Just Between Coaches – Episode 132
Profit Is A Habit (Mike Michalowicz)
Mike Michalowicz: The first is profitability, which is stability for your organization. We have to pay you and get out of this association of being associated with pain. You know, give until it’s painful. We want to give until it’s helpful. So we’re going to take that profit first. The second thing we need to do is allocate money toward a salary for the owner, which is different than profit often confused.
Melinda Cohan: Do you ever find yourself in the challenging dance of feast or famine survival in your coaching business? What if you could have profit guaranteed? Coaches, in this episode, we are delving deep into a transformative financial strategy that not only ensures profit, but tackles the very heart of financial uncertainties.
I’m Melinda Cohan, and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. I run a business called the Coaches Console, and we’re proud to have helped tens of thousands of coaches create profitable and thriving businesses. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experienced coach.
With over two decades of entrepreneurial experience, my guest today is a seasoned business expert. He’s the mastermind behind a system that saved over 175,000 businesses, and he says, profit is not an event. Profit is a habit. Stay tuned for insights that could reshape your coaching business.
I’m thrilled to have Mike Michalowicz joining me today for this conversation. Mike’s a sought-after keynote speaker, a successful entrepreneur, bestselling author, and fellow podcaster. He is on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurship poverty. He’s serving entrepreneurs around the world, revealing his personal secrets and failures, empowering leaders to forge unstoppable teams, and guiding businesses to become cash earning machines.
Welcome, Mike.
Mike: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. So this is a win win already.
Melinda: I am really excited to have you on the show, Mike. But before we dive in, would you mind sharing just a little bit of your background with our listeners?
Mike: My background is I’m an author guy. But prior to that, I was an entrepreneur dude. And I think what’s relevant, I built some businesses. I sold some. I had a private equity deal. I had a Fortune 500 exit, which is great for resumes, and it was great for my pocket, but it wasn’t great for my ego. Ever since I sold my businesses, clearly, I’m a genius. I know everything. I became a self-made millionaire in my early thirties. I’m like, my God, look at me. And then I lost everything.
So I think the most relevant and most important part of my life experiences was I started a third business as an angel investor. Sucked at it. I actually now call myself the angel of death. I was really good at destroying businesses, and I wiped out myself financially, but I wiped out these businesses. I thought because I was there were going to succeed, but clearly no. And a defining moment came when we lost our house. We lost everything. I hadn’t been telling my family because I couldn’t believe it.
Logically, I saw the money going away and everything failing, but emotionally, it’s like something’s going to turn. And it didn’t. And my daughter felt compelled, she was nine years old at the time, to save us by offering up her piggy bank. She goes, daddy, since you can’t provide, I’ll start providing for the family. I was so ashamed and embarrassed. And the last part of my story is, it wasn’t like the next morning, like, I’m going to fix this. I was like, I’m going to start drinking, and went through depression, used alcohol as a relief mechanism or whatever, if that’s the right choice of words.
But what also happened was I started to challenge every notion I had about entrepreneurship. I’m still on this journey. I realized I knew and still know very little about entrepreneurship. All these different things, profitability and what drives teams and what makes a good leader. So every book I author, honestly, is something that I am thirsty to learn for myself. I think the teacher is the best student. So I write business books, and I own many businesses now, and we deploy these things. I try them, I learn from them. And when something really works, and I think it may be profound, that’s when I document it and share it.
Melinda: Wow. What a journey. And I know that there is so much in all of what you just said. We could get into so many different aspects of that. In this particular conversation, we’re going to get into the aspect of profit first, the system that you created, that was kind of birthed out of you, challenging that aspect of, like you said, entrepreneurism. So when you develop the profit first system to address your own financial struggles, share a bit more about the challenges that you were facing, that aha moment that led you to actually see that world differently.
Mike: Yeah. And now I realize, my gosh, I have a little bit of a formula I’ll share with you that changes my perspective. So I’ve always been an entrepreneur ever since I graduated from college. And I thought this pump and dump concept, like, just put all of your sweat into it, hustle and grind, and you’ll make money in the end. You’re going to sacrifice everything, your wellbeing, your family, your income. But one day you’ll be rich. Well, that’s bull, by the way. Thats total bull.
But I bought into it. And so those companies, when I sold them, I did make some money, but I never made money operating them. Thats why I became an angel investor. I’m like, I’ve got to double down this. It’s about pump and dump, grow so fast that you’re always earning money on the exits. But I couldn’t exit. It’s interesting. I also heard a study I think it’s less than 1% of companies will ever have a financial exit. Most companies fade into oblivion. The owner exits. Most of small business, and it’s not a viable entity to sell, so it’s not a viable retirement plan.
One day I sit in there, this is after I lost everything. And I’m like, why wasn’t I profitable? And I kept on writing the formula down. Sales minus expenses equals profit. It’s been drilled into my head, and I’m looking at it and say, why am I not profitable? That’s when I realized, holy cannoli, the formula is wrong. It’s a lie. What it says is you have to have income; you subtract expenses you incur. And what’s left over is profit. And like leftovers, profit’s a leftover. It’s so much of a leftover. It’s in our vernacular, we call it the bottom line, Melinda, or the year end. Those are all words for last.
So the analogy is, if you care about your health, you don’t say, my health is so important to me, I’m putting it last now. I’m putting it first. I love my family. I put them first, not last. Here’s the formula I’ve kind of discovered in retrospect that I’m doing, and I encourage anyone to do this. I look at the desire like, what is the outcome I intend. What I wanted in my businesses was financial freedom. Theres other things I wanted to, but that was one of the components. I said, okay, I never want to worry about bills. Financial freedom. Then there’s a method we follow, and then there’s a result.
So when the desire and the actual result is different, in this case, extraordinary different, I want to be financially free. I’m entrapped in my business and have no money, it’s the method that connecting piece that’s wrong. So I looked at that formula like this tells us, take profit last. What if I took profit first? And so what I simply did was every time revenue came into my company, I took a small piece of it. I started off with a few percent, two or 3%. It grew over time. I hit it for my business, and then I operated off the remainder. And it was so easy to adjust.
Basically, what I did was the pay yourself first principle applied to business, and then I just sustained it, started teaching it, started sharing it, and other businesses were doing it. Like, my God. This, I believe, is the right formula. The success rate now is in alignment. The desired outcome and the actual outcome is the same. This is the right formula, not the old one.
Melinda: Now, let me ask you this, because I’m the daughter of a preacher.
Mike: Was I getting preachy on you? Was I soapboxing?
Melinda: No, no, no. I bet you could keep preaching, because, I mean, I’ve adopted this. My husband and I use this formula. We use it in the business.
Mike: Awesome.
Melinda: And one of the things that I saw growing up, and I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this, but I’m going to go here anyway. The whole concept of tithing, right? Similar idea.
Mike: Yeah.
Melinda: You have an amount, you take a certain percentage, and you, in this case, you give it away.
Mike: Yeah.
Melinda: What I watched in the church setting and the places that I grew up in was people would do that even when they didn’t have any to give. They still had the formula backwards, but they wanted to have that feeling of, I’m still giving 10%, like I’m supposed to.
Mike: Yes.
Melinda: And I watched them go, like, dig a deeper and deeper hole in the name of something that was supposed to be good, but they got it all turned around.
Mike: Yeah.
Melinda: And so I really appreciate that you’re flipping it on its head, because it’s like, no, it’s what comes in. We do the thing that matters, and then from what’s left, we figure out the lifestyle that we can live and make adjustments accordingly. Talk more about that.
Mike: Yeah. The concept of give till it hurts is totally, in my opinion, radically wrong. It’s give until it serves, give until it is healthy, give until it helps, not give until it hurts. So we take profit specifically to reward ourselves. It becomes a self-fulfilling, enabling process, empowering process. So we take money first to care for ourselves first. And some people are like, I hear profit first, it sounds like the essence of greed, Mike. And I’m like, no, it’s the essence of stability.
Can you imagine you have, and I wish this upon no one, but you have a heart attack or something, and you get rushed to the hospital. Two doctors walk out at the same time. First doctor says, I’m really sorry for cash. I actually, I can barely get by. I have no money. I need as many clients as possible. Can we do as quickly? Doctor two, she comes out and says, I’m extremely profitable. In fact, I only do one procedure a year for a big premium. I’m perfectly successful. I can fix this. I have all the time in the world because I’m profitable.
Which doctor do you choose? Likely, the profitable one. Likely, the one who’s going to care for you, because as a consumer, we want someone who cares for us at the highest level, that thinks of as customer numero uno. And the only way they can do that, give us their undivided attention, is to be stable, profitable, so customers actually thirst for us to be profitable. So you have to care for your business to bring about that stability, to bring around that comfort, because then you can care back for your customer base. So profitability is not greed by any sense. It’s contribution.
Melinda: Yeah.
Mike: It’s the way that we give, because we now have a business that’s healthy. So that’s why I argue you have to do this, and it is a reward mechanism for you. It does give you financial freedom, which gives you comfort, it gives you stability. You’re sleeping at night; you’re not wrecked about how am I going to pay bills tomorrow? And therefore, you’re caring for what you need to care for through the work you do.
Melinda: Now, one of the things that you emphasize is that profit, it’s not an event, but it’s a habit. So we have a lot of new coaches, a lot of new entrepreneurs that listen to our episodes. And so when they’re entering their journey and starting their business, how can they develop this habit from the outset?
Mike: Yeah. So you definitely need and want to start from day one. We have over 800,000 companies that have deployed profit first. And the interesting thing is, the biggest challenge is with established companies, because they have to unlearn all bad habits. So first I want to give a behavioral principle that will explain why and how to start early. It’s a concept called Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson, the guy’s name was Northcote Parkinson, theorist in the 1950s, studying human behavior and realizes that as a resource expands in its availability, our consumption increases to meet its supply.
Classic studies around time. The more time I’m given to do something, the longer it takes. I love cookies. The more cookies are put in front of me, the more I consume. So if we constrain the supply, it forces a frugality, it forces efficiency, it also forces innovative thinking. So instead of giving me a week to complete a project, I’m given 3 hours. I got to start thinking, how can I do this? And I start thinking outside the box, and I move expeditiously.
But this is true around money, too. What many business owners discover when it’s too late, or at least hard to unwind, is their revenue is increasing. They are making more money, but they’re frustrated. Like, every time I feel I’m getting ahead, I’m actually getting further behind. Why is that? It’s Parkinson’s Law. More supply of cash into your business, the more we’re inherently going to consume. Like, oh, I have a deposit of $5,000 that I came in. I can get that new computer I needed to get, oh, $1,000 came in yesterday. Good, we can pay these bills.
The reality is the money you earn has multiple responsibilities. The first is profitability, which is stability for your organization. We have to pay you and get out of this association of being associated with pain. Give until it’s painful. We want to give until it’s helpful. So we’re going to take that profit first. The second thing we need to do is allocate money toward a salary for the owner, which is different than profit, and it’s often confused.
Profit is a reward. If you started a coaching business, thank you. You’re one of the very few people on this planet that will ever start a business. Thanks for doing that. You are a contributor to our economy. Thank you. Profit is a reward for taking this risk. If you work inside the business, you also deserve a salary for the work you do, which is different than the risk taking. It’s the work you’re now doing.
Taxes. The biggest bill associated with operating business is taxes. We need reserve for that and then, of course, the operations of the business. So what happens is money comes in, we need to carve it up to these different accounts. If you start this habit today, when you’re starting out, your business doesn’t know differently, so you can actually start with good habits. It’s like saying, if you were raised in my house, my mother was a stay-at-home mom, which was amazing because I come home from school and with snack time, and what did we get? It was always a piece of fruit, apples or oranges, and water, or sometimes juice, but never soda.
My other friend, there was no one home, and it was soda and twinkies. And I don’t know how he is today, but for me there is this association that proper structure is fruit and fibrous items and stuff like this and water. And so that behavior became established. Now it’s just kind of ingrained to me. So if you start with the profit first system today, it’s just natural to grow into it. We don’t have to unwind it.
Melinda: Now for those seasoned coaches that have been around for a while, and they’re like, I’ve got to make a change, like, how can they shift that mindset? I know for me, before we started doing the profit first concept, one of my mindset shifts was to say, it doesn’t matter what you make, it matters what you keep. And I stopped looking at only top line because I was in that situation. Top line, growing, growing, growing, growing, growing, keeping steady, steady, steady, steady, decline. I’m like, wait a minute here. I had to say, you know, it doesn’t matter what we make, it matters what we keep. And then I was like, well, that, that actually doesn’t even matter. Let’s turn this whole thing around.
Mike: Yes.
Melinda: So how can seasoned business owners begin to shift their mindset and change this?
Mike: Sure, sure. You start slow and you let it grow. So the mistake as business owners go into it too abruptly, they say, gosh, it hasn’t been working. What I’m going to do is start taking 15% of my top line. We’ll go into profit. I need to be profitable. I’m going to start paying myself that salary I deserve. Six figure salary, whatever it is. We start picking things, and now it puts this sudden burden on the business that could actually hurt it. The gym I go to, I notice, and I’m not picking on guys here on purpose, but it often seems to be guys. I’ll be at the gym and someone new will join that hasn’t been working out in a long time or maybe ever.
And some folks have this propensity to say, I got to go all in. And they throw 300 pounds on the bench press and they start doing this. And these guys, like, rip their shoulders out. I’m like, they tear their, like, why are you doing this? And they never come again. It’s too much, too soon, and it causes injury. What’s interesting is the people that come in higher trainer. The first day of exercise often is simply stretching and following the proper protocol. They start very slow and then they slowly build the weight until what the body can tolerate. You test your way up.
So what we do with profit first is most businesses, we say, well, there’s always accounts you could set up. Let’s just start with one. We’re going to call it the profit account. And the only other thing we’re going to do is we’re going to allocate 1% of your income to profit. The reason we’re doing this is a simple stretch. If a $1000 deposit comes in, I’m saying take $10, put in your profit account. Now what’s going to happen is you’re going to be a serotonin and dopamine release, because now you see a cash profit accumulating. It’s small, I get it, but that’s a nice coffee at Starbucks, perhaps, but you see money accumulating.
But what’s interesting is if you can run your business off $1,000, I know you can run off $990. That’s inconsequential. So it’s simply a stretch then we keep doing this, and the goal is to, in many cases, overcome our own skepticism. I didn’t think a system like this would work. It felt like a shell game to me. But I’m like, I got to do something, and I had to win my confidence over. And then when I did, then I got commitment. Confidence went to commitment. And so what I find with many businesses and those hundreds of thousands of companies we have doing profit first is when they start slow, the full rollout of profit first could be a year or even two.
But that 1% profit maybe a few months later becomes two and then six and then twelve, and they grow it. Then they’re like, oh, let me start reserving for taxes. Let me start preparing for this. And the business adjusts slowly over time, and there’s no injury.
Melinda: Now, you said something interesting. You talked about, let’s create an account, we’ll call it the profit account. So one of the assumptions, maybe, I don’t know, is this an assumption? One of the assumptions is that you got to have your books in order. Like you have to be tracking books. I encounter so many business owners just talking with one earlier today, and she has one checking account. Everything goes into it. Whatever she makes personally, wherever she gets child support from her ex-husband, any money that comes in, it’s all just mingled all together. And there’s no tracking. And so an assumption, I think with this, is that you got to have your books in order. Is that a fair assumption to make?
Mike: I’m going to say something, and this is totally for dramatic flair, books schmucks, like you don’t need it. And the reason is people get caught up in the minutia and then never get to taking the action that starts serving them. So when we work with a business, it’s funny, we have a company that’s doing this is an extraordinary circumstance. $7 million in revenue, and they don’t have any bucks. Its paper receipts and stuff. And it’s like, my gosh, they said we need to hire an accountant. And the accountant said, this is going to take me about a year to straighten out.
And they said, well, we can’t do profit first, like, oh, no, no, no, you can do profit first because we do know something. We know how many deposits are coming in from the business and we can start allocating 1%. Now, in that case, where we’re blending personal income and business income, we do need to separate those because we want to see if the business is standing on its own. Some people subsidize a business without knowing it. There may be money coming in for childcare, and actually the business is the beneficiary. That makes no sense.
Melinda: Yeah.
Mike: So we do want to separate out at the bank, but the bank level, what we do is we simply add one more account. So we have an income account or the depository account, and an account called profit. Money comes that first account, we take the profit percentage. We keep running the business like we have in the past off the other account, but profit is now being cut away. Time, we keep building from there. But the key is start now and then the accounting comes in alignment.
Here’s the other thing. Now we have so many deployments and so many accountants that have reviewed this, the accounting becomes easier because we’ve pre allocated money to its use. A full deployment profit first could have five, in extraordinary cases, ten or 15 accounts. But they have the labels. This is reserved for materials or inventory. This is reserved for the rent of the organization. This is reserved to pay the owner. So now when money is dispersed, the accountant sees the account it’s coming from and says, oh, I know the intended use of these funds.
So you don’t have to clarify. When this money was spent at Home Depot, what was that for? Were you buying something personal? No. If it came out of the materials account, it was used to buy materials. Helps clean up the accounting.
Melinda: Yeah. Now, you said something in your introduction when you were talking about your background. You talked about the shame, the embarrassment. And so there’s a lot of often pretty heavy emotions that people have to get beyond when they’re experiencing this. And we could talk about stress, feelings of failure, isolations, and like all of this, who knows what it is?
But then there’s this little, it’s like a sneaky mindset that says, well, you know, it’s just 1%. I couldn’t do it today. I’ll get it next week. I’ll start with the next deposit and then the next one comes. It’s like, I didn’t get it. It’s only 1%. It’s no big deal. I’ll start next time. How does somebody get over that little sneaky mindset getting in there?
Mike: So I’ll give you a few thoughts. So the first thing is, there’s a label for someone who does that, someone who delays, avoids and stuff. The label is called being a human. That’s called very human. So first we have to accept that’s normal, that we’re not an anomaly, and we stop being punitive toward ourselves and say, gosh, I’m such an idiot for not doing this. No, we’re all the same here. This is cool, and you’re normal.
The second thing is you can use. I think it’s a Buddhist principle that says, when’s the best time to plant a tree? 40 years ago. When’s the next best time? Today. Right? So what the principle gets across is this concept that if we start now, the residual effect gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So just understanding that it’s not about being perfect, it’s just about planting it, and the benefit is going to serve you tremendously. Then there’s two other mechanisms you can use. I’ll show you one. It’s kind of a personal thing I do, but here’s a picture of me. I used AI. Supposedly, that’s me at age 90.
Melinda: Handsome.
Mike: First of all, I look amazing at age 90. And look at my hair. I actually have it. Like, that’s such nonsense. But whatever. Here’s why I have that image. It sits in front of me every day. And I look at me quite a few years from now, and I ask myself, what is he going to be saying about my decisions today? Is he going to be grateful or disappointed? So I’m looking at future Mike. Hopefully he’s saying every time, thank you for caring for me now. And that is a great reminder of making something that may be outside of my regular comfort zone, my kind of thermostat, and doing something slightly different, because I think that guy that has perfect hair will be grateful.
The last mechanism is engaging an outside party, especially it does not have emotional attachment. When I started doing profit first, I’ve been doing it now for, I think it’s 13 or 14, actually, maybe it’s 15 years. I literally have 58 or 59 consecutive quarters of profit distributions. And they haven’t always gotten bigger, but for the most part, they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So my tree was planted many years ago, and it’s unbelievable.
But in the beginning, I was avoiding a system. I didn’t have enough money to pay bills. I’m like, I’ll steal from profit. I’ll wait. So I engaged an outside party. His name was Larry. I said, Larry, here’s the deal. I don’t have the discipline to be disciplined. I need this account to have profit. I’m going to put money in there, but I don’t want access to it. In fact, I’m going to make you the check signing authority. You have the login and everything. I trust him. I said, the only way I ever take profit out is to reward me if my business needs me. No, do not give it to me because I’m trying to abate and avoid my own system.
And I remember going to meet with him once, there was a sizable amount of profit. Over time, it was like tens of thousands of dollars that accumulated. And for me that was like, hey, that’s a huge amount of money is life changing. And like I said to my wife, I said, believe it or not, we can go on a vacation. And it’s all paid for, it’s all ready. Let me go. So I called up Larry, said, let’s take the profit out.
He says, oh, great, come on down. And he pulls out the checking rates, 10,000. And he’s not signing it. I’m like, sign that. I got to go. He’s like, what are you using this money for? I said, vacation? He’s like, you’re rewarding yourself. You promised. I said, yes. He goes, show me the receipts and the bookings. He was holding me so accountable, and only when I proved I was rewarding myself. He says, enjoy it, as opposed to client back in the business. So you can get a third party involved if you don’t have the natural discipline and grow, and you need to grow into it. Just like I did.
Melinda: Love it. Love that. What are some of the misconceptions that people have?
Mike: They’re common. So the number one misconception is, oh, I can do this in a spreadsheet, or I can do my accounting system. This is great. So pre allocate money, I’ll put in a spreadsheet and track it. No, profit first is what’s called a behavioral intercept. And I got to be careful about that term. I made that term up. I don’t know if behavioral intercept exists, but this is what I mean by this is when I survey entrepreneurs, I ask them, how do you manage your money? And the reality is, well over 90% of business owners don’t use accounting systems to manage your money. They log into a bank account, see what the balance is, and make a decision based upon that.
We’ve been told by accounting professionals, don’t do that. And I’m saying, do that is the best thing you do because it’s a natural human wiring, and we need a system that channels us. The lesson here is, don’t change who you are, channel who you are. So keep logging into that bank account. But we need to set up multiple accounts at your bank level, because that will intercept what you’re naturally doing. A quick vignette about this, because this is how impactful it is. I wanted to exercise regularly. This also started about 15 years ago.
And realized I was circumventing the system. I would always have an excuse. So I looked at my pattern. I’d wake up in the morning, go to the bathroom, drink coffee, read the news, skip a workout. But in that pattern, I said, my gosh, every time I wake up in the morning, I go into the bathroom. So I put my sneakers on the toilet seat. Behavioral intercept. The only way I can use the toilet is by grabbing my sneakers. And now momentum kicks in. I’m like, just put my feet, walk down to the gym, get a workout in. And I did again today because the sneakers are there. It forces that behavior.
So the number one mistake, or lie is I can do a spreadsheet. Number two, we talked about already, too fast, too soon. People are like, you know what? I need to be profitable. I’m going to do this right away. That’s the biggest mistake. Biggest mistake. Number three is I need to get my book straight first. That’s something we discussed already, too. This is absent of that, and it works with any accounting system. You don’t need to change your system. You can work with QuickBooks or Shoebox, or Xero, it doesn’t matter. It’s a cash management system at your bank, works with any accounting. Those are the three common mistakes.
Melinda: Is there anything that I haven’t asked you or covered that you really want to make sure our listeners walk away with?
Mike: Well, I do want to reiterate this, is that your customers want you to be profitable. We talked about that doctor scenario. It’s crazy, but many business owners say, I don’t want to take advantage of my customers. We shouldn’t be profitable. That’s not fair. And your customers are paying the consequence of that. It’s hurting your customers, not being profitable because it puts your business and yourself in a stressed state. Then what the response is is, oh, I simply need to sell more. If I do more of what’s not working, that will fix things, and we all know makes it worse. I
In fact, sales translate to stress. The more we sell, the more we have obligation to deliver. That’s called stress. We are now obligated at a higher level. So the more you sell, the more obligation you have. And as a small business owner, that means the more we have to do in general, which means more stress. So we don’t want to sell more. We first need to make sure every sale is profitable, which brings stability and sanity. And then you can sell more. So sales doesn’t come first, it’s selling profitably that comes first.
And profit first is the mechanism and your customers will be grateful for it because once you bring about profitability, the whole way you carry yourself consciously or subconsciously starts to shift. You speak with more authority, you come across more confidently, you have more patience, you can cater to your best customers.
Melinda: Beautiful. Let’s summarize a few things that we’ve talked about today. I love how you took us into that profit is a way that we reward ourselves and care for ourselves first. That it’s not the essence of greed, it’s the essence of stability. We talked about developmental habits and behavior tips that we have to change in order to adopt this. You got into talking about how money that you earn has a responsibility and that the profitability, I loved this, is that it’s a reward for taking the risk of starting a business, contributing to our society.
And then the second thing is allocate to the salary for the owner, that that’s not something that should happen later that is important to include as well. And then taxes and operations. And I love when you said for those folks that maybe already have a business and they want to change their behaviors, start slow and let it grow because if you go too fast it can put a burden on your business. You talked about you just create an account and allocate 1% from each deposit. Let that become a rhythm and then you go to 2%. Let that become a rhythm.
And I love when you gave the $1,000 example of if you can run a business on a then you put $10 into that profit account, you can run that same business on $990. You won’t miss it. I love that concept. We talked about the different mechanisms and you gave us that great reminder. When is the best time to plant a tree? 40 years ago. When’s the next best time? Today. To be human, have compassion and grace with ourselves as we start this new way of thinking and new activity and to make sure. I loved the picture that you gave us. What is your future self-going to be saying about your decisions today? Really keep that top of mind and the importance of that third party, outside party accountability.
We got into misconceptions. We talked about how if you’re not taking a profit, how it’s hurting your customers when you’re not profitable because you’re in that stressed state, and then you’re like, oh, I got to sell more. And then you’re stressed more. And that’s not the cycle we want to get into. But the selling profitably is what we begin with, not selling. I loved how you took us through that. Mike, do you have any parting words for our listeners?
Mike: You can do all these things that your customers are starving for and waiting for, but if you’re hamstrung without profit, will never happen.
Melinda: Beautiful. Thank you for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches. And also a big thank you to Mike Michalowicz for this incredible conversation. You can find out more about him at mikemicalowitz.com dot that’s Mike, M-I-K-E Michalowicz M-I-C-H-A-L-O-W-I-C-Z dot com. And in the show notes, you’ll find links to his website, other downloadable free tools and resources, and links to his podcast and YouTube channel as well, with lots of great content there as well. Mike, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Mike: This has been such a joy, Melinda. Thank you.
Melinda: I’m Melinda Cohan and you’ve been listening to Just Between Coaches. Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Making It and Course Lab. To catch the great episodes on Just Between Coaches, please follow us on Mirasee M’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It is the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thank you and see you next time.