question when you ask your customers will my doing right they won't tell you what you're doing right there telling you what they're observing so my customer said you're going on site within an hour they said we notice how quickly you get on site and I said I have to go on site within fifteen minutes and I'd reach change my business around again sight faster when people look at your arm when they say I buy your are what you're doing right is your braking my vision of what was really possible they're saying I want to know more about how to break my vision what's possible how do you take this to a higher level so when people say you're doing something right there telling you I'd do it even better that's where a business really exploits its uniqueness and you've got it going on your super unique county extra super unique and I'll tell you how second question asked by doing wrong what don't you like but here's the problem with that if you ask someone what am I doing wrong? They won't tell you they will lie to you travis yourself if everything's perfect I love it ask him this question what's wrong with my industry what's what what's wrong with artists but what turns you off tow artists what don't you like you cricket if rick says what's wrong about what I do is think about my speeches people so no speeches are good we say pricing tons of rice I guy mccallan was he's a real a hole what's wrong with speaking industry of the gloating or whatever it is they're telling you what you can't do but the conversation becomes comfortable because this person outside the room what don't you like about artists? What kind turns you off about now they're talking about the person outside the room but they're telling you what you have fixing your business ok? And a third question is uh when doing right by my doing wrong what other vendors with other artists with other people in my community are you working with or do you enjoy? Do you like you know for us because we're not artist we asked our clients what other vendors are you currently utilizing who else do you work with? I may be your speaker but who puts the stage sets together? Uh you know, maybe you're right maybe you're making your your baby carriage covers but who makes baby carriage and the key about this question is your your best client is telling you the other people you should get to know so when you ask these women who other artists you like or whether things do you enjoy their telling the people you hang out with oh, you know, one thing I like to do is I really like to to go on hiking trails you know, I love hiking all of the outdoors I love that stuff they're telling you you should be more present in this trails maybe shouldn't be art galleries maybe an entrance to a trail never know there should be a sign saying nothing's impossible and that's there you know, maybe they're telling you the big adventures that they went for a tour around uh, hiking outside and your picture is a memory of it may be they're telling you it's really the hike that's amazing. Why don't you have a whole tour set up of your six or seven structures throughout the place that they're walking? I don't know, but they will tell you by saying what other vendors to depend on whether people you work with whether experiences do you pursue okay, once you get inside that now you have the ability to clone your best customers. This customer is not always a top customers sometimes this one's a cringe sometimes the person that they pay a lot of money go who they're difficult to deal with once you find who these ones are and you start cloning them business starts growing explosively hugely profitable that makes sense yes, cool thanks for our brother. Thank you. Nicely done dio has great love for your work online people have gone to your website I think you've got some sales actually while you've been up there we say this image is what they're suggesting things like market to businesses and franchises like yoga studios talons spars has come up a lot of time therapist certain types of dance studios high entire studio so people got some great ideas possibility yeah, this possibly they're amazing and what I think travis should I hope he did get some sales because it is our work is and I'm not just plugging you is mine by additionally is yeah it's awesome. He should listen to the people that are saying that you also bought his art right? Because it is someone online right now a piece of his art and they're saying should be you yoga studio I agree that if someone saying should be a yoga studio and not buying the art that's not his best customer you know so there's great feedback yeah, thanks for doing that we just have some questions that came in good I'll take a partly to do with them the earliest segment but still worth going victor and he's joining us from new york he's saying what about business credit? Should we build it by example things like dun and bradstreet there those important when you're building credit or can you rely on your credit card in your personal credit when you're building yeah so you know your business credit becomes its own independent things when you start a business it gets basically its own unique identifying social security number is called tax idea here in the u s and international is a little bit different but you become your own little entity they called the corporate umbrella and for legal purposes what if you have a business entity with its own social security number effectively if you get into difficulty there's a separation between you and the business theoretically your business could get sued but you're protected and so forth and there that could be pierced in every problems with it but when it comes to credit the same thing same rule applies as your business starts building has to have its own credit report it says basically it's his own entity so dunn and bradstreet is other tools become very important great thank you good I love you one more hot cdf john I just have a comment about your client assessment up there because I don't know if you remember, mike, but maybe you're in a half ago, you and I spoke on the phone briefly. You called me one day, we were talking about pumpkin plan a little bit, and I was talking about how you weed out your smaller pumpkins. Yeah, and that we might discuss it's up here. You want to come up and we'll do it quiets has been free right now. You're like, ok, you come on up, let the world see you. So what was the question? No, it was the whole I talked to mike about pumpkin plan because the whole concept there with his second book was, you know, do a client assessment. Look at your client's name, look at your monthly revenue and the ligature cringe factor and the people that you really cringe out, maybe that's the ones you should look at weeding out, right? So I did that client assessment, I said, well, you know, actually, I have a pretty good clients, right? You know? But I have one but doesn't do a lot of revenue, and every time they call, I'm just just they want do it their creative, so I said but I said, what did I just do? Do we just cut him off? Say sorry, your jerk. I don't like you and I can do business with you anymore. Yeah, and one of things you said as well, you know what? What are they doing from a pricing standpoint? I said, well, you know, maybe one of the slowest payers, biggest complainers, uh, margins not very good. Hey said, well, raise the margin just would they wouldn't get to jack. The prices were to be a point where well, if they want to pay that much, you know, maybe the cringe goes away. Yeah. So that's why I did that to clients. And what was the result of that? Um, both of them are my highest margin clients. Okay, uh, one of them I still get a little bit of a quran. Yeah, yeah, deal with it. Yeah. Uh, the other one has since I raised the price quadrupled his revenue and it's, the most pleasant person were to deal with. I say I'm not surprised. And I'll tell you why I equate money to appreciation points saying, if you charge me one hundred dollars for something I'm giving you one hundred appreciation points charged me a thousand dollars I'm giving a thousand appreciation points the more money I give to you the more committed I am to the relationship the more I appreciate your value is ironic it's the people that pay us the least that are inevitably the most critical of us because it was ten bucks you know but when I pay you mohr on become perceive use way more value people so it's it's not abnormal to increase your prices and then your client starts saying who I like really like what you're doing and they kind of cool things down can we do a quick assessment of your clients now where we stand today we don't use their names was going so so let's go through uh client one two three four so client one client too and so forth who's your number one client right now what kind of revenues that represent uh I would say probably four hundred thousand I annually for two thousand annually and what kind of business are they and what's there uh business would probably be what they meant manufacturing their manufacturer okay okay that's good um client to uh probably three hundred thousand okay and when they do uh events events okay calling three uh probably just under three hundred two seventy five okay where they dio construction okay and and next one uh probably you know to to to seventy five hundred still say to fifty okay. Probably be construction what's what? One more deals I'm surprised will see a big dollar drop off yet yeah, I I would let's say um hundred thousand ok, ok do what they do that would probably be it's probably construction again interesting right now normally so this was like a four seven that's about million so looking at this I'd say I was two and a half million you're cos I've got to have two three million our company now if they don't know that you're not but I was suspect is that the revenue starts dropping significantly and so over most businesses don't get the eighty twenty rule eighty percent of revenues generate by twenty percent of client most of revenue is going to be up here and then there's gonna be a lot of clients down here they're doing it right twenty five thousand ten thousand six hours six thousand but lottery yeah, okay. And we're gonna get into that there's this thing called the prado overlap going teach you in an upcoming segment um and in that segment we'll tell you how to handle these clients down here are all these now you went through this cringe factor ready are the all these smiles or andy even cringes? I would say pretty much all those smiles smiles okay good, which is a typical for someone has not gone through this process yet, but since I know you've gone through it we're good, but the other element we look for is the commonality of clients is your business gets bigger is their common clients and what was interesting is the commonality is in construction and even though you're providing a very similar service to all of them right do the construction people have something that they need that's a little different than the event in manufacturing folks, any other unique specialties that you found? No, I think it's it's pretty close to the same just just the volume that they need is different okay its volume driven a lot so here's what I found if you if you want to take your business to the next level in revenue is when all customers even though they're indistinct industries themselves have a similar need. Often that means you haven't achieved true speciality specialization in your business for them when you can talk to construction, work better than the construction guys and speak it when you khun just tweak your story was just a little bit to do something that the construction guys have always wanted from guys like you, but they don't do all of a sudden you become world famous in the construction industry so even a business that's doing you know very comfortably is yours I would still say there's an interesting kind of thing going on here these are your top revenue customers but there's a consistency that you're already tracking construction guys, I would take all these guys out for that lunch meeting and say, you know what I'm doing right? When my doing wrong and whether vendors to depend on there may be a huge niche sitting here that's what the evaluation does and interestingly enough, yeah, three, two thousand eight yeah, it was flipped, there was very, very little of this, and there was a whole bunch of this interesting in two thousand eight, the economy crashing, construction died. Yeah, we had to look at something else because there was nothing there just yeah destroyed your business almost yeah, that's. So when I say the riches are the niches, the risk is that is that if you go after a vertical or an industry where the industry collapses, but the flip side if you don't go for the niche and you stay, but now that you're saying broad, you still have a concentration, but if you stay really broad, you can't growl, so there is a risk there's there's a thing called a macro economy, we have no control over it, no one could make ur I couldn't control it happen in two thousand eight or two thousand one, we can't control it's going on the economy is going to slip and die industries will collapse, so we're going to be affected by that but we were gonna be affected by the upside too if you're in the construction industry in construction takes off you're going to ride it up quickly too I'm not saying when's the riches are in the niches I how I conduct my own businesses I would try to get somewhere upwards of fifty to seventy five percent of my clients in this exact category and then the rest to have a little bit of diversity okay but this is good so you took the first step a year ago a few years ago into pumpkin plan I almost think there's something more here I'm really curious about that we could use damn fire business china thank you alright um I want to bring on my friend fred fred are you there? Mr came here michael hey, how are you? I'm terrific fred is a ah good friend of mine going back now three years he is a master at business efficiencies that systems and businesses and as a result is a cash money or cash flow master because fred knows the principal of this is that when you have run a business efficiently that money comes out of it. Is that a fair assessment for what you do? Well absolutely and money is ah good thing I can tell by that big safe in the back is that you you really take money very seriously I do so frank used tell us a little bit about some of the strategies you use with your customers to help them extract profit from their business to become more efficient. How do you go about this? Well, I walk or I talk to my customers and two there managers who buy things or have things bought for them and you talk about their cycles of their business and there's generally a a rhythm to when they need ah parts if there are manufacturer when they need inventory, if they're ah retailer and so on and you work with them too, minimize the steps involved to get ah vendor's approved s o that you could buy efficiently to find out when the right times to purchase things are because vendors have schedules a cz well and if you could get into their right schedule, maybe you can ah minimize your freight. Or maybe you can do things twice a month instead of every week that it allows them to give you a different discount or something like that. But the whole you know, efficiency inside your building inside your company is often ah duplicate application of efforts. If you have to computer systems and they both have a customer list, somebody has to keep up that customer list accurately in both places and so on. We really, really work hard to try to eliminate extra work that doesn't add any value yes the keyword is this minimize and you turn me on the first day we met I remember you turned me onto a book by eli gold rat correct the goal the goal which is an amazing book even though it's oriented toward manufacturing I don't care what business you're in you have to read the goal on it talks about constraint theory and other concepts can you just share a little bit of the elements they are from the goal sure well first of all the goal is a novel it's not a how to book but when you're when you've read it you learn a lot about how to run a business and it's really a fascinating exercise just on how to write a book to teach people but the constraint theory is simply that every system has ah maximum uh friction point of some kind of bottleneck and if you understand where that bottleneck is you need to build all of your other systems in a way to maximize the value at the bottleneck so if I've got five pieces of equipment and four of them could do eighty pieces per hour per day what whatever the unit is and one can only do forty the maximum I could do is forty doesn't matter what the other ones are so I have to set up my system so that the one that khun do forty never does thirty nine because I'll never get that unit back at the constraint so straight management is absolutely critical to running any business and running your household or anything like that you have to know where you are what your limits are and then make your limiting factor as efficient as possible and it seems like is the propensity of entrepreneurs to work on those eighties as apostle lately so I'm thinking that someone's here were in service based businesses we we have ten or fifteen things we we have to improve in our business we just picked whatever comes to our mind first as opposed to determining that one thing that's the constraint how do we how do we find a constraint or business? Well first of all on that comment so if I have four workstations that khun do eighty and my manager at one of those workstations says g I if we just spend ten thousand dollars here I know I could get to eighty five right well we had extra five units doesn't do anything for you because you have a constraint that could only do forty right a soul but back to how do you find your constraint sometimes it's obvious usually if you have image if you're manufacturing of inventory that backs up in front of one of your workstations well odds are that's your constraint you talk to the people doing the work they usually know what the constraint is but in not all businesses are as obvious as ah, a simple manufacturing plant. So you have to watch and listen and observe people doing the work, and they can generally tell you where your constraints are. But it's it's often just where is your most pain, what's the what's the hardest thing to do in your facility and attack that make that just a little bit easier than a lot of things become easier. Yeah, that's the key takeaway, you know, even though the goal and what you were teaching me was around manufacturing, they said in the book and what you told me is that where inventory piles up as materials go through manufacturing plant where they start piling up that's usually an indicator of a constraint but in a service based business, like many of our businesses would that be where time piles up, where you get stuck the longest? Is that the equivalent? It is roughly the equivalent? Yes, because time is ah constraint that's the old equalizer among every business because we only get so much time per day per week or so on, and the things that take you the most time and or at the least value per time unit are the other thing you know, is this something that absolutely has to be done doesn't absolutely have to be young by you you and that that's another value of systems if you look a twx just assess and you look at each person or machine is doing those processes is at the highest value for that a person or a machine now and very often it isn't you khun delegate you can eliminate a process or whatever but the uh uh the idea is the value per time unit is justus important as it is in the plant scene inventory pilo in front of a workstation okay, so in our businesses I'm thinking more service based businesses right now if we want improve efficiency which means become more profitable it's in our best interest to find out where what things take the most time on see if we can reduce that where time piles up or get stuck. Secondly, do we have the right resource being the right person doing the work and can we maybe as ourselves as the entrepreneur remove ourselves and find someone else to do that work correct and soul in virtual assistance or something a lot of us use from time to time or find a new software package or an app to do something automatically that we've been doing manually and those are all great constraint busters that help us doom or in the same amount of time in the last question I have for you fred is when you go into a business and help them become more efficient what have you seen from your experience? How's? The bottom line been affected. These business sell the same rate and their bottom line explodes. Like what? What happens if you fix these things? Sure. Well, what happens is cost go away and, uh, either time is freed up so you can do other things and maybe not have tohave your virtual assistant because you don't need that pose service anymore, which reduces your costs or you khun doom. Or you can sell maurine the same amount of time which just brings in more money because time is a fixed unit and we only have so much of it, and we only have so many contacts with our customers that we can do so we have to maximize that. And so often that constraint opens up it's just magic. So so efficiency directly translates into money to the bottom line all all the time, as long as you're working on the constraint. If you make some other unit more efficient and may not translate two dollars, because it's not the constraint. So you have to be careful if he working on the right problem to free up the constraint great fried thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it absolutely like anytime. Wei have a question your eyes if you don't I hang with us once we got a great reaction from online audience now mm webster is one of our viewers and they're saying how do you find that constraint in a service business the only one I ever recognizes my time well time is is a big constraint and a service business uh if it's a one man operation they have to manage their time and know that they're using their time wisely if it's ah group of people five or ten people who each have a different job towards a uh an end result then it's more difficult but it's still a matter of who's always who are we always waiting on and is that a result of them being a constraint or is it a result of the amount of work maybe not be distributed properly it's it's much more difficult in a service business than it is in a manufacturer yeah good question thank you for appreciate you asking that s o friends with man and management thie guy is a guru in finding money in your business without having increased sales check him out fred thank you so much again appreciate it. All right any time I take care here's a little trick if, um a great way to evaluate your business if you're a service face business say your owners pay the opie account and this is why prop first work so effectively say the cumulative funds that came out of this year's fifty thousand dollars that means you took fifty thousand divide whatever number you took as distributions or salary as an owner this year divided by two thousand why two thousand two thousand working hours per year roughly forty hour work week and I recognize offers work more but you should be trying to target less work on be more efficient but the goal is the same take the total you've taken divide by two thousand and you'll find out your hourly wage up from twenty five dollars okay, so if you take made fifty thousand dollars this year from your business divide by two thousand you find out that your hourly equivalent is twenty five dollars an hour now when you're doing anything you're filing papers away, you're you're cleaning your desk, you're making a sales call whatever you're doing, your business is paying you twenty five dollars an hour. The question is whatever that task is that you're spending a lot of time on is it worth twenty five dollars an hour or can you find someone to do it? If you're filling out a database with information takes you four hours it just cost your little request your business one hundred dollars to do it can you outsource that and get done for twenty five dollars? Well then or ten dollars it's a sway smarter decision you're an employee to of the business the business is responsible to pay you this is your cost so when fred was talking about time accumulating where do we spend a lot of time put a cost to it and then you can decide if it's better to outsource it and by hiring that virtual assistant for example you may be saving your company a lot of money because not only are you not spending that hundred dollars to file papers or fill out a database they do it for half that that time is not freed up for you to sell or to service something that's usually much higher skilled level which were capable of doing last thing I wanted to share um is the three questions that I want to have earlier there these are separate three questions as your business grows to become efficient on dh to match up with that chart I showed you earlier the uniqueness that demand and the the system is a shin I found these three questions you can use when any challenge any question presents itself in your business may monique you're looking at doing a new website uh maybe jeff you're secure considering hiring a new employee any quit any time you face something that you want a question run these three questions against it that new website monique you're doing first thing I say is if I do this new website doesn't maintain improve my uniqueness now remember the strongest companies exploit their uniqueness we talked about steve jobs does your business exploit your unique is and isn't being expressed through in this case the questions your website and the same thing jeff if it's an employee does this person exploit my uniqueness? How you distinguish yourself in the market when you hire an employee are they exploiting and building your uniqueness if we don't do it, we start watering ourselves down and we never ask this question we just say I like her I don't like I like this person in a higher we like this website gonna do it the question is not that is does it distinguish my uniqueness next though if you could say yes to unique this it does not mean proceed with that website or hire the next question is does this better serve my top clients? Those best clients those people they're buying from you repeatedly when you make this great website that's unique monique unique unique when you do that does it also serve your top clients if it doesn't cater to their needs? You're not going to track people like them you're gonna start attracting others but if you're speaking exactly to their needs maura maura, those top clients wouldn't come to you, but even if you can say yes to these two questions, you still don't proceed with decision until the last question can be answered yes the last question is by doing this website and my maximizing, increasing my profitability by hard in this person. Am I going to more profitable by doing this presentation? Talking about is increased my profitability, because if it doesn't it's death by a thousand cuts, over time, we're less profitable. We do. The website doesn't bring in money, we've run advertisements, they're not bringing money and becomes death by a thousand cuts. Any consideration, advertising, hiring, anything you do run past the three questions. If you can't say yes to each one, you have to reposition the question. You have to redesign that website. You look at a new way, reed, don't do the ads or change it around until you can say yes to all three. We can't say yes to all three, don't do it. This is a system I've been using now for myself for a few years. It absolutely drives profitability.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Viktor N.
It was a great course, packed with a ton of valuable and actionable information and resources. I enjoyed participating in the live chat during the course and getting my questions answered live by Mike. I purchased the on-demand course so I can always go back and watch parts that I need help with the most. Keep in mind, in addition to this course, I would also recommend getting Mike's Profit First book/ebook. That's what the course is based on, and if you're like me, having it in a text version helps find and highlight important points. Highly recommend for all business owners at any stage of their business!
Ella Heath Photography
Wonderful class!! Not only is the content very impactful and life-changing but Mike's funny character made the class very entertaining - the marker on the forehead story made my husband and me laugh to tears!! We are implementing Profit First right away. Thank you CL for hosting such an amazing class.
a Creativelive Student
Exceptional. Never thought that a money management course would be engaging, thought-provoking and would change my business. In one segment of this class, I completely reworked the finances of my business. Great stuff. Highly recommended. If you run your own business, you NEED this course. It will pay itself off so quickly, it'll amaze you.
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Money & Finance