Profit by Design

If your business is growing, chances are you will be hiring either now or sometime in the very near future. In today’s episode, Dr. Sabrina shares the key to successfully hiring A-players for your business.  This content is based on Dr. Sabrina’s book, How to Hire the Best: The Entrepreneur's Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top-Performing Team Members, and is a companion book to her soon-to-be-released book, The 4 Week Vacation. After all, if you want to be able to have a business that can run without you, you NEED A-players on your team! In this special 2-part series on How to Hire the Best, Dr. Sabrina will be sharing what it really takes to attract A-players to your team and that requires understanding the psychology of A-players. Don’t miss part 2 in next week’s episode, where Dr. Sabrina walks you through implementing a system to attract those A-players to your team based on the psychology and behavior of A-players. Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business ConsultingGroup. Show Highlights: Hiring the best team players is not a modern-day problem, but it is more challenging now. The 3 core issues surrounding hiring: Women have been forced out of the work place to stay home with children. People’s valuation of time has changed. The overall mindset. The difference between hiring challenges pre-COVID andnow. It is very costly to mishire. Costs of employee turnover can range from 100% - 300% of the replaced employee’s salary. Traditional hiring practices are out of alignment with the behavior of A-players. The State of Entrepreneurship: the health of your business in relation to your own well-being as an entrepreneur. Dr. Sabrina dives deeper into this in her upcoming book, The 4 Week Vacation! Have you taken YOUR assessment yet? Various “symptoms” you will notice when you don’t have an A-player hiring system. Dr. Sabrina shares a personal story about her passion behind teaching business owners how to attract, hire, and retain A-players. One of the best perks to having a team full of A-players? They can run your business without you! Dr. Sabrina details the psychology of A-players. NEXT WEEK: The 3 simple steps you can take using this knowledge of A-player psychology behavior to create a way to attract, hire, and retain A-players in your own business! Are you ready to become an employer of choice? Check out our 5-week How to Hire the Best course, which teaches small business owners like you how to use a recruitment and hiring system that attracts the A-players and aligns with A-player psychology. Links and Resources: Download Dr. Sabrina’s Introductory Training: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Join Dr. Sabrina in our Entrepreneurs Take Your Life Back! Community Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Our guest today is not only a listener favorite, but he was also the very first guest on the Profit By Design podcast! Mike Michalowicz (pronounced mi-CAL-oh-witz) is the entrepreneur behind three multi-million dollar companies and is the author of Get Different, Profit First, Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan, and Fix This Next. He is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and regularly travels the globe as an entrepreneurial advocate. In this episode, listen in as Mike discusses his newly-released book, Get Different.  We also get to pick his brain about how he writes his books, how he chooses his topics, and how the books he writes really manages to capture the attention of entrepreneurs. It is always a lively conversation with Mike! Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Mike discusses how each book he writes is inspired by his life’s purpose and his mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty and to simplify the entrepreneurial journey. Why businesses are fearful of marketing and how to get past that mindset. The importance of affirmations. Mike shares a powerful and poignant story about a man named Justin and the impact that Mike’s book, Clockwork, had on his life. How we lose connection with what’s truly important in life. Once you’ve gained your entrepreneurial momentum, putting more energy and more effort into growing your business is not healthy or sustainable. Taking care of your health is a foundational necessity for running a healthy business. Mike describes his definition of a successful life. Mike reveals the topics which intrigue him the most and what he is working on next.   Connect with Mike! Mike’s Website  Mike’s Books Other Podcast Episodes Featuring Mike Michalowicz: Episode 92: Fix This Next with Mike Michalowicz Episode 50: The Surprising Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs  Episode 1: What Every Business Owner Need to Know to Avoid Entrepreneurial Poverty Mentioned Episode: 24: From Weeders to Leaders – Tapping into Your Team’s Greatness with Jeff McManus  Mentioned Books: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace by Gary Chapman and Paul White Links and Resources: Download Dr. Sabrina’s Introductory Training: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Join Dr. Sabrina in our Entrepreneurs Take Your Life Back! Community  Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Today’s guest is not only an internet marketing rockstar, but he’s someone who has a heart for supporting individuals with physical disabilities. Tom Antion recently introduced a pilot program that appears to be a no-brainer: if someone can legitimately learn from home, they can legitimately be hired to work from home. Listen in to this inspiring conversation around accessibility, automation, and profits! Tom Antion has never had a job. He's an Internet Multimillionaire "guy next door" and the subject of a Hollywood Documentary "The American Entrepreneur" premiering summer2021. Tom is the founder of The Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center, the only licensed, dedicated internet marketing school in the country, with the only facility of its kind in the world. People come from all over the world to study internet marketing there, in the lap of luxury. Tom also has a new podcast, called Screw The Commute, where he teaches people how they could live pretty much two for the price of one, if they didn't have to sit in their car on the way to work, making other people rich.   Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: A-players with limitations who find it difficult to get into a workplace can be highly motivated individuals when it comes to working from home. Tom explains the adaptations used for the visually impaired. Tom shares the goals of the students who are in his pilot program. Resiliency is an A-player quality and Tom helps add self-sufficiency to that. Tom details how to choose a shopping cart. Tom addresses the profits that can be made from the upselling component. Here’s a tip when sending follow-up emails! FREE Download from Tom! How to Automate Your Business If you just look, there are money-making opportunities everywhere!   Connect with Tom! Help 5 Disabled People Go To School Internet Marketing Training Tom Antion Referenced Books: Speak and Grow Rich by Dottie Walters and Lillet "Lilly" Walters Referenced Episode: 20: Street Smart Entrepreneurial Strategies with Tom Antion Links and Resources: Download Dr. Sabrina’s Introductory Training: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Join Dr. Sabrina in our Entrepreneurs Take Your Life Back! Community        Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Today’s show is a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of speaking and how to get booked for speaking engagements.  We hope you enjoy listening to this fun and insightful conversation with Li Hayes. Also, don’t miss her explanation of the differences between talking, teaching, and speaking! Li Hayes puts professional speakers on more stages! She is founder of Go Leeward Speaker Management, working with inspirational and impactful speakers like Mike Michalowicz, Emmanuel Kelly and Jeff Hoffman.   Through her Path to the Mainstage speaker program, she also helps emerging speakers by sharing the behind-the-curtains secrets of professional speakers and event planners that are essential to speaker success. Most speakers don't fail because of their content or on stage talent, they fail to be successful because they don't understand the business of speaking. With a long history in business working with Corporations, Associations, NPFs and more, Li Hayes gives emerging speakers, who want to accelerate their businesses, the skills and tactical path to getting themselves on the mainstage. Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Li explains the impact that being surrounded by thought leaders has had on her. The number one thing that event planners are looking for. Li shares tips on how to “build your celebrity”. Understanding the needs of an event planner is very different than understanding the needs of your top clients. How these tenets relate to Pumpkin Planning. Li addresses the foundational steps to building a successful speaking career. The biggest mistake that speakers can make. It’s important to stay humble! More tips from Li on how to bring value as a speaker and advice on managing expectations. Li explains the difference between a talker, a teacher, and a speaker. Li provides an overview of what a keynote presentation should entail. Understanding the BUSINESS of speaking: that’s what Li’s Path to the Mainstage is all about, since only 20% of your speaking success is related to your stage performance.   Connect with Li! LinkedIn Facebook Links and Resources: Download Dr. Sabrina’s Introductory Training: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Entrepreneurs Take Your Life Back! Community  Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Steve Dale is the author of The Profitable Contractor and we’re delighted to have him with us as our guest today!  As you will hear from Steve, working more hours does not necessarily correlate to making more money; in fact, many times, it’s quite the opposite. He also shares the value he gained in being coached, what he learned through Pumpkin Planning, and how Tap the Potential introduced him to a better way of running his business. Please join us in this conversation to hear about the successful pivots that Steve learned to make in his business that ultimately inspired him to write his book. There is much to learn here! Steve Dale is a contractor, entrepreneur, and author who has run a residential remodeling business for thirteen years. He graduated from Lewis-Clark State College with a business degree and is a certified Pumpkin Plan Strategy coach.  Steve combines a strong business foundation with an insider’s understanding of what it takes to run a successful remodeling company. He transformed his own business using these skills, which fueled his passion for helping other contractors learn how to run a thriving business while still having a life outside of work. He lives in Lewiston, Idaho, with his wife and three children. In his free time, he enjoys hunting, fishing, exploring the great outdoors, and spending quality time with loved ones. You can learn more about Steve and download free resources for your business at OneYearRescuePlan.com. Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Steve addresses the mental shift from contracting to coaching. Steve shares how he learned to overcome the struggles to embrace his value and to price appropriately. Surrounding yourself with the right kind of support is crucial to moving forward. The dangers of the “contractor buddy advice”. Work does not have to take away those important moments in life that we can’t get back. When we become genuine and vulnerable, we can share and request help with our struggles. Only then can we start to turn things around. Do you need to be supported as you grow your business? Take our Better Business, Better Life™ assessment and schedule a consultation!   Connect with Steve! The Profitable Contractor Links and Resources: FREE Download: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour  Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Mary Pierce of Pierce & Company has been in Tap the Potential’s Better Business, Better Life™ program for about a year now, and she’s our featured guest today! In this episode, we examine ways to get a better quality of life when business is going well but we’re kind of feeling “stuck in the weeds”.  If you’re feeling the “scarcity mindset” of not having enough time, money, or love and you’re ready to transition to the “abundance mindset” where you feel safe and supported, you’ll want to listen to this inspiring conversation! Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: As Mary explains, she is an experienced CPA who has worked in the accounting profession for over 30 years, advising clients in construction, real estate, and service businesses, and she has recently niched down even further to the automotive repair shops. Mary describes how she felt about her business and her life at the time that she joined the Better Business, Better Life™ program. How to get out of the scarcity mindset. Mary shares the many changes in her business and her life that have her excited. What Mary has gotten out of the How to Hire the Best course. Change your thinking from “I can’t” to “How Can I”. Mary addresses her plans for her future. Why many business owners are ready to look for a j-o-b. What endeavors, hobbies, or professional interests would YOU like to explore outside of your business? Do you recognize yourself in Mary’s “before” story? Take our Better Business, Better Life™ assessment and schedule a consultation!   Links and Resources: Download Your Free Workbook: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Book Mentioned: Unleash Your Primal Brain: Demystifying how we think and why we act by Tim Ash  Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Hi, Profit Designers! As we at Tap the Potential gear up for a number of special, upcoming projects, we’re taking this time to bring you some of our most popular episodes from the vault! We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back with new episodes for you very soon!  On today’s Profit by Design, Dr. Sabrina Starling talks with her good friend, Donna Leyens. Donna is the president and Co-Founder of the Provendus Group. She is on a mission to save small businesses from extinction, by providing business tools, strategy, training and support to business professionals who want to make a big impact by becoming small business growth strategists.  This mighty team of strategists uses The Pumpkin Plan Action Guide, a business growth program Donna developed based on the methods in the book The Pumpkin Plan, written by her Co-founder Mike Michalowicz. Pumpkin Plan Strategists help small businesses to not just stay afloat, but to scale and grow in both profitability and size, while allowing the owner to have time for a life as well.  Today, we will learn how to make your business more sustainable using The Pumpkin Plan. Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Donna gives us a brief overview of how The Pumpkin Plan is so helpful to business owners. The 3 crucial elements in your business. How you know if you need to find the Sweet Spot in your business. The Client Assessment for ranking your clients. What questions to ask your best clients to find more clients like them. What The Pumpkin Plan offers for business owners who are overworked and spread too thin. Why Profit First needs The Pumpkin Plan. An example of narrowing what you offer to get better pricing on what you sell, increasing profitability. The Blueprint for Growth   Links and Resources: FREE Download: Dr. Sabrina's 5 Favorite Wishlist Interview Questions +  Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Hi, Profit Designers! As we at Tap the Potential gear up for a number of special, upcoming projects, we’re taking this time to bring you some of our most popular episodes from the vault! We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back with new episodes for you very soon!  In this episode, you're going to get some great ideas that are really going to get your wheels turning. Dr. Sabrina talks to Tom Antion, an internet multi-millionaire who has never had a job. He has been a professional speaker and entertainer since 1988. Tom has a really outrageous hiring method that takes guts to implement. Dr. Sabrina verifies, however, that it's a good method to use, and that it will work.  Tom is the founder of The Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center, the only licensed, dedicated internet marketing school in the country, with the only facility of its kind in the world. People come from all over the world to study internet marketing there, in the lap of luxury. Tom also has a new podcast, called Screw The Commute, where he teaches people how they could live pretty much two for the price of one, if they didn't have to sit in their car on the way to work, making other people rich.   Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Tom shares the one life lesson that he has carried forward. How Tom got his outrageous idea for an entertainment company, Prank Masters. Tom explains how he got back up, kept humor around him, and started all over again when things fell down for him. Tom talks about how he got into the speaking business. Tom had to learn how to become a great, professional public speaker. Tom realized that if you try to be excellent at something yourself, people will notice and they will often ask you to teach them. Tom used what his Dad had taught him about being excellent when the commercial internet came along, around 1994. For Tom, the overriding principle is to be really excellent at what you do so that other people will ask you to teach them how to do it. This is how he got to be a big internet guru. Although it's good to have long-term dreams, you have to do the step-by-step and your emphasis will change over time. Some tips for keeping up with the constantly changing internet, for the online portions of your business. Tom discusses the ins and outs of his outrageous, street-smart hiring process. Why it's best to pay young people for the job, rather than by the hour. Tom explains how to place a hiring ad his way. Tom's ads are unprofessional, yet they really work. Tom's hiring process will help you to filter the wrong people out and speak to the right people. Dr. Sabrina's book, How To Hire The Best, features interviews with real-life entrepreneurs about their hiring practices. Tom gives his thoughts, as an entrepreneur, about what he has learned about being intentional and he also explains how he designed his business and how he runs it. You can keep your costs low by learning and doing as much as possible yourself. Only delegate once you know what you're doing. How to make your hobby legitimately tax-deductible. Tom discusses what inspired him to start his podcast and he gives some of the topics that he gets into. Tom gives some great tips from the training he does on how to do a $50,000 video production for pennies on the dollar. Tom explains how you can use Shortkeys for a PC and  Keyboard Maestro for a Mac to save yourself millions of keystrokes and to provide lightning-fast customer service.   Links and Resources: Download Your Free Workbook: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Register your A-Player team members for Tap the Potential’s Leadership Bootcamp  Mentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Hi, Profit Designers! As we at Tap the Potential gear up for a number of special, upcoming projects, we’re taking this time to bring you some of our most popular episodes from the vault! We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back with new episodes for you very soon!  In this episode, Stephen King, president and CEO of GrowthForce, joins Dr. Sabrina and her co-host, Mike Bruno, for an illuminating conversation around pricing. Should you discount during an economic downturn? Listen in to this discussion to hear compelling reasons why you should NOT discount, and what you should be doing, instead. Top executive at a Fortune 500 company. Bootstrapped CEO. Venture-backed tech startup founder. Non-profit fundraiser. It’s safe to say Stephen King is not your traditional CPA. Stephen is president and CEO of GrowthForce, one of the nation’s largest providers of outsourced bookkeeping and controller services. Regarded as an industry thought leader by AICPA and CPA.com, his ability to visualize the future of accounting has lead GrowthForce to become one of the fastest-growing companies in America. His experience at the forefront of technology development and accounting system design spans nearly three decades. In 1995 he founded Virtual Growth, the nation’s first cloud-based accounting service, and quickly grew it into a market leader. After being acquired by Insperity, Stephen was brought on as president of Insperity’s Financial Management Services division, serving two years before leaving to build GrowthForce. He also spent seven years working at Amnesty International USA—first overseeing 300 percent growth as CFO, then raising over $20M a year as Director of Development. Stephen’s time at Amnesty reinforced his life-long commitment to giving back to the community. As a result, non-profits represent 35 percent of GrowthForce clients. Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Business owners are feeling a lot of pressure in this new normal. Pricing is harder if you’re not confident of the value that you’re bringing. Stephen addresses the issues around discounting, then provides the math: If you have a 40 percent gross profit and you give a 10 percent discount, you need 33 percent more sales to generate the same bottom line. If you have a 30 percent margin, you need 50% more sales to generate the same bottom line. If you have a 40 percent gross profit and you ADD 10% to your pricing, you can sell 20 percent less and make the same money.  When Stephen let an objective person price his jobs, his fees started going up. Stephen shares some case studies and classic mistakes from clients that allow him to share their data. The accounting industry was designed for compliance. Financial accounting is designed for external users. For example, it is your CPA’s job to help you pay as little in taxes as you’re legally allowed to, to get you through an audit, and to keep the banks happy. Management accounting is about internal users and about understanding your unit economics, the profitability on each job.  Stephen explains the benefits of automated activity-based costing and cautions against time-leakage. Things to consider to gain confidence in pricing appropriately: Stephen offers accounting system suggestions to set up reports to show you your “income minus your cost of goods sold equals your gross profit”. Your gross profit percentage is the most important number of every financial statement. This will tell you if you’re pricing right. Which clients should you fire? Which clients should you re-price? How do you spend money to make money in sales and marketing? Dr. Sabrina explains the 80/20 principle: 20 percent of your clients and customers are responsible for 80 percent of your revenue. If you focus on increasing revenue from the top 20 percent by 25 percent, you’re at choice and you can get rid of 80 percent of your clients and customers. One mistake is to think that your biggest account is your best client. When you have the appropriate margin in your pricing you are able to run a much more simplified, streamlined business. Whatever you do, don’t discount your services during an economic downturn. Don’t make decisions based on fear. You need to have an attitude of gratitude. Surround yourself with people who have a positive mindset and who are looking for growth. Links and Resources: Download Your Free Workbook: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Register your A-Player team members for Tap the Potential’s Leadership BootcampMentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.

Hi, Profit Designers! As we at Tap the Potential gear up for a number of special, upcoming projects, we’re taking this time to bring you some of our most popular episodes from the vault! We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back with new episodes for you very soon!  Dr. Sabrina invites a valued member of the Tap the Potential team to join her on the podcast. As a Tap the Potential strategist, specializing in Profit First and Pumpkin Planning, Stacey Seguin supports Tap the Potential’s efforts in identifying ways for clients to save money, MAKE more money and free up their time.  Listen in to this thoughtful conversation! It’s a peek inside the internal discussions of the Tap the Potential Strategists team. Tap the Potential clients have more time for what matters to them and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. This conversation offers a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into how our strategists accomplish this with our clients.   Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group. Show Highlights: Being a business owner and entrepreneur is a lifestyle that can easily lead to burnout. Stacey relates her own compelling story of entrepreneurial burnout. The Tap the Potential team has compassion for what business owners are going through because they’ve all lived that life. Fortunately, there can be great things waiting on the other side of that burnout. A powerful, simple question: What has to change in order to make this possible? Getting sleep and regular downtime is imperative to reducing stress. A comparative advantage (vs. competitive advantage) creates opportunities for an increase in profit. Discover why your industry standard may be your own self-imposed glass ceiling. Tap the Potential focuses on ways to better their clients’ businesses. Stacey and Dr. Sabrina field a question on a business owner’s desire to open a second location. How to know when you are maximizing the profit potential in your business. When we decide to sell our business, we need to be able to show that the business can support a C-suite executive (or several!) and pay appropriate compensation. If we can’t, it’s not sellable.   Links and Resources: Download Your Free Workbook: How to Make Your Time Worth $10,000 an Hour Register your A-Player team members for Tap the Potential’s Leadership BootcampMentioned in this episode:20h Anniversary!We're celebrating 20 years of helping business owners take their lives back from their businesses so they can have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank accounts than ever. Book a call with Kaitlyn to see how we can support you. Visit us at www.tapthepotential.com and click the button to schedule a call today.